his job, and had arranged for Balto, himself, Star, Steele, and Nikki to take a ride in the Defiant. Accompanying them would be Julian Bashir, Ezri Dax, and Miles O'Brien to help them with the ship.

“Well captain, where to first?” asked Star.

“The last known location of the Roddenberry.” And they were off.

Soon they arrived. They found nothing.

“Well, that was fun. Back to DS9.” said Nikki.

“Not quite yet.” said Balto. “Lieutenant Dax, are there any energy trails we could follow? Remember, the Roddenberry was damaged, so it might have been leaking some energy.”

Ezri did a brief scan. “Yes sir. You're right, there is! It goes in a straight line, 2 degrees to our left.”

“Follow it.”

Four minutes later, they found something. O'Brien was the first to notice. “Sir, I'm picking something up on my scanner.”

“On screen.” The crew reeled in shock. Debris, strewn across the entire view screen and beyond. Limitless amounts of metal just frittering away. “Holy Shnykeebits.” said Balto. “Is it the Roddenberry?”

“Yes sir.”

CHAPTER 4

“Commander Boris, contact Sisko and tell him...” he sighed. “That the Roddenberry has been destroyed.” He then turned his attention to O'Brien. “Miles, see if you can beam any scraps aboard and study them.”

“Yes, captain. What are you going to do?”

“I'm going to record this in my log.”

Captain's Log. Star date something or another. I've just had the lousiest few days of my entire career. To sum it up, we had to ditch a very important ambassador, get him back after the other starship got attacked, got our own ship nearly crippled, then the other ship got destroyed! Great day, huh? Oh, and also, I probably helped in starting another war. First a Romulan crosses the Neutral Zone in direct violation of a treaty, then we fire on each other. Joy. Joy Joy Joy. Joy.

While he was writing, O'Brien's voice came in over Balto's communicator. He said “Captain, I found out something a bit... odd. I think you should come down to the cargo bay and see this.” Balto hurried down. “Yes, O'Brien, what is it?”

“Well, while I was looking at this debris in here, I noticed there wasn't many scorch marks on it. Then I realized that it looks like it wasn't shot to pieces, it seems it was... torn to pieces.”

“Torn to pieces? What are you talking about?”

“Just that sir. This ship wasn't blown up.”

“So you're saying that somebody went over to the ship and ripped it into all these... millions of pieces?”

“I know it sounds stupid sir, but I'm sure of it.”

Star's voice came in over the communicator. “Captain Mandrell, what's our next heading?”

“Deep Space Nine. I've seen enough.”

Later Balto was talking with Jenna in Quark's bar.

“I don't understand it. O'Brien said that the weapons that destroyed the Roddenberry were clearly Romulan. Why would a ship that crippled us need to rip a ship apart? It just doesn't make any sense at all.”

Jenna thought about this for a minute. “Have some more Klingon wine. I hear it helps you think clearly.”

“You've heard it helps you think clearly? Haven't you ever tried it?”

“I've never gotten the courage to try it.”

At that point Julian Bashir walked up to Jenna. “Hey, why don't you let me buy you a drink.”

“For the third time, no! Why do you keep asking me?”

Bashir shrugged “I'm a rebel.”

Balto clicked his fingers. “That's it! Thank you VERY much doctor.” And then he ran off.

“So what exactly does that mean?” asked Jenna “I'm a rebel?”

Balto was running down the hallway as fast as he could, heading for O'Brien's quarters. He reached the door, and knocked hard. O'Brien came to the door. “What?”

Balto said “I think I figured out why the Roddenberry was ripped apart.'

Balto began explaining his theory. “A group of renegade Romulans decides that their empire should have attacked us while we were weak. Since their empire didn't, they hijack a bird-of-prey, cross the Neutral Zone, and fire on the first Federation object they find. The Canine Outpost 4. When they realized a Galaxy-class starship, us, were coming to investigate, they run. They also know that the Roddenberry, a small Miranda class, was transporting an ambassador, so they attack it. We show up again, so they run. Again. Later they find us with our shields down, so they fire. When our shields go up, they run. Again. By time they find the Roddenberry later, they decide to finish the job. But while attacking, and after they destroy the Roddenberry's shield generator, they run out of torpedoes and their phaser bays have been destroyed. So they beam over to it, overtake the crew, and rip the ship apart.”

“That's a pretty wild story.”

“Yeah, I know it's far-fetched, but it fits! And if they keep this up, they'll get the entire Federation after them, a war between us and the Romulans begin, and their plot succeeds.”

“Yeah. Okay. I still say it's far-fetched.”

“Well, let's say I'm wrong. They've still destroyed a starship and an outpost. We still need to find them.”

“You've got a point there.”

“And we know one of their last locations.”

The Defiant was off! Manned by the crew of the Iditarod, and some from DS9, it was headed for the place where they had found the debris from the Roddenberry.

“Captain,” said Lieutenant Dax “I've got something on scanners. It looks like... a Romulan ship!”

“What luck. Returned to the scene of the crime. Mr. Henderson, arm quantum torpedoes. Mr. Karzon, shields up!”

The Defiant moved in on the bird-of-prey.

Ezri Dax spoke up “Sir, their shields are going up!”

“Should I open fire?” asked Star.

“No. Let them fire first. We want to be sure these are the guys we want.” Two torpedoes and a phaser volley gave them their answer. “Yup. Open fire.” Fortunately for the Defiant and crew, they had quantum torpedoes, and the Romulans only had proton torpedoes. So within about half an hour, the Romulans were in bad condition. Shields were down, phaser power was gone, and they were about as well off as the Roddenberry first time it was attacked. “Open hailing frequency.” Balto said.

“Hello, evil Romulans. Are you having a nice day?”

“Cut the crap.” said the Romulan captain. “What do you want?”

“I want to know why you attacked us, the Roddenberry, and the Outpost.”

“I'm not telling you nothing.”

“Steele, open fire.”

“No no no! Alright, fine.” And so began the captain, explaining why they had done what they did.

“ We decided that our empire should have attacked you while we you were weak. Since our empire didn't, we hijacked a bird-of-prey, crossed the Neutral Zone, and fired on the Canine Outpost 4. When we realized a Galaxy-class starship was coming to investigate, we ran. We found out, though that the Roddenberry, a small Miranda class, was transporting an ambassador, so we attacked it. The Galaxy class ship showed up again, so we ran again. Later we found it with its shields down, so we fired. When the shields went up, we ran again. By time we found the Roddenberry later, we decided to finish the job. But while we were attacking, and after we destroyed the Roddenberry's shield generator, we ran out of torpedoes and our phaser bays had been destroyed. So we beamed over to it, overtook the crew, and ripped the ship apart. We were wearing zero-grav suits, by the way.”

“An awful lot of effort to put forth, just to destroy a ship.”

“We wanted it to look like we were more powerful than we really were.”

Balto almost laughed.

Later, the Romulans had been shipped back across the Neutral Zone for a court martial by the other Romulans, for numerous crimes they had committed, including their hijacking a bird-of-prey and crossing the Neutral Zone, and the crew of the Iditarod went back to DS9.

“Well, that was an interesting field trip,” said Steele. He was playing Dabo in Quark's bar with Jenna, Boris, and Kaltag. “Not only did we trash our ship, we also stopped a budding war between the Romulans and Federation. All in a days work.”

At that point Bashir walked up to the table. “Say Jenna, I was wondering, would you like to go to dinner with me?”

Jenna paused before answering. “Well, alright.”

“What?” shouted Steele “You'll go to dinner with him but not me? Oh, fine! Be that way!”

Balto however, was in Ops once more, talking with Sisko, when Dax said “Sir, we have something coming through the wormhole.”

“On screen.” said Sisko.

The wormhole opened up in a dazzling display of light and color. What came out, however, was not dazzling or colorful at all.

“Borg.”

to be continued....

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