His vision was blurry, and his head throbbed. Lieutenant Commander Ekkomas Eidran remembered the grenade, but nothing after that. As the floor shook beneath him, he snapped back to reality, to the cold, hard deck of their getaway craft. Or at least what was hopefully their getaway craft. 

He could feel the shift in momentum as their stolen Manasa class assault pitched and rolled, its pilot taking evasive actions. But then the ship shook again. Hard. He didn’t need to call to ask why. The Vaadwaur had caught onto their ruse.

He looked around the room. There were bodies spread out all across it. The bodies of his team. All except for Lieutenant Commander Sena and Lieutenant J.G. Brewster. If they were up, he could only assume they’d probably rushed to their stations with the ship under fire. But that still left half dozen incapacitated young men and women, the rest of his team, just lying there.

Rummaging around in one of the packs on the floor, he found a medkit and tricorder. 

He started with Chief Petty Officer Abedayo, their weapons and tactics specialist. He was unconscious, but at least he was breathing, and a quick scan showed only trace levels of polaron radiation from the grenade that had gone off.

With the hiss of a hypospray, he brought the chief back.

“Fuck!” Chief Abedayo gasped as he sat straight up, almost as if he thought he was still in the middle of the fight. “Oh, we made it.” A smile washed over his face as he realized where he was, but it quickly faded as he caught sight of the others lying all around the room. “Shit, how are they?”

Lieutenant Commander Eidran had already moved from the chief to another member of the team, but the news wasn’t good. “Dead.” One by one, he checked the others. Dead, dead, and dead. Five times over. Everyone he’d sent to hold the door – besides the chief, who had been saved by his quick reaction time – everyone else was dead. “They’re all dead.”

“Grenades,” Chief Abedayo frowned. “I fucking hate grenades.”

Almost the entire team wiped by one damn grenade.

For a moment, they stood there, staring at the bodies. But then the ship shook again, even more violently this time, reminding them that the fight wasn’t over yet. Their teammates were dead, but they weren’t. Not yet, at least.

Lieutenant Commander Eidran tapped his combadge: “Report?”

“Just trying to keep this bitch from blowing up, Ekko,” came the response from Lieutenant J.G. Brewster, her voice frenetic and out of breath. There was a hissing sound in the background, and then a loud pop. “God damnit! Shit’s blowing off down here. I could really use another pair of hands!”

Without even waiting for the order, Chief Abedayo turned and trotted off.

“Kevin’s on his way down,” Lieutenant Commander Eidran replied.

“Appreciate it, boss. Is there any chance you could go down to deck 2 junction 14 and check it out? A relay blew over there, and it’s making it hard to maintain shield integrity.”

Shield integrity. The second most important thing right now, he knew. Only the engines were more important. “On it.” 

The lieutenant commander took one last look at the room and the bodies sprawled across it. It hurt. Bad. But there were still four members of his team standing, and so he turned and raced off to check on Brewster’s troublesome relay.

Meanwhile, up on the bridge, Petty Officer Priyanka Dhawan urged the ship forward, leaning into the controls as if it would somehow make them go faster. “Give me a count,” she asked as they raced past the alien array, the ship shaking again as it took another glancing blow from one of the Manasa class escorts in hot pursuit.

The Romulan gave her the count: “Fifteen.”

Petty Officer Dhawan checked her velocity. 500 kilometers per second. Damn, she’d been trying to get away, but now they were going too fast on a straight line. She wanted to be right at 5,000 kilometers when the place blew. Any less, they’d be dead, but any more, and their pursuers might survive too. She couldn’t slow the ship without giving them a clear shot, so instead she banked, hugging the array’s superstructure to come about.

“Ten.”

Their ship now even with the array, it was time to race away. She brought the throttle up 4%, the ship accelerating just slightly, as she hit her combadge: “Laney, ‘cept for engines, all to shields!”

“Affirm, all shields.”

“Five.”

Petty Officer Dhawan checked their distance from the array. 2,520 kilometers at 520 kilometers per second. And the Vaadwaur were back there, strung out at distances ranging from 500 to 800 kilometers behind them.

“Three… two… one.”

Dhawan stole a final look. 5,140 kilometers. Right on the money, as long as the Romulan had done her math right, and as long as the exotic matter in the core didn’t do something funny.

“Zero.”

There was a flash of light, and 0.541 seconds later, the shockwave hit.

Everything shook violently, and out the window, the starscape rotated as the ship was forced off its axis, tumbling in the night. Petty Officer Dhawan tried to correct their pitch, but the console beneath her fingers flickered out. And then the lights went too.

But then the shaking stopped.

The lights came back. The console came back. And quickly, she leveled them back off. “What’s our status?” she asked, glancing over at the Romulan who sat there unphased, still looking as cool and collected as ever.

“Minimum to aviate and navigate, all operational,” Lieutenant Commander Sena replied calmly. The rest though were pretty trashed. This stolen Manasa was definitely on its last legs. But that was fine. Here on out, all they’d need from it was to get them home.

“Status on the others?” Petty Officer Dhawan asked, pretty sure she already knew the answer.

Lieutenant Commander Sena rechecked her sensors, just to make certain. “The array, the Astika, and the three Manasas, all noncom.” The gambit had paid off.

“Don’t you think that was a little close?” Petty Officer Dhawan laughed. The explosion had blown them off their axis and caused a momentary short in the power delivery grid.

“To be crippling for them, it had to be uncomfortable for us,” Lieutenant Commander Sena replied flatly. In truth though, it’d been a bit closer than she meant it to be. But when you did all the math on the fly, and you were working with unknown technology, what more could you ask?

“Well, I don’t know about you,” Petty Officer Dhawan smiled as she brought the ship around and lined it up with the aperture. “But I’m ready to get the fuck outta here.”

And with that, they tore away, back into the Underspace.