The first round of enemy fire slammed into the shields. Warning lights flashed orange, signaling imminent burn-outs in the shield generators. “Damage control teams to shield generators one, four, and nine!” Another jarring blow to the shields left Judge clenching his jaw and wincing. Alerts multiplied across his panel.

Shrill whoops and screeches heralded the firing of the Bombay’s main phaser banks. Reverberating percussions from the magnetic launchers in the torpedo bay counterpointed the shriek of the secondary phasers kicking in. Power shunts were overheating systemwide as the fire-control center unleashed another volley of torpedoes and followed it with more shots from the main phasers. Judge heard coolant manifolds rupturing two decks above him, but the sudden spike in phaser generator temperatures was all he needed to see. Pointing in the direction of the damage, he shouted to his assistant chief, “McCarthy, get up there and seal that leak!”

From somewhere to his left, someone shouted, “Starboard shields collapsing!” Before he could reconfigure an aft emitter to cover the gap, another voice cried out, “Incoming!”

Judge reached for a breathing mask. “Brace for impact!”

The strike threw everyone portside, like chess pieces swatted from their board by a vengeful god. A deafening explosion compressed the air, which hit with the force of a thunderclap.

Judge peeled his face from the deck to see smoke and fire spreading swiftly across the upper level of main engineering. Firefighters, stunned by the blast, staggered groggily toward the blazes. Events played out in silence before the chief engineer, whose eardrums ached terribly.

Loak, the Tellarite engineer, stood in front of Judge, shouting something. Judge couldn’t hear a word the man said. All he could do was shake his head numbly, dazed and deaf. The Tellarite hefted Judge over his shoulder and carried him out of main engineering, following several other engineers as they dashed through narrow channels in the walls of orange fire.

In the corridor, damage-control officers were distributing pressure suits and firefighting equipment. Surrounded by activity, Loak looked like he was talking to a wall. It took Judge a few seconds to realize the junior officer was likely receiving orders from the bridge.

A security officer kneeled down and pressed a breathing mask firmly over Judge’s nose and mouth. He pulled greedily at the clean air. Sharp stabs of pain knifed through his ears as they popped, and a muddy facsimile of his old hearing returned. He pulled the mask off his face and pushed himself back onto his feet. From the wall panel, he heard the captain’s voice.

“…whatever you have to, just get those shields back.”

“Aye, Captain,” Loak said. “Engineering out.”

Judge cornered the younger officer. “Report.”

Loak was focused. “Direct hit, main engineering aft. Hull breach, partial pressure loss. Fires on this deck and the two above. Starboard shields down, fire’s cutting us off from the damaged generators. We’re clearing a path.”

“Good work,” Judge said, snagging a pressure suit from one of the damage-control personnel. “Suit up and lead us in.”

With a proud nod, Loak said, “Aye, sir.”

Another round of impacts trembled the ship as Judge shimmied into his insulated pressure suit. “Bloody worthless things,” he grumbled.

A cock of his head expressed Loak’s confusion. “Sir?”

“Shield generators. They never last more than one hit.”

Loak sealed his pressure suit, muffling his reply. “Let’s make a better one.”

“Ambitious thinking, mate,” Judge said. He sealed his suit, picked up his gear, and slapped Loak on the back before pointing to the nearest ladder that would take them to the damaged shield generator. “But one thing at a time, eh?”

Sickbay was empty of patients, and that worried Dr. Lee. She imagined her shipmates wounded or dying in dark, smoke-filled corridors, unable to reach help. Hit after hit pounded the ship, but instead of her triage area filling with wounded personnel, the room remained dark and all but abandoned. One critical system after another shut down as the engineers stole power from throughout the ship to feed its energy-hungry phaser banks. Wouldn’t want to waste power on something frivolous like an operating room, Lee fumed, saving her darkest sarcasm for later.

It was the isolation of being in sickbay that most troubled her, just as it always had. While other departments remained keenly involved in the struggle to save the ship, the medical staff frequently found itself ignored, taken for granted, left to guess at the cause and meaning of each nerve-racking blast that echoed through the corridors.

Relax, she advised herself. The battle’s less than two minutes old. Maybe it sounds worse than it is.

Then came the impact that flung her across the room. Meters away, nurses Guerin and Imelio fell together in a heap, and Lee’s gray-haired assistant CMO, Dr. Stewart Greisman, sprawled on the floor between a pair of biobeds.

An unfamiliar male voice crackled over the intercom. “Engineering to sickbay! We’ve got wounded down here!”

“On our way!” Lee scrambled back to her feet and reached for a portable medical kit. She looked at her staff. “Come on!” The others hurried to gather surgical tools and medicine while Lee checked her Feinberger to make certain it was in proper working order. Emitting a rapidly oscillating tone, it glowed in the dimming half-light of the suddenly all but powerless sickbay.

More explosions quaked the deck beneath the short, round-faced Korean woman’s feet as Greisman led Guerin and Imelio toward her. All three were heavily laden with medical equipment and satchels. “Ready to go, Doctor,” Greisman said.

Lee turned toward the door. It swooshed open. She stepped through, her three compatriots right behind her. “Focus on the ones you can heal quickly,” Lee said. “The engineers will need every pair of hands they can get.” Greisman and the nurses nodded their understanding. It was the kind of instruction that Lee hated to give; it was essentially an inversion of normal triage priority, whereby the patients who were most gravely injured would be passed over, because they would consume time and resources that could restore several other less seriously wounded personnel to duty. Basically, the more a patient needed their help, the less likely he was to get it.

Of all the types of medicine Lee found herself called upon to provide during her Starfleet service, combat medicine was the only kind that she thought deserved to be called evil.

Kevin Judge staggered out of the fire-filled corridor into main engineering. He pulled off the helmet of his burn-marked pressure suit. It fell to the floor with a hollow thud. Gasping for air, he found it heavy with smoke. Fumes from scorched polymers and vaporized chemicals stung his eyes. He coughed.

“Engineering to bridge,” he said.

“Bridge here,” Captain Gannon said.

“Starboard shields at half-power, Captain. Best we can do until we put the fires out.” Two horrendously loud blasts from the bottom of the ship sent painful vibrations radiating up from the deck, through Judge’s body, and into his jaw and inner ear.

“I need more power to tactical, Kevin. Get it from life-support. From the computer. Anything that isn’t shields or propulsion, just get it.”

“Aye, Captain,” he said. “Engineering out.” He closed the channel and gulped down another half-poisonous breath. Looking around, he noticed that Ford and Robertson had just extinguished the fire in the back of the main engineering compartment. “Good work, you two,” he said. “Grab some tools and follow me.”

The two women put aside their firefighting gear and scrambled to gather together a pair of complete toolkits. Judge, meanwhile, twisted his helmet back into place. Robertson and Ford were standing in front of him when he turned around. “Sir,” Robertson said, “where are we going?”