'Not one word of the following is true.'

- Stephen Fry

'A hundred bottles of beer on the wall, a hundred bottles of beer...' Lieutenant Nick Akhurst gazed dreamily at the enormous array of alcohol that spread out before him. 'This is going to be a sweet party.'

Crew Senior Fortune staggered past him with a large crate of bottles. 'This is the last of the good batch,' she said, plonking it down with a musical tinkling. 'After we finish this lot, then we've got to start on the batch that Graham fell in.'

'You kept that? Man, that's nasty,' said Emma the Klingon, polishing a glass.

'He was trying to re-enact the scene from Asterix,' Nick explained. 'You know, where Obelix fell in the magic potion and it had a permanent effect on him.'

'Yeah, but that's no reason to keep it. Chateau Graham – yuck.' She pulled a face.

In a quiet part of the galaxy, unencumbered by pressing duties, the crew of the USS Compromise were once more preparing for a party. Lieutenant Prideaux from security was turning four hundred, and had put out a ship-wide bulletin that everybody had to come to the party lest she release Ruth's experimental killer cockroaches into their quarters. With such incentives being offered, nobody was surprised that the party list was long and the bash was going to be big.

Very big.

Excruciatingly big.

A type of big that redefined bigness.

Nick and Di's homebrew kit had been pressed into service to provide the bulk of the beer, but there was more than just beer. Emma the Klingon had managed to acquire a lot of favours over the years,[1] and had used up a lot of them to get hold of a stack of highly intoxicating, mildly illegal and potentially lethal liquors.

'So,' Emma said. 'Who's doing the honours as far as birthday speeches go? Euan again?'

Nick nodded. 'Pretty much. You know how much he loves doing it. Besides, he slept with her once.'

'Really? I hadn't heard about that.'

'It's not entirely common knowledge,' said Di, knowing that it soon would be if she was telling Emma. 'Remember when Euan visited Starfleet command a couple of years ago? She was Admiral Walsh's yeoman then, and had just been in a shuttle crash.'

'Are these related factors?' Emma asked.

'Well, not really. But she had concussion and thought he was somebody else. Jumped him completely, shagged him senseless and then fell asleep for three days,' Di said.

Nick chuckled. 'I didn't think he was that energetic in bed.'[2]

Emma laughed. 'I wondered why he came back from a meeting with Captain Goodwin looking so shell-shocked. Probably still trying to work out what happened.'

'I keep telling him how it works. I don't think he listens,' Nick said. 'I even gave him some explanatory pamphlets and magazines...'

'OK, is that it?' Emma asked, putting down the now-polished glass and wiping the top of the bar. 'Everything ready?'

'Yep. All systems go at 1900,' said Di.

'All systems go at 1930.'

The man who spoke was a small humanoid with short greying hair and sparkling beady eyes. He addressed his team, all dressed in black pyjama-like suits with balaclava hoods, in a small shuttlecraft which was travelling through an area of space known as the Outer Wajarri system. Anyone who knew about such things and looked hard enough at the control console would have noticed that an antiquated Klingon cloaking device had been rather clumsily jury-rigged into the ship's mainframe.

'Sir, we are ready, sir.' One of the black-clad team ripped off a salute.

'Good.' He sat back in the command chair and steepled his fingers. 'The USS Compromise will soon be ours.'

Being the captain of a starship was a difficult job, Euan reflected. And it was even more difficult when the starship in question was the USS Compromise. The crew were totally undisciplined and showed him no respect or deference to his rank, although he had actually got used to it in the past seven years. The latest development, however, involved a secret plot by the CMO and Chief Engineer to make him say foolish things in front of attractive female crewmembers with whom he may otherwise have had a passing chance. After their most recent effort, where he'd called the Assistant Counsellor a peppermint flavoured rhododendron, he had decided to retire to his ready room and sulk.

Although objectively not the most captainly of duties, Euan nonetheless devoted a considerable amount of his spare time to the study of battle tactics and war scenarios by use of his lego set and GI Joes. He considered it vitally important to ensure that his mind was always engaged in tactical exercises and the development of new defensive strategies.

After carefully constructing the proximity of starships and Borg cube which immediately preceded the battle of Wolf 359, he pondered deeply the position of the USS Saratoga in comparison to the USS Satellite of Love...

...for about five seconds, before deciding to stuff the historical accuracy and play.

Several hours later, he was distracted by the comm unit on his desk. Crawling around on the floor to find the last few lego bricks that had fallen there when the Borg cube was destroyed, he poked his head over the edge and tapped the panel. 'Bowen here.'

'Euan, it's Dad... What are you playing at? Aren't you a bit old for peek-a-boo?' Admiral Bowen's face appeared on the monitor, his expression somewhat taken aback by his son's nose and eyes being the only part of his face peeping over the edge of the desk.

'Sorry, Dad, I dropped my—uh, I dropped my very important command documents.' Euan dusted off the knees of his uniform, sat in his chair and tried to unobtrusively nudge the GI Joes out of the view of his father.

'You don't have any important documents, don't be silly. Anyway, I've just had word that your ship could be moving into an unstable sector of space. A Markonian terrorist group was tracked in the area a few weeks ago. Probably nothing really serious, but keep your eyes open, OK?'

'Right-oh. How's Earth?'

'Not bad. We're having problems with the dog, though.'

'Really?'

The destruction and subsequent reconstruction of the Compromise had finally convinced Euan that space was a dangerous place for his dog, and so had left Parker with his parents.

'He didn't like the look of a dog over the other side of the street and jumped through the lounge-room window to go and get at it.'

'Hmm. Not very well behaved of him.'

'No, especially since the window was closed at the time. Broken glass everywhere. And the ruddy mutt didn't have a scratch on him!'

Euan laughed. 'He always was lucky like that. How's mum?'

Admiral Bowen's reply was interrupted by Euan's comm badge giving a beep. 'Hang on, dad.' He tapped it. 'Bowen here.'

'Euan, it's Eliane. Where are you? It's nearly half past seven, you're meant to be at my birthday party!'

'Oh, shit. Is it that late already?' He winced. 'I'm sorry, Arne, I got distracted.'

'I thought you probably had. Just get down here soon, OK?'

'Right. Bowen out.' He turned to his father. 'Dad, I've gotta go. Eliane's birthday.'

'OK. Wish her a happy one for me.'

'Bye.'

Switching off the comm system, Euan wondered briefly if the Markonians were anything he need worry about. He decided it was unlikely; in the current climate, a starship was an extremely unlikely target. Most of the smaller terrorist groups chose targets that were similarly diminutive, like Volvos.

He piled the GI Joes and lego back in their box and stuck it in the bottom of his cupboard, and yanked out the carefully wrapped present he'd got for Eliane. She was sure to like a genuine replica 1885 Colt pistol, wasn't she? Yes. That was the sort of thing girls liked. He'd even had her initials carved on it.

Quickly checking in the mirror to make sure he didn't have any plastic weapons stuck in his hair, Euan turned to leave.

And all the lights went out.

'Ah, crap.'

10-Foreplay was crammed with the entire crew of the Compromise, minus her captain. The bar and entire forward section of the deck had been expertly rigged to fit in the huge number of people and all the booze. Booze currently outnumbered people, but Eliane's plan had yet to reach its full fruition, which culminated in the whole crew waking up sometime the next day and begging Euan to cook them some bacon.[3]

In the midst of the mass of people, Crew Senior Fortune decided that she wanted to check her homebrew kit. The batch may have only been fermenting since that morning, but hey, you never knew if you were going to get lucky.

'C'mon Nick,' she said, taking his arm unsteadily. 'We go look at beer.'

'Oi. Hands off. Superior officer,' he said. 'I'll go look at beer when I fucking well feel like looking at beer.'

'Beer. Now. Beer.'

'Oh, all right.' Nick had to admit her logic was compelling.

The pair made their way through the throng of people to the doorway. Nick walked into the door a few times before realising.

'Stupid thing's not working,' he said, glaring at the doorway and the door, which remained obstinately closed.

'Mm. Maybe an engineer should have a look at it, make sure there's nothing wrong,' said Di.

'Good idea.' Nick tapped his badge. 'Nick to some engineering thing. Make the door work. Nick out.'

'Brilliant idea, boss.'

'Fuck it. I need a beer.'

Euan bumped around in the dark for a while, trying to locate the door. When it refused to open, even after he hammered on it, he bumped around some more till he found the wrist-mounted Sims beacon he kept for emergencies.

'Computer? Analyse power outage,' he ordered before realising that the computer needed power as well.

'Bugger.' He tapped his comm badge. 'Bowen to Prideaux.'

No response.

'Bowen to Sigma.'

Still nothing.

'Bowen to anybody who can hear me.'

Nothing.

'Hm.'

Euan thought hard. The ship had about fourteen million fail-safe devices in place to prevent something like this happening; even if something had happened to the power and the emergency power and the backup power and the back-backup power, his comm badge, which operated under its own power, should still work.

'So,' he announced to the room at large. 'Something's happened to the ship.'

Reflecting on the sentence when it was said out loud, he decided that it wasn't really that earth-shattering, and he was rather glad nobody had been there to hear him.

The first priority, he decided, had to be getting out of the ready-room. Clipping the light onto his wrist, he pulled out the housing on the jeffries tube and crawled inside.

'Is the dampening field in place?'

An empty shuttlebay which had recently housed the Corona[4] echoed with the sound of his voice.

'Sir, all indications are that the dampening field is working within normal parameters. Power has been disrupted to all areas of the ship, with the exception of the forward section of Deck 10. Communications have similarly been disrupted. We are able to isolate specific areas to reactivate power and communications with this,' the black-clad soldier held up a specially modified tricorder. 'However, we can't localise it to less than about a thirty-metre radius, so we will have to be very careful.'

'Excellent.' The leader of the group, who was called Blaine, had to admit that the information they'd been given on this starship had been extraordinarily accurate. Right down to the details of the crewmember's birthday which had the whole crew in the bar.

One of the soldiers stepped forward and saluted. 'Sir, we must get moving if we're to get this all done. It won't take them long to work out that we've deactivated the doors.'

Blaine nodded. 'Right. Come along – this way. The bridge is three decks up and the lifts are out, so we'll need to climb in the jeffries tubes.'

Euan had to admit it, he was lost. Climbing through miles and miles[5] of Jeffries tube which all looked alike in pitch darkness with only a small torch to help him seemed like a really clever idea on paper, but what had started as a quick skip out of his ready room had turned into a strange trip through an optical illusion.

He had picked a junction area to stop for a rest. The knees of his pants, never in great shape to start with, were starting to look rather threadbare. He also wasn't quite sure, but it seemed to be getting hotter.

Running a finger around his collar, he wished he could just materialise in 10-Foreplay where the beer ran freely and was always chilled to perfection. For that matter, even a glass of water would go down nicely.

Unzipping his jacket, he tied it around his waist by the arms, and was about to start his endless crawl again when the erratic beam of his torch lit on a toolbox, jammed under the ladder.

It was a fairly old one, probably left there by a careless engineer when the ship had been refitted. He tugged it out. 'Property of Nick Akhurst' was emblazoned on the lid, confirming his speculation. He snapped it open, hoping to find something useful.

Well, a tricorder with a flat battery was better than no tricorder, in a way. And a selection of broken isolinear chips would make a very pretty mosaic if he was ever bored. As for useful tools, a half-used roll of gaffer tape and a Phillips-head screwdriver rolled out, followed by...

Euan picked it up, awestruck. The thin beam of his torch glinted off the smooth surface. He marvelled that it had sat here, undisturbed, undiscovered, unmissed for all this time. The insulated toolbox had kept it at a constant temperature, and beads of moisture glittered like jewels on its sides.

He ripped the top off and took a long swig.

A hard earned thirst needs a big cold beer. And regardless what the advertising may say, in this case it proved that the best cold beer was actually Chateau Graham.

The party was in more than full swing; it had swung all the way around from full swing back to not swinging at all.

This is not to fool the casual observer into thinking that it was winding down; the Bunnies were skilled party-goers, and were quite able to keep going to the wee small hours of the next evening without breaking a sweat.

However, several members of the party were a little irritated with the current situation.

'Stupid late not turning up captain. Don't want him to give the speech any more now anyway,' Eliane sulked.

'You know, Arne, we've been friends a long time. Why don't I do it?' Graham asked.

'Because I didn't sleep with you.'

'Well, if that's what it takes—'

'Fuck off.'

Graham nodded. 'Fair enough.'

Euan kicked the wall. He was sure there was meant to be an exit panel around here somewhere, but couldn't find it. It didn't help that he also still had no idea where he was. And it was definitely getting hotter. The environmental systems had probably been reset to minimum when the power had gone off, and ambient heat, probably from the warp drive, was beginning to make its presence felt.

At least, that's what Euan guessed had happened. He acknowledged that it could just as easily have been someone leaving their electric blanket on seven.

With a soft 'whum' noise, the lights in the tube suddenly flashed on.

Somewhat confused, Euan switched off his Sims beacon and peered around, slightly dazzled. The area of light that he sat in stretched for about five metres further down the tube, and then stopped abruptly.

Feeling more than a little confused, he managed to locate the exit panel, and crawled out into what turned out to be the corridor behind the bridge.

'Great,' he muttered to himself. 'Nearly an hour crawling through jeffries tubes and I've moved twelve metres!'

'Quiet!'

Euan fell silent until he realized there was no-one around to tell him to be quiet. Straining his ears, he heard sounds coming from inside the bridge. Two voices, both male. One was deeper and more assured, the other was more urgent and lilted a bit. The lilting one had spoken.

'Do you hear something?' was what the deeper one said.

'Wait...no, sir. I thought I did.'

'We've shut down their engines, their communications, all of the systems on board. With nothing making any sound, the party on deck 10 is probably echoing right through the ship.'

'Sir.'

Euan thought of kicking open a door and bursting in at his captainly best, but (A) he'd probably only break his foot, and (B) the next sound he heard was several more bodies stepping onto the deck from the Jeffries tube. Euan had seen more than enough action movies to know that anybody taking on superior numbers in a fight would probably get some really good one-liners, but would more than likely get their arse kicked.

'Just in case - you and you, watch the doors,' the deeper voice ordered.

'Sir,' said two more voices. Then a few clicks that were more likely to be weapons at the ready rather than someone adjusting climbing gear. 'Bridge is secure,' said one the voices.

Euan was coming to a few conclusions:

1) These people were up to no good. The cleaners, strange as they were, rarely came in heavily-armed squads and certainly didn't need to shut off the whole ship to run their hoovers.

2) Chances were, if they were on the bridge, they were after taking over the ship or at least something very important to them was on board. No doubt, if they were taking over the bridge, their views about the ship were different from his own. Probably against regulations, he shouldn't wonder.

3) These soldiers obviously had a lot more respect for the chain of command than the Compromise crew, and Euan was quite interested to find out where one got troops like that.

Communicating with the rest of the crew wasn't working, and he really didn't want to scream down the Jeffries tubes to see if anyone was around, so he was stuck with moving or doing something about the situation himself.

He tried to hear the next part of the villains' actions, which he hoped would be someone describing their exact background and plan, along with any major weaknesses they may have and how to exploit them. Unfortunately, they seemed content to make little bleepy machine noises for the moment.

Machines. Crap. Euan sighed. The most likely explanation for the situation, he thought, was that a theta-band distortion field had been set up to disrupt the power supply to most of the ship, which left a bubble of around thirty metres around the intruders. He wasn't sure. It sounded fairly realistic, but he was painfully aware that he didn't know much about distortion fields or what caused them. What was the difference between theta band and kappa band, anyway? He thought hard back to his engineering lectures at the Academy. Unfortunately, he remembered that engines make ships go, and that there had been rumours about the professor sleeping with some of the more attractive students. He might have got away with it if his wife hadn't been Academy superintendent. And they'd had a mutual conquest who blabbed. Euan still felt a bit bad about that.

He forced himself back on track. He had no chance of disabling the distortion field from the bridge as it was full of bad guys. (Euan mentally labelled them the Kobras.) His only chance to shut it down was to find out where it was being generated from and disable the machine. But he couldn't do that because internal sensors weren't working and he couldn't access them even if they were. The internal environmental controls still seemed to be working (after all, he wasn't floating to the ceiling or suffocating, which was always promising), but the temperature seemed to be rising slightly, leaving him to speculate that there might be something wrong with the warp core. Additionally, he had no idea why the Kobras had taken over the ship, what they planned to do with it, and what they'd do if they found him hiding behind the bridge.

Euan straightened his back and squared his jaw. It was up to him. He had to take back his ship from the evil intruders. His only assets were his own intelligence, a Phillips head screwdriver and half a roll of gaffer tape. He was sweaty and dirty and he'd lost Eliane's birthday present in the Jeffries tube.

Could this day get any worse?

Damn.

He really needed to pee.

'Sir, all systems functioning correctly as far as we can tell,' the man at the ops console reported. 'Power output levels appear to be fluctuating slightly, most likely from the dampening field.'

'Excellent,' Blaine had seated himself in the captain's chair and was quite enjoying the sensation. 'Conn, are you able to access the impulse engines?'

'Just a few minutes, sir,' the woman at conn responded. 'Just have to by-pass the field, and we should be on track.'

'Very good.'

So far the plan had gone flawlessly. Blaine was privately extremely surprised. It was unusual that intelligence about the internal workings of a Starfleet vessel should have been so accurate. The new informants must have been of a very high standard.

'Sir, impulse engines coming online. Course, sir?' the conn spoke up.

Blaine smiled a very thin smile. 'Where else? Starbase 47.'

Having made use of the restroom behind the bridge, Euan assessed his options. Obviously he had to get control of the ship back. But there wasn't much point doing that if there was something wrong with the warp drive. He wouldn't be able to find out whether there was something wrong with the warp drive without going to engineering, and that was a very long way away in the stardrive section of the ship. However, without anything else resembling a sensible plan, he decided that it was basically the only option available.

He took off the jacket which had encumbered him for so much crawling and used the screwdriver to stab some holes in it. After a bit of persuasion it got the message and ripped into two fairly neat halves, which he tied to his knees. Thus protected, he clipped the Sims beacon back onto his wrist, crawled back into the Jeffries tube and pulled the hatch closed.

This time he had a slightly better idea where he was going, if only because of the absence of any options. Deck 1, which held the bridge, was at the very top of the saucer section, and all he had to do was crawl along till he couldn't go forwards any more, and that (theoretically) should be main engineering.

Euan's optimism was only dented by the unpleasant knowledge that he was relying on his sense of direction.

The conga line finally fell to pieces halfway around its fourth circuit of the bar. Although most of the participants had enjoyed the scenery on the first few times around, it had got a little dull.

''k tired now,' Dianne said, slumping between the wall and Suzy.

'You're not allowed to go to bed yet,' Suzy objected. 'At least... you're not allowed to go to bed by yourself yet.'

Di tried to raise an eyebrow. 'You propositioning me? You're a married woman!'

Suzy shrugged. ''k, fair enough I'll invite Niki as well.'

Di looked over Suzy's shoulder to where Niki was lying back on the bar with Jared and Graham taking tequila slammers off her stomach, while Sam poured Bourbon down her throat.

'Nah. She's busy.'

'Well? What about you?'

Di tried to consider it but her brain wouldn't work.

'Nah. Too tired.'

'Piker.'

'You are so wrong!' a voice bellowed from the other side of the bar.

'I am so not wrong!' responded a second voice.

Di tried to focus. The first voice seemed to belong to her boss, and it could potentially be something important, but for now the floor seemed more interesting.

Suzy, deciding that maybe Di wasn't really in the mood after all, wandered over to the argument.

'Steve Waugh did not retire after the Ashes in '02 - '03! He went on to captain the Australian test series in the West Indies, thus securing his position as the greatest test captain of all time!' Nick was saying, obviously rather upset.

'Oh, don't be silly,' Leila waved her hand airily. 'He retired to the country to raise pineapples. It was Steven Fleming who captained the tour to the Windies.'

'Steven Fleming played for New Zealand,' Nick ground out through gritted teeth.

'Well? I'm sure he captained a tour to the Windies some time,' she said. 'Anyway, you're still wrong – it wasn't Steve Waugh who captained the Australians to the West Indies, it was George Gregan.'

'He played rugby!'

'Oh, Nick,' Leila laughed. 'You'll believe anything!'

Suzy sighed. Sometimes, she reflected, it would be nice to forget that you were a diplomat. However, in the interests of not having the Counsellor severely dented, she felt it was her duty to step in.

'Leila,' she remarked. 'I think Emma said something about mixing a coffee daiquiri. Did you want to go and help her?'

'Coffee? Daiquiri? Bye!' The redhead dashed off.

'Aww, Suzy – you're a big spoil-sport.' Nick pouted. 'I was going to thump her.'

Suzy tapped him on the nose. 'Come on, Nick. You know it's against Starfleet rules to thump a superior officer.'

'By what definition of the word is she my superior?'

Suzy considered this. 'By actual definition. You're a lieutenant; she's a lieutenant commander. Ergo, she's your superior. She's got more things on her uniform.'

'Only because she's a messy eater.'

Euan stuck his head out of the hatchway and popped the torch through to see where he was.

'Right,' he muttered to himself. 'I started on Deck One. I needed to stay on Deck One and travel forwards for eight hundred odd metres. I have not turned left or right and have not gone up or down. So why the FUCK am I in the holodeck?'

Sure enough, Euan's innate sense of direction had led him to holodeck four, which was in section C of deck six.

He hauled himself out of the jeffries tube and stretched out the kinks in his back. The jeffries tubes were extremely useful for purposes of access to most of the ship's systems, but they weren't really designed for lengthy use as thoroughfares, and he was starting to get quite sore.

Lying flat on the floor staring at where the ceiling would be if it wasn't so dark, Euan sighed. In the action movies, the hero always managed to find his way around by crawling through ventilation ducts. Theoretically, crawling through jeffries tubes should be even easier, since they were designed for access use. But it seemed that things weren't working out like in the movies. Which was something of a drawback, since Euan had learned most of what he knew about combat from people like Bruce Willis.

It is difficult to convey an interior monologue of the kind that followed, but what went on in Euan's head was more or less as follows:

'Well, I'm getting completely lost. It'd be better if I could see.'

'Maybe so, but I can see enough in front of me with the torch to get by. I think I'm getting lost because I don't know where I'm going.'

'Actually I know perfectly well where I'm going, it's just that this bloody holodeck turned up where it wasn't meant to be.'

'If it's a choice between me getting lost by my own means or the ship being subject to a dimensional warp which has placed this holodeck in the middle of deck one... well I know which one I think is more probable.'

'Wow! You really think there's been a dimensional warp?'

'Oh give over...'

Regardless what the bickering in his brain was saying, Euan was beginning to get the distinct impression that the small beam of his torch wasn't really helping him much in the area of not getting lost. It would help if he had something to show him the way he should travel through the ship's innards, but—

Hang on, he did have. Nick's old tricorder. It might not have a functioning power-pack in it, but it would have had full schematics of the Compromise. All he had to do was...

He popped the side of the Sims beacon open and peered at the power supply. Sure enough, it was a double-phase long-life Duracell power pack, designed for all-purpose Starfleet use. It would probably work in the tricorder. All he had to do was remove the power pack from the torch and fit it into the tricorder without any of the light that either of them would give.

It took a few minutes of fumbling, dropping things and one minor electrocution, but eventually he had it put together. The tricorder blinked a few times then came on properly, running through the last pieces of data it had gathered before the previous power pack had died. A few keystrokes, and a full internal map of the Compromise was displayed, including 'You are here' function.

'Right,' Euan said. 'Let's go.'

The Compromise moved relatively slowly through space, although 'relatively' is, in this sense, a relative term.[6] The ship was in fact moving at a respectable fraction of the speed of light, and this is very quick when compared to, say, an Austin 1100 or a Leyland P76. In fact, the only real reason that the Compromise's speed could be called slow at all is due to the fact that it was capable of going so much faster.

However, for the purposes of narrative cohesion and everybody not getting too confused, the expression 'relatively slowly' can and will be used.

Blaine sat calmly on the bridge, watching as the stars drifted past. A small dot of light, which had been growing on the viewscreen for several minutes, finally coalesced into the shape of a conical structure. A space station.

'Starbase 47,' he muttered. 'Soon we will have exactly what we need...'

'Sir, we are approaching sensor range. The station will be able to detect the dampening field.'

'Set the auto-response for any hails,' Blaine ordered.

The man at ops punched a few keys, the function of which was to send an automatic response to any hails informing people that the computer, communications and sensor systems on the Compromise had been shut down to allow emergency maintenance.

'Very well. Alert me when we are within weapons distance,' Blaine said.

Using the tiny ambient light provided by the tricorder was not ideal for navigating jeffries tubes. However, Euan was sure that now he was going in the right direction. The pesky holodeck that had turned up in the wrong place was now a thing of the past and he was heading straight for main engineering.

He hoped.

If he wasn't, then he was hitting his head on overhanging plasma conduits an awful lot for nothing.

The temperature seemed to be slowly rising again, which lent more weight to his theory that something was wrong with the warp core. He hoped fervently that he'd get to engineering to fix it before it blew up the entire ship. Of course, there was the additional problem that he didn't really know how to fix it, but he was trying to take things one at a time, considering the position he was in.

Had Euan known the exact position he was in, he'd probably have been crawling an awful lot faster.

Back on the bridge, Blaine's ops officer was grinning in satisfaction. 'Sir, weapons are online and in range.'

'Excellent.' Blaine positioned himself behind the tactical console and nodded to the ops officer. 'Open a channel.'

'USS Compromise, this is Starbase 47, Commander Sirri Novar in command. How may we be of service?'

'I am Blaine Skovic of the Pied Grande. We have taken control of this vessel, and unless you agree to hand over your supply of biomimetic gel, we will open fire.'

'I'm sorry? Is this a joke? Are you Graham in disguise?' The woman on the other end of the communication seemed remarkably unfazed.

'No, madam, I am most certainly not Graham in disguise. I am a Markonian nationalist and I am very, very serious. Hand over your biomimetic gel or you will be destroyed. You have thirty minutes to comply.'

The ops officer cut off the communication.

The senior staff of Starbase 47 looked at each other.

'Sir, do you think this could be serious?' asked the tactical officer.

Commander Sirri shook her head. 'I'm going to put in a call to Starfleet command. This is probably just another one of their stupid practical jokes. Like last time, with the tribbles and the experimental ultra-superglue.'

'That wasn't a practical joke, sir, it was an engineering accident,' the second officer corrected her.

'It adds up to the same thing.' The commander stalked into her office. 'Ops, put in a call to Starfleet Command, Admiral Bowen's office.'

'Shouldn't be anything really serious, Commander. There was a birthday party on tonight, and I think it's probably likely that the boys are getting a bit silly.'

'Thank you Admiral,' Commander Sirri sighed. 'Permission to give your son an earbashing when I get hold of him?'

'Granted. Oh, did you get the memo from Admiral Walsh about the possible threat of a Markonian terrorist group active in the area?'

'I did, Admiral. It made for some interesting reading.'

'Good, good. All right, I'll speak to you later. Bye!'

'Sirri out.' Commander Sirri closed the channel and walked back to the bridge. 'OK, people, it's just a false alarm. High jinks of the usual Compromise variety. Ignore them.'

Euan headbutted an access panel. When the flashing blue and yellow lights finished dancing around his head, he realised that this was it – he'd finally made it to main engineering.

'Lovely,' he muttered to himself, crawling out of the access hatch.

Scanning around the room with his tricorder, Euan made a number of quick judgements. It seemed that his theory about the theta band distortion field was almost right – it was gamma band, not theta band, but it was definitely a distortion field. And it seemed that his theory about the warp core overheating was also correct.

A healthy warp core in a state of not going to shit looks very much like a large tower of bright blue tyres all piled on top of each other with swirling plasma moving inside them. The warp core that towered over Euan was broiling and bubbling fiercely, reminding him of a gumbo he'd made once that had gone critical all over the stove in the main kitchens and started a China-Syndrome that only ended when it had got through six decks to Eliane's quarters. The layer of rubbish that permanently decorated her floor had fortunately stopped the gumbo in its tracks.

A quick assessment was that the core was producing far more power than it could possibly require to run the ship. With the distortion field deactivating whatever it was that had been using this power, the build-up was getting rather serious.

A bit of rummaging around in one of the many large tool-chests yielded highly useful fruit: two more tricorders with fully charged power-packs, and another Sims beacon. Euan switched on the torch to better see if there was anything that could be done to stop the warp core dying in the arse.

He followed a length of cabling that had been jacked into the main power output. It snaked through the main part of engineering, past the pool table and through to one of the back offices. Through several doors, it eventually led to a large, complicated-looking crate with a large sign on the lid:

So this was what she was doing! She was using the excess energy from the warp core to power a device emitting high levels of Omega band radiation. By bombarding the cockroaches with this radiation, Ruth had created her newest and least predictable weapon.

Euan made a mental note to severely discipline Nick for letting her set this up in engineering without asking permission. He then mentally erased that mental note on the grounds that Nick would probably have lost a limb if he'd tried to refuse.

So here it was. He had three tricorders, one Sims beacon, a hyper-active warp core and a crate of experimental killer cockroaches.

Now – what would Bruce Willis do?

On the bridge of the Compromise, Blaine was drumming his fingers on the arm of the captain's chair.

'Ops, how much time have we given them?'

'Seventeen minutes so far, sir,' the man at Ops responded.

Blaine had the worrying feeling that something wasn't going quite right. 'Try hailing them again.'

'No response, sir. They appear to be ignoring us.'

Blaine scowled. 'So be it. Once the full thirty minutes have expired, you may fire a few warning shots into the habitation zone.'

'Chapter Three: So Your Warp Core is Overheating...' Euan read aloud.

For some reason he'd been both pleased and mildly scared to find a 'Transwarp Engineering and Emergency Maintenance for Dummies' book in a locker. It had quite accurately identified a number of the problems that he was facing, but unfortunately said very little about how to deal with them when there was a gamma band distortion field fouling everything up.

But there was a very interesting table in the back of the book, under the heading 'Stuff for Total Brainacs to Know'. It gave an illustration of the way the various bands of radiation worked, and this gave him the start of an inkling of an idea.

'Now,' he said aloud, knowing that he was sounding a bit like a dork. 'If I could just get this tricorder to emit a xi band distortion field, it should compensate for the gamma band field and remove its influence in the immediate area...'

It took him a further few minutes rummaging around in the debris of Nick's model of the Compromise[7] to find what had been the deflector dish. Securing this to his tricorder using gaffer tape, he took a deep breath and switched it on.

A strange humming sound was the first thing he noticed change. The quiet ambient rustling of the cockroaches in their crate was suddenly replaced with a frantic scrabbling as the Omega band radiation started bombarding them again.

As the overhead lights started to come back on, one by one, Euan gauged how effective his tricorder was being. It seemed that its sphere influence only had a diameter of about ten metres, which was enough to see by but not much more useful than that.

Carrying his disruption-disrupting tricoder with him, Euan trotted back to the main area of engineering to see if the warp core was looking any better. It seemed that it wasn't.

'Hm.'

Well that made sense, didn't it? If the extra power was being syphoned off to run the cockroach irradiator, then when he gotfar enough away from the irradiator that it stopped working again, he was back in the same situation he'd been in before. The only way to get rid of the excess energy was to use it, and the irradiator was the only thing that was in a position to use it. He had to get it going again.

Staring up at the warp core, a slow grin began to spread over Euan's face. At last, he had an idea.

'Time remaining?' Blaine asked.

'Three minutes,' Ops answered. 'Should we prepare to fire, sir?'

Blaine drummed his fingers nervously on the armrest. This wasn't going quite how he'd planned. Surely, when a station was being threatened by a group of terrorists who'd hijacked a ship, it was standard procedure to be at least a little bit nervous?

'Try hailing the station one last time,' he said.

'I'm sorry, sir, no response.'

'Then prepare to fire.' Well, if they weren't nervous yet they would be in a minute.

Euan caught a glimpse of himself in the reflective surface of one of the display panels, and grinned. The combination of ten minutes hard jury-rigging with his adventures crawling through the jeffries tubes had left him looking completely fed up, sweaty and rugged – exactly the kind of way a proto-Bruce Willis should look.

'Right, Kobras. This is it.'

He hefted the cockroach crate on to one shoulder, and hit the switch.

'Attention unauthorised people on the bridge.'

The viewscreen flashed into life, suddenly showing the image of a tall redheaded man with glasses and an unkempt goatee. He had a large crate on one shoulder and did not look happy.

Blaine jumped. 'Ops! Report!'

The man at ops was frantically tapping his panel, but to no avail.

'My name is Captain Euan Bowen. You are on my ship, and I don't remember inviting you.'

'Sir, the transmission seems to be coming from main engineering,' the ops officer reported.

'How?' Blaine snapped.

'I don't know, sir.'

'Now it's my conviction, unauthorised persons, that you are up to no good. However, I am a reasonable man. I am giving you exactly two minutes to get your worthless stinking carcasses off my ship before I open the access hatch to the bridge and release... these.'

The man on the monitor held up the crate so that Blaine and his crew could read the label.

'Experimental killer...?'

'These are the personal property of my chief of security, Commander Crabb. I am sure you've heard of her. I don't know what they'll do. They might eat you. They might try to mate with you. They might just try to build a nest in your skull. Who knows? I'm giving you the opportunity, right now, to get the hell off my ship with your arses intact. Your time starts now.'

The viewscreen blinked off.

'Ops, send a message to the starbase that we are going to commence firing!' Blaine snarled.

'Sir, do you think that it's wise to call his bluff?' the conn officer broke in.

'I am not leaving without the gel!' Blaine roared. 'Ops! Send the message! Now!'

'Message sent, sir. No response.'

'Very well. They asked for it. Fire phasers.'

The man at the weapons station hit the button that, under any other circumstances, would have sent a powerful bolt of phaser fire into the habitation zone of Starbase 47. Instead, it gave a sad squeaking noise.

'Report!' Blaine shouted.

'Um... phasers offline, sir.'

'That is utterly inconceivable! How?'

'Oh, one more thing,' the captain's face reappeared briefly on the viewscreen. 'I'm afraid I've deactivated the phasers and torpedoes. You can't access them from where you are without my authorisation codes, and I am not going to give them to you. One minute left, people. I'd get lost right now if I were you.' The screen went dead.

Blaine's face was twisted with fury. His plan, which had worked so seamlessly up to this point, had suddenly started to fall apart around his ears. His superiors would not be pleased.

Eventually he controlled his rage enough to grind out an order. 'Everybody, back to the shuttle. Our mission is cancelled.'

Euan looked at his watch. Two minutes were up. Well, a threat is a threat, and he had to make good on it.

'Here we go.'

He opened the Jeffries tube which (to anybody but him) led directly to the bridge and tipped the cockroaches in. The susurrating creatures recoiled from the light and scuttered off down the tube towards the bridge. He'd soon know what they'd do.

Euan looked proudly at his accomplishment. Recalibrating the cockroach irradiator to emit a xi band distortion field had, he thought modestly, been a work of genius. With its increased power and range in effect, it had been simple to deactivate the ship's weapons systems and tap into the comm system. The Kobras were at his mercy now.

With a soft whumm noise, all the systems around him flickered into life as normal.

'Well, that's good,' Euan said to himself. 'They've gone.'

He used the sensors to track the ship as it left the Compromise until it cloaked itself and disappeared. A smug grin passed over his face.

'Game set and match to Bowen.'

His comm badge beeped. 'Euan you are in so much trouble right now it's not funny,' Eliane slurred at him.

Euan swore and looked at his watch again. It was nearly midnight. He was meant to have given the birthday speech at eight, before everybody got too drunk to remember it.

'I'm sorry I'm so late, Arnie. You'll be amazed when I tell you what happened.'

'With how late you are right now, Euan, it's going to take something pretty damn spectacular to save your bollocks from the mincer,' the inebriated voice responded.

Euan sighed. It was hard to be a hero.

Euan wasn't particularly pleased with how the crew greeted the news that they'd been hostages of an evil group of bad guys called the Kobras who Euan hadn't actually seen. They were even less pleased that the experimental killer cockroaches had got everywhere and started breeding in the plasma conduits.

'Look, it's just plain irresponsible,' Carmen chided him. 'You know how dangerous those things are – now we've got to get the exterminators in and have the place fumigated. And your story doesn't hold much water either.'

Several of the command crew had gathered in the Obs lounge, where Ruth had set up a field of motion-detecting sentry-bots designed to shoot anything cockroach-shaped.

'I told you – there were these guys and they took over the ship—'

'Yes, we've heard all that,' Ruth interrupted. 'I've given the place a thorough look-see and seen no evidence of any breaking or entering, and the only damage done is what you did to my poor babies!'

Euan pouted. There wasn't much point in being a hero if people didn't believe you.

'Well, I guess there was no permanent damage done,' he said weakly. This wasn't quite true – so far five people had suffered minor injuries running away from the cockroaches, and Eliane was making him cook her dinner every night for a week to make up for missing the most important part of the party.

The door slid open. 'Eh up, you'll never guess what's happened,' Ratbat said, stepping over the buzzing sentry-bot, which briefly considered shooting her.

'What's up?' said Carmen.

'Just got a message from Starfleet Diplomatic. Val's been given a promotion and reassigned!'

'Wow!' said Carmen.

'And Suzy's getting a promotion to take over.'

Carmen grinned. 'This is fantastic news! When's Val leaving?'

'We've got her for another week.'

Carmen jumped up. 'Well we'd better get ourselves organised. We've got to have a party for them!'

'I've already asked Emma. We can have the bar next Wednesday. Extra special cocktails from all parts of the galaxy, in honour of her new assignment.'

Euan raised his head and gave a half grin. 'Am I the only one who's thinking "uh-oh! Here we go again!"?'

Ratbat gave him a look of utter incomprehension. 'Yes. Yes, you are.'

Captain Euan Bowen

TED RAIMI

Commander Daria 'Ratbat' Sigma

Admiral Len 'Bullshit' Bowen

Ensign Niki O'brien

ANDY SERKIS, CHRISTINA HENDRICKS, JOHN AMOS, MICHAEL O'NEILL & ROGER REES