Commander Brishar of the Britar battle cruiser Briear sensed a sudden feeling of uneasiness among his operations officer. Curious as to what it was, he stood and went to the back of the Command Center to the officer's station.

She was a rather pretty Britar, who's ridges were rather smooth, which was a sign of beauty among the female Britar. Her intelligence level was higher than most other Britar.

Brishar considered her the most wonderful woman he'd ever met. And he had the honor of being her lover.

"Something wrong?" he asked as he approached her.

She looked up quickly, obviously startled by his approach, then nodded. "I think so."

She looked at her console, Brishar joining the observation from behind her station. "I'm reading a large temporal distortion trail being created."

Brishar frowned. "Any idea what it could be?"

She looked at him and nodded solemnly. "The Destroyer."

Brishar's fear levels jumped higher than he thought possible, and no doubt the entire bridge crew could sense it.

"And the trail's apparent trajectory is heading right for us," she finished.

Brishar put on a battle face and headed back for the command chair. "Battle stations," he ordered. An annoying alert klaxon sounded momentarily, but he shut it down, at least on the bridge, when he sat down and tapped a command into his console.

"Prepare to bring the fleet out of the nebula," Brishar stated.

They were in the Onkrine nebula, guarding it to make sure no Vorkalai ship set the nebula's volatile mixtures off. If they failed, it would mean 40 parsecs of Alliance space would be destroyed.

"We'll have to lead the Destroyer as far away from the nebula as possible," he thought out loud. "We definitely don't want to allow stray weapons fire to set the nebula off…"

The USS Dragon, the proud advanced prototype Starfleet vessel, moved through space in orbit around the newly acquired Alliance planet designated as Alshan. Her vast display of weaponry and power only visible in the form of launchers and glowing nacelles.

Chris was lost in his thoughts as he stared out the aft window of his ready room, the stars and the planet as beautiful as ever. He found that he went to this window to think quite often.

It had started during his first week of command. When they had been on a simple mission to pick up crewmembers and supplies at DS9, their bad luck streak began.

However, would Starfleet even remember their missions? Would the Dragon even have existed, now that time was restored? He cursed at Q in his mind, wanting to know what they had missed in the past 3 years.

They had been brought to the Kalium galaxy after that, and were brought into a struggle to free the galaxy…to free the Hintaru. And they had almost failed 6 weeks ago.

Then the Britar had come along. They had been the Dragon's and the Hintaru's saviors. And they were allowing this war to be won.

"Bridge to Captain Harriman," Perkin's familiar voice said over the comm system.

Chris was startled out of his thoughts by it, and even spilled some tea on his hands. He swore quietly to himself, but then considered himself lucky he had allowed the tea to cool down while being lost in his thoughts.

He walked over to his desk and set the mug down, then tapped his comm badge with his clean hand. "Harriman here."

"There's a priority one message coming in from General Abiarn," she stated.

This piqued Chris' interest, so he sat down at his desk. "Put it through in here."

The Alliance symbol came up on his screen. "Authorization Harriman seven-two-two-fifty five."

The screen then immediately changed to show the familiar face of the leader of the Alliance, General Abiarn.

"Admiral," Chris said, immediately seeing that Abiarn was not in the mood for pleasantries. He immediately was curious about this call.

"Captain Harriman, about an hour ago, we received a continuous distress call from the Onkrine defense group," Abiarn said in an authority tone.

Chris frowned and asked, "Isn't that the nebula the Dragon had discovered a couple weeks back?"

Abiarn nodded. "They said they were being pursued by…" He hesitated, adding to Chris' speculation that something major was wrong. Abiarn sighed and apparently decided to finish. "...by the Destroyer."

Chris's mind and body froze in terror when that was said. The Destroyer, a project that had been 7 decades in the making by the Vorkalai, had only recently been completed, and had only recently began rampaging across Alliance forces.

Chris nodded as his only reply, momentarily unable to speak. Abiarn leaned forward and stated, "I need you and your crew to finish the analysis of that information you found as quickly as possible. We need to find a weakness."

"Understood," Chris immediately stated. "We'll step up the process, if that's possible."

Abiarn smiled a grim, humorless smile before saying, "Abiarn out."

With that, the Alliance symbol presented itself on the screen again. Chris sighed, then stood and headed out to the bridge.

Lieutenant Commander Thomas Halkrat found himself at a jog to catch up to Lieutenant Ada Marquet, for she was walking at such a brisk pace.

When he finally caught up, he slowed to her pace, and said, "Uh, hi."

She glanced at him for a moment, then looked back down the corridor they were walking in.

"Hello, Commander," she replied in her usual powerful voice.

Tom hesitated, trying to find some approach, but couldn't think of one. They weren't exactly friends, and didn't associate with each other much, but he still liked her.

"Umm, any thoughts on the Destroyer?" he asked, thinking that might get her talking.

She shook her head before replying, "Not really."

He waited, expecting more to follow, but none did. He almost let out an audible sigh, wondering how to approach her. Nothing ever came to mind, and he found himself frustrated.

He'd liked her for quite a while now, but had never found the courage to approach her, and let her know how he felt. Now, he quickly found himself out of options, save telling her flat out how he felt. And he didn't think that was a good idea.

Then he remembered the main reason he had wanted to talk to her. "Oh, I think I've found a viable avenue for us to try on the Destroyer," he said matter-of-factly.

She immediately stopped, Tom following closely. She looked at him, eyebrow raised. She stood like that for a moment, then asked, "Well?"

He fumbled words for a moment, realizing he had neglected to tell her. "Well," he began. "I think the main problem is taking out its shields. It's powered by about fifty primary reactors, right?"

"You mean the ship," Ada asked. He nodded in reply, in which she did after.

"Well, the best way to destroy shields is to cause fluctuations in it's matrix, correct?" he asked. He shifted his weight to his left foot as he continued. "All we need to do is find a way to slightly disrupt it's shield matrix enough to cause a gap some where, then get a fighter or something in there to destroy it's shield generators."

She seemed to concentrate on that idea for a minute. She then nodded and said, "Indeed, that would be viable, but the problem is finding a way to disrupt the shield matrix."

"Tachyon bursts," some one said as he passed by.

Both Ada and Tom spun around to see that it was Lieutenant Commander Charlie McKariant. "What did you say?" Ada asked in a surprised tone.

He stopped and turned to look at them before replying, "Fire tachyon bursts into their shield grid, and it'll cause them to remodulate their shield harmonics."

Ada took in a breath of realization and said, "Right, and they have to lower their shields for a moment in order to do that."

"We should tell the Captain immediately," Tom suggested.

As Charlie turned around and began walking again, he said over his shoulder, "Glad to be of service! If you have a problem, take two sleeping pills and give me a call in the morning!"

"Its time we found out who's the best pilot on this ship," James stated over the comm system as he finished the launch sequence and engaged the plasma drives. The ship immediately then switched over to manual, and he guided the ship up to an altitude above the planet's clouds.

"I've yet to be beaten," Chris stated over the comm system. "Again, the deal was that who ever loses has to…"

"I know what the deal was!" James snapped back.

"Easy there, Lieutenant," Chris replied. "Anyway, let the games begin!"

With those words, communications ceased. James stayed at his current altitude, preferring his opponent to come to him. At this altitude, he could easily detect Chris if he decided to venture on up to where James was cruising.

Sensors were saying nothing right now, and he wondered what Chris was waiting for. He should've already come up at him.

He remained cruising at the same altitude for about two minutes when he finally became suspicious. Chris was up to something.

No sooner had that thought passed through his minds did a proximity sensor go off. He checked the readings to see the other Bladerunner coming at him from underneath, weapons already spewing out energy.

He immediately banked to starboard, but not fast enough, and two Quantum Torpedoes glanced off of his shields. His cockpit was illuminated by a pale glow as the rest passed his own Bladerunner.

He brought it to full atmospheric power and dove for the ground. Sensors told him that Chris was hot on his tail. His sensors didn't have to tell him Chris was still firing pulse blasts at him, for he could very well see them barely missing his ship.

He then went into a Split-S, a maneuver that used to be dangerous in the late 20th century. He found out why as he barely missed Chris's Bladerunner. He then came out of his inversion and pulled hard back on the stick, sending him into a steep ascent out of the atmosphere.

A few more pulse blasts hit his shields, causing them to lower to 55%, but it was all he allowed Chris as he began a wild set of maneuvers.

It was quite obvious Chris knew his own fighter's limitations and abilities. He seemed to handle his ship with ease.

Chris continued to spew energy at James's fighter, but James managed to avoid the blasts. A few glanced off of his shields, causing a small amount of damage to them, but they held.