As she unbuttoned her shirt, the panelling in her quarters turned to red. It was her downtime after finishing Gamma Shift. the Captain and her traded off thirteen hour shifts until the rest of the crew managed to get on board.

Tying back her blonde hair, rebuttoning her shirt and Zipping up her duty jacket, she tapped on her combadge for a situation report. As the Captain filled her in, she decided her best place would be at the helm of the ship, they had no idea what they were going into.

“On my way Chris.” she tapped the commline closed.

Her personal quarters were next to the Captains, and some of the other Senior officers, on Deck 3, while everyone else bunked out. They were relatively small, but none smaller than the Defiant class or the Aquarius’. As she stepped onto the turbolift she noted the another officer joining her journey to the bridge, it was Idris, the Captain’s, well actually the whole Ship’s Senior Science Advisor.

“Mr. Amir.” she greeted, stepping into the turbolift.

“Commander.” Idris nodded, taking note of the First officer. Her blonde locks were up which was different from Gamma Shift. “I like your hair up Ma’am.”

“Thank you.” she smiled at the man, even though he was older, she looked at him more of a friend more than anything, but felt the need to remain professional other than with the Captain. They had a lot of new officers coming aboard soon, a lot of them lower ranks than what they previously had.

As the bridge doors opened, alarms were popping off all around them.

“Sir, 3… no four… Sir, no communications. The Powhatan… she’s taking heavy fire… Two more ships warping in…” the operations officer reported rapidly.

“Taking helm,” Abby said without the order,

“Idris, you know what to do,” Chris ordered him, “Ops keep trying to raise the Pow, Idris break through the darned comms blockers. Engineering can we beam them out?”

As they all talked at once, Abby sat at the helm, and began dodging the Tal-Shiar ships firing arcs, “I can get us within transporter range, but I do not recommend lowering shields, we don’t have much defence. I suggest drawing fire away from the Powhatan as much as we can til they are able to get out of here.”

Moments later, the warp bubbles opened up and an Oddysey and Gagarin class dropped out of warp, “Sir, it is the Verity and the Cunningham.” reported Idris.

“We got some fire power.” Chris stared mouth agape. “Right, Open hailing frequencies, wide spectrum, This is the USS Sacagawea, you are outgunned, stand down. We have no interest in conflict.”

“Sir there is no audio message just instructions… ‘Leave this tear to the Tal-shiar. The Federation has done enough.’ “said the operations officer.

“They have been increasingly Xenophobic sir, I suggest we abide.” Abby said to the Captain.

“Agreed, signal thanks to the other ships, and signal Meila I will message her in a bit, return to Neutral Space.” Chris Ordered.

“Yes Captain.” came the acknowledgement from the officers of the bridge as they watched him leave the bridge.

“See if we can be a help to the Powhatan.” Abby enquired.