The Tokyo made it’s warp jump through the phenomenon and found themselves not only inside Tholian space but also inside the subspace disruption barrier to eight medium sized vessels and twenty four fighters engaged with three Tholian weaver vessels and an outpost.

“Red Alert! Battle stations everyone!” Bruce ordered and he noticed Stan jump up from his seat to walk around the wooden arch to stand next to the tactical officer. Bruce had to hand it to the designers of Starfleet. While the bridge did look similar to the bridge on a Galaxy-class vessel, it was somewhat smaller. One would have to consider the size of the New Orleans vs the Galaxy. Nevertheless, he still loved the aesthetics of the wooden arch.

Bruce leaned forward in his seat, “Bring up a tactical display of the combat zone right here on the main viewer,” he requested. When the view screen changed to display all the vessels in combat around the outpost, Bruce rubbed his chin as he saw the data that was projected along the side of those ships. “That enemy ship there, the one with no shields.” Bruce turned in his seat to look up at Stan. “I want you two to unload a full mag of photon torpedoes into that. It’s time we got their attention.”

While Stan had disagreed most of Bruce’s decisions, he had no issues agreeing with Bruce’s tactics. “Enemy vessel targeted. Selecting five points on contact for each torpedo.”

“Bringing us in range!” Harper announced.

“Maximum yield, Commander Palmer! Fire when ready!” Bruce ordered.

“Targets locked,” Stan then selected all five torpedoes in the launcher with one swipe. “Firing!” Then he punched the red button and they all watched as five photon torpedoes raced to their destination. The seconds it took for the torpedoes to cross the distance was almost nerve racking for some of them, but when they saw those torpedoes smack into the hull of the enemy vessel, they all felt the feeling of relief wash over them, along side the feeling of pride.

“Detecting a cascade of explosions from within. I think we got it!” Harper announced.

“Confirmed, their reactor is going critical!” Stan added and they all watched as the enemy vessel erupted in a big plume of plasma, chunks of debris scattered about, some even ran into their sister ships that were next to it.

Bruce smiled and pushed himself out of his chair. “Now it’s time to tell them who we are. Open hailing frequencies, I want the Tholians to hear.”

“Frequencies are open,” said Pip. “You’re on, sir.”

“Now that I got your attention, I want you to listen very carefully. I am Commander Bruce Henson of the USS Tokyo, of the United Federation of Planets. And-”

“We are the instrument of the Vaadwaur Supremacy! And you do not belong here, Starfleet!” Interrupted the Vaadwaur commander of one of those ships. His face appeared on the bridge’s view screen and Bruce had a disgusted look on his face.

“Listen here, snake head. I don’t care who you are. And I don’t care if you think we don’t belong here. You see, you’re bullying our friends and I simply despise bullies. So if you do not leave our friends alone, then I have no choice but to step in and crack a jaw or two. You feel me, snakey?” Bruce asked but then continued. “Don’t bother answering. I already know what it is. I hope you’re ready to be schooled on how Starfleet treats bullies.” Bruce made the cut motion to terminate the link, which Stan forwarded to Pip.

“Channels closed, sir,” Pip announced.

“The three Tholian ships are lining up in formation with us, Commander!” Harper said with a tone of surprise in her voice.

Bruce just smirked and looked at Stan. “What’s the status of the Tholian Outpost?”

“Their shields are down to thirty percent. I don’t think they can take much more,” Stan looked at Bruce, worried that they came all this way for nothing.

Bruce took a deep breath and sighed. “Then we got to play smart. Switch all of our phaser arrays to point defense. Have them prioritize fighters and torpedoes.” Bruce then looked to Harper. “Hate do this to you, Lieutenant but you’re going to have to put us in a tight orbit around the station. Try to make Tokyo absorb as many of those polaron beams as we can, don’t let them get too many shots in on the station.”

Bruce then looked back towards Stan but he called out to Pip who was at the station behind him. “Tell the Tholian ships to focus their weapons on a single target and the moment they take the target’s shields down, move on to the next target.” Then he looked at Stan. “With that said, empty a magazine of photon torpedoes into the target that has no shields.”

Bruce finally brought his focus back onto the view screen before he sat back down in his chair. “By the numbers people! Let’s do this!”

The scene around Starbase 415 was nothing more than a chaotic light show between two opposing forces. Although, it was much more than just a light show. The station traded the Vaadwaur’s polaron beams and torpedoes with phasers, photon and quantum torpedoes, where the quantums were being pulled from storage and reserves as Gerald Hunt wanted to reserve those for the squadron. It was not like Starfleet was short on them or anything, but they weren’t something that they wanted to just use on random pirates or raiders that were too drunk to realize they were up against a Starfleet space station. In this particular situation though, those torpedoes were certainly needed.

“Half the enemy fighters have been eliminated! Our shields are down to eighty percent!” Ward reported as she punched commands into the central display. “As for the main fleet, they’ve hardly begun their assault, aside from the five medium sized ones that joined in on the first initial assault with the fighters. Three of those were destroyed, the other two returned to the main fleet, leaving seventeen mediums and that one large one.”

Hunt slowly paced around the central display, leaning heavily into his cane. He had been so occupied with the battle at hand, he had forgotten that he was supposed to put more weight into his leg, to ween off the support of his cane. “What about the civilian vessels? Freighters? Transports? Have they all been evacuated?” Hunt requested. In the first initial attack, they had lost one of the civilian vessels, all hands. So they changed their tactic, increased the their shield bubble to protect the civilian ships, until Hunt ordered all of them to dock and evacuate their ships. The shields were returned to normal and they will protect the docked vessels but he did not want to leave anyone on those ships for obvious reasons.

“Lieutenant Ryker’s hazard and Lieutenant Bates security teams have cleared all civilian vessels, sir. Everyone on board have moved to their designated safe zones,” Ward reported.

Designated safe zones. If that were to be true. At the moment they did provide much protection, where all non-essential personnel, civilians included, were tucked away in the inner most section of the entire station. This left them protected in case the outer hull, view ports, any of the sort, were breached by a well placed torpedo. And that is if the shields had failed. But if the station were to sustain severe damage, this strategy to protect those people would leave them at a disadvantage in a complete evacuation from the station. At least, it would be if Hunt had not come up with a plan to counter that disadvantage.

The planet they orbit, Nereus III, is not the most habitable world but while the surface is radiated, there is a large subterranean network that is habitable. Although, there is very mild radiation underground, so if they do not get rescued within forty-eight hours, there is a risk that they will not survive. Hopefully they will not have to resort to that, as twenty-four hour exposure is treatable, but it is certainly not ideal.

“What about the plan?” Hunt asked.

Ward smirked at him. “We got the signatures from all captain’s of those ships. I mean, we did promise them that the Federation would reimburse them with a new ship but we didn’t mention the fine print of ‘no guarantees’. Nevertheless, we got teams on their way to those ships right now.”

The plan was to take the civilian ships, load them up with extra deuterium along with what deuterium they already have in their tanks, along with three magazines of photon torpedoes, all rigged to maximum yield. Then to program the auto pilot and send them on their way towards the asteroid belt in a group, in hopes that the Vaadwaur will send ships after them.

“And the pilots of our shuttles and runabouts understand the risks?” Hunt asked her. They were going to send a squadron of their shuttles and runabouts to escort the civilian ships towards the asteroid belt. They want to make it look like that they’re trying to get the civilians out of the system, to avoid the Vaadwaur’s so called punishment.

Ward nodded their head. “They are to escort and protect the civilian ships as if they were full. And then, as soon as they’re in the asteroid belt and the Vaadwaur ships, however many we lure, are on top of those civilian ships, the squadrons are to scatter and the squad leader will send the signal.”

Hunt took a deep breath as he stopped his pacing and stared at the holographic display of their plan. “Were you able to calculate what kind of impact this will have on this system?”

Ward punched commands and brought up a new display that showed some asteroids being destroyed, others being shoved by the shockwave. “One might skip off or impact Nereus Six. Same with Nereus Four but Five will be on the other side of the system. Rest of the asteroids affected by the blast, their course projection does not show them to be any threat to any other planet, nor the station. Two might get roasted in the sun but I doubt that’ll be anything that we would need to worry about.”

Hunt nodded his head before he made a loud thud with his cane, for he had hit the floor with the end of it. “Where the hell is the Tokyo?”

Bruce watched as the last two Vaadwaur ships enter an Underspace aperture and disappear from their sight. The Tokyo’s shields had taken a beating, which he hoped will be restored by the time they reach Starbase 415. But their overall goal was a success. The Tholian Outpost almost lost shields and the Vaadwaur were getting desperate. Unfortunately for them, they knew their efforts was futile when they did not have enough strength to continue the assault.

“I’m sure I did the math but tell me how many torpedoes do we have left?” Bruce asked.

Stan sighed. “Since we used eight full magazines of five torpedoes each to eliminate a vessel with one magazine each, a hundred and ten torpedoes are left on board.”

Bruce made a look of ‘not bad’ before he turned around to face the viewer. “Well. Our job here is not quite over.”

“Sir?” Stan asked with a tone of curiosity.

“Pip. Translate this message to the Tholians,” Bruce requested.

“Ready, sir,” Pip announced.

“Attention Tholian vessels. While I am happy that we succeeded in defending your outpost from the enemy, I hope that you understand that this means you owe us a favor. I would like to cash in that favor right now. My crew and I have reason to believe that Starbase Four-Fifteen is under attack, but at a much larger scale than this outpost. I have to compare the size of the attack force the Vaadwaur sent to this outpost, to what they could have sent to Starbase Four-Fifteen.

“What I am saying is,” Bruce licked his lips as he paused for a second. “I don’t think that the Tokyo can do this alone. We seriously do not have any other ship in the region that could possibly come to aid Starbase Four-Fifteen. Another way of putting this, in a way of what my people say, is that we scratched your back, so would you come scratch ours?” Bruce gave the signal to Stan, who relayed it to Pip.

The silence on the bridge was deafening, aside from occasional beeps here and there from a station or two. This would go on for what felt like an eternity until Pip crossed over to stand by Stan’s side, to look right down at Bruce. “Text message from the Tholians. They will consider it.”

Bruce took in a deep breath and sighed heavily with a shrug of his shoulders. “I think that’s the best response any Starfleet officer has ever gotten from them. I think.” He has no idea if anyone else got a better response or not. But at least he got something from them.

Bruce turned to Harper. “Bring us to the edge of the ‘nope-zone’ and jump us through it. Once we’re clear, maximum warp to the Nereus System.” It was time to see if Bruce’s choice to aide the Tholians had consequences or not.