Julia sat back in the command chair. Sometimes she was glad Commander Barker had helped her killed that pathetic Captain Devore. He was weak and incompetent to be in command of this vessel. He hadn’t even been able to get any information from the Romulan t’Rashad or her Cardassian traitor When the two prisoners escaped, someone needed to do something.

The two of them had, Oakenshield ‘luring’ Devore to a remote part of the vessel, where Chu had been waiting to transport the Captain into the vacuum of space. Lieutenant ASHER had then joined the two assassins and wiped all records of their movements and the transport. In return, he’d been promoted to Lieutenant Commander and taken over Oakenshield’s position at tactical.

One thing that Julia had wondered about was how the prisoners had got off the ship, a complete search of the ship had been conducted, but in essence didn't care. The ship was better off without them and the Captain. Now, in a new universe they had to fight to survive, they had managed to obtain supplies and materials to make repairs to their ship, but the ISS Leviathan was still in serious trouble. With no warp capability and their quantum slipstream drive now just scrap, the vessel had to rely totally on impulse.

The only good news was that the dimension jump equipment had suffered only minor damage. With the right materials and enough time, they should be able to us it to return to their own universe. But those materials had been rare in their own universe and it was proving just as rare in this.

With the Captain gone and both Barker and ASHER on her side, she had bullied the rest of the ISS Leviathan’s crew into submission of her regime. She noticed it was time to meet Chu for dinner in their quarters. She walked off the Bridge and motioned for Major Phanan to take command.

Five minutes later she entered her quarters to see her husband in a tuxedo. She realised she looked bad in comparison. She ditched the uniform and changed into a bathrobe since it was the closest she had to a dress.

"How's it going honey ?" He asked, motioning for their Romulan slave to start cooking.

"O,K, I guess," Replied Julia. "Have you captured that damned probe they sent after us?"

"Yes, I modified it to seek out the pathetic creatures of this galaxy. It is already found a fleet of three Romulans and a small shuttle sized vessel."

"Good," Julia replied. "Phanan, set course to intercept the ships on the probes telemetry" She barked into the comm port.

The ship swung around on impulse and started to move off. She was amazed when the ship jumped into low warp.

"I love those engineers!" she exclaimed.

"Masters, your dinners is almost ready," Their slave grovelled, hoping they like it.

"Taste it." Chu ordered the Romulan. You had to be careful around these Romulans.

He tasted it and lived, so they sat down to eat and told the slave to go to the repli-mat.

Two hours later Julia and Chu were on the Bridge and back in uniform. They had reached the group of vessels the probe had been tracking and were now ready to engage.

The ISS Leviathan flashed out of warp with its shields up and weapons charged. Reacting to the arrival of the new vessel, the Romulan Warbird swivelled around and it's phasers flashed.

"Shields holding at 98 percent, returning fire!" Chu yelled from behind Julia. The ISS Levithan's phaser flashed at the smaller shuttle type vessel that rocked slightly under the force.

"Damnit!" shouted Julia from her console. She flashed off a couple of quantum torpedoes followed by firing the phaser cannons at the mirror Leviathan. The Snipe class frigate fired off two plasma torpedoes. Julia recognised them as the smallest type ‘F’.

*Still does two and a half time the damage of a standard photon torpedoes.* She thought.

The ISS Leviathans shields took their impact gracefully. The Warbird now came around for another run, fired first a pair of type ‘G’ torpedoes followed by it’s powerful type ;’R’ plasma charge cannon, before slowly altered course, chugging away from the ISS Leviathan at low impulse. With their shields severely damaged and limited power to regenerate, the warbird was now vulnerable.

Julia recognised that the plasma charge had been pumped up and that the Warbird had used so much power that it wouldn't be able to fire another one for twenty minutes at least. She fired off another salvo of quantum torpedoes and phasers cannon shot. The Romulan scout and frigate followed suit and the shields of the ISS Leviathan glowed at the onslaught of weapons fire.

"Sir, we need to protect the warbird." Julia remarked, realising that the warbird was vunerable.

"Mister Shale, place us between the Leviathan and the warbird." Chu ordered.

The Hellcat's ordinance hit and bounced off easily, whilst the Romulan plasma torpedoes from the frigate and scout hit on the forward shields.

"Forward shields down to 92%" Remarked Chu.

Then the pair of type ‘G’ torpedoes hit the shields. "Correction 90%" he said.

The over-powered type’R’ fired by the Warbird finally hit, shaking the larger vessel.

"Damnit!" Chu swore. "Registering all shields down!. Impulse limited to one sixteenth, warp is limited to warp one." he yelled.

"Let the warbird have it with the plasma phasers and shoot the scout with our other weapons," Julia growled in response and tapped in a course out of the area at warp one. The plasma phasers from the ISS Leviathan shot out at the warbird. However, the smaller Snipe class frigate, having moved in front of the vulnerable warbird got in the way. Its weaker shields couldn't handle the stress and buckled, then the frigates warp core exploded.

The weakened shields of the warbird were no match for the massive power of the exploding frigate and they finally failed, causing major damage. Nearly all the lights on the warbird were extinguished and it stood dead in the water.

The rest of the ISS Leviathan’s weaponry went off at the Romulan scout, most of it missing its mark as the smaller vessel manoeuvred out of the way. Then the ISS Leviathan turned and fled leaving the Hellcat and the two remaining Romulan vessels behind.

When the frigate had exploded and the shields failed, things started exploding. Half the crew died instantly from the hull breaches. The rest attempted to seal the breaches and set about repairing their severely damaged ship. Their estimate was six hours until operational status, they were in no state to chase the mirror vessel.

The shields of the scout had groaned under the load of the ISS Leviathan's weapons, but because of the piloting skills of the vessels crew, they hadn’t received such a heavy blow. Even so many of their systems had shorted out and there was minor damage on the hull.

"Damage report" The scout’s Captain ordered.

"We have lost most of the primary systems, some of the backup systems are gone as well. Hull breaches on decks three and four. Repair teams are on the way. Estimated repair time, fifteen minutes." One of the Romulan officers replied.

The Hellcat was OK, for some reason the ISS Leviathan had concentrated on the three Romulan vessels. They had now pulled up alongside the crippled Romulan warbird and were transporting over the injured and aiding the Romulans with repairs. Half an hour later, some of the crew from the scout joined them, speeding up repairs.

Five hours later they transported back over as the warbird's lights came back on and the nacelles glowed back to life. The drive plasma streamer from the nacelles intensified and the Hellcat's shields started to audibly groaned under the energy of the drives plasma flow.

Shale moved the Hellcat out of the way before any damage to the vessel could be done. Ten minutes later the streamer stopped. The warbird was back to acceptable status and ready to fight. However, there was no trace of the ISS Leviathan. The search group was back to square one.

"Any idea how they found us ?" Chu asked.

"Negative." Julia replied. "They came in close from warp two, our sensors just weren’t fast enough to detect them."

"Then we start searching again." Chu replied.

"There was one odd thing." Julia commented.

"What’s that ?" Chu enquired.

"Just before they arrived, I’m sure I started to get telemetry from our probe, but it only lasted a few seconds." She replied.

"Check it out." Chu ordered. "Our hypothesis about them destroying the probe may have been wrong. They may have just captured it and if you’re getting a signal, we maybe able to find them again using it."