Captain Nemros had never been called rash, or any other particularly energetic adjective you might care to mention. Even as a child, he had been more often found amongst the still boughs of the local library, rather than racing beneath the green-leafed arms of the nearby fields where his contemporaries played. Five decades of Starfleet service had done little to dismiss that reputation; quiet, contemplative and considered had always been words that trailed at the heel of his boot.

Perhaps that was why Lieutenant Fern felt a shudder run down his spine as the aged man lay one fell smack with the butt of his fully discharged phaser against the wall.

“Automatons,” he hissed in frustration as he glanced down at the prone forms of the three intruders at his feet. Their tactical helmets knocking against the corridor’s bulkheads, bouncing with the dregs of their momentum from being cast across the deck to reveal pale, grey-skinned faces.

“Supremely basic units, I would say,” Fern suggested with a frown.

“Advanced enough to take out one of our own,” the captain replied with boiling blood.

Nemros found it too difficult to look over to the fourth body in the corridor, wrapped in a hasty shroud fashioned from a thermal blanket by the paramedic team. Keswick had been a young man, barely into his twenties, before finding himself wrapped in the thin metallic fabric.

His death stung. Especially when the intruders had apparently not lost anything of value in leaving the automatons behind. Coupled with the fact that they had seemingly spirited the young Divine in Nemros’s care out of the VIP quarters under the cover of the firefight, it was obvious the score card was in their favour.

Nemros smacked his commbadge with more force than he intended, sending spidering lines of pain across his ribs.

“Atil’ika, report.”

“The trio of vessels continue to evade us,” The commander replied a moment later, the undercurrent of sorrow at Keswick’s loss inaudible to any but the most familiar ear.

“And Tribolus? Internal scans?” Nemros spat through the comm link.

“No sign yet, there’s some sort of scattering-” The woman’s voice stopped abruptly.

“Atil’ika?”

“We’re seeing an escape pod coming online, about one hundred meters away from you.”

“That’s how they’re leaving.” Nemros pointed down the corridor as he set off into a sprint with Fern a few steps behind. “Lock it down!”

“Hurry it up Kyoma, the last robot stopped transmitting,” Lykal hissed urgently. “And this one is getting heavy.”

He shuffled the small form of Ensign Tribolus awkwardly on his shoulder.

“You wanted to bring her.” The tall Orion woman replied, barely lifting her attention from the array of cables spilling out from the small control panel where she worked, nimble fingers rearranging connections and bypassing controls.

“She saw us.”

“We could have shot her,” Kyoma spat back. “Them too, we only need the child.”

Lykal’s jaw went momentarily limp as he took in his compatriots’ form, almost elbow deep in the bulkhead as she attempted to unlock the escape pod’s access door. It was true that it had been several months, perhaps a year, since they had worked together properly. Longer still since they had been romantically involved. But cold murder had never been Kyoma’s style, at least not the Kyoma that he remembered.

“We don’t kill if we don’t have to,” Lykal chided as his stomach turned slightly at the apparent coldness of the woman he had once loved.

“Like I said, you chose.”

“Right, and I chose to keep them alive,” Lykal announced with a faltering tone of authority.

“And what do you intend to do with us?” The melodic tone of the Divine crept from the floor where the handcuffed girl knelt. The young girl’s voice was a strange balm to Lykal’s adrenaline-hot ears, absent of anger or fear. It was simply a question.

“We’re taking you to our employers; after that, you’re their problem,” he replied.

“And what are their intentions?” She asked, the sweet tone of her voice tinged with an ugly disharmony of worry.

“Don’t talk to them, your grace,” Tribolus interrupted as she wriggled on the man’s broad shoulders to no effect.“Don’t say anything at all.”

“I don’t know,” Lykal admitted as he wrestled with Tribolus’s meagre attempts at escape.

The Divine looked up at him, her piercing eyes reaching out from behind her thin embroidered veil, drilling an unexpected doubt into Lykal’s forehead.

She was just a girl; this was wrong.

“Did it not occur to you to simply ask us to go with you?” The dancing melody of her voice echoed again against the dead-end walls of the corridor. “That we might have gone with you willingly?”

“No, I never thought…” Lykal whispered.

“If you free us and allow Ensign Tribolus to go, I would gladly go with you.”

From beneath the dark cowls of her attendents, two more pairs of bright eyes reached out with silent whispers towards the leather clad mercenary.

Perhaps he should free them.

Perhaps he should have just asked?

A sharp smack against his temples sent shockwaves through Lykal’s thoughts, chasing the doubt scurrying into the shadowy corners of his brain.

“Lykal, what is wrong with you?” Kyoma hissed, her hand already raised to strike once more.

“Nothing.”

“Then what are you doing?” She pointed to his outstretched arm, gripping the young woman’s handcuffs, his finger hovering over the fingerprint key that would release them.

“I…” He swallowed heavily, pushing the foggy miasma from his brain forcefully. “I don’t know.”

Kyoma smacked his hand away from the cuffs and lifted the kneeling girl to her feet with surprising roughness.

“The escape pod is ready. Get in. I’ll signal Tal,” Kyoma snapped as she hauled the girl into the now open doorway, her white gown disappearing into the darkened passageway. The two attendants followed dutifully behind without any instruction, leaving Lykal alone in the corridor save for the form of Tribolus slung over his shoulder.

“You’re going to fail,” Tribolus spat with a final fruitless wiggle of rebellion.

“I don’t know Ensign, I seem to be winning at the moment,” Lykal replied, an arrogant grin returning to his face, framed by the lingering doubt that hung at the corners of his lips.

“They’ve managed to bypass my lockout,” Shubri announced from the engineering console at the rear of the bridge.

“The vessels are coming around for another pass,” Irenko added from the operations station. “Probably to pick them up.”

Atil’ika gripped the arm of the command seat with her gnarled fingers, causing the tan leather to squeak in protest. There were fewer and fewer options available to her and little information to inform any choice.

“Shields?” She enquired.

“Have been re-established, but they will not help if the intruders decide to launch the escape pod,” Kosh answered evenly from the wide tactical station.

“Transporters?”

“The scattering field is still in effect, and if they launch, they’ll be outside the shields.” Shubri cautioned from the rear of the room.

The deck shook angrily beneath their feet as the trio of vessels unleashed a volley of energy weapons against Ascension’s barely stable deflector grid.

“What about-”

“-Escape Pod is launching,” Kosh interrupted.

On the viewscreen, a strange camera angle filled the forward bulkhead, an awkwardly twisted point of view looking out across the smooth surface of Ascension’s saucer section. A white panel violently flew away into star speckled backdrop, disappearing offscreen, to be quickly followed by a boxy-looking craft that shot from the hull like a bottle rocket. The camera angle jerked outward, tracking its journey away from the vessel and into the starfield.

“Tractor Beam!” Atil’ika cried.

But the command came a moment too late, as the blue energy began to coalesce and reach out towards the almost supersonic escape pod, its cuboid form was enveloped by strands of orange light.

And then it was gone, leaving the blue translucent energy of the tractor beam clutching at empty space.

“The satellite’s interdiction field is deactivating; they are going to warp,” Shurbi announced meekly.

On the viewscreen, the broken brown curves of the Vahklas-class’s coleopteric nacelles turned towards Ascension and, with a wink, propelled the maurauding craft into the endless horizon.

“They’re gone, Commander.”

“Shit.”