//------------------------------//
// Chapter Forty Nine- Save the Day? 
// Story: STAR TREK: EQUESTRIA 
// by Alicorne 
//------------------------------//


CHAPTER FORTY-NINE



SAVE THE DAY?


I clung to my chair and tried not to think of the energies required to overcome our superluminal momentum and toss us around like that!
“Emergency deceleration! Put us back in Normal Space!” I called out and hung on as True collapsed our Warp Field as fast as safely possible. Federation Engineers long ago developed a process called the Positron Flywheel Effect that transferred a portion of a ships Warp momentum into a burst of subspace radiation, effectively allowing us to brake three times faster than comparable ships our size. The Hermes went from Time Warp Eight to point eight ‘c’ in two and one-thirds shuddering, whining seconds with all of us braced at our stations. Padds, styli, anything not secured went flying in the direction of our travel, in this case about forty degrees port and up from dead ahead, as the compensators howled their protest throughout the ship. I dug my heels into the deck, glad of my tight-fitting seat, and grabbed at the Doctor as he went by, airborne, with a look on his face that would have been hilarious under any other circumstances. I missed his hindleg and got a death-grip on his tail a hoofsbreadth away from his body and jerked him to a stop in his impromptu trip to the Engineering Station, wincing in sympathy as I felt the tiny bones crackling in my grip. I held him there for maybe half a second, his hooves flailing, before the ships systems re-asserted themselves and he dropped to the deck straining against my hold the very microsecond he made contact! I let him go and got back to business.
Kyr shouldn’t have been able to stop that quickly and should have overshot us by at least light-minutes in Normal Space, giving us precious time to prepare.
“Ensign Way!” I kept my voice to normal level with double urgency. “Full duotronic countermeasures! Helm! Evasive maneuvers! When he gets in range try to avoid his disruptors and target his secondary weapons. Security standby for boarding parties. Flood all decks with ultrasonics in preparation. How are we doing, Maglev?”
“Warp Power, Impulse Power intact, though shaky. Especially the Warp Power! Whatever those modifications were…” He glared reproachfully at the Doctor who jumped up to survey his board in three places, dodging around the Engineering Officer like he was a garden statue. “We’re on the edge of an overload to our grid. What are you looking for?” He demanded of the little Stallion.
The Doctor paused in the act of drawing his weird tool out of his pocket, the back half of his tail hanging oddly limp at a strange angle. I’d apparently broken his tail but he was too busy to notice it. “I need access to the electromagnetic collectors attached to your Stardrive! They’ll have to be synched to the Sensory Station for what we have planned. I’ll have to make certain adjustments to them to make this work. Is that them? Thanks ever so much!” Without further preamble, he hopped up again, shouldering Maglev to one side as he began poking at the controls for the magnetic scoop that funneled interstellar hydrogen into the ships Engineering section to get made into deuterium for use in the Time Warp Drive.
“I need to reconfigure the magnetic field this generates. We won’t need faster-than-light travel just now, anyway! Now we need to make a magnetic bottle!” He paused for just a moment, startled, before turning to look over his shoulder at his backside. “Also… my tail seems to be broken!” He shot me an accusatory glance. “You broke my tail!”
“I grabbed what I could to keep you from doing a face-plant into Engineering, Doc.” I said. “Considering where I was able to grab you, just be thankful it wasn’t anything else! Think about it!”
Code kept him from saying anything in reply.
“Sickbay on the line, Captain!”
I nodded to him, ignoring the Doctor’s indignant, injured look. “Put then through, Code.”
It was Sunny. “What the Bloody Blue Blazes ‘r ye on about up there?” She demanded. “Do ye no mind not shakin’ th’ place up so much? We’ve got patients doon here I dinna want t’ break more bones than necessary!”
“We had to hit the brakes, Sunny.” I told her, glad she sounded unhurt. “Better strap everypony in, we’re going to have a rough ride for a while. The Klingons are back and out for blood!”
“Oh, Bloody Hell!” She said after a second. “I’ll get out o’ yer hair, then. We’ve got eleven Ponies n’ a great, grumpy Tellarite all wi’ lacerations, punctures, n’ broken bones. They’ll be makin’ it, if things dinna get much worse. I’m also getting’ quite a collection o’ them slobberin’ dog-laddies goin’ on. I’m treatin’ ‘em fer balephaser stun n’ injuries after I trank th’ Hell out o’ ‘em! I’ll be sendin’ th’ lot doon t’ th’ bloody Brig as soon as Security can spare th’ ponypower!”
Given the nature of the Diamond Dogs I couldn’t help being pleasantly surprised. “We didn’t lose anypony?”
“It was no fer lack o’ tryin’ on their part!” Sunny said grimly. “Doctor Willowbark’s wee gift has been busy. We’ve needed it exactly three times t’ save our people from death. Luna made a shrewd guess as t’ what we’d need, t’would seem!”
I sent a brief, silent prayer of thanks and hoped it made it through the Portal. Still, over ten percent of the Crew were temporarily out of action, heavy casualties by anypony’s reckoning!
“I wish I could tell you that it’s over, Sunny. The truth is, though, that it may soon get worse… a lot worse!” I swallowed, wanting to tell her so much just then. “The Klingons mean to take this ship and the crew for their own purposes. I’ve talked to Kyr and… well; there are things a lot worse than death in store for us if he wins. I can’t let him do that. I won’t let him do that!” I said with dreadful urgency. “… Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Oh, no.” She said softly. I wanted so much to be holding her just then! I could imagine her looking out across Sickbay, at the injured Ponies she was trying so hard to save. I could just see the tears gathering at the corners of her lovely, lovely eyes… I love her and she followed me into the stars for this… because she loved me.
“Sunny…” I began, and then faltered. What else was there to say under the circumstances?
I heard her gather herself up and blessed her strong, loving heart. “I daresay it’ll no coom t’ that, not if ye have aught t’ say aboot it! N’ don’t let us count yon canny Doctor laddie out, either! From what I hear he’s a right proper whiz at all that technical claptrap. Tyllae thinks th’ world o’ him n’ that’s got t’ count for summat! Oh, crumbs! They’re a-bringin’ in yon Doctor’s wee Pegasus now! I’ve got t’ go! I love ye, Dear Heart! I Love You!” She broke the connection in a hurry and I paused before shutting down my comm. In all the adventure vids the Lovers get such meaningful Last Farewells, sometimes I really hated living in reality!
The Mare in my Head idly speculated what our chances were of ending up in the Equestria-Beyond-The-Stars. I ignored her and spun to face the Sciences Station.
“Where’s the Werewolf, Ensign?”
She was already bent over her readout. “… He overshot and is coming around for intercept again. Estimating five minuets until he gets back to us… unless he pulls that teleport trick again!”
“Let’s hope countermeasures can buy us some time!” I said. “What’s the plan you two came up with?”
Milky Way stayed glued to her viewer. “The Klingons are making full use of the raw magical power Discord’s supplying them with. Every Arcane erg of it is being funneled into maneuvering and weapons as far as I can tell. There’s so much power that their shields can’t keep me from reading it, like trying to hide a magnesite flare behind tissue paper! They’ve never used Magic before, though, they don’t understand how it works. Captain, they’re running with zero Arcane safeguards! …Klingon is teleporting!”
We all held our breaths and scanned our boards, waiting for his location…
“Werewolf is now three light-minutes away, bearing one seventy mark one seven, plus seventeen… and firing on empty space!” She called out triumphantly. I permitted myself the luxury of shutting my eyes for a moment in relief!
As I’m sure I mentioned sometime earlier, the thing that makes a Scout-class vessel dangerous is its supercharged duotronic suite. During the War our sensors were so powerful that we were able to electronically fool the Romulan ships by actively feeding them false information about our distance and heading. Their sensors couldn’t sort out the real signals from the false ones. We cold make ourselves appear as anything from a simple freighter to a cloud of ionized gas. Depending on the abilities of their sensor techs we’d be able to manufacture multiple false images on their screen, ghost ships indistinguishable from us by anything short of direct visual observation… and nopony steers their ships by looking out a windshield! Even a ship’s Main Viewer displays only what the sensors tell it. Kyr was chasing phantom ships that refused to take damage no matter how much firepower he poured into them!
“Take that, Kyr!” I smacked one hoof into the other allowing myself a feral smile! “We’re still in this fight, Ponies! Let’s hope they keep taking the bait! Ok, pretend I’m not an Engineer and I’m an Equestrin, Milky. What’s the significance of ‘zero Arcane safeguards’?”
She looked up from her viewer and smiled. “They have no Magical Shielding for their Arcane systems at all, Captain. No anti-Magic defenses, they’re relying solely on standard shields. Granted, they have shielding equivalent to a ship five times our size…”
“But Magic ignores standard shielding!” I finished for her and then frowned. “You mean any Unicorn grade-schooler could just trot in there and telekinetically tinker with their systems at will?” I blinked, not sure I could believe our luck. 
“Or something could be apported in!” Milky Way gave me a significant look.
“The Good Lieutenant what’s-his-name has some torpedoes in one of your Transmat devices, I believe.” The Doctor added smugly. I swiveled to face him “But before we do that I propose that your Unicorns cast a dispel-magic spell into their ship. From what Miss Way tells me it should at the very least cut them off from the source of their power. At that point I propose to use your hydrogen-collecting ramscoop, suitably modified, to draw off the essence of those trapped souls onboard in what amounts to a magnetic bottle. They needn’t be killed, Captain. I’m certain I can use the TARDIS’s systems to return them to whenever and wherever they came from. I can at least give them release from what they’ve been put through.” He gave me a level look as he hopped down from Engineering. “The Klingons will be at your disposal in an unpowered hulk… to do with as you will.”
I eyed the little brown Stallion. “I can’t take them onboard, Doctor. They’re Klingons! There’s nowhere near enough room in the Brig to hold them all and Life Support wouldn’t be able to accommodate so many even in without our battle damage.” I chewed my lip for a moment. The Mare in my Head pointed out that the practical thing… the Equestrin thing to do… would be cut them loose to freeze, suffocate, starve, or blow them out of the stars. My eyes wandered to the younger Crew on the Bridge, these first graduates of a newer, more enlightened Starfleet. The processes of change had already been started with them. If the Doctor was correct these changes were meant to continue; making Starfleet into something more concerned with mere survival, something unlike those entities that surrounded it, something to be even more proud of in future days. It was up to me at this point to lead the way and show them that even we of the Old Guard were up to the new challenges. I noticed the Doctor scrutinizing me with his Alien eyes. Was he somehow privy to the thoughts in my head?
I nodded thoughtfully.
“Very well, Doctor. Can your TARDIS send them home as well, across these distances? The nearest Klingon world is hundreds of light-years away.”
The Doctor treated me to a private, knowing smile before lapsing into breezy confidence. “Time and Space, Captain, are the TARDIS’s specialty! Give me the proper coordinates and I’ll tuck them safe into their beds!”
“I wonder if we’d actually be doing them a favor.” I said. “From what I understand, the Empire doesn’t suffer failures gladly!”
“Now what do you actually know about the Klingons, Madame? What firsthand… firsthoof… experiences can you cite? The authorities who interrogate them will know that you showed mercy to a helpless foe and that knowledge will always be there, giving the Empire pause to reconsider the Federation. The Klingons have a sense of Honor, Good Captain Starry-Eyes! More martially-oriented to be sure, but the experience will stick with them. Future incidents will give more forward-thinking elements of their society reason to compromise with your own. I daresay that, in a future generation, peace might break out between the Federation and the Empire!”
I regarded him skeptically and tapped the Cutie-Patch on my chest. “And I thought I was ‘starry-eyed’, Doctor!”
“Well,” He crossed both sets of legs and leaned against the console. “There are stars and there are stars, Captain. Some shine more brightly than others is all!”
“Uh-huh.” I grunted before thumbing my comm panel. “I still wouldn’t give a corroded copper credit for their survival once they get home! Engineering! Jerry, are you there?”
“Right here, Starry!”
“We’ve got a new plan! I need all the Unicorns you can spare to cast a ‘Dispel Magic’ spell into the Klingon ship when I give the word!”
“Say what now?” So help me, I could hear him blink in surprise!
“It sounds loopy but Sensors show they’re not using any Arcane safeguards over there! We hit ‘em with that spell and, zap! There goes their power!”
“How sure are you about this, Starry? That sounds too… easy to be true!”
“It beats the ever-loving heck out of Plan B!”
“Which is…?”
“Plowing into them at Warp One! Which one would you rather try?”
“I love Plan A! Just don’t shake us up too much getting us close enough. Our own power is hanging by a thread down here. We’re on the edge of overload as it is!”
“I’ll do what I can. Keep our power stable as possible. Make Shields your priority; give me as much magical enhancement as you can until we need to switch over. Do we still have full Impulse Power?”
“So far. The Warp Drive’s taken a beating. Regenerating crystals or not, we’re leaking drive plasma. I’ve had to vent to space to keep from contaminating the lower Engineering decks!”
That was bad news! Sooner or later Kyr would notice that only one of his sensor ghosts was trailing radioactive plasma. All he would have to do was point an old-style Geiger counter in our direction to realize we were the real McCoy!
“How much Warp capability do we have left?”
“Warp Six for just a little while. I can give you Warp Five or lower for longer. If we push things could blow out part of Engineering and we’ll have to repair the hull as well, which will add hours or maybe days to the repairs!”
Well, damn! “Ok! Get your Ponies ready. We’ll hide from his sensors as long as we can. Do what you’re able!”
“Maybe we can pull some Unicorns from Sciences and Medical.” Jerry suggested. “You don’t have to be an Engineer to cast a piddling spell like that!”
“I’ll round up who I can and send them your way! We’ll send you coordinates when we’re ready.  Bridge out!” I shut down the Engineering Comm and switched to Public Address.
“This is the Captain! All able Spellcasters report to Engineering and see Jerry-Rig for an emergency casting! Anypony who can cast Dispel Magic, report to Engineering at once! That is all!”
I swung to face the Science Station. “Status of the Klingon, Ensign?”
“Werewolf has ceased fire and has gone to active scanning.” She said, peering intently into her display. “He’s using an incredible amount of power! Sensors show that he’s intensely scanning random areas of space. I believe he’s checking out each and every false target before he makes up his mind which to attack.” She stiffened suddenly and I perked my ears!
“Werewolf has teleported! … Five light-minutes away, bearing three-one-seven mark two-seven, minus two-zero-nine. …One burst of fire. …He’s scanning again!” She tore herself away to look at me. “If he scans us with that kind of power he’ll pick us up for sure, Captain.”
I nodded. “He’ll get us by process of elimination sooner or later. Keep me apprised of his movements!” I turned back toward Engineering to where the Doctor had his mouth full, waving his weird device over Maglev’s board. The Engineer looked on with a suspicious frown.
“How much time do you need, Doctor?”
“I’m eddy en oo are, Cat’n!” He put the thing away in his pocket again so he could speak more clearly. “That is to say, I’m all set here! I was wondering, though…” He looked troubled. “Is there any way I can ring up your Infirmary from here? I believe I heard your people say that a Pegasus was brought in from the Power Room…”
I raised two fingers one at a time as I ticked off the points. “It’s called ‘Sickbay’ and ‘Engineering’, Doctor!” I politely ignored his rolling eyes. “And I have no idea what it is to ‘ring’ anything! Don’t worry! If Ditzy was badly hurt Sunny would be calling. She’s in the best protected part of the Ship. Besides, she has Tyllae to keep her company.” Then I added gently. “The Mare that I love is down there with her, but we have to worry about the whole Ship right now.”
He smiled softly. “That’s one thing we have in common then, isn’t it?” He shook himself briskly and looked over the part of Maglev’s board he’d commandeered and muttered. “Never thought I’d see the day when I became such a sentimental old fuddy-duddy!”
“You’re never too old to be in love, Doc! Stand by your systems!” I faced forward again and watched the Werewolf scenting Space for us. “Ok, Ponies! I don’t like that teleporting trick of theirs. The question to the floor is how can we circumvent it?”
“They can do it, but they’ve needed at least half a minute between jumps.” Milky Way put in. “Maybe it takes them that long to recharge.”
“They’re five light-minutes away…” The Doctor mused. “Why not kick in your hyperlight drive and dive in on them? You’ll be moving faster that his ability to see you coming!”
“They’ve got subspace sensors, uh, Doctor!” Maglev shook his head. “They’d detect our going into Warp the same way we can detect them. …And nopony’s called it ‘hyperlight drive’ for decades. We call it Time-Warp Drive or just Warp Drive for short.”
The Doctor fixed him with a narrowed eye and stomped a forehoof. 
“Young fellow, I’ve seen more kinds of superluminal travel than you could shake a figurative stick at! Let’s not quibble over local nomenclature, shall we? Warp it, jump it, tie it in a knot, I assure you I’ve seen it all!” He shook himself again. 	“Harrumph! So it’s a matter of our maneuvering in such a way that they don’t see it coming until it’s too late. Does your ship’s electronic countermeasures extend into hyper, er, sub-space?” He flicked an eye toward Maglev, daring him to say something and looking exactly like some crotchety old fogey in the process!
“Yes they do, Doctor.” I said, diverting his attention and saving my Engineer. “In fact, that’s what this Ship was designed for. During the War we were a countermeasures platform and a darn good one, too! They fact that we’re here now is a testament to its abilities. We’ve been flooding all their channels with noise and spurious signals for some time now. So far they haven’t been able to get a lock on us. Eventually they’ll sort us out, unless we can come up with something clever in the next couple of minutes!” I caught his eye. “You’re about to propose we try to blind his subspace sensors, aren’t you? The only trouble is his power curve. He’s got so much power available to him that he can override our jamming channel by channel!”
“We don’t have to blind him permanently!” The Doctor said. “Just pop a flashbulb into his sub-space face!” He laid his ears back and regarded me dangerously. “… And don’t tell me they don’t have flashbulbs any more! You know what I mean!”
Honestly! I wasn’t going to a say a thing! His idea got me thinking. I whirled back to Milky Way.
“Can you identify what subspace channels the Werewolf is scanning?”
Down went her head to her viewer. A few seconds later it popped up again and she was smiling.
“He’s scanning the primary subspace bands, the minimum required to find a ship our size. He’s got more power but he’s spreading it out on between normal and subspace. If we drop all other countermeasures and hit him on those frequencies we’ll blank him for at least half a minute!”
“All right then!” I tapped my forefinger on the arm of my chair, thinking. “He’s had time to recharge his teleport spell by now! We’ll wait till his next jump, when he does, drop standard countermeasures and put all your power into jamming his subspace bands. We’ll go to Warp One point one at emergency acceleration. As soon as we’re there we emergency decelerate back to normal space right on top of his squirmy ass before he sees us maneuver. We hit him with the counterspell and the Doctor makes his move. Once we depower him we’ll give Kyr the chance to surrender. Whether he wants to or not, without shields he can’t do much to stop us from sending his crew back home anyway. Once we evacuate that ship we beam those torpedoes Kirk has set up onboard and we destroy that ship once and for all!” I thumped my fist on my knee. “That’s the plan! Anypony got any input?”
“What if Kyr self-destructs his ship?” Maglev spoke up. “He won’t want it falling into our hooves for Starfleet to back-engineer!”
I wondered just how much of that ship is still Klingon! I nodded to him. “At the first sign of anything along those lines, we blow it up. I’m sorry, Doctor,” I said as the little Stallion stirred.  “But I can’t and won’t risk my ship or crew. You’ll just have to work fast!”
He subsided and nodded tersely. “I’ll have to get down to the TARDIS when I’m done here.” He gave Maglev a stern look. “Just keep the power levels steady while I’m gone!”
“Understood, Doctor.” I said for Maglev, who was giving our new ally a dubious look. I made a real effort to at least look relaxed in my chair as the seconds slipped by. To keep from drumming my fingers I tabbed the comm button again. 			“Lieutenant Kirk!”
“Aye-aye, Ma’am!”
“We’ve got a plan. There’s a fatal flaw in the Klingon’s magical power supply. We think we can sever them from their power source using a counterspell. We’re going to blind their sensors and maneuver close to deliver it. How many torpedoes do you have ready?”
“I’ve got four of them primed and on the pad, Captain. Just give me the word and the coordinates!”
“Good work, Kirk! Stand by!” I called up Engineering.
“Jerry! Can the Ship manage an emergency jump to and from Warp One point one? We’re going to blind the Klingon sensors and hit him with the counterspell before he sees up coming!”
“One point one? Piece of apple cake! I’ve got half a dozen volunteers from Medical and Sciences down here ready to cast their spells. I can spare four of my ponies so between our Departments we should have enough mystic megawattage for the job! We’re ready when you are!”
“We’re waiting on the Klingon to do another one of his teleports. We want to catch him while he’s recharging between jumps. Stand by on this channel, Jerry. True will patch you in to her tactical scanners so you’re people can see what they’re casting at!” While I said that I made hoof motions to the Helmspony to illustrate my request. I patched Kirk into the circuit as well and kept the lines open and resumed waiting.
The seconds dragged by as I listened to the comforting and familiar beeps and quaverings of the Bridge instruments. Ensign Way never stirred from her viewer, her body almost as tense as Maglevs as he anxiously surveyed the trembling displays on his board. True’s hooves hovered over her tactical controls and High Jumps never strayed far from his, his eyes flicking between the Navigational Display and the Main Viewer where the Werewolf crouched, snarling into space with its disruptors!
Milky Way spoke up before I had time to call back over my shoulder.
“Werewolf is firing disruptors, apparently at distant sensor images. One gets you five he’s waiting to see if there’s any reaction from the target’s shields! He’s cagey, that one!”
“More to him than just a pretty face!” I nodded, feeling keyed up and not a little optimistic. I forced my feelings back down and tabbed my comm panel one more time while the Doctor nosed around in his pockets and brought forth an object wrapped in crumpled white paper. Holding it in one hoof... I made a note to ask him just how he did that... he undid the paper with his mouth to reveal a somewhat worse-for-the-wear muffin, He took a bite, decapitating the treat and munched, looking for all the worlds like a tourist waiting in line at an amusement park for all his body language let on!
“Captain to Sickbay.”
Sunny replied almost at once while the Doctor perked his ears my way. “Aye, go ahead!”
“Sunny, we've got a plan in the works. We needed your Unicorns because the Klingons don't have any Arcane defenses for their new systems.”
“'N ye're preparin' t' show them th' error o' their ways, is it? Would I be breakin' Miltry Protocol t' ask wha' ye' ken our chances are?”
I couldn't help smiling. “Let's just say that confidence is high. We're waiting for him to teleport again so we can catch him while he recharges that spell.”
“I've got t' say I like this idea much better'n th' other one!”
“It's my current favorite, too! Say, Sunny...?”
“Aye?”
“I was just wondering how Ditzy is doing, you mentioned she was brought in.”
“Ye can tell yon Doctor laddie she's doin' just grand! Has a wee case o' a broken wing. When th' Ship took that lurch she launched herself into air, thinkin' t' be safe but th' bulkhead, wall, whatever, hit her. All in all she's in fine shape after bein' run over by a bloody Starship! We've got her taped up for a bit but she'll be fine except fer worryin' fer th' Doctor!”
“Tell her he's fine and she should meet him in the TARDIS after we make our play.”
“Sure n' I'll tell her. As long's she's careful she'll be fine.”
“... Maybe you should give her an escort just to be on the safe side.” I said delicately. “Long story, I'll tell you later.”
“Just make sure there is a later, then! Though I dinna ken what yer worried aboot...” There was a clatter beyond her as something fell. Tyllae laughed and a familiar voice said “Ooops! Sorry! I'm not sure what went wrong, I just wanted to move the tray.”
“Captain out!” I closed the connection and looked over to see the Doctor giving me a grateful look. He saluted me with his muffin and took another bite.
“Werewolf is teleporting!” Milky Way called out. I jerked my chair her way and strove to look calm and waited.
“New location is two light-minutes, twelve seconds away bearing thirty-eight mark one-one-seven, plus one-one-three! His heading is three-fifty-two, mark one, minus one-six!”
I tried to keep from sounding too eager, despite my pounding heart. “Is he firing on a false echo?” 
Ensign Way shook her head in her viewer. “Negative. … He's coming about! He must have crossed our plasma trail!”
“Drop countermeasures, then hit him with everything we've got in the subspace bands!” I spun around and faced the Main Viewer as she worked her board. I could hear the soft buzz of feedback from her station as the Hermes blazed like a subspace supernova!
“Helm! Implement our maneuver! Emergency Warp to one point one, then emergency deceleration! Maneuver in close!” I bent my head to address my open comms. “Stand by for spellcast! Standby cargo transporters!”
We all hung on, except for the Doctor who splayed his hooves and braced himself, swallowing quickly. As the Warp Drive thrummed into life the Ship seemed to slew slightly to port then starboard. No sooner than acceleration started, it seemed, we braced as the Compensators mostly made up for the sudden stop. The Main Viewer blanked for a moment, then the Werewolf filled the screen in all its diseased malevolence as we shuddered into normal space.
We were coming in from above in the direction of what would be our number five shield, overtaking his from behind.
“Our speed is fifty-seven feet per second, relative, heading twenty-five mark one. Target bearing nine mark six, heading ninety-four mark seven. Range seven hundred, twenty-six yards and closing!” True North declared triumphantly! I couldn't blame her! She lined him up almost directly ahead of us as we appeared, good flying in anypony's Fleet!
“Good job, True! Spellcasters, go! All weapons stand by in case this doesn't work! Milky! Monitor Klingon shield and power status! Belay subspace countermeasures! Cross your fingers, everypony!” I hunched forward on the edge of my seat as far as my cramped quarters would allow while the Mare in my Head shook a hoof at her Main Viewer with a positively feral grin on her face!
We watched as the Werewolf began to turn, its disruptor banks gathering a baleful green glow as they powered up.
“Secondary weapons are locking on!” Milky warned. We'll be under their main guns in five seconds!”
“Turn with them, Helm! Keep us out of their forward firing arc! All available power to Shield reinforcement!” I gripped the arms of my chair and wrenched it around, trying to turn our Ship all by myself while a lump of cometary material settled in my stomach. It didn't work! Damn magic! 
I glared at the screen. The Klingon seemed to cease moving as we matched turning speeds with him. That wouldn't last, though. In a few seconds Kyr would start evasive maneuvering and we'd be hard put trying to out guess him. Half a minute later he'd be able to teleport into position to deliver a killing blow. He had our radiation signature now and even our countermeasures would only buy us a little more time before the inevitable. With our shields up we couldn't deploy Kirk's torpedoes.
“Secondaries locked on and energizing!” Milky Way called out.
“Brace for it!” I ground out, swallowing a cold meteoric iron lump as I did so. “Helm, set course for center of Klingon's mass...” My voice trailed off while the Mare in my Head suddenly crowed!
We couldn't see his disruptors at our angle just then, but the livid green glare from what used to be his warp nacelles faded suddenly! The lurid lines of power flowing through the hull of the Werewolf flickered and grew dark! Was it just my imagination or did they writhe as they died out...?
A few feeble flickers of red sputtered along its hull as its secondary phasers did what they could. They might have been searchlights for the good they did!
“No appreciable damage to shields! Klingon is depowered!” Milky looked up from her viewer and gave a whoop! “We got him!”
“Belay that, True.” I said, quietly. “Doctor, go ahead.” I held myself erect in my seat, wondering how Caper coped with these situations. I was more than happy to follow his lead during the War, but it was worlds away from sitting there giving the orders! Frankly, for what I was prepared to do, I wanted to faint! The Mare in my Head called me a softie and I dug up a suggestion from Feldspar's lexicon by way of a reply that made her sniff in refined disgust.
The Doctor sprang up and worked Maglev's board. “Just stay with me, young fellow!” He murmured, intent on his task. 	“Despite myself I've learned a thing or two about Arcane Science since I came to this Universe! Oh, I'm no Twilight Sparkle, but I like to think that I'm able to come up with a real whizzer now and then! The thing to remember about Magic...” He paused and started making a series of lightning-quick adjustments to his controls. If he was pressed for time his voice betrayed nothing, keeping its soft, conversational tone as he worked. “Is that it can behave very much indeed like its electromagnetic and superluminal counterparts. Energy is energy is energy, I suppose! And it will always take the road of least resistance! Space is a notorious vacuum and, as such, keeps things tremendously well insulated from, well, other things. The net result of the spell your crewmates have cast was to render this particular bubble of space terribly, terribly non-conductive, if you follow my meaning. I need you to invert your magical shield reinforcement. That's is!” He beamed at Maglev approvingly. “Lower it straight down below zero and keep going oh, I don't know....” He laid a hoof across an indicator display and presented it to the bemused Ensign. “About that far. Yes, that'll do for starters! Good lad!” He warmed up to his subject and began making a show of playing his board like a piano, flourishing his hooves and bringing them down quickly and dramatically.
“What we're doing here is making an area around this ship very attractive to all that Arcane energy that's bouncing around that ship. It's got nowhere to go now, doesn't it, since we've made it such a poor conductor? The trick is to not let it come into physical contact with us. Oh, no! Wouldn't do at all! You see, poor old Werewolf has been possessed. Unlike good old electricity or magnetism, this particular Arcane energy has a malevolent purpose guiding it. Quite against all their wills, I'm sure, but still driven nonetheless! Hence the need for your magnetic ramscoop to create a magnetic bottle, suitability modified, to contain what is, in essence, Arcane Plasma. Once we have it stabilized... when you adjust the flux density there... See? It'll just follow the lines of Arcane force as it folds over on itself until it all zips up tight, sure as Bob's you Uncle!” He gave Maglev a companionable punch on the arm and gleefully pounced on a final control before hopping back down on the deck. He extended one foreleg, drew the other one back and bent his neck in a bow, his performance at an end... almost!
“Et viola, Madame la Capitenne!” He held that posture for just a moment before he hopped straight up suddenly, clearing the deck entirely and punching the air with one hoof in a burst of exuberance! “Who's the Pony? Eh? … Anypony?” He looked around expectantly, the grin fading from his face as the blush colored his muzzle. He shook himself and adjusted his bow tie self-consciously as the entire Bridge stared at him. “Oh, Dear. ...You have an open mike, don't you?” He muttered, deflated. “You'd think I'd learned my lesson about that the last time, wouldn't you? Ahem! Miss Way, what do your sensors tell you?”
Milky Way closed her mouth abruptly and ducked her head back to her scanners. “Minimal stored power readings, fading fast. K1 and K2 scans falling. Already down by fifty percent...” She looked up soberly. “The Werewolf is dying, Captain.”
“Well I wouldn't go that far!” The Doctor put in. “The life-energy it had was stolen. We're just transferring it to another form. Just like with non-metaphysic energy, eh?  Nothing is ever truly destroyed! Once we have it safely stored the TARDIS will put it back where it came from, never fear!”
“Can you make out individual Klingon readings, Milky?” I asked. “There were nearly two hundred on board the last time.” I turned to watch the image of the quiet ship on the screen.
I heard the hesitation in her voice. “Yes... and no, Captain. I have half-a-dozen readings that are nearly Klingon. And there are broad stretches of the ship that have Klingon incorporated into it... somehow. I would say that the biologic mass is equivalent to perhaps two dozen individuals.” She sounded faintly sick as the implications of her statement sank in.
“Like Kyr?” I asked.
“More so, I'd say.” I could hear her steady her voice. “These are far less... centralized. My guess would be they've been, uh, cannibalized and used in control circuitry.”
“'For the Glory of the Empire', was it?” The Doctor said bitterly, looking at the ship with his alien eyes. Luna knows what memories he was comparing it to, I sure as Hell didn't... and I didn't want to!
“I must tell you about the Cyberponies one day...” He said darkly. He veiled his troubled blue eyes and looked to me.
“I'm sorry. I'm so, so, sorry. I wanted to save them, but I don't know how many of them I can put back when they've been reduced to... that!” He shot the ship on the screen a reproachful look, then. “Perhaps we should give Captain Kyr a call, he deserves the chance.”
I raised a forefinger at him. “One moment, Doctor.” I addressed my comm panel. “Lieutenant Kirk? Make ready your torpedoes. Space them out through the Werewolf. I want the memory of that ship blown out of space! Stand by to transport.”
“Aye-aye, Ma’am. Coordinates set and standing by.”
I caught the Doctor’s eye. “The way I figure it it’s the least I can do for …what’s left over there. I wouldn’t hold out much hope for Kyr’s being reasonable or rational.” I did what I could to soothe the frown on that enigmatic face with my words. “Five point two million will be saved, Doctor. Innocents, at that! That’s more than you can say about two dozen Klingons.”
“We are all born innocent, Captain!” Part of his mind was elsewhere… or elsewhen… when he looked at me with eyes that refused to divulge what was hidden behind them.
“People grow up and make their choices, Doctor. They have to live or die based on what they chose to do.” I said stolidly.
“There are many who have their choices made for them!” He snapped at me unexpectedly!  I sat back, blinking as he went on. “Many more let others do it for them willingly because they feel that they can’t aren’t able to make them themselves. As if their ability to make the right choice is somehow inferior to those who are all too willing to do it for them. These are the ones I feel sorriest for… the ones who believed they weren’t capable of trying and would never get the chance!”
He caught himself and stopped suddenly. Wisely or not, I chose that moment to plunge in. “Like Ditzy, perhaps? Is she the symbol of some sort of Crusade to you?”
The Doctor was half my size and a quarter of my mass. No fancy martial art of his would give me pause. I did not judge him to be a Fighter except in the moral sense. He was an eccentric, eclectic, idealistic genius with a Time Machine who took an inordinate amount of pleasure in flaunting his knowledge at people less privileged. Fine, there were worse personality flaws. Let him carry on any way he wanted as long as he wasn’t a threat to me and mine.
But suddenly the Pony-shaped thing before me glared with ancient and bottomless eyes and I caught a mercifully brief glance of something profoundly tragic and old. Not old like immortals in the fashion Celestia and Luna. They were born that way, it was their natural existence.  They were wise and patient and benign. The Doctor… or perhaps his entire species… started out mortal and became otherwise, going down a different road than the Faeries travelled. It was a journey that left horrific marks that I only dimly perceived on this individual.
I never backed down from the Lord of Chaos, but the eyes of the Doctor made me want to fall back and get reinforcements! Still… I was an Equestrin, damnit! That miserable chair was feeling more like a cage by the second but I forced my hooves into my lap and I met his poor, damned eyes and stood my ground.
And just like that, his eyes were merely hard and simply blue! I honestly don’t know if I had been warned or had been unlucky…
“Leave off trying to analyze me, Captain Starry-Eyes.” He said in a low, neutral voice. “I’ve given Freud and Surak both nightmares. I. Am. The. Doctor. …And that’s explanation enough for Empires, Federations, or any Pony curious enough to ask and bold enough to listen. The lives of my enemies are still lives, and I will never allow myself to forget that again. So don’t even imply that a few lives are some sort of fair trade for millions. Unless you are in a position to appreciate their potential don’t dare to treat them as some sort of tally in an obscene game!”
It would have been safer to cut myself and go wading on Equestris… but I cocked my head ever-so-slightly and asked. 		“Like you, Doctor?”
“Exactly like me, Captain. Just exactly.” I should have been disgusted at his arrogance, but…
“What are you, Doctor?”
“A Timelord.” His eyes softened just a bit, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they became just a little more Equine. “Do you really want to know more?”
I hesitated before I spoke. “No… but for the sakes of the Ponies under my command… I have to.” I wasn’t being noble in particular, truth be told, I haven’t been that scared since I thought Sunny had been killed by Kruse. If I was the only one at stake I’dve let the matter lay but, like I said, I’m an Equestrin…and he was part of my job.
He considered me for a long moment, weighing me up with his impossible eyes, before a smirk twisted his lips.
“As hard as it is to believe coming, as it does, from a Pony with a Time Machine…” He began in an abruptly lighter tone. “I simply don’t have the time to go into all that just now! Let’s finish saving the day first, shall we?” He treated me to a winning, fey smile and I felt like sagging in relief!
“Sounds like a plan to me, Doctor!” I kicked my chair into a slow spin and took in the faces of my Bridge Crew. They were all still staring at the self-declared Timelord as if he’d just pulled a mask back down over something Alien and inscrutable. Well… he just did at that, didn’t he?
It was time to get everypony’s mind back on business! “What’s the status of the Klingon life-force readings, Milky? Maglev? Shut your mouth before something flies into it! Code, is the Klingon capable of receiving our transmissions?”
Maglev gave a start in his seat, shut his mouth with an audible clop, and turned back to his board to give it his absolute attention! Code stuck his earpiece into his ear and played a medley on the Comm circuits while Milky Way bent over her viewing hood. True North and High Jump sat at attention and paid scrupulous attention to their boards and the Main Viewer respectively. Everypony avoided the Doctor’s gaze. For his part, the Timelord idly monitored his board with a ‘Well, what you expect?’ expression. There were reasons I shouldn’t, damn good ones, but I couldn’t help feeling that he and I could almost be friends. In its own way our little clash of wills served to give us a measure of one another… and we both liked what we saw.
Code broke the silence first.
“I’m getting feedback on both EM and subspace carrier waves, Captain. For my money he’s got enough power to transmit and receive.”
I was going to have him open hailing frequencies when Milky Way spoke up.
“Klingon K-band readings are holding at twelve percent. There are signs of some sort of feedback through the Arcanomagnetic matrix the Doctor set up. …It’s increasing in frequency and strength!”
The Doctor couldn’t have looked more surprised if his tie and coat had been magically swapped for a Fez and a mop! His eyes flew wide, then he frowned.
“That’s impossible!” Me made as if to fling himself upon the controls but froze, instead. He raised one hoof and looked my way. “Unless… No, that would mean that there’s a… Of course!” He spoke the last words with disgust directed at himself, punctuating the comment with a hoof to his forehead repeatedly!
“What ‘of course’, Doc?” I demanded. “I’ll bomb that ship in a Salusian second if you can’t…”
“The tentacled motif!” He said as if that just explained everything! My irritated look goaded him into expounding. “I thought it was something Klingon! But Discord’s been raiding Earth… or at least a near-Earth… for Prism fodder! And he’s been one busy Dracoequitaur, it seems!” He sprang up to the board he was sharing with Maglev, nearly shouldering the hapless Ensign aside in the process! He ran an anxious eye over the panel and began making rapid adjustments, keeping up a running commentary all the time.
“Lord of Chaos he might be, but I can’t believe that even he would have the absolute temerity to snatch…” He paused and stabbed a hoof at a display! “There! Plain as day! I made a mistake, Captain. I equated the strength of five million, two hundred thousand souls to five million, two hundred thousand individuals. But there as souls and then there are souls! Some darker and more powerful than others, to be sure. Case in point!” He pointed at a display I couldn’t hope to read at that distance. 
“Weighing in at an equivalent of six hundred sixty-six thousand, six hundred sixty-six souls, the absolute proof of Discord’s insanity and thirst for power! Our boy has bagged himself an Elder God to make his Prism! The Werewolf is in the clutches of none other than Mighty Cthulhu!” The Doctor studied his displays for a moment and concluded. “And he is not amused. Then again, it’s always so hard to tell with those Elder Gods! Completely alien frame of reference and all that, never tell which way they’ll jump, crawl or ooze!” He propped one foreleg up on the Engineering console and rested his chin on the other thoughtfully before summing it all up so succinctly.
“Oh, bugger!”