Hours before contact.
On board the Ronin.

The briefing room table often became the dining room for the senior staff of the Ronin. Especially when the majority of their mission discussions happen during meal time, and that’s if they get the time to actually have a decent meal. Fortunately for them, this was one of those times where the trip to a destination takes about a week and that gives them all the time they need to have a little downtime. And a good meal.

“Chef really outdid himself today,” said Sven. It was a very fine array of dishes set out for them. Clearly their chef was waiting for a special occasion to make such a large meal for the senior staff so that they wouldn’t have to replicate anything.

“The casserole is so good!” their chief medical, Andre exclaimed, as every bite of the casserole left a look of satisfaction and relief on their face. Their last mission was quite stressful and the Harald could see the looks on the faces of his senior staff, all of them looked pleasant and relieved. Except for his chief of security, Finn.

From his peripheral vision, Harald could see that his number one took one look at his face and spoke out to the Finn.

“Don’t you have a report to write up for us?” Sven asked.

Finn paused from putting a fork full of stuffing into his mouth and replied. “Now, sir?”

Harald stared at the man, hard. “Considering it was your mistake that caused the situation to become much more complicated than it needed to be. So, chief, what do you think we mean?”

Finn put his fork down, wiped his lips with his napkin before he got up, saluted. “Right away, Captain!” He pushed his chair out, stood up and left in a matter of seconds. Once he was gone, Sven stood up, went to one door while their chief engineer, Antonin, went to the other door. They both entered their security codes and locked them. But just to be sure.

“Computer, sealed doors can only be unsealed by my voice authorization. And please erect a maximum security forcefield around the room.” Harald waited for the chirp to acknowledge that his commands had been completed. “Now we can speak freely. What is the status of the camp?”

There were several reasons why they did not want to speak around their current chief of security. Harald hand picked his crew, down to the last bootsman. But when their previous chief of security, Vicki, was killed in action, High Command insisted they assign someone to replace her, with no objections. When this happened, Sven and Antonin spent weeks gathering as much detail as they could on Finn and they learned just how much of a loyalist he was to the Supreme Leader. This complicated their objectives severely.

Fortunately, they have been able to conduct business as usual, as long as they were able to keep Finn busy with official tasks. They had to be, or High Command would certainly become suspicious. Their last mission was at one of the prison camps, where there was rumors of a rebellion. Their job was to question the Commandant and investigate the situation, to determine whether the Commandant was incompetent or if it was the failure of his own security, which was Finn’s area of expertise.

Sven was able to set something up to make it appear as Finn failed at his job and caused a sudden uprising in the camp. With the combined forces of the Ronin security and the camp’s security, they were able to quell the uprising with minimum casualties. This, however, allowed Harald to write in his report that not only was the Commandant incompetent; an uprising occurred under Finn’s supervision, who failed to act to prevent it.

“The new Commandant we put in place has sent an encrypted message. Progress in transferring and freeing prisoners are under way but it is slow. While they still have to maintain production to High Command’s standards, it won’t be long until they have to start manipulating supply orders. And once they discover that things do not add up, hopefully the camp will be fully evacuated.” Sven explained after he sat back down at his seat.

Harald sighed as he pushed his plate forward. As much as he loved the food, he could not bring himself to finish it. “How many camps has the resistance managed to free so far?”

“Out of thousands?” Andre asked, then shook their head. “At least a hundred or so.”

Antonin put the piece of bread down on his plate, as he not wanted to speak with food in his mouth. “And this is why High Command assigned someone to this ship. Someone that was under their thumb, easily to control and gather intel. They’re already getting suspicious.”

Harald looked over to Julius, their chief pilot. “What are your thoughts, Juls?”

Juls quickly swallowed and dabbed his lips with the napkin before he answered. “I think we get rid of Finn, as soon as possible. But in a manner that won’t raise suspicion.”

“Anything we do to Finn will raise suspicion with High Command! We cannot touch him! We simply can’t!” Said Antonin.

Harald looked over to his number one, stared into Sven’s eyes for a moment before he returned his gaze to the rest of his staff. “When the time is right, when the resistance gives the signal, I will eliminate Finn myself.

Minutes before contact.

“We’ve dropped out of warp in front of the vessel, sir.” Said Julius.

Finn spoke up, “It looks like one of our own but look at this.” He shifted the viewscreen from the forward camera view to a top down outline of the ship after the sensors had fully analyzed it. He created a red box around the object in the saucer. “It’s some sort of crystal-like structure. From the analysis, it pierced the ship through the ventral side and came out the dorsal side. The rest of it was shaved off by phasers with precision. Most likely phasers from small crafts.” But that wasn’t what Harald was focused on. In the corner of the screen, he saw ‘U.S.S.’ If he remembered from the history books, that used to be a designation for the Americans, before they were atomized during the war. What’s more, it was the Sovereign, a ship they thought was lost. It was never confirmed if they were destroyed in action, or just missing.

“That’s not all,” Sven began. “Her main power is online but only at 51% efficiency. Auxiliary power is on but her batteries are completely drained. And take a look at this.” He took control of the viewscreen and swapped the top down view top a bottom up view of the ship, where he magnified the engineering hull. “Sensors showed quite a bit of damage at her ventral structure of the engineering hull. Looks like someone has tried to take her out by targeting the warp core.”

“Captain, another ship just dropped out of warp!” Said Julius and they took over the viewscreen to bring the new ship up.

Harald sighed heavily as he saw what ship it was. “That’s Hans ship.” ‘This complicates things.’ He thought.

Finn, “Captain, we were here first! We need to seize it and obtain the Supreme Leader’s blessing! Sensors detect a residual radiation of some sort of technology, technology that will benefit the Reich!”

Harald cursed under his breath at the mention of the ‘reich’ and looked at his first officer who nodded his head. Harald turned to look at his chief of security. “Take a team. Seize their bridge and engineering.” As soon as their Finn left with a new spring in his step, he turned to his crew. “I need options. Now!”

“Han’s ship’s communications are located right here,” Sven shifted the viewscreen to erect a red rectangle around the spinal mount. “If we hit it hard, we take out both their primary weapon and their comms. They won’t be able to tell command anything before we destroy them.”

‘Why did it have to be Hans? He wasn’t a bad Captain but he was loyal to the Reich. Still…it has to end. All of it.’ Harald thought. There had been numerous attempts to overthrow their Supreme Leader. One that was so close to succeed was Valkyrie.

At the helm, Julius turned in their seat to chip in. “If we target one of their warp nacelles, we can keep them from escaping and that could also reduce their power to their weapons. Not significantly, so they’ll still be a challenge for us. But without their spinal mount-”

Antonin interrupted Juls, “We will have a serious tactical advantage over them.”

Harald turned to look at Antonin, “What about our spinal mounts? Has the power issue been resolved yet?”

Antonin sighed, “Afraid not, Captain.”

“I am very disappointed, chief. Why has this not been rectified?” He asked.

“The primary conduits were severely damaged in our last engagement. Repairing them is a very delicate matter and I have only the best working on them right now, but I’m afraid that this kind of job takes time.” Said the chief.

Sven had stood up from his place and took over the tactical station. Just as he did, alarms began to go off where sensors detected activity. “Captain! Sovereign’s torpedo tubes just activated and they’re fully loaded!”

‘Shit! No time!’ Harald whipped around to Sven. “Quickly! Fire on the spinal, the nacelle and their main engineering!”

Finn glared at the captain. “One last time! Relinquish control of this ship to the Terran Imperium!”

Maxwell stared at this officer who pointed the emitter of their rifle at his head. “I wish I could do that, but the second our onboard sensors detected intruders on the Bridge, all command functions were transferred. I am no longer the Captain.” But before they could continue their conversation, he heard alarms from the tactical station.

Even though Bates had his own problems with a weapon pointed at him, he could still see the displays of his console. “Sir! The Ronin is preparing to fire!”

“What?!” Finn turned around to look at the viewscreen. Maxwell was uncertain if the man was surprised that their own ship was about to fire on his ship, while their team was on board. But everyone on the Bridge was left speechless when they saw the Ronin opened fire on their companion ship. Several phaser volleys into the spinal mount, warp nacelle and some torpedoes from their torpedo turrets impacted the secondary hull. It did not take long for the other ship to respond to the surprise assault, as it began to return fire. And then something else happened. Maxwell watched as blue torpedoes appeared to come from his ship and impacted the other nacelle and other side of the engineering hull of the vessel. None of the weapons from his ship fired on the Ronin, for the Ronin already had their shields up.

“Captain! Brace!” Tagg shouted. Maxwell wasn’t certain as to why, but he was not going to question one of his senior officers. He saw how Tagg and Graves plopped down into their chairs and pressed their backs into the seat. Maxwell did not question it, he simply did the same thing and just in time too! He suddenly felt himself being compressed into his chair, as he watched the stars whizz by around the edges of the viewscreen, a clear indication that they just went to warp. What was the inertia dampeners set at? But that was not something he needed to concern himself, as the moment he realized the dampeners had reset, he had to help his staff deal with these pests.