Stardate 52054.2 Beeg sat in his quarters, scanning his prosthetics with a tricorder, making sure they were undamaged from the last attack. The intercom chirped "Enoz to Beeg." "Beeg here." "Come to the bridge. With Ming and Mason out of commission, I need some experienced help here." "On my way, sir." Beeg ran to the turbolift and commanded it to the bridge. While on his way, he thought about what had been occurring without him while he was confined to quarters. The last few days had been extremely bothersome. Once on the bridge, he made some adjustments to the combined deflector dishes. While offering warp capability, the merging of both dishes had left tactical at partial power. He was attempting to boost the output of the sensors and find Antal’s ship in the nebula. Over the next few hours, most repairs were underway and injuries treated. The notable exceptions was Captain Mason, who had slipped further into a comatose state. Enoz ordered all crewmen to arm themselves in case of yet another boarding attempt. Beeg reorganized the security department, which had decreased in efficiency in his absence. While running the patrol, several of the beacons went off. "Enoz, there are two ships exiting the nebula." Beeg reported. "One is Antal, I am trying to determine the other type of ship. It does not show up in the database. What should we do?" "Hail them, on screen." "No reply, I’m scanning for weapons and life forms. There’s only two life forms, one Ferengi, the other unknown. I’m not reading any Goulavar or Wiansani, but there is a lot of interference from the nebula. It may be shielding us, they don’t act like they’ve seen us." "That gives us an element of surprise." Enoz said. "Can we warp right up on them and beam our hostages out?" "No, ma’am. Their shields are up. However, I may have something in my collection that might be of use, something that would make their shields useless." "Go get it." Beeg nodded and exited for cargo bay four. While going, Beeg started to think about how good it was to be back on duty and helping the crew he thought so highly of. Ensign Davis was at the door to cargo bay four, one of the security officers Beeg had spaced out. "Sir, what’s going on?" "A hostile race has two hostages, Ming and Reman. I’m trying to find a specific device in my collection." "We can find it faster looking together." "Very well, it’s a Cardassian contraption. It modulates a phaser beam across almost every known frequency in just a few seconds. That way, it essentially scans a shield for its frequency. Once determined, it fires shots at that frequency, making shields irrelevant." "Irrelevant? You make it sound like something the Borg would use." muttered Davis. "How big is it?" "It was actually a concept the Cardassians stole from the Borg. It’s a small device, an addition to a phaser rifle. They field tested it on Bajor in the latter years of the Occupation. There were plans for a larger version for their warships, but they couldn’t overcome certain problems." "Like what?" said Davis. The ensign had stopped looking for the device, now, engrossed in fascination with the conversation. "Well, after Wolf 359, most Alpha Quadrant fleets redesigned their shields to rotate frequencies at random intervals. Some Cardassian ships were designed to rotate shields every ten seconds. This device only gets through shields that stay the same frequency, so unless you hit the shield generator itself on the second shot and prevent the other ship from rotating, it’s useless." "So the Cardassians didn’t bother making a starship version?" "No, there was no one to use it against, and Cardassians aren’t stupid, just evil. Ah, here it is." Beeg picked up his toy from a storage bin. "Beeg to Enoz, I found the weapon. I’m going to engineering to see if we can develop a larger version." When he got there, he found Syxx and showed him the device, describing it to him for a few moments. The Bolian scratched his head for a moment, thinking. "Something like that would require a hookup between the phasers and the deflector dish. If the Goulavar don’t rotate their shields often, it could work. Work with Zenoz." Twenty minutes later, Zenoz had programmed the deflector dish to scan precisely for the effects of various frequencies of phaser fire, and Beeg had programmed the phasers to modulate across the whole available spectrum in one long shot. The phasers would automatically retune at a deflector dish commanded frequency for the second shot. Beeg turned to Zenoz. "I’m returning to the bridge. See if you can create an interface with the transporters as well." On his way back up to the top of the ship, the Pinx contacted his security officers, ensuring they were properly deployed and patrolling the ship. Every heavy compression phaser rifle they had was in someone’s hands, and he even ordered many of his guards to carry hyposprays with pure oxygen in them in case in came to hand to hand combat with the Wiansani. Once back up on the bridge, he reported the option he and Zenoz had created to Enoz. "With one shot, we can get Antal’s shield frequency and then beam the hostages out, ma’am. With a second shot, we can disable his shield generator." "Wouldn’t a second shot be unneeded with the hostages back?" asked Elea from the helm. "No," said Enoz. "To beam them in, our shields will have to be down momentarily and there is a second ship. Disabling Antal would make it one on one if we don’t get in and out of there fast enough. Have you been able to cut through the interference, Mull?" "A little. Our hostages are still with Antal, but I’m reading over 150 readings on the other ship, armed with disrupters and some form of bladed weapon." "Wiansani?" "I can’t tell." "We need to get our shields back up before they have a chance to beam over. Elea, on my mark, you’ll pull us up behind Antal, put him between us and the second vessel. Beeg, are your teams deployed?" "Yes ma’am, and all crew are armed." "Very well. Bridge to all hands, battlestations! We may be boarded but I doubt they know we’re prepared. Elea, engage!" The helmsman kicked the Equinox to high warp for a mere second, bringing her right under Antal’s ship. Beeg fired the first shot with one hand while targeting the shield generators with his other hand. As he blew Antal’s shields out, Mull locked onto Ming and Reman and attempted to energize. "Did you get them?!" asked Enoz. "I don’t know, there’s over a hundred life forms materializing aboard!"