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File #4 - "Test Your Metal"

"Captain!" cried out Commander Val'sha as bridge was rocked around them in a continual spray of sparks and EPS conduits overloading.

But still Captain Nicholson was not there.

His body may still have been on that cataclysmic abyss which had befallen his ship but his mind was examining his decisions that had led to this point.

He wondered how Commander Riker must have felt when he faced losing the Enterprise or losing his best friend and mentor during the Borg Invasion of 2367.

He wondered how Commander Sisko must have felt when he abandoned the bridge of Defiant at the disastrous Second Battle of Chin'toka in 2375.

Would he now lose his ship due to his negligence, his ability to predict the unpredictable?

He had been so proud when he took command of the Warrior, the first of her class and what was to be the first new ship in the renewed Federation battle fleet. He was proud that they were following in the legacy of such legendary classes of starship, like the Defiant Class and the Akira Class, many of which were still in widespread use today.

The Warrior Class was designed to be the first "Force Reconnaissance" cruiser designed by Starfleet Command, to answer the growing crisis between the allied Romulan Republic and the remnants of the Tal Shiar and the Romulan Star Empire.

As a graduate of Starfleet Corps of Engineering and one of the greatest students of Captain Geordi LaForge, he had earned his position by serving aboard the U.S.S. Challenger, a Galaxy Class cruiser which was used as a testbed for many new experimental technologies for the corp.

He had designed the Warrior, his dream, his legacy, to be a powerful vessel,.capable of nullifying the most impressive tactical advantage that the Romulan Star Empire had held over the Federation for decades. The cloaking device.

With the introduction of Reman engineering and the Scimitar Class Warbird, cloaking technology had considerably improved over the last thirty years to the point where Romulan vessels were capable of being using their weaponry and their shields while fully cloaked.

The Warrior had been designed to even the odds for the Federation...

Now, some unknown force had rendered all that work completely obsolete. All the years that Nicholson had spent in the drafting room of Utopia Planitia, working late into the night and it had all been brought to its knees by something he had never fully anticipated.

He could not, he would not see his project go down in flames.

Nicholson suddenly snapped out of his trance and the smell of smoke filled his lungs as he turned to Commander Val'sha and nodded approving, acknowledging the efforts of his First Officer to free him from his own self pity.

"Report!" he shouted over the blaring alarms.

Zant looked possibly overwhelmed as he rushed over the tactical console. The Warrior was only supposed to be on a test run and was running with a skeleton crew. He had never manned tactical before but with the death of Anna, he would have do something.

"The Victorious is powering its weapon systems and shields... Odd, I am only reading one massive lifeform Captain."

Commander Val'sha rushed over to the back of the bridge where the engineering consoles were located and began to tap away at the controls as she looked back to the Captain.

"Captain... whatever sabotage we have endured has completely overloaded most of the EPS system on the ship. Shields were automatically raised when we suffered the first internal explosion but are currently at thirty-two percent..."

Nicholson rushed over to help Kiska up as the next explosion knocked her out of her chair. This one did not come from inside the ship but was from the attacks of the Victorious on the exterior.

Val'sha continued citing her report with the same Vulcan sense of accuracy.

"Quantum and Photon Launchers are offline and we have partial phasers. Pulse phaser cannons are offline... They knew exactly where to hit us."

"Who though?" thought Nicholson as Val'sha continued to state that Commander Tempest's body had come to a stop on Deck 5 and had collapsed back into a deep state of unconsciousness. The electrical discharges that caused the first internal explosion had also ceased.

"Can we go to warp?" asked Nicholson immediately.

"No Captain" replied Kiska from the front of the bridge. "The antimatter containment field has been damaged, possibly due to the electrical discharges. If we engage the warp drive, its possible that the field will collapse and we'd be looking at a breach."

"We have casualties on multiple decks, two confirmed fatalities so far Captain, Doctor Rayner and Lieutenant Mayer."

Nicholson was incensed at the knowledge that one of his oldest friends, Doctor Kevin Rayner was dead. They had been friends for years and he had always been like an older mentor for him, so much so that he requested him for this assignment.

But this was not the time to grieve.

The ship rocked again with the impact of weapons fire, causing Nicholson to grab hold of the back of Kiska's chair for support.

He suddenly had an idea how they could get some breathing room.

"Zant... what type of Excelsior Class is the Victorious. Is it a pre-refit model?"

Zant's antenna went berserk as he trawled through the database to gather any information on this lost Federation ship.

"Y-Yes Captain" he responded. "The Victorious was part of the original assembly line of Excelsior Class starships following the commission of the U.S.S. Excelsior in..."

"Ok, enough!" barked Nicholson, looking over to his slightly shocked makeshift Tactical Officer.

"Captain" interjected Commander Val'sha immediately afterwards. "If you are thinking of taking advantage of the Victorious's prefix code, I am pretty sure that it would be changed..."

"Just... shut up and let me think!" commanded Nicholson, as he slid into the console beside Kiska and began rerouting Tactical control to his station. He began to mumble to himself as he looked over the data.

"Zant..." he finally said after a few seconds of silence, with on the rumbling of weapons fire striking the ship to comfort his crew. "Rig a graviton beam and direct it at the coordinates on the dorsal side, between the nacelles."

"A-Aye sir". Zant immediately set to work, knowing better than to question his commanding officer. However Val'sha was decidedly curious.

"Captain... what is your suggestion...? and I do not appreciate being told to "shut up"" scolded Val'sha with a slight hint of annoyance in her voice. Only a slight hint that made Kiska somewhat smile as she looked forward.

Nicholson input a computer guided targeting sequence into the main computer as he attempted to calibrate the main phaser array on the fly.

"Well... I remember from school that the original Excelsior Class design used a symmetrical subspace graviton field to power the shields. This was about a century before the advent of regenerative shielding. Shields of that era were nowhere near as advanced at dealing with gravimetric pulses and a sustained graviton beam at the Victorious would momentarily disrupt their shield grid."

Val'sha raised an eyebrow. Nicholson knew what was coming, this was a sign that she was about to raise a very astute observation. "However Captain" she retorted calmly. "That would only create a minor disruption for zero point five two seconds before the shield grid reasserted itself?"

"Yes... which is why I have programmed a firing sequence into the main computer which will target all the major EPS junctions and attack them all simultaneously, before they can reengage their shields."

"Like a scattershot!" shouted Zant. His only contribution to a conversation that was almost completely above his understanding without simplifying the principle.

"Exactly!" replied Nicholson. "If we time it just right, we can disable all twenty seven main EPS junctions on the Victorious and disable the ship!"

Val'sha looked somewhat perplexed at the suggestion but behind her eyes was also the annoyance that she did not think of it. "Ingenious" she replied with a nod.

"I'm glad you approve Number One." Kiska gave the Captain a short smile, she knew that "Number One" really got under Val'sha's skin. She hated things that were not protocol and she had always insisted that the Captain not call her that. Captain Nicholson smiled right back at her.

"Graviton beam is ready." signalled Zant as he charged the deflector to full capacity.

"Fire"

A cyan coloured beam shot out the deflector of the crippled Warrior and struck the Victorious almost immediately on target. A few seconds later, a dazzling display of light from the many different phaser arrays on the Warrior fired all at once, creating an almost beautiful array of orange colour as they all struck different points of the Victorious causing the ship's nacelles to slowly flicker and lose their blue hue as the beams struck the ship.

TheVictorious was disabled... unable to run or fight back and Captain Nicholson breathed a sigh of relief as his crew cheered around him. All except Val'sha who was busy watching the very "emotional" display with contempt.

Maybe he was ready for a command after all?