Repartee

Shaka and Hansen worked as quickly as they could in engineering. Occasionally--almost rhythmically-- they stopped working to brace themselves from the force of an attack. Shaka had been listening in on the hailing frequency. When Devore tuned out, Shaka released a sigh of exasperation. "What?" Hansen asked.

Shaka was always amused at the casual level of conversation two Starfleet officers could hold in times of pressure. "Great," she continued. "Our ship and the Loreans' are both damaged, and Devore's pressing the fight forward. Why can't he just talk it over? They offered to talk before, didn't they?"

"They wanted us to surrender, yes," Hansen said in a half-sarcastic voice. "I'm re-tuning the tractor beam's frequency."

"Okay," Shaka said. They continued with their work. "I guess there's no way we can just destroy their main weapons array." "I'm an engineer, not a tactician," Hansen said. "For someone as reputedly confrontational as yourself, you don't seem to have the stomach for a struggle."

"I don't have the stomach to be sucked out into the vacuum of space, no," Shaka said. "Re-routing propulsion drive controls to the main engineering console," she continued, moving to the center control table. "If we dump all the power from the warp and slipstream drives into the tractor beam, wouldn't we blow every power conduit from here to the tractor emitters?"

"I'd rather not have a tractor beam than not have a hull, wouldn't you?" Hansen asked.

"Touché," Shaka replied. "I'm ready over here."

"Just be sure to keep the power transfer as close to the energy-transfer functions as possible," Hansen said.

*Well, duh,* Shaka thought. She tapped her comm badge. "Shaka to Bridge."

[Bridge here. Go ahead.]

"Engineering reports ready."