“This has got to be the most jank solution to a problem I have ever seen,” announced Moana Tipene, Flop, after her ever so brief survey of the work being done on the automated freighter AB1726. “This is going to work?”

“Eh, I’ve seen worse,” said Sonhi Nagnax, known to her wing mates as Crash. “During the Dominion War there were a lot worse hack jobs done all over the fleet to either keep things working, or mash problems together hoping for a solution.”

Moana shook her head as she wrapped an arm around the smaller woman’s shoulders and pulled her into a sideways clasp. “You, Crash, didn’t serve in the war. They did,” she said, a finger pointing at Crash’s abdomen.

AB1726 was a Fluyt-class freight that someone, somewhere, had agreed to lend to the Republic’s officers to help flush out local pirates. None of the Night Witches were aware of whatever deals had been made to secure the ship, just that it had been, and they were being turned into the ship’s offensive armament in an attempt to nab some pirates.

Engineers had been scrambling over it for a day now, fitting the external doors with charges to blow them out in a hurry, allowing the Valkyrie-starfighters to launch in a hurry. Duranium plating, all of which looked like spares from maintenance stores, had been slapped around the internal cargo bay, providing cheap and likely effective shielding against most sensor systems. And in just the last hour the Night Witches themselves had arrived, fighters included, to turn AB1726 into a pirate-hunting Q-ship.

Aside from the runabout Paralus, parked down near the crew section of the ship, the cargo bay was otherwise empty. Harsh white overhead lights beat down on everyone and everything. No doubt perfectly serviceable when loading and unloading and chosen for being reliable and maintenance-free lighting fixtures.

“Flop,” Crash whined as she slipped out of Crash’s grasp. “Please. Me, Nagnax, one and the same, but different. Yeah, Nagnax’s had a host during the war, but I feel those memories are like part of me. So just…let it be, okay?”

“Sorry, sorry,” Flop replied.

“Everything secure?” another voice asked as it rounded the fighter next to the two women. Catalina ‘Cat’ Saez, squadron leader, wasn’t much older than those under her command at all. She only was in command by seniority in rank after all. “XO just went back to Republic to grab something, then we’re off.”

“Grab something, or someone?” Flop asked, her tone indicating her direction of thought. Everyone knew of the commander’s affection towards her wife and it was a talking point amongst some of the crew after all.

“Something,” Cat answered. “Said ‘if I’m going pirate hunting, I need to look the part’ before she left.”

“Bet she’s getting Endeavour then,” Crash said. “Endeavour,” she repeated at Flop’s quizzical look. “That sword hanging over the bar in the agora. The one that Revin put up.”

“You know, I heard that sword was actually made from hull plating of the previous USS Endeavour.” Cat shrugged at her own statement, judging it as a matter not worth continuing on for now. “Back to what I asked, is everything secure?”

“All craft secured by magnetic clamps, weapon loadouts confirmed and fuel topped up. Crash and I just finished hooking them all up ship power so we can keep the computers all spun up for rapid launch.” Flop had even straightened her back for the brief report. “Hop in, disconnect the clamps via a command that’s already on the screens, wait for the doors to get out of the way and away you go.”

Cat looked around the empty expanse, the six fighters all parked and ready to launch from the freighter’s insides like a swarm of angry hornets. Then she looked over the space again and again before turning back to her two pilots. “Get a couple of couches and a table, plop them down over there,” she pointed at a spot roughly in the middle of the fighters. “We need to be nearby.”

“On in,” Crash answered.

“Well?” asked Dirk ‘Knives’ Mattis as Cat returned to the Paralus, the two of them having taken on the task of preparing the luxurious escape pod for the crew that would be flying the AB1726 in case something went terribly wrong.

“Flop just being a pain to Crash,” Cat answered. “Didn’t seem intentional, just insensitive.”

“Never is with her,” Knives answered. “She does get better with exposure though. Crash just needs to sit her down and explain what’s going on.”

“Does Crash know what’s going on?”

“Fair point,” Knives answered. “Right, this bucket of bolts is ready to fly. Even if the XO decides to take the helm.” He, like Cat, knew just how bad the XO was at the helm. ‘Perfectly serviceable’ was the phrase that was bandied about. Given any form of disruption though and things would get hairy.

“Let’s just hope that Chief Malcolm insists on flying then,” Cat said. “You know, I was looking forward to going over to the Hysperian ship, but guess this takes priority.”

“You really wanted to go over to that floating palace?” Knives asked. “I couldn’t think of a better waste of time, honestly.”

“Exactly!” Cat said with a grin. “Stuffy nobles, people pretending to live in a fantasy world, wacky ways of referring to everything. Oh, the hilarity of it all. I even heard there was a dragon aboard ship, too.”

“And instead you’ve been co-opted into another of the Commander’s wacky plans to go pirate hunting in order to get intel.” Knives looked at Cat seriously. “This is wacky. You know that, right?”

“Murphy’s Law my man,” Cat answered. “If it’s stupid, but it works…”

“I ain’t stupid,” Knives said, finishing the statement.

“And besides, this isn’t that stupid. The wacky bit is just Engineering was given a day to sort things out. Though these Fluyt beasties are pretty adaptable.”

Knives shrugged, then looked down at the console before him as it beeped. “The commander and a security team just beamed aboard. Looks like with the engineers we already have, we’re good to go.”

“I’ll go stop the departure until we get some couches for the flight deck,” Cat said. Knives didn’t even look confused, just nodded in acceptance before rising to follow her out of the runabout.

Stepping into the limited command deck of the AB1726, Cat felt like she was stepping into a play set. There were only three stations in the limited space – helm and navigation at the front, engineering set to the right and defensive and operational systems to the left. Defensive, not tactical. This was, after all, an unarmed freighter.

Aside from the flight of fighters in its belly all shielded and pretending to just duranium cargo pallets and containers, that is.

But in the middle of all this nothing, only two people were present aside from Cat herself; Commander Sidda Sadovu and a young ensign she was overseeing as they prepared the flight systems for the freighter for departure.

The Commander had opted for her field jacket versus her uniform tunic. She’d procured a black Stetson hat from somewhere, perched at a crooked angle on her head. The disruptor holster that Cat had seen a couple of times was present again, and field with a nasty-looking Klingon weapon, accompanied by a standard phaser as well on Sidda’s opposite hip.

And then, to round off the entire ensemble, was a scabbard hanging from a sword belt. The sword present wasn’t that long, but the hilt bore a Starfleet delta in it, though the hilt itself wasn’t that wide at all.

“Ah, so you did get the sword,” Cat said.

“I did,” Sidda said, turning to face Cat, a grin a mile wide. “If we’re going pirate hunting, I have to look the part.”