— USS Andromeda, Romulan Space —

The lights were not working right on the USS Andromeda. Even on the bridge they flickered like they were in a horror holonovel, making the crew’s job that much more difficult than it otherwise would have been. Several secondary systems were offline, and engineering and operations were working to bring them back. Captain Olivia Carrillo sat in her sporadically lit Ready Room eating an emergency rations packet that was meant to be Chicken Alfredo because the replicators were offline.

There was a chime indicating that someone was at her door, but when she called for them to enter nothing happened. Eventually First Officer Kan Th’kaotross manually pulled open the door.

“How’re repairs going?” Carrillo asked, though there was enough evidence that the ship was not back to working order yet.

The Andorian man frowned, “Slowly. Young says we have slipstream drive and shields. We’ll have weapons back online in about an hour.”

“Well that’s all we really need for this next part. If the Vaadwaur blow us up it’s going to save us the work of fixing the rest,” Carrillo said, offering her first officer a grin.

The Andorian had been around humans enough  not to react angrily to that, though it was clear that the joke had annoyed him. His posture stiffened and he nodded, accepting the fact that this was a human lead ship and so a certain amount of unprofessional sarcasm was to be expected.

“Once the weapons are back online have Young privatize getting the bridge lighting back on. I’d like to see what we’re doing when we return,” Carrillo said. She paused and looked at him in the dim light. “Do we have a final count on what shuttles made it through the Vaadwaur forces?”

“Before our sensors went offline we spotted the destruction of one Federation and two Romulan shuttles. Unknown how many others were damaged or how many made it through,” he said.

It meant that if the Andromeda survived this to see the other side of the Vaadwaur invasion she was going to have to compose letters home. She’d not had crew members die on her watch before, not while she was captain. Also functionally the fewer crew members who arrived alive on the planet’s surface the more unlikely it was that they would reactivate the planet’s defense grid. If they were unable to do so, then the Andromeda and the Romulan warbird the Talonwould be destroyed upon their return in a few hours.

“Thank you for the update Kan,” Carrillo said.

The pair had not yet achieved that chummy relationship that first officers and captains seemed to have. They were still formal and awkward with each other, and even calling him by his given name felt a little too familiar to Carrillo.

“You’re welcome Olivia,” the Andorian said.

Carrillo made a face, “Ewww no I don’t like that. Okay we’ll find our thing, but first names isn’t it.”

“Understood,” Th’kaotross said. For the first time agreeing with her.

— Romulan Colony, Planet’s Surface —

Javal had to admit he was impressed with the physical conditioning of the Starfleet officers that he had ended up with. Granted they were, for the most part, less robust than a Romulan. There were no Vulcans amongst the crew that had found his crashed shuttle, but the Lieutenant Sesi Oari  was driving them forward at a good clip. The Bajoran woman seemed to know more than he did about urban warfare, and kept them away from populated areas and in tree cover to help hide them from Vaadwuar patrols.

“Do we have an idea of how much resistance we’ll meet at the defense building,” Oari asked, falling into a job beside Javal.

The Romulan shook his head, “No but there’s no reason the Vaadwaur would defend it overly. There’s a dozen government buildings on this content along and as far as we know they don’t know about the grid.”

Oari frowned, “I don’t love that we’ve lost a chunk of our assault team already, and we’re going based on assuming the enemy is dumb. Always assume you enemy is smart, and you may be pleasantly surprised.”

It was good advice. Javal wondered how a Romulan occupation of Bajor would have gone. They certainly had enslaved non-Romulan races in their time, and yet they had never run into the stiff resistance that the Cardassians had encountered. He set the thought aside as being irrelevant.

“We will find out how many of our shuttles made it to ground at the rendezvous point,” the Romulan said.

—- USS Andromeda, Bridge —

Lieuenant Claudia Jara broke the silence that had fallen on the bridge, “The Talon is decloaking. It seems they didn’t suffer any damage in that last battle.”

“Cloaking must be nice,” Carrillo observed. The plan had been for the Adromeda to keep the Vaadwaur forces occupied, so the result of the Starfleet vessel being beaten up while the warbird was in no worse shape than when they had entered the planet’s orbit was to be expected.

Carrillo glanced back at the tactical conn, “Unless they have some critical system offline we’ll keep our engineers here. But let them know we’ll be able to depart on time.”

Jara nodded, the lights on the bridge were now working and the doors had resumed operation. They still were having to break into emergency rations for meals, but slowly but surely they were putting themselves back together.

Carrillo stood and stretched, “Alright bridge crew grab a few hours of sleep. In ten hours we’re going back in, so we should try being rested.”

As she headed for the turbolift to her temporary quarters, during the saucer separation she added, “Hopefully I don’t get stuck in a turbolift.”