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File #6

Commander Tempest slowly tried to edge himself off the floor of the bridge, his vision blurred as the ship was in utter chaos. He could hear the echoes of voices shouting and the sounds of explosions around him but nothing seemed to come into focus for a few seconds.

He stared beside him as he tried to command his body to pull himself up from the floor, his blurry vision coming slightly better into focus. Sparks and fires surrounded him as he tried to make sense of what was happening, the momentary disorientation from the explosion that had occured behind him passing.

The first site he saw was one that he wished he was dreaming of...

Captain Greyfell was laying on the floor, his deep red blood slowly trickling from several wounds to his body as he lay there unconscious with Counselor Mewsin knelt down behind him, her face illuminated from the various fires that had started on the bridge.

He remembered the Romulan ship decloaking and Captain Greyfell ordering communication between the two vessels, hoping to resolve the situation peacefully.

It was a good move. Worthy of Jean-Luc Picard himself.

But unlike Picard's encounters, the Romulans were not interested in talking and immediately opened fire on the Warrior. The D'Deridex's disruptors ripping into the ship's hull armor and causing massive damage to the vessel internally. The initial attack blasting both himself and Captain Greyfell off their feet and wreaking havoc on the bridge itself.

"R...Report!" shouted Commander Tempest as he rose to his feet, knowing that he had to take command. Captain Greyfell was not in any state to issue orders to his confused and bewildered crew.

He wasn't sure if he wanted to know how badly the ship had been damaged.

"Shields and weapons are offline!" replied Lieutenant Strato in a panic, as the ship continued to shake continually from repeated weapon impacts. "Ablative armor is buckling... we can't keep taking a pounding like this!"

"The patches I did to the main EPS System have ruptured..." replied Muraco, who was frantically trying to direct repair teams to critically damaged areas of the ship. "I didn't expect to take us into combat... Main power is offline!"

It was just as Tempest had feared... the Warrior was a sitting duck to the Romulans.

"Warp and Impulse drive are offline!" shouted Nova from the front of the bridge, narrowly trying to dodge the incoming explosions that peppered the console beside him. "Even the maneuvering thrusters are out..."

Tempest looked to the viewscreen, to the image of the hulking green Romulan Warbird repeatedly firing plasma disruptors at the Warrior. It seemed there would be no negotiation, they were intent on destroying this vessel.

At in their current situation. Tempest knew that fighting back would be pointless.

"Concentrate on the engines..." he called to Muraco, who gave a quick nod.

"Commander!" replied Strato in protest. "We need weapons..."

"Weapons arn't going to do a damn thing!" replied Tempest in a curt and abrupt tone that would have been considered rude in any other situation. "Now follow my orders and polarise the ablative plating, that should help absorb some of the impacts."

Strato, although fairly inexperienced, knew enough about Starfleet protocol to follow his orders, immediately running an electrical current of negative frequency through the Warrior's ablative armor in order to somewhat distablise the magnetic field that held together the Romulan's destructive disruptors and thus lessen the damage caused.

A few seconds passed by, which seemed like an eternity. However Tempest was convinced, his time was not here...

Not now. His perceptions of time told him that he was not yet going to meet his doom.

"Commander!" shouted Nova, still clinging to his console for dear life as the Warrior began to spin widely, without internal dampeners, causing the crew to grab hold of whatever they could as their stomachs went up to their throats. "Altitude controls have failed, we are being pulled down into the planet's atmosphere..."

That was it!

"Angle to a descent vector!" called Shon, convinced that he had a plan to save the ship and her crew. This command caused Counselor Mewsin and Lieutenant Kakariko to look at the Commander like he had suddenly gone mad.

"Commander!" called out Yusa, clutching his station as they angled downward. "The pressure is more than we..."

"I know" cut off Tempest again. "I'm hoping the Romulans know that as well!"

The Warrior would survive a lot longer down there then it would in direct conflict with a Warbird. Maybe it would only be hours before the ship was crushed by the atmospheric pressure but they could be the hours that save the ship herself.

"Muraco... vent all drive plasma from the nacelles..." he called out. He knew this was a desperate move, one that Captain Greyfell would almost call uncharacteristic of him but the ship had to come first.

Yusa looked puzzled as he again raised his voice to protest. "But the drive plasma with ignite with the methane in the atmosphere!"

"I know..."

"Yeah..." said Strato, realising Tempest's plan almost immediately. "You want it to look as if we have been destroyed... that's a very old trick Commander."

"Well I guess you can't teach an old dog, new tricks" remarked Nova from the helm, letting out a brief smile as he attempted to keep control of the ship's descent through the gas clouds.

The Warrior began to pick up more and more speed as it fell into the gas clouds of the planet, the green bolts of Romulan disruptor following the ship as it feel. After it immersed into the purple and blue gas of the planet, the ship began to emit long trails of wispy green smoke from itself nacelles as it continued further and further down into the atmosphere... leaving behind a large explosion behind it that could be seen from orbit.

"Pressure is getting too intense!" remarked Yusa as they fell into the atmosphere. "The hull is starting to buckle!"

"Steady as she goes!" cried out Commander Tempest. "Mr Nova, restart the RCS Thrusters in drift mode!"

"I'm trying sir!" remarked Nova, who was frantically tapping the control console. "The RCS injectors won't initialise..."

Tempest thought for a moment. They were out of options, the Warrior would spiral out of control and be crushed by the intense atmosphere of some random gas giant. Would this be how his story ended? Would this be the end of his current life and the end of every life on the ship?

Had he led the crew to their deaths?

He looked down at his Commanding Officer and friend, feeling a pang of guilt in his heart alongside a much more profound and illusive feeling. The captain was laying there, Mewsin trying desperately to stop the bleeding with an emergency medkit while the Warrior spiralled to its doom.

The sound of metal scraping and groaning as the fell deeper and deeper into this tomb seemed to lament him and then just...

Silence...

Tempest looked around to the equally confused crew, consoles flickering and sparking around him but other then that, there was total silence.

"What now?" he asked himself.

Yusa tried to rise to his feet as he examined the flickering console inside him, having bearly enough power to make an accurate reading. "Commander... We appear to be caught in a thermal layer... it's slowed our descent."

Everyone on the bridge were astounded by their incredible and almost unbelievable good fortune. They were still alive but still doomed aboard a broken ship, spiralling to a certain doom.

Was a long death preferable to a quick one?

"Bridge!" shouted a voice on the internal communications system, all muffled and distorted because of the damage. "Sickbay here... What the hell is going on!?"