SEASON 2: EPISODE 06

A DREADFUL OPERATION: Prologue

  It was a vast shining globe and it cast a light of lambent topaz into space, but it was not a sun.  To the human eye it could be mistaken as a small sun and it had a climate no better.

  It would be a tough place for life to exist.  It was a desert world that circled two massive stars whose light struck its sodium high sands and flats to produce the starlike yellow glow.  That same light suddenly shone on the thin skin of a metallic shape falling crazily towards the atmosphere.

  The erratic course the Karemma starship was travelling was intentional, not the product of injury but of desire to avoid it.  Long streaks of intense energy slid close past its hull, a golden storm of destruction like a school of yellow remoras fighting to attach themselves to a larger, unwilling host.

  One of those probing, questing beams succeeded in touching the fleeing ship, striking its power distribution system to its engines.  Gemlike fragments of metal and plastic erupted into space as hull and internal components disintegrated.  The vessel seemed to shudder.

  The source of those multiple energy beams suddenly hove into view – a Federation cruiser, its forward wedge shape hull bristling cactus like with phaser emplacements.  Those weapons ceased as the ship cruised over the now disabled freighter, its shadow blocking the light of the two suns.  The freighter disappeared under the bulk of the cruiser.  The cruiser then angles away from the desert world and jumps to warp, leaving nothing but tiny bits of wreckage and the hastily dissipating energy signatures of a short and lopsided battle.