"The End?"

Author: Commodore Jeffrey H. Pike
Stardate: 60896
Earthdate: November 23, 2383
Location: Knight bridge

As Tyran left the bridge heading for Kira's quarters, Pike felt a touch on his arm. He turned and saw that Captain Neil wore a troubled expression on her face. He could tell she had something to say. "What is it, Kara?" he asked.

"I.... I'd rather not say in public, Commodore," she said in a low voice.

"All right," said Pike. "Mr. Taylor, you have the con. Find out how we got here!" Pike stood and invited Neil to follow him to the conference room.

After the door had slid shut, Pike said, "Well?"

Captain Neil had walked over to the large bay windows. Outside the beautiful blue and white globe of Bajor spun slowly beneath them against the background of stars. She turned her back on the vista and looked at Pike. "I'm pretty sure I know how we got here."

"I see. I'm listening."

"You know the story of what happened to the Ilion?"

Pike instantly knew what the Captain was leading up to. The story of the bizarre misadventure of the USS Ilion had spread quickly through Starfleet.

The ship had been transported to the Andromeda Galaxy by a teserract and had encountered a ship from the Kelvan Empire. The Ilion was badly damaged -- half the crew was dead, most of the systems were permanently out.

They had no hope left of ever returning home, or even of surviving the encounter. But it turned out one of the crew wasn't quite what he been passing himself off as -- he had a certain 'ability'. He could harness the energies around him and redirect them in various ways. Using this ability, he managed to send the Ilion back to this galaxy.

"Kira," said Pike.

Neil nodded.

Pike slammed his fist down on the tabletop. He was livid. "He did it behind my back just like he kept his little secret from you one year ago!"

"I know exactly how you feel, Commodore," said Neil. "What he did was way beyond the bounds of protocol, but let's worry about that after we deal with the Kelvans."

Pike realized Kara was right. He brought his anger under control and sat down at the conference table. "Computer, tactical display," he said to the ceiling.

The lights in the conference room dimmed and a three dimensional map of the Bajoran Sector appeared above the center of the conference table. Pike and Neil studied it.

"Show our location," said Pike.

A small blinking dot appeared inside the display.

"Display location of Kelvan Battle Planet."

Another dot, this one red, appeared some distance away.

"They're not even at Cardassia yet!" exclaimed Neil.

Pike said, "Computer, time until Kelvans reach Cardassia Prime?"

<Six hours forty seven minutes.>

"Time for us to intercept the Kelvans at warp 9?"

<Five hours twelve minutes.>

"Then we have them!" said Pike triumphantly to Neil.

Five hours later....

The Kelvan planet-ship flashed back into normal space-time. The transwarp conduit the Kelvans had wrested from the Knight had spent its energy and dissipated, depositing the planet in the heart of the former Cardassian Union.

Somewhere near the northern pole of the planet, in a cavernous chamber several miles underneath the surface, a single, monstrous, pale yellow eye regarded the wall of holographic displays before it. The large main holo showed a typical Class-M planet -- Cardassia Prime. It was circled by a few dozen small defense satellites that slowly came to life as the Kelvan battle planet came within sensor range. A pitiful few spacecraft were detected coming around from the far side.

A pitiful defense, thought the Kelvan. He wondered at this, but only for a moment. There was, of course, no defense possible against the Kelvan Empire. He lashed out one of his tentacle-like limbs and activated the Cardassian communication frequency. When he spoke, his voice was heard by virtually every living being on and about the planet, as it boomed from every communication receiver within range.

"ATTENTION, PEOPLE OF CARDASSIA PRIME. THIS IS THE CONQUEST PLANET OF THE KELVAN EMPIRE. YOUR WORLD IS CONQUERED. ANY RESISTANCE WILL BE IMMEDIATELY AND SEVERELY PUNISHED."

The Kelvan closed the communication with another flick of his long tentacle, and reclined deeper into his command pit to observe the reaction to his ultimatum. The tactical displays showed the blips that represented Cardassia Prime's satellites and defense ships closing on the Kelvan planet-ship.

Very well. They have been warned, thought the Kelvan. His tentacles began working the complex control stations that almost completely surrounded his command pit. A few short minutes later, everything was ready.

Suddenly, alarms began flashing all across his command board. He called up the tactical display, but he couldn't believe his eye. It was the Knight, the same ship he had just pushed a thousand light-years in the opposite direction! How could they be here?!? And what puzzled him more, they were attacking, the fools!

His tentacles danced an additional minute or two over his controls. He would direct a portion of his defenses against the foolish Federation ship while he continued with the destruction of Cardassia Prime.

Pike was sitting in his command chair with Captain Neil in the seat next to his. The reports from his crew were starting to come in.

"The Kelvan Battle Planet has scanned us, sir. Several hundred fighter ships approaching. -- Han'gosian shields have ten minutes of life left. -- Peregrines heading out to intercept enemy fighters. The Orion is pulling across the Kelvans' vector to draw their fire."

"Steady on course," said Pike. "Bridge to torpedo bay. Status?"

[We just need five more minutes to finish programming the Genesis Device, sir.]

"Helm, time to launch point?"

"Five minutes thirty seconds, sir."

Why does it always have to be so close? thought Pike. He didn't have time to ponder the question however. The Orion and the four surviving Peregrines had met the enemy and the battle was on once again!

Most of the Kelvans were successfully diverted by the Orion and the Peregrines, but a few wings had broken through and were heading straight for the Knight. The Knight had only her phaser banks to defend herself with though, because the torpedo launcher had been reconfigured to fire the Genesis Torpedo, and phasers were of limited use against Kelvan shields.

"Red alert!" shouted Pike. "Divert all available power including weapons to the shields. We have to make it to the launch point for the Genesis Device or this whole party will have been for nothing!" He knew they had to stop the Kelvans here, even if it meant sacrificing his own ship.

Taylor looked like he disagreed with this tactic, but complied without voicing his objections.

The Han'gosian shields were taking a beating, and the ride was getting quite rough. Pike held tightly on to the arms of his chair. The rest of the bridge crew were having an equally difficult time hanging onto their own seats. On the main view screen, Kelvan fighter ships darted this way and that as they picked the Knight's shields apart bit by bit.

"Shield failure in one minute! Launch point in two!" shouted Tumock.

"Call in the other ships to see if they can take some of this heat off us," ordered Pike.

"The Orion reports they are surrounded and can't get to us, Commodore. All our shuttles and runabouts have been destroyed. There are two Peregrines left, but they are heavily engaged against several dozen Kelvan fighters."

Suddenly, the ship rocked hard and the consoles behind Tactical exploded. Taylor tried to duck, but some of the plastiform shrapnel caught him in the shoulder. Pike looked back at him in alarm, but Taylor waved him off weakly and said, "I'm all right. Shields down. Genesis launch in 30 seconds."

The Kelvan fighters had smelled blood now and were closing in for the kill. Their powerful beam weapons hammered repeatedly into the Knight's now defenseless hull. The ship's ablative armor took a few of the earliest shots, but the concentrated fire soon opened numerous hull breaches all across the primary hull. Emergency force fields snapped into place over most of the gashes but not all. Still the Knight drove on.

"Launch point!" yelled Taylor.

"Fire!" yelled Pike in return.

"Choke on this, Kelvan scum," hissed Taylor as he stabbed the launch control.

From the leading edge of the Knight's connecting dorsal, a fiery orange starburst flashed into the night toward the Kelvan Battle Planet -- the Genesis Device. A few of the nearest Kelvan fighter ships sped after it in an attempt to intercept it before it hit the planet, but the last two ships of Banshee Squadron, Max and Sam, were after them.

But there was no time to watch and wait for the outcome. Pike yelled, "Helm! Pull up and reverse course! Get us out of here!"

The Knight ponderously began veering away from the planet, but many of her systems had been damaged -- she was responding very slowly. The Kelvan fighters that had been harassing her were still swarming about taking shots. If they knew what was about to happen, they would have gotten away as fast as they could.

A massive hit on the Knight's port transwarp engine caused the entire ship to begin spinning out of control. The nacelle vented raw plasma into space and the support pylon began buckling. The torque from the Knight's spinning and the considerable damage that had been inflicted by the Kelvans finally caused the port warp nacelle to tear away completely from the rest of the ship, taking a good portion of the secondary hull with it. The area exposed to space was much too large to be covered by the emergency force fields; atmosphere and anything else not physically attached to the ship spewed out into space like so much flotsam.

The bridge echoed with the deafening shriek of tearing metal caused by the loss of the port engine. The deck tilted crazily at almost 45 degrees, and the entire bridge crew was thrown across the room like a bunch of rag dolls. Some of them didn't get up again.

The computer was reciting a countdown to a warp core breach. There were about 15 seconds left. Pike raised himself painfully up on an elbow and shook his head groggily. He was pretty sure his other arm was broken, but it didn't matter. Not even the imminent warp core breach mattered as much as what he saw happening on the main viewer.

Commodore Jeffrey H. Pike, commanding officer of the Federation Starship Knight, had fulfilled his duty. He was proud of that fact, he was proud of his ship, but most of all, he was very proud of his brave and gallant crew. Their sacrifice had not been a vain and empty one.

On the main viewer, Pike saw the Genesis Device hit its target. Then the computer's countdown reached zero, and Pike saw no more.

The Genesis Torpedo impacted the surface of the Kelvan Battle Planet. Immediately, the Genesis Effect began burrowing into the crust. Like a flaming orange shockwave, the effect spread across the surface in all directions, all the way around to the other side of the planet until the entire globe had been covered. And the Effect did not just cover the planet, it penetrated inward to the core as well, until not one single subatomic particle that made up the Battle Planet was left untouched.

The Kelvan Commander never saw it coming. The wall of orange flame that was engulfing the planet swept through the Command Center so quickly there was no time for notice.

The Genesis Device had been programmed to convert its target's matter into simple hydrogen compounds and disperse them into space. The process didn't take very long. Once the Effect had completed its global transit, the planet began changing. Mountains melted and evaporated into space. Dirt, rocks, entire slices of the planet dislodged themselves and crumbled into dust, then disappeared from view as their subatomic structure was reorganized into that of interstellar gasses. The Effect spread a short distance into space around the former-planet and touched the glittering debris of a former Federation Starship and her crew. Their atoms were added into the new matrix the Genesis Device was building.

Minutes later, Cardassia Prime had a beautiful, brilliant new purple-and-yellow nebula in its night sky, and its people marveled at its gossamer loveliness. In a few days, maybe a week, the nebula would be gone as soon as the protomatter in the nebula's matrix broke down, and then there would be absolutely nothing left of the Kelvan Battle Planet. It would be like it was never here.

<<< Is this the end of the Knight and her crew? Stay tuned until next time for the Final Episode! >>>