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Published:
2022-10-03
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2022-12-10
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23/23
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Shore Leave Interrupted

Chapter 21

Summary:

Engaging the Romulans in combat, inside the ship and out.

Chapter Text

Inside the freshly-christened USS Minnow, James T. Kirk turned to look at his first officer. He knew his eyes were wide, but at the same time, Kirk wanted to frown. “Did I hear that right, Mr. Spock? Is ‘Commander’ Chekov taking my ship into battle with a crew of 12? Against a Romulan battle cruiser?”

Spock didn’t even raise an eyebrow. “So it would seem.”

Perhaps Kirk should have been no more surprised than the Vulcan considering the situation. He shrugged and decided that the situation warranted the strong stance Chekov was offering. It wasn’t as if he had many options available, after all. The Enterprise was the only active defense in the system at the moment. “Mr. Storm, all power to weapons.”

“Um, yes, Captain. All power to weapons.” The weapons console was small on the shuttle, but Kirk was grateful it had one at all. The shuttles on Enterprise were all unarmed, normal enough. The phasers on a ground station combat shuttle were far more powerful than the largest portable phaser cannon marines used, perhaps equivalent to the main gun in the armour corps, but he’d still classify it as a pea shooter next to cruiser-mounted weapons. “Shields at full strength but…”

Kirk cast a glance over his shoulder. “Yes, Ensign?”

“This is a solid little shuttle, sir, with excellent shielding. Technically—” he cleared his throat—“if you added a warp drive you could class it as a corvette, though we’d need a couple of bodies in the way of engineering crew and a couple of bunks. But we can't take very many hits from starship-level weapons.”

Nodding, Kirk turned back to piloting duties. A corvette without the warp drive, was it? The little ship’s maneuverability certainly suggested performance beyond the standard ship-board shuttle so far. “You're absolutely correct about that, Ensign. But I hope we don't have to.” He hoped they wouldn’t take any. At least, that was the plan. “I strongly suspect that Romulan commander will see us as more annoying than threat. We can’t cause them much damage by comparison, so they won't worry about us until and unless they can disable the Enterprise.”

“Then what's our objective, sir?” The young man’s voice sounded confused.

And that brough another smile to Kirk’s face. “To be as annoying as possible, Ensign. We don't have much chance of inflicting any significant damage on the cruiser, but the Enterprise has a much better one, even underpowered and under-crewed as she is right now. We need to make it harder for the Romulans to aim at their primary target.” And any little bit of power drain the Minnow could manage to the Romulan shields was a good thing. Thinking about power, he pushed their acceleration a little harder and felt a tiny lurch before the compensators dealt with the extra weight they didn’t need. “And, realistically, we probably don't have to destroy that cruiser.” Which unless the Enterprise had a full charge to all weapons, they probably couldn’t, anyway. “We just have to make it more worth their while to retreat than to keep fighting. Whatever their plan is here, I'm sure the commander would rather get home with partially accomplished objectives than not at all.” Although, his direct experience with Romulans didn’t necessarily bear that out.

“Captain, I feel I must point out the possibility of the plasma weapon.”

Count on his XO to temper any overly-good feelings about what was going on. “Certainly an important point, Spock. But the Enterprise's shields, if they’re at full strength, are heavy enough to survive at least one hit. And we’re maneuverable enough to get out of the way of the blast at anything more than point blank range. Anything I’m not considering?” He hoped Spock wouldn’t remind him that the starbase didn’t have any possibility of getting out of the way of a plasma weapon.

As if he’d read Kirk’s mind from where he sat, the Vulcan chose to let things go. “Nothing with significant bearing on the current situation. However, if you will permit me, I will take over all non-flying, non-weapons functions of the shuttle at this point to improve our combat efficiency.”

“I'd like that, Mr. Spock.” Kirk grinned. “Mr. Storm, don't feel like you have to wait for an order to open fire once we’re in range. Weapons free.”

“Yes, sir!”

#

Seconds slid by slowly as Sulu crouched with three Security officers in the Jeffries tube. On the opposite side of the bridge, Castellano would be in position with three more. Since Mr. Riley was a little busy at the moment, he’d sent two officers back to the transporter room and given the remaining two responsibility for the timing on the turbolift. He hated to give up the phasers, but there weren’t a lot of options.

Listening intently, he checked his respirator and waited for the sound of the transporter beam dropping a tool cart beside the Engineering 2 station. When it started to fade, he listened for the soft whoosh of the turbolift doors. A slow count of seven didn’t give him the sound he was looking for, but there were definitely a couple of Romulan shouts.

They’d agreed not to use the communicators to coordinate, trusting to internal clocks, their own ears, and reaction time. Sulu had had enough of waiting for results, though. He nodded to the other members of his team and spun the manual release for the hatch.

“Now!”

Finger already on the stud, Sulu popped up and opened fire, barely waiting to find a target.

#

The ship shook again.

While Enterprise’s shields were holding well so far, Chekov felt the lack of adequate phasers to respond with. The Romulan Stormbird was getting at least twice as many shots in as he could manage, mainly just due to having more weapons available. He swore under his breath and then raised his voice. “Mr. Riley, I could use a great deal more weapons power.” And more individual ways to shoot back would be nice, as well.

“I'm giving you as much as I can, Pavel.” His voice didn’t quite take on a Scottish accent, but the cadence was familiar enough to Chekov. “I'm not looking to break all the safety margins you know.”

If not now, then when? Chekov felt his lips curl in a bit of a snarl and pulled that back to just a jaw clench. A good thing he was the entire bridge crew. “Mr. Riley, I don't particularly care about safety margins at the moment.” His fingers worked to rebalance the shields and present a stronger face to the Romulan vessel even as he tried to maintain the phaser lock and shoot again. “The Romulan battle cruiser probably has 10 people to do each of the jobs I'm balancing right now, and a full engineering crew to back them up, which amounts to at least the same for you. Unless we are about to explode, I'll remind you that we are looking down the throat of a ship that we are outgunned and heavily out-crewed by.” And they hadn’t even revealed whether or not they were carrying any heavy weapons yet. More and more, this was not turning out to be a good day.

“Mr. Chekov, I–”

He interrupted, smacking the panel in front of him as he lost the phaser lock. Nothing for it but to fire by instinct. There was just too much to do. “If you say you can't change the laws of physics, I will be forced to throw you in the brig.” He looked up to see an armed Starfleet shuttle zip between the Enterprise and the Stormbird, smaller phasers reaching out to strike the enemy’s shields and perhaps distracting them for a moment. “Where did that shuttle come from?”

Riley clearly hadn’t seen it, though, and ignored the rhetorical question. “I was just going to say I'm not Commander Scott.”

“No, but you are Lieutenant Riley.” He felt the frustration bubbling up and reminded himself of history and differences in experience. “The fact that you are the only engineer currently on the Enterprise doesn't change the fact that you are qualified and competent, nor that you are the one holding the ship together in our current situation. Break the safety margins, get me more weapons. I would like to return the ship to Captain Kirk in approximately one piece.” Or at least return it.

The ship shook again as Riley somehow waited to respond. Chekov didn’t have a lot of time for his engineer to reach inside and find the courage he needed, but Riley stepped up. A sigh came over the communicator, but it was a short one. “All right, unbuckling the safety harness. Pushing the matter antimatter reaction to 110% of recommended peak strength, and I'll give you 120 if I can. I don't know how long it will last but enjoy the fire hose.”

Chekov wanted to imagine that he felt and heard the surge of power through the ship’s systems. Riley certainly must, standing right next to the warp core. He watched the readings go up on the other phaser banks, rising quickly towards providing him the entire array, at least for as many shots as Riley could maintain the reaction at that level and still give him power for shields, sensors, and impulse drive. “I will take whatever I can get. Thank you.”

In only a few seconds, several parts of his boards had brightened to full capacity, and he grinned. Let the Romulans take note. Commander Chekov had them in his sights. In moments, he had all three phaser banks firing. Their shields remained strong, but he’d certainly caused more damage to them than he’d been able to do so far. “Someone to reload the torpedo tubes right now would be very nice.” After the initial salvo, there hadn’t been much he could do about that.

“I’ll just run down the hall, shall I?”

“I didn’t mean—” The ship rocked again and Chekov fought to keep the Enterprise level for his next firing solution. Beside him, a light on the small communications portion of his panel began blinking urgently. He clicked the button beneath it and opened his mouth for a query, but the person on the other end beat him to it.

“This is Captain Quintana Schmidt of the USS Magellan hailing USS Enterprise. Do you require assistance?”

“Ha! Chekov, Enterprise. You are most welcome Captain Schmidt. If you would kindly direct your weapons towards the Romulan battle cruiser troubling us, we would be most appreciative.”

Did he imagine the grin in Schmidt’s voice? “We’ll be in firing range in fifteen seconds, Mr. Chekov. Hopefully, we can make this an unpalatable situation for the Romulans.”

He had no idea what class the Magellan was or what armaments she might carry, and no time for a scan, but it didn’t matter. Chekov now had some desperately needed assistance and the Romulan ship now had to divide its attention further. Between them, this situation could possibly be changed favourably. “A wonderful goal, Captain.”