“Sit down Doctor, you’re making me nervous,” Tikva said as she walked down the starboard ramp from behind the Tactical arch and towards the centre seats. Mac was already there, seated in his customary seat, while Blake Pisani was standing before the third seat, usually unoccupied, bouncing lightly on the balls of her feet, nervous energy radiating from her. “And besides, if we’re lucky, we won’t see the Breen until we’re free and clear in space.”

“At which point,” Mac said from the XO’s seat, “we can choose to either introduce them to our phaser arrays or run at full impulse until we build up enough warp plasma to high-tail it out of here.”

“Oh, shoot, yes,” Tikva said as she sat down, snapping her fingers as she did so. “Tivka to Engineering.”

“Velan here,” came the response in quick order. “And if you’re asking if we can go lower, I’m going to say no and then give you five more kilometres anyway and that’s it.”

“We’re holding altitude now and the shuttles are on the way back now. We’re going to start making our ascent shortly. Get your people shovelling coal, we might need the warp engines.” Tikva gave Mac an easy smile as he silently chuckled at her.

“I’d really rather not just now,” came the response. “We’ve been running the impulse driver coils pretty hard keeping the ship buoyant and it’s done a number on our cooling loops. The atmosphere is pretty hot out there and we’re just barely able to radiate the ship’s heat at the moment. Bringing the warp drive online is going to make things uncomfortably warm.”

“How bad?”

“Unbearable within two hours?” Velan answered with a questioning inflexion. “Maybe more as we ascend. But with the impulse engines and atmosphere drag, even a straight upwards course is going to take longer than that.”

“Okay, but as soon as you’re happy, I want you to start up that warp core and start priming the engines. Those Breen interceptors might just have friends waiting above we haven’t seen.”

“Right you are captain. Velan out.” And with that, the line went dead.

“See,” Tikva said as she turned to Blake, “nothing to worry about.”

“Still don’t see why you wanted me on the bridge,” the young doctor stated, still having not sat down as requested. “I’ve already told Charles everything I can think of that would be helpful. And you two have way more tactical experience than I do. Hell, I got my bridge officer certification because I was bored.”

“Did you take the Gas Giant Atmosphere Tactical Course?” Tikva turned to Mac. “I must have missed it on my way through the Academy.”

“No, don’t think I saw it either,” Mac answered, stroking his chin in thought. “Advanced Tactics didn’t cover it. Neither did Strategic Introductions. Might be we found a gap in the Command curriculum.”

“Ha ha,” Blake said, sarcasm dripping off of both syllables. “Fine, you want my advice? We don’t want to just go straight up away from the Rubic, we want to head off on an angle.” She finally sat down, perched on the edge of her seat and turned to better face Atlantis’ command duo. “When Rubic implodes, it’s going to make a heck of a lot of noise. Let’s assume the Breen hear it. So they’ll rush over to investigate.”

“And?” Tikva asked, knowing there was more. Tasting it from Blake as sweetness, like cotton candy. That ‘I know something you don’t know’ she’d tasted from so many others before.

“Let’s assume one of them is clever enough to consider the possibility of some sort of rescue. The quickest way out of this mess is straight up, so they send a single ship in that direction. And if you assume your enemy is always faster, stronger and smarter than you, you’re never surprised.” Blake smiled, something vaguely predatory to it. “So you have to be cleverer.”

“One ship goes straight up, faster than us, never finds anything. But it leaves two ships closer to us still searching,” Mac jumped in. “But two is better than three. And by going sideways for a bit we’re vastly increasing their search area.”

“And it also means if we give them the slip and break out of here, we’re only possibly looking at facing a single ship waiting for us in orbit,” Blake added. “And I think Atlantis can handle one little Breen raider without trying.” She looked upwards, towards the Tactical station where Adelinde was standing.

“Damn right,” Adelinde said confidently.

“What was our hit rate at the Battle of Deneb again?” Mac asked.

“Eighty-seven per cent,” Lin answered. “Jem’hadar fighters are annoyingly agile.”

“Waihou and Lesbos are aboard,” Rrr spoke up from Ops. “Shuttlebay reports doors secure. And sensors show Rubic approaching her crush depth.”

“Damn shame we couldn’t tow her out,” Tikva said.

“Least we got the crew and all of their research that they were concerned about.” Mac shrugged before he turned his attention forward. “T’Val, best possible speed at zero zero zero mark zero two five.”

“Ahead full, twenty degrees up angle,” Blake corrected the order into her understanding of submarine speak, though all three of them seated together held their own levels of doubt as to the accuracy of the phrasing.

“Aye sir,” T’Val answered back, as precisely as one would expect from a Vulcan.

Silence settled over the bridge, outside of perfunctory updates between stations, as Atlantis left the Rubic to her fate and started her climb out of the depths of the Dormak VI’s atmosphere. Slow and steady was their raise, either to avoid taxing the engines at this depth (performance would increase as they rose to ‘cooler’ layers) or leaving atmosphere wakes or noise the Breen might follow. But after nearly ninety minutes it had finally been broken when Blake, who had been walking laps around the bridge, her nervous energy bleeding into a few of the younger officers, planted her hands on the tactical arch and leaned forward so she could look down on Tikva and Mac.

“I just had a thought,” Blake said, continuing without waiting and shattering the business like quiet the bridge had settled into. “Velan said the cooling loops were barely keeping up. So we’re hotter than the atmosphere around us, right?”

“Makes sense,” Tikva answered without looking up from the padd of reports she had in hand. The neverending reports a captain had to either read themselves or trust someone else to read and then sign off on. “If it was the other way around, we’d be taken on heat.”

“And that’s why he didn’t want to bring the warp drive online. After all most of the cooling system is meant to keep the ship cool when that thing is running.” Blake then hurried around, throwing herself into the third seat. “What if the Breen are still running their warp cores though?”

“The Breen are experts in cooling systems. They likely have figured out how to shunt more of their heat build-up out into the atmosphere.” Tikva then stopped her reading and looked to Mac, who was just looking up from his own reports. “Which means they’re radiating heat.”

Mac nodded his head in agreement. “A lot of it too,” he said. “The atmosphere will be diffusing it though.”

“But it’s another avenue for passive sensors,” came a new voice as Gabrielle Camargo injected herself into the conversation. “Won’t be great, but it’s every sensor window is better than none.”

“Nice thinking Blake,” Tikva said, giving the doctor a grin. “Now, seriously, we’re looking at hours more of this slow climb, so either sit down and enjoy the boring parts of bridge duty, or you’re free to head back to sickbay.”

It didn’t take much for Blake to accept the offer, make her excuses and be on her way, delayed momentarily by Mac as he rose to follow her, speaking to her quietly at the open door to the turbolift. Not entirely professional, but discreet enough, and limited to merely asking about dinner plans at the such. Entirely mundane couples talk.

It was however cut off by Camargo turning in her seat to face the bridge proper. “Five thermal contacts aft, range unknown, but outside the five kilometres on our other sensors. Three more above us and I’m guessing descending.”

“Could they be the creatures?” Adelinde asked sharply.

“Not a chance,” Camargo replied.

“Eight ships. Five already following us and waiting for their three friends.” Tikva stood from her seat, watched as Mac passed in front of her for his seat, Blake having returned as well, the bridge a far more interesting place to be all of a sudden. “Almost seems fair.”

“I dislike fair,” Lin grumbled from her station.

“We can go quiet, see if can give them the slip,” Mac offered. But his inflexions alone told everyone what he thought of that plan – unlike in the least.

“Or we can go loud,” Blake spoke up. “Fire up all our sensors, light them up so they know we’ve seen them and send a volley of torpedoes at them while we break for space.”

“Hmm.” Tikva thought about it, walked forward five steps, turned around, five more back to her seat, three more towards the helm and ops again before she turned to face Lin. “Red alert. All hands to battlestations.”