They got warp.

For all of two point five seconds.

Mason sighed, closing his eyes for a moment in sheer frustration as the ship groaned, and they dropped out of warp… and right into the middle of a battle.

“What the…”

For a moment, he just sat there, the same as the rest of the bridge crew, not believing the scene in front of them.

The system they’d landed in had had two inhabitable planets, with orbital defences and what looked like a large spaceport with space dock facilities.

Had. Past tense.

Now, everything was on fire. The spaceport had almost been sheered in half, debris floating around its exposed guts in a grisly skirt. The orbital defences were little more than ruins scattered across the upper atmospheres, and what ships had been in dock were either destroyed husks floating in space or desperately fighting back against the enemy that harried their every movement.

As they watched, two of the aggressors drove a large transporter into the cannon field of a third. It shattered apart in three sections, each exploding lazily, one after the other. Hundreds of lives lost.

Mason’s expression hardened. They were civilian ships, and they were being slaughtered.

“Attack pattern echo-echo-four,” he barked out, activating the harness on his chair. The familiar rattle of clicks around the bridge told him that the experienced bridge crew had followed his lead. Kovash’s flying was edge-of-the-seat at the best of times. During ship-to-ship combat? There was a reason Kovash’s academy instructors had refused to step onto anything she flew as soon as she graduated.

“Let’s give these assholes someone their own size to pick on.”

“Aye sir!”

“Need more power, engineer!” Kovash demanded as two of the enemy ships spotted the Resolute at the same time, coming around to try and catch them in a crossfire field from their front cannons.

Only the Resolute wasn’t where they expected it to be anymore. They slammed sideways, coming around in a hard, fast arc. 

“Always,” Bennett threw back. “You concentrate on the flying and leave the power to me.”

“Target the cannon arrays,” Mason ordered. He didn’t recognise the lines of the ships. Small and fast, they were heavily armed.  “And someone tell me who the hell these assholes are.”

“No idea, but they’ve got heavy shielding,” Harrow called across the bridge as all their first volley of phaser fire did was just light the enemy craft’s shielding up.

“Allen?”

“Working on it, not much in the database,” Allen shot back, wincing as he was jerked sideways by another hard manoeuvre from Kovash at helm.

Mason ignored his harness biting into his shoulder as an ensign who hadn’t strapped it was jerked out of his seat. Quickly, he scrambled to get back to his seat, slapping the harness activation as soon as he did.

“Pattern Seven-India-four,” Mason ordered, spotting two smaller trading ships trying to make a stand ‘back to back’ with each other so they could cover each other’s weak spots. Unusually, they seemed to have some heavy-duty weaponry. The trouble was, one of the enemy had them in its sights. “Head that one off, make it chase us. Harrow, get their attention.”

“Aye,sir.”

“On it, boss.”

Kovash punched it, and they sped right past the nose of the ship heading for the two traders, their speed enough to keep them ahead of its cannon fire.

“Allen, what can you tell me about them?” Mason demanded over his shoulder, keeping his eye on the battle around them.

His fingers raced over the console in the arm of his chair as he split the view screen down, each quarter displaying different information on what was going on around them. Front view, rear view, active battle telemetry, and the ship’s monitoring systems. All laid out so he could see everything at a glance.

There were four enemy ships in the fight… but the wreckage of at least two was in the debris field. As he watched, the two traders working in tandem managed to bring down one of the enemy ships, despite their impressive shielding. Harrow managed to make a dent in the nose of the one following them with a full phaser spread.

“Weird readings,” Quinn replied. “I’m reading damage consistent with Starfleet weaponry on all the ships. A shit-ton of it. Looks like they’ve already taken a battering.”

“Where? From who?” He couldn’t see any debris from a destroyed Fleet ship in the chaos. “Kovash, get ready to roll off the top… Harrow, I want a targeted strike from the torpedoes and the array when I say the word. Kovash, in three… two… one… NOW!”

He grunted as Kovash spun the ship up and over, bringing them face to face with their pursuer. They hurtled toward the enemy ship in a deadly game of chicken, closer… closer… They could practically see the enemy’s view screen to their bridge when Mason bellowed.

“Harrow, punch it!”

There was a split-second pause. A moment to reflect as the enemy ship filled the main view screen. Mason sat, his face impassive. Then it exploded in front of them, a deadly bloom of fire and metal that pinged off their shields as they flew through it.

Mason grunted. “Excellent timing, Harrow. Bring us about Kovash.”

“We got an underspace rupture!” Quinn called out. “The last two are quitting the field!”

The Resolute came about just in time to see the remaining two ships running for their lives and disappearing through the underspace aperture just before it snapped closed behind them.

“Well, that certainly sent them packing,” Jayce said, turning to him with a grin.

Mason shook his head, his eyes narrowed as he thought about all the ruined systems they’d come through.  “No, I don’t think so. Nothing that comes out of that place is good. They’ll be back, mark my words.”