"Captain! Are you in there?" asked an unfamiliar male voice. The question sounded muffled coming through the hatch.
"Who are you?" asked the Captain.
"Lieutenant Commander Jensen, from Mission Ops. Captain, please open the hatch!"
"Cannons!" the Captain pointed and whispered to the Operations officer. The Operations officer turned to four gray plastic cabinets behind the Operations station computer, retrieving items from the top shelf, and then closed the cabinet. The Operations officer faced forward, holding two type-two hand cannons. The Operations officer activated both sidearm units–one was handed grip-first to Jason through the Sensors officer, the Operations officer operated the second.
"Aim at the hatch." said the Captain. The Captain gestured for the First Officer to open the hatch.
The First Officer walked around the corner, reached for the hatch handle and pushed with his shoulder.
"Be careful!" the Engineer whispered through the crawl space to the First Officer.
The foam on the bottom of the hatch rubbed against the carpeting as it inched open. The First Officer looked up, slightly, appeared calm, and then backed away from the hatch as a short white human male in an E.V. suit entered the bridge, helmet under his left arm.
The Lieutenant Commander looked right and left, and then made eye contact with the Captain.
"Put your sidearms down."
Those with sidearms complied with the order.
"Captain, is your crew all accounted for?"
"Yes."
"What about the computer specialist?" Aaen asked. "There's always one assigned to the Odyssey." You never bothered to check in with deck two, sir. Aaen thought, wishing he were telepathic for the moment.
"I'm 'ere, Keptin!" a male voice said with a heavy Russian accent. The voice carried through the speakers mounted throughout the bridge.
"What's going on out there, Commander?" the Captain asked.
"Captain, you should get your main viewscreen online so you can see outside." The Lieutenant Commander had the entire bridge crew's attention now. "The entire Starbase has gone dark, inside and out. Someone or something just appeared on the base's sensors, opened fire on the base's power grid, and then stopped firing. The Starbase's main computer and main power grid are offline. The Starbase is on emergency power, but that's not going to last more than a few hours before the station has to be evacuated."
"Are they still out there? In space, I mean. Whoever attacked Starbase." Aaen asked.
"If by 'out there', you mean outside Starbase–no one knows yet. But we can't launch any ships because the base has no power, and without power–or the main computer–we won't know if anyone or anything has boarded the Starbase."
"Who sent you down here, Lieutenant Commander?" Aaen asked. The Captain turned around and gave Aaen a hard look for a few seconds, and then looked at Jensen.
"The base's second in command sent me down here to see if I could make contact with any of the crews. We don't know about the Voyager, Falcon, Magellan or Galileo, yet."
"What was their last subspace transmission?" the First Officer asked.
"None. Your ship was the first one that was ready and prepared to launch for the next two hours."
"So there's no word yet on whether or not the other crews are even still alive, or what's happened to them?" Jason asked.
"Right."
The crew looked at the Captain. There was a moment of silence.
"Orders, sir." the First Officer said.
Have the Engineer work on restoring power to the ship. Deploy an armed away team to help maintain security and help restore power to Starbase, and then continue launch procedures. Aaen thought.
"We need to get power back to the ship." the Captain said. "Engineer, start figuring out how to do that."
". . .Okay."
Timid. Aaen thought.
The Captain turned around. "Helm, get ready to release docking clamps. Use thrusters to get us out of the docking port."
Aaen turned around. "Understood. Standing by docking clamps, and then thrusters."
"That's right."
"Computer, activate main viewscreen."
The computer chirped acknowledgment, and then the main viewscreen went dark.
"Turn on forward lights."
The First Officer flipped a few switches on his station panel. Two bright spotlights activated.
"Focus the lights on the same point."
"Yes, sir."
Aaen looked at the main viewscreen. A wall, Aaen thought. "Operations, how long can we keep the forward lights on while on reserve power?"
"A half hour."
"Stop talking to the rest of the crew." the Captain snapped.
"Captain, the main power circuits were damaged after being hit by an electromagnetic pulse. I'm starting repairs. We should have main power back online within twenty minutes." said the Engineer.
"Can you work any faster, Engineer?"
"Not really."
"Helm, are we still docked?" the Captain asked.
"Yeah."
"Stay docked."
"Okay."
"Captain, since we can't undock yet. I suggest we send an armed away team back to Starbase to make sure there aren't any intruders, and to help get main power back online so we can all launch." Aaen said.
"What makes you think there are intruders?" the First Officer asked.
"It makes sense, Captain," said Jensen. "Someone strong enough to disable a Union Starbase?—"
"Who could it have been—" Jason asked. "They could have opened a transwarp conduit right in front of the Starbase! They would have caught us all completely by surprise!"
"They would have started teleporting to populated areas to start attacking everyone on board."
"Maybe they didn't detect us?" said Operations.
"It's a possibility. There's only one way to find out, though, Captain." Aaen said calmly.
*****
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