Silent, swift and deadly. That was their way, just as Captain Lewis had trained them. The hazard team moved with practiced precision, a pack of hungry wolves on the prowl, their eyes sweeping for threats, their ruggedized type 3 rifles at the ready, creeping through the voluminous interior of the alien array.

The array was foreign, a relic of millennia past. They knew not where it came from, but it was nothing like the Vaadwaur ship they’d arrived on. It had a totally different feel, unlike anything any of them had ever seen before. Had it been any other time, they’d probably have stopped to study it, but right now, only one thing mattered. They needed to destroy it, and they needed to destroy it fast. The clock was ticking down.

“Left at the junction,” Lieutenant Commander Sena ordered, the HUD in her mask synced with the tricorder on her hip, guiding them on their journey to the array’s power core, the weak spot they had identified would allow them to collapse the array. “Target ahead, one hundred meters.”

As they came to the fork, Chief Petty Officer Kevin Abedayo raised his arm, bent ninety degrees at the elbow. The universal signal to stop. 

The team drew to a halt, taking defensive angles to cover exposed sight lines.

Chief Abedayo gestured wordlessly, two fingers to his eyes, then one down the hall, and finally three in the air. Three guards, dead ahead, blocking their way.

Lieutenant Commander Sena slung her rifle over her shoulder, pulled out her tricorder, and began an interior scan, looking for alternative routes. After a moment, she had an answer. But it wasn’t a good one. This was the only way.

The Romulan motioned for Lieutenant Commander Ekkomas Eidran to join her. As the Betazoid moved from the rear, Lieutenant J.G. Delaney Brewster, a large pack of explosives on her back, moved to replace him, now covering the angle he’d been holding prior.

Lieutenant Commander Eidran took a quick glance at the Romulan’s tricorder. “We’re gonna have to go through them, aren’t we?”

“No alternative,” Lieutenant Commander Sena confirmed. “Energy chamber is just on the other side of the door though.” That was why it had guards stationed out front, whereas the rest of the array was simply patrolled by roving security units that had been easy enough to evade.

“Soon as we start shooting, we’re going to trigger their internal sensors.”

The Romulan nodded. It was a good guess.

“Then we’re just going to have to be quick about it.”

She nodded again as she folded her tricorder shut, reholstered it on her utility belt, and brought her rifle back to the ready. The time for sneaking was over.

Lieutenant Commander Eidran moved to the front of the squad, drawing up beside Chief Abedayo and one of his guys. He peaked around the corner to have a look. 

In front of the door that led to the power core, three Vaadwaur soldiers stood at ease, their rifles crossbody rather than at a ready position. A common mistake when assigned to a seemingly secure posting. In their minds, they probably felt safe. The only way to reach the array was through the Underspace, and the aperture was guarded by an Astika class battlecruiser and a wing of Manasa class escorts. No one would just be able to stroll in here. Except they just had.

Lieutenant Commander Eidran tapped his combadge. “Hazard One to Hazard Home. Expect it to get real hot in a sec.” As soon as they revealed themselves, it wouldn’t take the Vaadwaur long to figure out how they’d slipped aboard the station. “Anticipate Vaadwaur ships to react, and prepare to beam us out on my call.”

“Heat expected, beam out on your call, affirm, Hazard One,” Petty Officer Priyanka Dhawan confirmed from the Manasa class assault escort, quickly scrambling to make ready. Things were about to get real interesting.

Aboard the array, Lieutenant Commander Eidran knew they’d need to be fast and precise. “On my call, Kev right, Joran left, I got mid.”

The chief and the other operator nodded, and behind them, the rest of the team tightened up, ready to surge forward as soon as the trigger pulls announced their presence.

“Execute.”

Polarons leapt forth from all three rifles in near synchronicity.

The guards never saw what hit them.

They slumped to the deck.

Dead.

Immediately, alarms began to sound. The Vaadwaur had detected the energy discharges on sensors. It would only be a matter of time before they had company.

“Get the door!” Lieutenant Commander Eidran ordered.

He hadn’t even needed to say it. Chief Abedayo was already rushing forward, drawing a breaching charge from his utility belt as he went. He slapped it against the door and backed off.

“Fire in the hole!”

With a nod from Lieutenant Commander Eidran, the chief hit the detonator.

The shaped charge tore straight through the duranium, and the door came down.

Chief Abedayo and Lieutenant Commander Eidran were first through, their rifles sweeping the room, hunting for targets. A single Vaadwaur stood in the middle of the room, appearing caught off guard by the sudden discharge. He went for something at his hip, and the chief pulled the trigger. Dead. Other than that, the room was empty save for a massive chamber at its center that swirled with blue-green energy.

“Clear!” Chief Abedayo shouted.

“Sena! Brewster!” Lieutenant Commander Ediran ordered. “Rig it up!”

The xenotechnologist and the engineer were already rushing through the doorway, the engineer’s pack already halfway down her back, and the Romulan’s rifle already her shoulder, tricorder out once more.

“Curious,” Lieutenant Commander Sena said as she came up to the energy core. What the hell were these readings? They shouldn’t even be possible based on the laws of physics themselves. “It’s using some kind of novel exotic matter as its power source. Definitely going to want to analyze…”

“Just tell me where to stick this bad boy,” Lieutenant J.G. Brewster interrupted as she hoisted a pair of shaped quantum charges out of her bag. The engineer cared not about the novelty of the power source they’d stumbled upon, and she knew time was of the essence. Polaris was due to arrive at the target at 1200 hours, and that was less than three minutes away. If they hadn’t blown this place to pieces by then, bad things would happen.

If only she had a bit more time to study it, the Romulan thought to herself. This was something incredible. But alas, they didn’t have time for that. They were just going to erase it from existence. She looked back down at her tricorder. “Over there,” she instructed, pointing at a conduit that flowed straight into the energy chamber. “Right on the joint. Give me the other.”

Lieutenant J.G. Brewster passed the Romulan one of the changes, and then she went about attaching the other to the joint Sena had identified. Meanwhile, Sena affixed hers to an exhaust vent that her tricorder had identified as another weak point.

As they worked, a polaron blast flew overhead.

“We got company!” shouted Chief Abedayo from the door as he returned fire down the corridor. His shot found its mark, striking the Vaadwaur soldier that’d just rounded the corner.

But another soldier immediately took his place.

And then another, and another.

“Hold them at the door!” Lieutenant Commander Eidran ordered. Lieutenant J.G. Brewster and Lieutenant Commander Sena just needed a bit more time.

The other hazard team members rushed to join Chief Abedayo, but even as they unloaded a steady stream of fire down the corridor, the Vaadwaur just kept coming.

“Charge 1 set,” Lieutenant J.G. Brewster reported.

“Charge 2 set,” Lieutenant Commander Sena confirmed.

Lieutenant J.G. Brewster looked down at her tricorder and hit a button. “Charges set, two minutes.” Just enough time to beam out and race away from the array.

Lieutenant Commander Eidran went for his combadge, ready for that beam out, but before his hand reached his chest, he heard the clink of metal on metal.

“Grenade!” shouted Chief Abedayo as he leapt away from the door.

And then the grenade went off.

The explosive force launched Lieutenant Commander Eidran from his feet, slamming him against the far wall of the chamber. It concussed the Betazoid, his ears ringing and his eyes blurry.

Across the room, Chief Abedayo’s split second thinking had saved him from taking a direct dose of polaron radiation to the chest – more than could be said for the others holding the door – but the explosion lifted his 85 kilogram frame off the ground and sent him flying into a support pylon. He went out cold on impact.

As the dust settled, the only two still coherent were Lieutenant J.G. Brewster and Lieutenant Commander Sena. They’d been somewhat shielded by the structure of the power core itself. 

Lieutenant Commander Sena hit her combadge: “Hazard Home, pull us out.”

“Affirm, Hazard Two.”

As Sena looked back at the door, she could see Vaadwaur soldiers racing down the corridor towards them. Two could tango, she thought to herself as she reached for a grenade on her belt. She tapped it to activate, and then hurled it straight at them.

Sadly, she never got to see the result, to revel in the lives it took, as the cold alien energy chamber evaporated around them, replaced by an equally cold alien transporter bay. 

But at least it was their equally cold alien transporter bay.

Lieutenant Commander Sena immediately rose to her feet and made for the door. She could feel the acceleration of the ship, and she knew Petty Officer Dhawan would need an extra pair of hands on the bridge now that the Vaadwaur had certainly caught onto their ruse.

“Where are you going, ma’am?” asked Lieutenant J.G. Brewster, who had dropped her pack to the floor, rummaging around in it for a medkit, hoping she might be able to save her teammates that lay sprawled across the floor.

“I’m headed to my station, just like you should be.”

“But ma’am, the others…”

“They’ll possibly live,” Lieutenant Commander Sena replied flatly, although in the case of a few, she knew they would most certainly not. The ones by the door had been flashed by so much polaron radiation that they were probably already gone. “But no one lives if we don’t get out of here in one piece so get down to engineering and make sure this ship doesn’t fall apart.”

It was cold. It was merciless. But it was also right. And so, reluctantly, Lieutenant J.G. Brewster left her pack and her team behind, sprinting off down the cramped, narrow corridors towards the engine bay. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Commander Sena raced for the bridge.

When the Romulan reached the bridge, she didn’t even bother to announce herself. Petty Officer Dhawan was in the zone, pushing the craft forward, bobbing and weaving as polaron blasts arced past them on all sides.

As the Romulan strapped into the jumpseat beside her, Petty Officer Dhawan noticed her out of the corner of her eye. “Where are the others?” she asked, her eyes staying forward as she banked the ship hard to port.

“Grenade went off as you pulled us back,” Sena replied in a matter of fact tone.

“Got it,” Petty Officer Dhawan took the information in without any visible reaction, her focus completely on the task at hand as she rolled the ship over and cut back to starboard, trying to keep their profile narrow as their pursuers unloaded another barrage at them. “Who else is still standing?”

“Just Brewster.”

“Got it,” Petty Officer Dhawan nodded as she shoved the throttle forward as far as it would go. She needed more juice. At least the engineer was still in one piece. She tapped her combadge. “Delaney, welcome home. Can I get some more juice, girl?”

“Let me see what I can do… yeah, stand by… I can probably reroute something… you don’t need weapons, do you?”

“Not as much as I need shields and engines,” Petty Officer Dhawan replied. They weren’t going to shoot their way out of this. Not one Manasa versus three, plus an Astika back there somewhere too. Running, and trying to stay alive, was really their only option.

“Alright, rerouting. Try again now.”

Sure enough, that’d bought them an extra 20% thrust. “Thank you, dear,” Petty Officer Dhawan said as she pushed the throttle overmax. “I’m going for the aperture.”

“No, not yet,” Lieutenant Commander Sena interjected as she checked her chronometer. “Come about, back towards the station.” If they made a mad dash for the aperture with the Vaadwaur in tow, they’d be on the run through the labyrinth for the next four days. As good of a pilot as Priyanka Dhawan was, she’d only been at the helm for four days. The Vaadwaur flying opposite them had trained their entire lives for this.

“Come again?” Petty Officer Dhawan asked. She’d just put everything she had into making as much space as quickly as she could from the array.

“Five eight seconds,” Lieutenant Commander Sena replied. “That’s how much time we’ve got left.” She did the math in her head, estimating the blast radius, and doing a bit of guesswork when it came to what the exotic matter at the array’s core might do. “Loop back, nice and tight, close as you can get them to the array. Just make sure we got five thousand k-m buffer when she blows.”

“Five thousand k-m,” Petty Officer Dhawan confirmed as she checked the chronometer. “At forty five.” They couldn’t outshoot the enemy, but they sure as hell could blow them up. “Works for me.”

And so around they went, racing back towards the array that was set to blow.

Hopefully the Romulan had done the math right.