"Sensors are off-line!" Jetto reported, shouting to make himself heard. "Hull breaches reported on Decks 58 through 65; automatic sealing off has failed due to main and auxiliary power failure. Massive decompression . . . the station is collapsing! Anti-matter containment is at critical; we're going to lose it within the next fifteen to twenty minutes. Engineering reports containment field controls have been fused and manual input is destroyed."
"Divert battery power to life support and the structural integrity field!" Gerard shouted as he clutched his bleeding right calf. "That should stop the decompression for now, if we're lucky. Dump the core while you're at it."
"Core ejectors have failed, Commander," Jetto reported, as his fingers danced over his console.
Gerard then punched a button on the arm of his command chair. "Crew of Starbase 123, this is Commander Gerard; all hands to emergency escape pods. Abandon station, repeat, abandon station."
The crew made hastily for their emergency escape pods; curiously, no more weapons fire hit the station during this time. Commander Yilaan, Commander Gerard, and Mr. Jetto joined seven others in one pod, and launched it. The pod sped away as the crew looked back at their doomed station.
"Commander Gerard, look!" Jetto said as he piloted the tiny craft. Gerard and the others crammed around the craft's windows and watched the Romulan Warbirds. Distracted from their efforts to destroy the space station, they were engaged with a new foe; and they were losing. "Aren't those Klingon ships?"
Gerard smiled, then laughed aloud, clapping his tactical officer on the back. "So they are, Mr. Jetto! So they are."
After several minutes of fierce fighting, the Romulan Warbirds were destroyed or driven off. A general hail was sent out by the lead Klingon vessel, requesting communication with the commander of the Starbase; Gerard quickly answered.
"Greetings," said a smiling Klingon, his teeth bared with the rush of battle. "I am Captain K'Tang of the Klingon vessel Nipagh. Your Klingon allies have come in response to your distress call. We would've arrived sooner but this part of space seems to be infested with glob flies," he continued dryly. "How may we be of assistance?"
"Beam as many survivors from the station aboard your ships as you can before it explodes," Gerard replied, wasting no time on courtesies.
The Klingon's smile faded. "Done," he said simply, and his image on the lifeboat's viewscreen was replaced by stars. The Klingon ships moved off quickly in the direction of the station and sat within transporter range for several minutes. The lifeboat waited breathlessly, watching as the ships sat near the station, then moved off rapidly. Moments later the station, along with the crippled ships still in its launch bay, exploded; the shock wave shook the lifeboat containing Gerard and Yilaan. The officers watched in horror as a couple of the boats, launched just prior to the explosion, found themselves consumed by the blast.
The Klingons then returned to the proximity of Gerard's lifeboat; moments later the ten men and women aboard were unceremoniously beamed onto the lead Klingon ship. Once aboard, Gerard and Yilaan were escorted to the Bridge of the vessel.
"Your survivors are being transported to our ships," Captain K'Tang said by way of a welcome aboard.
"Thank you Captain," Commander Gerard replied, clasping hand and forearm with the Klingon. "My name is Commander Gerard; this is Commander Yilaan," he said.
K'Tang nodded at Yilaan and was about to look away, when he stopped. "You look familiar to me," he told Yilaan. "Have we met?"
"I'm not sure," she replied. "It's certainly possible."
K'Tang dismissed the thought and addressed Gerard. "We can drop you off at your Starbase 78, which is not too far off our course."
"Thank you again Captain. The Federation owes you and your crew a debt of gratitude," Gerard replied evenly.
Another Klingon officer approached then, and whispered something in K'Tang's ear. "Our doctors will also see to your wounded. We have nothing in the way of guest quarters to offer you; our ships are designed for battle, not for ferrying passengers."
As fate would have it, K'Tang wasn't kidding. The rescued occupants of the Starbase were generally herded into the many hallways aboard the ships, with a few of the privileged given the luxury of storage closets or the one or two actual rooms that were available. In accordance with their rank, Yilaan and Gerard were given a small room to share with a couple others after their wounds were tended to.
"That was well handled Commander," Yilaan said approvingly once their guide, a stocky Klingon with an irritated expression on his face, had shown them their room. The room, little more than a metal box, provided them with several benches set into the wall and several more affixed to only the floor. The room also contained a food dispenser. The guide grunted exasperatedly at several last-minute requests made by Yilaan and Gerard and left quickly, lest they come up with something else while he was still in ear shot.
"For a pencil-pusher, you mean?" Gerard replied, laughing.
Yilaan smiled at him. "I'm aware your service record hasn't consisted of much outside an office, but it doesn't show. You'd make a good Base Commander."
Gerard's smile faded. "Unfortunately Commodore McCovey didn't seem to think so."
"Ah," Yilaan replied, her smile also fading. "You've heard that I was offered the post on the Starbase then?" she asked; Gerard nodded. "A lot of people seem to have been stepped around on this one," she observed. "I don't think it was any slight to your abilities; clearly there was something with me or my record that caught Commodore McCovey's eye. Whatever it was, it's hardly relevant now."
Gerard nodded in agreement, unable to fault her logic. He then caught her eye. "Would you have taken the job?"
"I hadn't yet made my final decision, but probably not," she replied, selecting a bench to rest on. "Space exploration is why I got into Starfleet; being cooped up on a Starbase isn't terribly appealing right now."
Several more survivors were escorted into the room shared by Yilaan and Gerard, providing a natural break in their discussion. After the new arrivals, none of which were crew from the Bristol, had settled in and the room grew dark and quiet, Yilaan lay back on her bench and tried to sleep.
Despite exhaustion, sleep would not come for a long time for Commander Yilaan as she stared at the ceiling, wondering as to the fate of her friends from the Bristol, wondering if she would ever see any of them again.
The morning brought Cecilia Yilaan a shred of relief. She was awakened by a hand gently shaking her shoulder and a familiar voice. "Commander, it's Reiv. Please wake up," said the Bajoran helmsman of the Bristol.
Yilaan's eyes fluttered open and she smiled. "I'm glad to see you made it, Lieutenant," she replied quietly as she sat up on her bench.
"Many of us did. Captain K'Tang wants a meeting with several of the Bristol crew, at the suggestion of Captain Freeman," Reiv informed her.
"Freeman made it too!" she responded, still half-asleep, rubbing her tired eyes. "Why does K'Tang want a meeting with us?"
"I don't know. To catch up on lost time?" Reiv smiled slyly as he helped her up.
"Did I miss something?"
"Remember that time we had a Klingon stowaway aboard the Bristol?" Reiv asked; Yilaan nodded so he continued. "We surrendered the stowaway to Captain K'Tang and this very ship. K'Tang was impressed with how Captain Freeman handled that situation; not to mention the fact that his prestige rose steadily after bringing in one of the most sought after dissidents alive." Reiv paused before adding, "It's nice to know we've picked up a few friends along the way."
After the meeting was over, Yilaan and Reiv returned to the room Yilaan shared with Commander Gerard. "Did you find out anything interesting?" Gerard inquired of Yilaan.
"Basically we were pretty lucky that the Klingons were anywhere nearby at all. K'Tang was open to the possibility of helping us track down the Bristol, but we decided that Starfleet Command probably wouldn't go for such an arrangement at this time," Yilaan informed him. Her expression then grew sly, "Of course Captain Freeman did note that if at some date in the near future the Romulans were to suffer some setbacks of their own, K'Tang would have his gratitude. All unofficially of course."
Gerard's face blanched, then grew stern. "He can't do that!" Gerard demanded.
"Do what?" Yilaan replied innocently.
"Tell the Klingons to attack the Romulans on his behalf. That sort of thing is out of our purview," Gerard told her angrily.
"Well, he didn't actually do that, you see," Reiv explained, grinning as he did so, his dark goatee accentuating his fiendish expression. "Captain Freeman merely commented during our meeting that he wished that someone would teach the Romulans a lesson. Severe injuries sometimes make our Captain testy. At any rate, the Klingon Captain smiled broadly at that point, and mumbled something in Klingon to one of his officers."
"He said 'Battle!' in the short, quick dialect Klingons use during a conflict," Yilaan interrupted. "The vicious grin the two Klingons exchanged after that leads naturally to certain conclusions."
Gerard shook his head and mumbled under his breath as the door to their room opened and a Klingon entered.
"The final lists you asked for Commander. Your Captain Freeman has also been given a copy," the Klingon attendant informed her, then departed.
"What's this Commander?" Gerard asked.
"I asked for lists to be drawn up of all those rescued and then divided into Bristol and non-Bristol personnel. You'll be most interested in this one, I should think," Yilaan explained, handing Gerard one of the two portable document holders the Klingon had given her.
Yilaan then paged through her own list, smiling as she ran across the Bristol crew whose names she recognized. When she reached the end of the list, her smile faded and she punched several buttons, going over the list more quickly now.
"What is it Commander?" Reiv asked.
Yilaan didn't answer, but instead moved quickly over to the door. "Are you sure this list is complete?" she inquired of the Klingon attendant on duty just outside their room.
"So I was told," the Klingon said gruffly. Yilaan frowned and stepped back into the room, the door closing behind her as she sank heavily on her sleeping bench.
"Commander?" Reiv said again, as urgency crept into his voice.
"There are several names missing. Doctor Giovanni is not on the list," she said quietly, ashen-faced, as tears began to well in her dark eyes. "Neither are Lieutenant Hathaway or Lieutenant O'Shea. They didn't make it."
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