Chapter 8

I arrived on a bridge that was utterly silent. Everybody was concentrating on his or her work at her station. There was only one thing I needed to know now, and the operations station would have that info for me."Status commander?"

Kenahov was at the operations station. I walked over there first so I could see the big and burly Klingon alternating between adjusting the sensors and other instruments there and monitoring the situation. "Two minutes ago sensors picked up two Breen Chell Grett cruisers. Their course shows them as having come from the Kelvani belt and heading for Zaria."

"On screen."

The main screen was switched over. The stars streaking by were still there, but this time there was also the visible stern of two starships, streaking through space at a similar velocity to ours.

"Magnify!" I had hoped to see some details, but Kenahov put me out of my misery.

"Sorry sir. This is maximum."

I headed back to the center seat. Things were going to happen soon, and all responses were going to have to be coming from the center seat from now on. "Life signs?"

"Considering the distance we're picking up about 30 Deferi life signs. Everything else, is Breen." Two words were coming up in my mind immediately; slave transport. The intelligence report that I had received on DS9 had indicated the Breen were still using slaves for the at times dangerous business of mining. And if the Zaria system mine was indeed operational…

"Range to those two?"

"We should be just outside their scanner range. They are on the edge of ours though." I never heard the rest.

"Continue course and speed. Drop out of warp on the outside of their target system." Sojourner class ships were big ships. No matter the size or the power of the ship, it wouldn't help anyone, and that included ourselves, if we ran into the system phasers blazing without having a clue to who and what was in there.

The bridge fell back into utter silence again. Everybody was alternating between concentrating on their tasks and watching the screen. We were on phase one of the waiting game now.

"Breen ships are decreasing speed." Kenahov suddenly reported.

"Helm, match their speed." I had barely finished that order before the next thing happened.

"Ice cage!" Kenahov cried out.

It meant the following; while still at warp the Breen vessels would make a full 180 degree turn. The leader of the pair would fly a full circle while scanning. The wing man of the pair would alternate between the z-positive and z-negative axis conducting scans as well. If they found a ship following them within those arcs, that ship would literally be enveloped almost immediately, and thus in serious trouble.

"Silent running, right now!" I nearly shouted it. All around me fingers began dancing across keyboards. The first thing to go was the standard illumination. Not much later another sound filled my ears as systems all across the ship began shutting down or going to very low power. And so commenced phase two of the waiting game.

"Breen ships, closing. They're at half impulse and their scanners are at full." Kenahov seemed to have no trouble keeping his cool. Externally I was the same. Internally it was somewhat different. I was literally screaming for power to the weapons and shields and what not. I didn't notice I was holding my breath.

"Helm and Ops be ready. We may want to get out of here fast." When I finally spoke it was more then a whisper. In the meantime, the Breen closed in further.

As the Breen were getting closer still I did began to contemplate breaking silent running and just blazing away at them to show them who was boss. It would put the rest of the mission at odds though. I wasn't really willing to do that just yet.

Apparently the Breen commanders were satisfied that there was nobody following them. Not half a minute later, Kenahov reported that the ships had stopped their scans and were returning to their original course. I heard people exhale from more then one duty station as the power was brought back up slowly.

I stood up from the center seat and walked to the middle of the bridge. I looked around, making sure that everyone saw me "Ladies and gentlemen, that was well done. But we're not out of the woods yet. Those 2 Breen cruisers will be stopping to deliver some slaves. About 5 minutes after they've made their delivery, they're gonna find out what we think of that."

A thin chuckle ripped through the entire bridge crew. "Now resume your duties and get us to full power! We have places to be."

Engineering didn't need all that long to get us back up to power. The pursuit of the Breen was soon on again.

5 hours later, the Breen did indeed come out of warp, at the Zaria system.

We came out of warp a short distance away from the system entrance, and closed in under impulse. Just before we got to the edge of the system we released a small number of probes that engineering had made as stealthy as possible.

I didn't stay in the center seat. Instead, I rejoined Kenahov at the Operations station once the probes reported they were coming into range of the planet.

"Probes 1 and 4 are picking up a number of signals." There were a bunch of extra audible beeps from the station. "The probes are picking up extra signals."

It was the way he said it, as if he not only had not expected those signals to be there, but was in awe of what they represented at the same time.

"Visual, if possible."