Into the Looking Glass

Prologue

The ISS Event Horizon was stationary in deep space the star light reflected dully on its hull. It was a long way from any Imperial Union of Planets patrols or any one else for that matter. Which was exactly what their orders had stated. The Captain took another look at the long range sensors to make sure that they were indeed alone and that there was not some one spying on them. There were about to change the tide of war against the Klingon, Cardassian Alliance and giving the Imperial Union of Planets total domination over the other races but first the needed to test their new weapon. A weapon that if worked could stop the battle on the second front before it happened.

The Captain was honoured to have this assignment she had been picked from all the other Captains due to her total focus to duty and not putting her personal feeling in the way of what needed to be done. A smile crossed her face as she ordered the crew to activate the drive. For today they were stepping into history books and today they would make the Imperial Union of Planets glorious.

A bright light emanated from the Event Horizon and then suddenly there was a bright blinding flash and the Event Horizon vanished.

Practice Makes Perfect

Jay watched the large wrap around view screen intently. They had been tracking their targets for the last five hours through the asteroid field. Their targets were allusive even though they had nearly caught it once of twice they had managed to slip out of her grasp. There was a cry of alarm from Pachakan who was working the tactical console. Jay looking at the screen was two of the four targets swooping over a large asteroid and charging down towards them. They began firing phasers and torpedoes at them as they rocketed past. The shields held as Jay ordered retaliatory fire. The USS Serenity spat back phaser and photon torpedoes but the agile targets danced away with the weapons fire doing little damage. Suddenly the other two targets appeared behind them and joined their fire with the others. The shields were dropping as Jay ordered the Serenity into hard evasive manoeuvres as it saturated the areas with weapons fire.

Two of the targets were hit and spun away as their engines failed while the other two began evasive manoeuvres of there own. Suddenly the voice of the communications officer rang across the bridge. He had picked up a distress call from a USS Road Runner who was under attack by a Breen vessel and that they were the closest Starfleet vessel able to respond. Jay acknowledged the order as she looked over at Lieutenant Perr’Mess who was cocooned in her console at the corner of the bridge. She nodded at Jay and quickly tapped a command on her console. Ther four target vessels that had been attaching the Serenity moments before stopped their combat manoeuvres and began moving steadily toward them. They were a new addition to the Serenity after its refit. They were Unmanned Multimode Tactical Support Craft, there were the same size of a runabout and able to give the Serenity a larger search range when performing search and rescue but also had weapons to give them wide tactical options. They were housed in blisters set into the hull which gave good access to maintenance, well as rapid deployment and the Serenity carried six.

As the last UMTSC snuggled into docking cradle in its specially designed shuttle bay Jay ordered the Serenity to maximum warp. She hopped that the Road Runner would be okay. It had been the first starship that she had commanded and there were people on board that she know and cared fore.

On a hairs breath

The Serenity dropped out of warp to a scene of chaos. There were there star ships in the system. Two were Breen and one was a star fleet vessel. As she took in the information it became apparent that one of the Breen vessels was lousing hull integrity while the other vessel was firing at the star fleet vessel. Pachakan identified that the star fleet vessel was the Road Runner and it was badly damaged. As she watched she was that the Road Runner was trailing smoke and damage. Pachakan also identified the other two Breen vessels as Breen Confederation Starship Strotess which was damaged and the other one was BCSS Kodess was the. Jay frowned as she head the name of the ship as it had been the one she had been posted to when she was a liaison officer. She had to find out what was going on so ordered red alert and ordered Williams to put them between the Kodess and the Road Runner.

The Serenity swooped into towards the battle its shields flaring from the continues barrage of weapons fire from the Kodess it positioned itself in between both starships. She opened communications channel to the Kodess and spoke to Pred Gal its commanding officer and managed to persuade him to stop firing at the Road Runner and they would find out what had happened. She also promised him that the guilty parties would be punished for what had happened and suggested that the Serenity and Kodess send over rescue teams to help the crew of the Strotess. He begrudgingly agreed and Jay ordered the search and rescue team to begin there work.

Rock and a Hard Place

Jay looked at the exhausted face of Commander Leo Foyle and the helmet of Gal as they both looked at her from the bridges view screen. She had managed to keep Gal from blasting the Road Runner into atoms only by the fact the she had worked with him before and the he trusted her. From what they were both telling her the Road Runner and Kodess picked up a garbled distress call from the Strotess saying that they were under attack. The Road Runner got there first and moved closer to offer help. This was when the Kodess arrived and saw the heavily damaged Strotess and the Road Runner close by. Gal assumed that the Road Runner had caused the damage and attached it out of revenge until the Serenity come and stopped them. To help calm the situation she had showed the Road Runners logs to Gal so that he could see what happened.

Jay showed the reports that she had gotten from the medical teams was that there was a unknown parasite that had taken hold and quickly spread through the ship. This meant that the ship lost structural integrity as the biological parts of its construction failed. They crew had been evacuated and was going through decontamination on the Kodess. It became apparent that if the Road Runner did not attach the Strotess then who had. Jay ordered the Serenity scan its powerful search and rescue sensors in the area to see if there was any one still lurking about.

Friends and Enemies

Pachakan informed Jay that he had found an inconsistency in the sensor scans in the area. There was not enough data to make a positive. He then scanned the area using a tachyon detection grid a blip appeared on the screen of a cloaked vessel. Suddenly a large starship appeared out of the area as it de-cloaked and a woman’s face appeared on the view screen. She spoke to Jay and told her that the federation should stop meddling in the affairs of the Imperial Union of Planets and that the Breen were scum and deserve to die. The star ship then began firing on the Serenity which was the closest. Jay returned fire and ordered the Unmanned Multimode Tactical Support Craft to be launched. Pachakan managed to identify the enemy starship from an image of its hull plates that it was the ISS Event Horizon. Jay tried to hail the Event Horizon but phaser fire was the only reply. The Serenity ducked and weaved as Jay tried to get a good shot as its shield weakened. The damaged Road Runner and Kodess joined the battle swing in on different vectors to try and catch the Event Horizon in a cross fire. The Event Horizon staggered under the barrage from the three vessels as it turned its ferocity on the damaged Road Runner. The Serenity tried to put its self in between them to save the Road Runner but it was too late. Its shields flashed out of existence as its engines flickered and died sending it in a slowly spiralling trajectory away from the battle as the warp core become critical.

Internal Damage

Jay ordered an emergency transport trying to snatch the Road Runners crew, its warp core was ejected as it breached. The whole engineering section of the Road Runner vanished in a bright flash of energy sending the wrecked spherical section spinning off into space. The energy wave of the warp core explosion slammed into the Serenity and the Event Horizon causing their shields to fail and multiple hull breaches. The Serenity staggered and heaved over from the explosion belching out atmosphere before the emergency shield activated and stopped the explosive decompression. Reports came from all over the ship main engines were down, life support was on back up, shields were fried and weapons were inoperable. Sickbay was being pushed beyond its capacity. Jay realised that this was an opportunity to get some information about what was going on, on Event Horizon. She ordered Pachakan and his FNP Special Forces Team onto the Event Horizon to get anything that might explain what was happening.

Snatch and Grab

Pachakan and his team materialised on the Event Horizon. It looked like they were in a damaged corridor near the main computer core. Their mission was to retrieve data and gaining access to the computer core seamed to be the quickest way in doing it. Taking the crew hostage and then interrogating them would have taken to long and from what Pachakan had seen and read about the Imperial Union of Planets most of them were zealots who would rather die then to give up any information. The moved swiftly along the damaged corridor keeping a sharp eye out for any enemy attack. They reached the computer core with out incident as it appeared that the crew of the Event Horizon had their own problems to deal with. This changed as they entered and they were met by a hail of phaser fire. It appeared that the attackers had been lying in wait to spring their trap. Pachakan and his team dived for cover and then returned fire furiously trying to dislodge the enemy who were well defended. He was worried that if they stayed there for too long then his team would be pinned down. He ordered his team to throw flash bangs followed by grenades. He new that this was tricky as the grenades might damages the data that they were here to get but he had not other choice if he wanted to get finished quickly.

The flash bands and grenades exploded and his team charged after them and subduing what remained of the enemy. Pachakan heard phaser fire from the corridor out side as the men he had left out side began to defend the area around the core. He moved quickly removing the data chips that he had been asked to retrieve by the engineering department. He was glad that there was not much difference between Starfleet and Imperial Union of Planets computer design as this helped him to get the task done quickly. Once he was certain that he had gotten every thing that he needed his team and he was transported back to the Serenity.

One Last Effort

As soon as Pachakan and his team were back on board Jay ordered the Serenity to move away from the Event Horizon but due to the damage they were only able to move on manoeuvring thrusters. As she watched the view screen the Event Horizon began to reorientation its self and power up its remaining weapons which would obliterate the Serenity due to its close proximity. With no weapons available to damage it Jay ordered Perr’Mess to ram one of her Unmanned Multimode Tactical Support Craft into the Event Horizon. The Unmanned Multimode Tactical Support Craft slammed into to the engineering section of the Event Horizon. The engineering section vanished in a blinding flash as its warp core failed and exploded. The Event Horizon shattered like broken glass before being devoured by the expanding explosion. It slammed into the Serenity with a force of a tsunami collapsing bulkheads and venting portions of the ship into space and adding more damage to what had happened before. As the explosion finally dissipated the Serenity lay adrift tumbling through space venting atmosphere and debris.

Epilogue

The badly damaged Serenity and the spherical section of the Road Runner was rescued by the Kodess and taken back to Geneva. The Strotess was scuttled to prevent any contamination of other Breen vessels. The data was finally extracted from the data chips that had been taken from the Event Horizon. It became apparent that there was problems in the Imperial Union of Planets.

The fighting had become rapidly more vicious between the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance and the IUP there had been mutterings from the Breen Confederation who had been isolated them selves from the conflict that they may decide to enter the conflict. The IUP high command could not risk the chance that the Breen may side with the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance that they ordered a weapon that would be used if the Breen did not go the way they were supposed to. A weapon was developed but it could not be tested on the Breen as this would turn the Breen away from the IUP. It was decided to retrofit the ISS Event Horizon with a cloaking device and the modified Interphasic Field Generator and send it through the rift. They would then test the new device on the Breen that were in the normal universe to see how effective it was in real life situations.

It was hoped that because of the destruction of the Even Horizon that this type of experimental weapon would now stop but only time would tell.