Currents

The Romulan dreadnought disguised as a Saber-class starship warped through space rapidly approaching its ultimate destination, Bartok VII.  Or so it would seem.  The dreadnought was a refit Federation starship – Typhon class.  The Romulans in their ultimate degree of arrogance could not resist the temptation of embellishing the deck plates with the symbolic bird of prey that dominated their culture.  Despite the peaceful calm of the exterior an internal fire-fight was burning.

"The Klingons have managed to bypass our security measures and are rapidly advancing on our position."

Shuzo did not know the security officer, most likely one of the survivors of the original Cutlass crew that were placed in suspended animation and placed aboard this weapon ship.

"I don't care how you do it.  Decompress that deck; whatever it takes, keep them away from engineering and sickbay," ordered Shuzo.  The Bartokian refugees had been sent to sickbay, the living ones at least, for treatment by the ship's EMH.  The Romulans had not made retaking the ship easy.  The entire vessel had been automated with holographic duplicates of the Cutlass crew.  Encryptions had been placed in the computer to prevent tampering with the overrides.  And as a safe measure a contingent of Klingon mercenaries were aboard to prevent exactly what Shuzo and his makeshift team was trying to do.

It hadn't been easy to get to engineering, but Shuzo wasn't going to let a few deck-plates get in hir way.  Igniting a few plasma conduits and overloading some EPS relays was all it took to punch holes through any offending walls.  This was not hir ship, nor a ship of the fleet.  Who was going to court-martial hir for a few holes?  Once in engineering, the real battle began.  The ship's AI had become aware of Shuzo's goal and placed sufficient security forces to protect engineering.  Unfortunately the ship's best defenses were holographic.  Shuzo's team targeted the emitters and the security force simply ceased to exist.

With engineering secure the ship was essentially under control.  The refugees were then moved to sickbay for treatment.  It was then that the Klingons were encountered.  The ship's defenses also targeted their forces as well.  Shuzo mused that how much faith was placed in advanced tech yet when the time came, even it could not determine friend from foe.

Shuzo was too busy to deal with the Klingons or the incident in sickbay, something about the ship's AI personifying itself in the EMH.  Whatever it was, s/he had a mission to focus on.  Bartok VII needed to be saved; more than that, the entire system as well as the entire sector.  The Romulans had not targeted Bartok VII; they only wanted it to look that way.  The true target was Bartok VII's sun.  Or so that would seem too.  Shuzo had managed to access the Romulan Typhon's strategic ops directives.  It too was encrypted like most of the ship's computers; however Shuzo was determined to figure out the Romulans' true plans.

The Romulan graphics scrolled by the monitor.  Patterns upon patterns, codes upon codes.  Shuzo's Axanarian brain deciphered one section only to find it to be a cipher for an even more encrypted section.  Multiple ciphers on top of more ciphers.  Shuzo so hated Romulan codes.  After what seemed like hours the ship slipped into an alert mode that Shuzo was unfamiliar with.  The ship's computer began announcing something in Romulan.  The UT could not decipher it.  After a few repetitions the UT finally localized a guess: "Liquid edge door near."

Shuzo was a strategist, not an engineer; however the more s/he stayed on this ship the more s/he wished s/he was.  "Liquid edge door near," s/he thought.  "What could that be?"

Moments later hir answer came.  The inertial dampeners fluctuated and the ship rocked.  A crewman from the nearest sensor console summoned Shuzo over to see something.