<<USS Grail- Stardrive- Battle Bridge>>

Epic Terrakian thrust himself into a standing position as the Stardrive came up under the belly of the Warbird, forward and starboard aft phaser arrays sizzling. Lt. Cara Hatcher was pushing the weapons systems into the red, Janice Hargen doing her best to compensate by oscillating the backwash between the primary and secondary heat exchangers. Epic knew that if not for her superhuman abilities, their phaser capabilities would be at half effectiveness because of overheating. She could switch systems so match faster than an ordinary person. In fact, he saw the tension in her face as she waited for the computer to catch up with her.

Alison Donucci made her attack run as bald and obvious as she could, hoping to draw the Warbirds fire. And she had been successful. The Stardrive had rocked and shuddered beneath the Romulans disruptor abuse, Hatcher warning of imminent shield failure.

But, Brinn.....

She had done something that Epic himself had not been aware of. She had augmented their arsenal with, of all things, `home-made' packet bombs, which she had succeeded in transporting to the Warbird when their shields were reduced to nil by the stardrive incessant and impossible punishment of their shield and deflector array.

But the gamble was considerable. She had drawn the firepower of the Romulans, who seemed unable to deal with more than a single threat at a time. DeMontigny must have been standing and dancing at the Helm, because that saucer was doing things it was never designed to do. He had managed to evade most of the disruptor fire, but a pair of beams, coupled with the saucers own random power fluctuations, had managed to find a hole in their shields. The triple reinforced tritanium hull withstood the depleted abuse, but it created a window of opportunity for the Romulans.

One which they had been prepared to exploit.

<<The Romulan Warbird T'saloset- Bridge>>

Sarvid coughed on the smoke that filled the bridge and squinted in the near total darkness.

"Main computer off-line!", Dierden shouted over the sparks and explosions. "Back-up systems coming on-line! Shields still down!"

"What about that secondary hull vessel?", Sarvid growled like the injured animal he was.

"Their shields are down, but regenerating."

"Bockh!", Sarvid shouted at his command chair as if it were the cause of all his torment. "Transport to the bridge of the secondary hull vessel. Now!"

Bocks reply was somewhat staticky, but audible. =^= Transport`krrk'... er minimal. Can send half ..`krrk' ... squad. =^=

"Transport!", Sarvid screamed. "Before they regenerate shields!"

<<Transporter Room- T'saloset>> Bockh could not generate enough power to send his entire squad of twelve. He had to hope that the element of surprise would allow the six he was sending to succeed.

He ran to join them on the pad as the transporter technician gave them what juice he could, going as far as pulling power from the bio-filters and pattern buffers. It was a `raw shot'. The tech just hoped that he would be able to retrieve them later.

Bockh and his team disintegrated and rematerialized on the dimly lit bridge of their enemy. An enemy who should never have been able to do to them what they had done.

And as he found his feet in the alien environment, he focused on the impossibly young looking female who was apparently in command. He raised his disruptor to fire.<<USS Grail- Saucer Section- Bridge>>

=^= Major Brinn! =^=, came the voice of the Vulcan Prexis over the open channel. =^= Six Romulan boarders are transporting....=^=

"No shit!", Brinn responded as the Romulans materialized all around them. One appeared only three meters in front of her, between DeMontigny and En. Theresa Milner. She heard Parker growl behind her and Stone shout in alarm.

The Romulan who stood before her raised his disruptor to fire.

And Brinn found herself looking down the barrel of a weapon for the millionth time in her life.