I... don’t know what to feel. I don’t know if there are words for it. But it feels right. Somehow it feels right.
The Lyret--the little warbird that saved us--had to be decommissioned following the battle. I was sorry to hear it; I had hoped it could be saved. But her crew was given shore leave, and their commander was promoted, I heard. Commander in rank now, as well as fact. He received full honors on our return to Mol’Rihan, and the Lyret’s crew was transferred intact to a fully retrofit Mogai.
They deserved it. But I didn’t even know they would be there.
Commander Arthan assumed I was there because I was the one who made a note of his actions, and Satra stopped me before I told him otherwise. Sometimes I wonder how anyone let me become someone important. I’m terrible at it. Satra is so much better at formal functions than I am. But I wasn’t there for him. I almost wish she’d let me tell him the truth. I wonder if he knows.
I was there for his ship’s rechristening. The Ei’krih. A good, strong name.
I am making a formal note of this so that it will not be forgotten. Let the record show that I request a formal commendation be made to Subcommander Miral Arthan of the RRW Lyret. The actions of him and his crew have undeniably saved the lives of mine.
The official mission log carries a report of the battle against the Undine near the Dyson Sphere; I won’t repeat the details here. But I feel it is important to note that when the Akhitha activated her distress beacon after entering the portal, we did not expect a response. Few other battleships were close enough to be of assistance, and those that were lacked the specialized shield polarization to fly so near the sun and were under attack themselves.
Sunrider
The Akhitha sent the distress signal expecting to be slaughtered as they very nearly were, in the hope that the fleet would detect it and know the dangers behind the portal, and that they would not follow. It was an attempt to warn our people of the impending invasion; they had already given up on surviving. By the time they managed to activate the beacon hull integrity had dropped to 32 percent. They were surrounded, caught in a three-way tractor beam in fluidic space, and had lost all shields.
That was when a Dhaelan warbird burst through the portal and opened fire.
The RRW Lyret wasn’t specialized. They had no sunshields, no advanced weaponry, no training in fluidic-space conditions. They had never met Ael before in their lives; many had never even heard of her. She didn’t even know they existed.
But she sent out an SOS, and nobody was responding. And they couldn’t just let a Romulan ship die alone.
They poured every last ounce of power in the entire ship towards shielding just to survive long enough to get through the gateway, burning up their singularity core in the process; every single backup and auxiliary system was drained to keep weapons and life support online long enough to take some of the heat off the Akhitha and allow her to slip out of the center of the bombardment. No longer surrounded on every side, she could make repairs and keep fighting.
The arrival of that single, tiny, rank-and-file warbird turned the tide and allowed them to defeat the Undine invasion before it began. When it was all over, their unexpected savior was in such poor shape the Akhitha had to extend its shield and warp bubble to tractor what was left of the Lyret back through the Gate; she had absolutely nothing left in her. The Lyret’s crew beamed aboard to a hero’s welcome that almost frightened them, as they were unaccustomed to Klingon enthusiasm.
