I didn't hesitate. Instead, I activated my warpdrive and folded space, bringing my power levels up and transferring powers into my weapon systems.
Arrival in three, two, one...
I dropped out of warp a couple of thousand kilometers from the fight.
"Red leader, we have arrived. Disengage."
"About time you got here! I don't know how these fuckers saw us, but get them off us!"
Lieutenant Bergson was not the best with com discipline.
Three ships. Two Orion frigates and one heavy cruiser, doing their best to try to hit the peregrine fighters with their heavy anti-ship disruptor weaponry.
They were not having a easy time of it.
"Orion vessels, this is the USS Second Star. Shut down your weapons and stand down," I transmitted to them as I rolled, bringing maximum amount of firepower to bare.
I waited a full five seconds as they changed targets to lock onto me according to Starfleet regulations.
Loss of life have to be prevented if at all possible and that mean giving fucking slavers a chance to stand down before I used my deadly deadly deathrays.
But five seconds was all I was giving them. Just enough time for a biological to register the hail and answer.
They didn't deserve more than five seconds.
"Targets locked. No response to hails. Engaging to disable," I reported to the bridge crew while holding the fighters' launch. These arseholes I could handle without risking them.
Disruptor beams played against my shields and I returned fire, twisting and turning to bring their fire onto fresh shield arcs.
Their shields handled the first spears of phaser fire, but they were Orion starships. Some of those hulls were pushing fifty years.
I was a brand new Starfleet Heavy Escort Carrier.
My second salvo cut through the shields of the first of the frigates, cutting a deep glowing swat along it's side, taking out two shield emitters and one engine.
The cruiser opened fire, four plasma torpedoes flashing towards me and I twisted, changing targets and letting lose my own spread of six photon torpedoes in return.
Three of the plasma torpedoes missed but the last didn't. It detonated against my ventral shields, bringing them down by twenty percent. Old or not, those plasma torpedoes pack a punch when they actually hit.
I didn't miss.
The photon torpedoes flew true.
Their shields held against one.
It held against two.
Even against three.
It didn't hold against four, five and six.
They smashed into the main superstructure, the forth one detonating against the meter thick armor.
The fifth didn't. It smashed straight into the ship and detonated deep in it, followed half a second later by a secondary explosion as it's antimatter storage lost containment when the last of the torpedoes detonated against the wreck.
I didn't mean to hit it quite that hard. I thought some might miss and I wanted to make sure their shields went down.
All I could do was hope that they didn't have slaves on board. If they stuck around a system like this, they likely had a hidden base somewhere in-system.
At least I really hoped they did and I didn't have anymore time to think about it.
Swinging around, I rolled, bringing my strongest shields against the shockwave, while my phasers played along the shields of the last intact frigate.
They turned and started to accelerate away, their aft disruptor arrays opening fire.
You are not getting away. Not happening.
I fired a single photon torpedo this time, smashing their aft shields apart before I lashed out with my phasers once more, slagging their main engines and aft weapons.
Leaving them to drift, I rolled around in a turn back towards the last still active combatant, the crippled frigate.
They still didn't try to surrender.
Instead, they kept firing at me. I didn't bother asking for their surrender either this time. Instead I reached out with my phasers, smashing through their weakened shields, picking off weapons, engines, shield generators.
When they were fully disabled, I turned again, heading back towards the other drifting frigate, giving it the same treatment, using low energy phasers as soon as I knocked it's remaining shields down to carefully knock everything defensive, mobile or offensive from it.
"All targets neutralized," I reported to Captain Mason, "Engagement time, forty point six seconds."'
He nodded, "Good. Survivors?"
"Approximately one hundred lifesigns in total between two frigates. Mostly Orion but also other species, including Klingon and Human. ...No lifesigns in the remains of the heavy cruiser. Sorry, sir."
Mason nodded again, "Are their life support stable?"
I checked quickly before I answered him, "Yes sir. I believe so."
"Good. Then they can drift for a while. Mason to Sleeman, how is it going with those cells in Cargobay Four?"
"Another four hours, Sir," my chief engineer answered after a short moment to think.
"Good," Mason said, "We can beam them directly to the cells in batches as soon as you are done and then sort the slavers from the slaves."
"Captain, there is a energy signature on the planet below," I reported with a mental frown, "It's mostly under ground and they have some kind of scattering field. If we were further away than orbit, I wouldn't have seen it. I think it's their base."
Janeway looked thoughtful at that. "Can you take out the scattering field from orbit?"
"No, Captain. I cannot directly pinpoint the source ...not without risking damaging the base and possible prisoners. I would really not recommend trying to beam through it either."
Captain Mason sighed at that before he frowned. "We just have to do things the hard way then. Shuttles and ground assault. Unless they decide to surrender that is," he said before he stood up. "Star, open a channel."
I hated this plan...
AN// Many thanks to Rastamon. Now where did I put those Salvage Corvettes?
