Stardate 75645.1; August 24, 2398
Episode 88
Edited by Peter Bossley
Written by Chris Adamek
ADDITIONAL CHARACTERS
Advisor Asvelene
Admiral Dracene
Admiral William
Grayson
Justin Reinbold
Advisor Tasarene
Ambassador Tuvok
Commander Vorsene
Prologue
The Tholians were coming…
That was the lone thought lingering in
Neelar Drayge’s mind as he frantically piloted the USS Aztec through the
depths of a dense and seemingly endless asteroid belt. Drayge knew that his concentration should
have been focused entirely upon keeping the tiny craft in one piece, but the
constant threat looming in the distance was a force his mind could not
deny.
Six or seven ragged blue phaser blasts had
already clipped the Aztec; countless others careened into the distance,
pulverizing entire asteroids in a single shot.
Despite his allegedly incredible piloting skills, Drayge knew that it
was only a matter of time before the Tholians got lucky—and when that happened…
He shuddered at the thought…
Erin Keller suddenly tugged at the Bolian’s
sleeve. “Neelar,” she called over the
hiss of a ruptured EPS conduit, “one of the cruisers is coming about!”
He glanced down at sensors, and sure enough,
the lead ship had ended its vigilant watch at the edge of the asteroid
belt. “They’ve set a direct intercept
course,” said Drayge, trying valiantly to sound half as calm as Commander
Keller. His attempt was a miserable
failure, but Keller and the others were too busy to actually notice.
“There’s no way in hell we can outrun the
bastards!” Lucas Tompkins quickly
seated himself at the engineering station along the starboard wall. “Even with the transwarp network in
shambles, their engines are still far superior to our own…”
“And that last phaser blast didn’t help,”
added a frazzled Kendall Johnson. He
was at the freestanding station behind Drayge, anxiously pouring over the
sensors in search of some sort of advantage. “One of the plasma coils in the
port nacelle ruptured…”
Tompkins immediately confirmed the data on
his own console. “Damn!” His deft fingers flew over the console. “If we don’t get that fixed soon, we’ll
start venting drive plasma…”
Keller shot Tompkins a curious glance. “What about the secondary coil?” she asked.
“It’s online,” said the engineer, “but it’s
having trouble keeping up with the plasma flow. There might be something wrong with it!”
“Cut power to the port nacelle then,” said
Keller. “If we can’t run from the
Tholians, there’s no use—”
A flash of azure light suddenly burst
through the asteroid field, blowing through the side of a large asteroid before
skirting the Aztec’s shield grid.
Drayge desperately tried to minimize the impact, but a second shot very
quickly fouled up his efforts—and struck the Aztec head-on.
The tiny craft jolted wildly, violently
throwing Drayge back in his chair; sparks and cinders rolled across the
flickering helm and the EPS rupture overhead began to spray white clouds into
the already murky air.
Keller turned to Johnson. “Do we have any weapons?”
“Phasers and torpedoes,” he said. “But, I… I don’t know how much good they’ll
do!”
“Well we can’t just sit here and let them
obliterate us!” Keller turned back to
her console. “Target their weapons and
propulsion systems—and fire at will!”
The Aztec lingered in the shadow of a
large, craggy asteroid for only a moment before darting into the open
battlefield in a blaze of phaser blasts and quantum torpedoes. The manic Tholian vessel weaved around the
oncoming torpedoes, but several of the phaser bursts smashed into its shield
grid; blue flares shimmered across the Tholians’ hull, but they emerged from
the assault unscathed.
Within seconds, the angular craft charged
the Aztec amidst a continuous barrage of phaser fire. The first dozen shots only skirted the
fighter’s shields, and by the time the next barrage was unleashed, the Aztec
was back on the offensive, casting its remaining quantum torpedoes into the
fray. The Tholian barrage intercepted
three of the torpedoes—prompting their immediate detonation—but the remainder
of the group plowed into, and ultimately through the Tholians’ shield grid,
calling forth a massive green explosion that swept across its angular hull…
* * *
“They’ve got multiple hull breaches in the
aft sections of their ship,” called Johnson from his workstation. “Their engines are gone, but… looks like
they still have weapons.”
Keller sighed as the magnitude of the
situation began to sink in. “They can’t
run… we can’t run…”
“Things are gonna get ugly,” surmised
Tompkins.
“They already have.” Drayge sat in contemplation of the
information flitting across is side of the main console. Though he wasn’t exactly certain what the
strange energy readings were, he had a very, very bad suspicion.
Much to the Bolian’s chagrin, it was a
suspicion that Kendall Johnson was very quick to confirm. “The two cruisers still outside the asteroid
belt have begun weaving some sort of energy field around us…”
And suddenly, things went from very bad to
very worse—the morbid look upon Keller’s formerly placid face was a dead
giveaway. Slowly, the Commander took in
a deep lungful of the acrid air and said,
“It looks like we just got ourselves caught in a Tholian web…”