abstract
| - Admiral Black and his ship, the USS Cochrane, have been sent to ferry a group of students from Starfleet Academy on their first field trip onboard a real starship. He considers this a punishment for his "insignificant" killings of Romulans some three weeks back. A single Romulan Warbird decloaks and its captain, Arius Rex, demands that Black answer for the annihilation of 600,000 Romulans, the "insignificant killings" some three weeks back. When Black insults Rex, the battle begins but the Warbird fires first, disabling the Cochrane's torpedo launchers. Another shot disables the phase inductors: both phasers and torpedoes are offline. With shields failing, Black sends his first officer, a Vulcan named Spyrak, to keep the students alive at all costs. He then turns to the viewscreen, where he sees a photon torpedo from the Romulan vessel oncoming. Some three light years away, Edward Shield is happy to be back on the USS Enterprise-C. The mutineers have been silent, if not "groveling" at his feet to regain his trust. But this hardly makes him happy: he is concerned that, no matter what has happened, they continue to drift hopelessly from one sector of space to another, running for their lives, rather than doing something about the corruption. As he takes his place on the Bridge, Lianna Young reports having received a subspace SOS from the USS Cochrane. Despite the fact that Admiral Black is a part of Sanders' organization, Shield concedes and the two ships set out to rescue their worst enemies.
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