Star Trek: Fallen Heroes Part I

Chapter 7b

"Captain!" Lt. Cmdr. Leif Anderson shouts as he frantically tries to regain control over the ship with that one console he's left to work with. "I can't bring thruster control back online. All circuits are fried. I need to—"

"Warning. Collision is imminent," the crackling computer voice says.

Leif Anderson waits for the computer to finish her sentence. The massive beating that knocked the ship off course caused him to bang his already injured head against the bulkhead behind him. The trickle of blood coming from his black hair now feels as though it's forming a small river. His legs are weakening, and he's having difficulty staying focused. That won't stop him from trying to save the ship, though. "Captain, I need you to open the ops/helm console and manually work your way through the standard rerouting procedures while I attempt to input new commands. I can't do it all from here."

Captain Reynolds doesn't respond.

"Captain? Captain?" Lt. Cmdr. Anderson shouts with growing desperation.

The captain doesn't respond.

Lt. Cmdr. Anderson sighs. She must be unconscious—or worse. She's just sitting there, staring at the viewscreen that displays the scrambled image of Station A-12 getting closer and closer. The Wolf is headed straight for the station they were sent to protect and there is nothing he can do about it. Despite the shoddy quality of the broken viewscreen, Anderson can clearly make out the conference room's large window and the shuttlebay a number of decks below it.

* * *

Commander Tony Q, who's still seated in the Type 11 shuttle he confiscated only a little while ago, can see the USS Wolf through the large shuttlebay windows. No doubt about it, it's on collision course. He saw what a blow she was left to deal with by the giant Massal-class prototype. The sight of the dying starship closing in has a hypnotizing effect. Automatically, his mind goes over some relevant statistics. The Wolf is an Akira-class starship. That means it has nineteen decks and a total mass of over three million metric tons! This shuttlebay is only four decks high...

Tony knows it's time for action. They've got to get out of here, and fast! He looks around, deciding what to do. When he looks to the right, he sees Ensign Murphy operating the controls on the platform, unaware of the impending collision. When he looks to the left, he sees the vague outlines of a man sitting in the cockpit of the far left shuttle. There's no time for Tony to react, though, because the left shuttlebay door starts to open! Air rushes out of the shuttlebay and into open space with a deafening roar.

"What the hell?" Tony shouts. His wound punishes him immediately by sending up a bout of agony. The heavy shuttlecraft he's in slides a foot or so toward the open bay door due to the rushing air, resulting in an awful scraping noise.

Ensign Murphy—who weighs considerably less than a shuttlecraft, lucky her—is taken completely by surprise as the sudden air displacement knocks her off the platform. She can barely hold on to the platform railing, but she's unable to hold on to her phaser rifle, which slips from her hands and flies toward the open bay door.

Tony Q's fingers race over his console as he tries to gain access to transporter control as quickly as possible. To his relief, he manages to get a transporter lock on her in no time at all. A moment later, Ensign Murphy materializes behind him in a bright transporter beam. Her hair is a total mess. Every muscle in her body is tensed up, until she realizes she is safe. Naturally, her first instinct is to thank Tony for saving her life.

"What on earth were you thinking?!" Ensign Murphy screams. "Opening the shuttlebay door like that! I could've been killed!"

"I didn't do anything!" Tony replies as he lifts up the palms of his hands to signal sincere innocence. "Honestly." Before he can explain the situation, it's already explained by the fact that the far left shuttle is currently leaving through the opened bay door.