Nige and Heim walked over to one
of the few remaining operating consoles and called over another officer.
"Lieutenant Tyran, this is Lieutenant Sular, our tactical officer"
"Pleased to meet you Lieutenant" said Nige
"As am I" responded Sular
"Grab a seat or piece of bulk head Lieutenants, we may be here for a while." Heim tapped on a few buttons and a tactical display flickered on. Luckily, the *Ronin* still had external sensors on line. Nige watched the screen and watched various Barien and federation lights blink out. He managed to pick out the *Knight* and see that it was still fighting strong. *phew, she's all right still* he thought to himself. "Any suggestions gentlemen?" asked Heim. The two officers looked at the display.
"We could cloak and fly around to the rear of the Barien fleet. Have a good go at some of the Barien Capital ships" suggested Nige
"It wouldn't work, the Barien fighters would be on us in an instant" replied Sular
"I agree" said Heim "There must be another alternative"
"Besides the cloaking device isn't going to be operational for a long time" added McQueen joining the three officers.
"Not only that, warp drive is non-operational Commander"
"Thank you Lieutenant"
"Hey if you three really want to pull of something spectacular, work out a way for us not to get hit at all. We could be out of here in next to no time then" he said jokingly as he got back to his repairs
"Not get hit, that's impossible" stated Sular
"Not entirely" replied Nige "Are either of you familiar with the Talosian incident, on the *Knight*?"
"I'd heard that the Talosians had made contact but I don't know any of the details. Where is this leading Lieutenant" asked Heim, sensing that Nige was planning something.
"Well on the way back to earth the first time around, to get there we used a temporal propulsion system that we found on an abandoned space station once used by the Han'gosians. We traveled back to earth, but while in the temporal tunnel, we found a Han'gosian ship trapped there. The crew let us have a look around their ship and our first officer, who was then our chief operations officer, found an interesting torpedo and shield configuration. The torpedoes could pass through conventional shielding by moving slightly out of time and then sliding back in again once they have breached the shields to destroy the target. It would be impossible to use the torpedoes in this situation as it would take too long to configure them. The shielding how ever, we could do, and it would help us more than the torpedoes. Lieutenant Benson and our chief engineer installed them on the *Knight* so Benson should be able to do it here too. The shielding works on the same principal as the torpedoes. When something hits them, the shields shift it out of time so that it cannot hit the ship. I think we could probably be out of here in an hour if the shielding works."
"Lieutenant Benson!!!" shouted Heim
"Yes sir" he said running over
"I want you, Lieutenant McQueen and Ensign Johnson to install....." he looked at Nige
"....Han'gosian"
"....Han'gosian shielding on the *Ronin*"
"Han'gosian shielding?? What the bloody hell is that?" asked McQueen
"I'll explain" said Benson taking him away from the group
"I'd better see if I can help out too" said Sular heading off to another console.
"Commander, I'd like to speak to Captain Evans" said Nige
"I'm afraid that won't be possible. He's trapped on the bridge and we have no way of getting to him."
"Ahh. Can I speak to your chief of security then? I need to sort out a few things with him"
"I'm afraid that's not possible either. We don't have a 'chief' of security. The only security officer we have is in the *Ronins* shuttle pod, some where out in the battle."
"My God man! They sent you into battle without a full crew?!?"
"Yep. All we can do is hope that we'll get some new crew members when we get out of this mess. If we do."
"Commander, one more thing. The Han'gosian shielding.... may not work. The Talosian illusion was only an illusion, and in practice, the shields may not actually work."
"Point taken, but we must try something"
"And even if we do get them on line, we'll only be able to use them for forty minutes at most due to the two technologies not interfacing"
"Mr. Tyran, if we do make this ship invincible, forty minutes is all we'll need" he said with a smile.