In the 29th century, Mankind faced a turning point. Content till now and not knowing that they could be part of a larger, pan-galactic community. They would be tested.

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HATTORAN CHRONICLE

Chapter 2: Tabiya

  "This is the Starfleet Cruiser Relentless. Please stand by. Recovery operations are underway."

  Escape pods and lifeboats were being efficiently checked, tractored and evacuated. Shuttles, tractor and transporter beams began relocating pods and crews to the safety of the 1200 meter long cruiser. Easily triple the length of the science vessel Heinlein, Relentless was an armed and armored monster in comparison.

  The arrival of the Relentless set off a flurry of activity in one particular pod. Equipment was hurriedly tossed into a pile. The two Hattoran dragons had reactivated their null-suits when Relentless showed up. In the rescue and recovery operation, a pod absent of life signs would be checked but not so urgently, and right now time was their only valuable asset.

  <"Is that everything?"> The Hattorans' native language had an almost musical flow to its sound when not being re-modulated to intimidate starship crews, designed with consonants only manageable by an agile, forked tongue.

  The white male nodded quickly to his sibling. It wasn't like they had so much to begin with. Few possessions of sentimental value, the monitor vessel Shrike, which was really equal parts ship, handler and parent for them almost as long as they could remember, since they had been pressed into service like every young Hattoran. Everything they weren't carrying was vaporized when Shrike exploded. One unlucky operation had cost them everything. Shrike would most certainly have lectured them on this, were it still around. The freedom to fail to bad luck and mistakes were luxuries enjoyed by the lesser beings, luxuries paid for in Hattoran labor and blood.

  Having been molecularly assembled, all of their equipment was easily disassembled in the same manner, leaving a small pile of basic metallics and inorganics on the floor amid the rising smoke of self-destructing nanomachines.

  <"At least none of that will destabilize this primitive backwater."> She sighed with regret. The recovery operation was going along at a fast pace. Whatever time they had left, it wasn't much.

  The pair had already evaluated and exhausted all their possibilities for escape. There was simply no way they were getting out of that busted escape pod on anything but that Federation battlecruiser. They would be captured, interrogated, and who knows what else.

<+ The null suits, too. +>

  Her brother's mind-speech was familiar in her head, effortless due to practice and relation. The skill was more difficult when used with others, and even more so when sent to aliens, and it had the limitation of only one recipient at a time. For most Hattoran, it was a foolproof, discrete method of communication, completely reliable over short distances, and completely inappropriate for use in public for those exact same reasons, unless your scales were white.

  The siblings' null suits were the most impressive of the kit they had with them, serving for stealth and armor and environmental protection all in one. They were made up of layers upon layers of woven nano-machines, all networked to form a rather powerful and versatile personal device. All relative of course, the null-suits were the bare minimum level of gear taken onto a mission, suitable only for the lowest threat levels, or for when the risks of detection were dire. They were no comparison to the city-shattering might of Hattoran personal battlesuits.

  <"Bye-bye, technological advantage."> she said as they both initiated their suits' destruct protocols, sending signals to each and every element to overload its tiny power-cell. 

  The suits boiled off their bodies, smoke rising as the microscopic matrix disintegrated in cascade, burnt elements falling to the floor as dust. Unprotected human skin would have suffered painful burns from the process, but these suits' destruction revealed tough, sleek scales, sensitive in a way to touch but not to pain or heat. Fully exposed, the Hattoran dragons had few nudity taboos, the reasons as much cultural as anatomical as there wasn't much to show with their internalized anatomy. Both had the build of mid-teenage athletes, a bit lanky, perhaps, but fit. The muscles to support a long, heavy tail gave them hips enough to look somewhat androgynous, their bodies sleek and well-internalized for protection from injury or accident.

  They both sported intricate designs on their scales, woven geometric lines over their cheeks, shoulders, hips and tails, visible in the ultraviolet at least, marks of rank, position and glory within the Hattoran collective. 

  His albinism did not come with the myriad health issues that it accompanied with many other races, though he always felt small and a little weak around his sister, her dark scales lining a true hunter's build, bulkier than him by more than 7 kilograms of muscle. 

  <+Their life sign scanners are sure to have spotted us now, and they are going to know we aren't one of them.+> He silently mused, echoing in his sister's mind. 

  <"We're getting captured anyway, doesn't much matter when. It's just a matter now of what happens when we do."> 

  <+They should have small, distortion-drive craft at their base with enough range, but they're primitive. If we can't get a pick-up we're looking at up to ten years to get to a relay, worst case. +>

  She sighed. <"Well that's a last resort. Nothing to do now but to pass the time until we get picked up.">

  He almost avoided the tackle, but there just wasn't much room to move inside the tiny lifepod. He just hoped that they weren't about to get transported into a bay full of armed, unhappy primitives right away. After all this time though, She knew perfectly well which buttons to push, and his sister always got her way, despite his weakening protests. 

----

  The rescue operations had been going smoothly aboard the Relentless. Even before being brought aboard, Captain Daniel Hawthorne had informed his counterpart aboard the Relentless about the situation and the two were now standing at the bridge, a lone, damaged lifeboat on the view-screen. 

"Recovery operation complete, sir. Four hundred sixteen crew accounted for. About two dozen casualties so far, still getting that data in. No fatalities, no emergency rejuvenations." a bridge officer reported from a crew station behind the two captains.

  Hawthorne let out a sigh, the visible tension of the last two hours draining from his form. "It’s a miracle, that's all of them. Thank you, Lieutenant."

  The Relentless’s Captain was a tall, dark-skinned man with graying temples and a distinguished, deeply wrinkled face. "That's the one, Dan. Two unidentified alien life-forms on board. Saved for last just like you asked."

	"They knew right where to hit us, Matt." Daniel was easy, informal around his Academy classmate and friend, grateful after such an experience that his friend's ship was the closest to respond to their distress signal. "One volley and we were dead in the water."

Matthias Grosvenor settled back into his captain's chair, finger to his brow. "I've read the encounter logs, would you have really expected any different?"

	"They've been brusque. Threatening. Mysterious. They've never fired on Starfleet before. This.. bare aggression. We weren't prepared for that."

  "They didn't kill anyone. I've already gone over some of the raw vid, what little of it that wasn't corrupted. I'm astounded they could execute an attack like that without a single fatality. If they were holding back..."

  "Then we definitely wouldn't want to see them cut loose." Daniel finished his friend's thought for him.

  "It was your ship, Captain. It's your call."

  Hawthorne flushed slightly. Was. That word stung him more than he'd been prepared for. He tapped his combadge. "Layton, get all personnel clear from shuttlebay two. I want five units of Anesthizine and Neurozine transported into that pod before you pull it in. Captain Grosvenor is giving you all of his marines, use as many as you need to ensure security. Hawthorne out."

----

USS Relentless Medical Log:
Chief Medical Officer's report.

It has been three hours since completion of recovery operations for the destruction of the USS Heinlein. Triage and treatment of the Heinlein crew is as follows:

416 crew all accounted for.

43 admitted to sick bay, details follow:
 
19 treated and released for minor injuries relating to the attack and evacuation of the vessel.

2 serious injuries from the initial Hattoran barrage resulting from hull breaches to engineering. Both patients are in regenerative therapy and are expected to recover fully within 2 standard days.
  
22 security and officers who responded to the Hattoran incursion were treated for lingering effects related to a stun device. Additionally 7 of these had more serious but easily treated injuries from the direct confrontation, including concussions, broken bones, minor internal injuries, and burn/blast injuries, all simply treated and discharged.

  
  With that out of the way, on to the subject of our guests. Ambassadors? Pirates? War criminals? Well, that's to be decided and above my grade. Below are the notes I've gathered to this point. I will tighten them up and formalize them when all this is over. Science Division is going to go mad over this.

  They were delivered to my medbay heavily sedated. Two hours under the best medical scanners in Starfleet have only revealed how far they are from anything we have seen before. If I had five more lifetimes to study these two Hattorans, I still wouldn't be privileged to a tenth of their secrets, and that's just biologically, genetically. We can start with the easy and obvious, and the complexity just goes up as the scale grows more fine.

  Subjects are bipedal digitigrade dracomorphs, both approx 1.6 meters tall not including accoutrements. Endothermic, and quite warm at that. Scaled in one way or another in near entirety. The scales themselves are remarkable, with an interlocking structure that is very effective at spreading force, and with a material strength that is well off the charts of any organic defense in our database. In addition to this the outer layer has what appears to be thermal superconductive qualities. Any directed energy below what I can only estimate is a remarkable threshold would be quickly spread over nearly the entire surface, and dissipated without penetrating deeper layers. Dermis, where it can be accessed, is flexible yet tough, a structure just underneath being highly resistant to penetrative force. 

  Eyes are highly developed with vertical slit pupils* (There are a few anomalies here for a later look), not only with visual acuity that would make a Terran eagle jealous, but with structures able to detect light well into the infrared and ultraviolet spectrums, as well as other structures that are as of yet unidentified. By all indications, their other senses appear equally acute.

  Another layer. Musculature is highly efficient, tremendous power available with minimal bulk, their muscles are laced with superstrong materials. I can only anticipate their physical strength is more limited by leverage than power generation.

  Organs are, well, they operate at efficiency levels higher than anything even remotely natural. More on that later. Nothing entirely remarkable otherwise save an unidentified structure partially enshrouding the heart and aortic area. Some anomalous brain activity has been recorded from the white one, and I have to wonder if there's some coincidental similarities to our own Aaenar sub-race. A question for later to be sure.

  Bones follow the same theme of the rest of their bodies, though stronger, heavier metals and nanostructures are found throughout. This extends to their rather obvious claws, which when combined with their likely physical might, could be rather worrying. Teeth are large and configured as an obligate carnivore. Their muscular tails also carry dense exposed bone-structures at the tip, giving another available natural weapon. The dense bone combined with external armor account for their higher than average physical density. Given this, their fully-developed wings seem to be a legacy as full flight seems unlikely outside of low-to-zero gee environments. Perhaps they also aid in heat regulation, given a lack of sweat glands? Such high-performance bodies have to generate a lot of waste heat.

  Now to the worrying part, on the micro and cellular level. There are the remnants of what would be considered a massive, biologically speaking, colony of nanomachines within their tissues and bloodstream. A small population seems to remain, apparently sustaining and optimizing necessary bodily functions, but from all appearances they had, and purged before capture, a staggering suite of specialized nanites, the functions of which I could not hope to catalog given months, much less a few hours. Intensive scans have assuaged my worries that the nanites might be a threat to the ship, (any extracted nanites seem to self-annihilate when removed from the very close vicinity of the host, making study difficult) however quarantine procedures will be in effect for some time.

  Genetically, where do we even begin? The hallmarks of genetic engineering and manipulation are everywhere. Layer upon layer, even getting started on any useful analysis will take months, then likely decades to make any sense of it. Just because the Federation prohibits this sort of thing outside of correcting for disabilities, it doesn't mean we are in any way ignorant. What's remarkable is the depth and intensity of the modifications, as a species the Hattorans must have been doing this extensively, or having this done to them, for a very, very long time. Just to begin making sense of it in short order I had to place an order to Engineering to divert more resources to the ship's computer cores. Whatever species they were when they first decided to reach for the stars, it could not have greatly resembled what the Hattorans are today.

   As for these two examples, scans place the physical age of both at around 50 years, earth standard, but as for physical development all signs point to something around late adolescence. Their genetics (fascinatingly partially triple helix DNA) use something we can identify as analogous to telomeres, and these show as close to zero degradation as I can measure. As far as I can tell, aging processes have come to a near standstill, past a slowed version of typical development towards full adulthood. There is all possibility that, so far as the ravages of time are concerned, theHattorans may be effectively immortal without external aid.

  Blue-skinned fingers set the datapad down onto the desk. Doctor Rubhal reflected on his own eventful life after reviewing his hasty notes on the visitors for a third time. 80 years to Starfleet (total). Two retirements. One of them involuntary. One medical rejuvenation. (related to the previous retirement). His third stint in Starfleet Medical. What kept bringing him back, with long stints away from his amazing, expanding family? Well he had a definite answer now.

  The physically 46 year old Andorian decagenarian ran fingers through his white hair. The last five hours had been intense. Exhilarating. If he didn't like excitement he wouldn't have taken posting on a tip-of-the-spear heavy cruiser. Again.

  "Well we're not at war with anyone this time, so at least there's that." Rubhal ended up muttering out-loud to himself, the empty room, and the two sedated and secured Hattorans behind --

  "You are, you just don't know it yet."

  Doctor Rubhal spun quickly to the noise, simultaneously bringing his hand up to his chest to activate the combadge. He found his arm caught in a hot, iron-like grip millimeters away from the small delta shield. He froze with the sight of white scaled fingers securely about his wrist. The dark scaled one stepped into view in front of him, teeth glinting, her scales still smoking from brute forcing her way out of the bed's level 2 restraining field.

  "So how about let's discuss how you're going to help us get out of here and back to our jobs."

  The Hattorans had been conscious for over an hour before they made their move, bloodstreams purged of the chemical sedatives, other compounds generated within their specialized bodies to eliminate lingering effects and ready them for action, while keeping their vital signs steady and unalarming. Starfleek, or whatever they were calling themselves, had clearly not come up with countermeasures to secure telepathic communication, or superconducting scales that could slip a restraining field if you knew where to push it just so and have a massive pain tolerance, or, as in this case, if you can simply turn pain reception off until the devices very considerate self-injury failsafe cutoffs are exceeded. 

  Plans were formulated in the complete secrecy of telepathy, and they were not going to be caught negotiating from a point of weakness. A hostage would ensure a certain level of commitment.

-------
 
   Rubhal required little convincing to agree to comply with their escape attempt. This was partly out of protocol, partly how the doctor knew, better than anyone else on the ship, the hopelessness of resistance a single Andorian could offer, and partly because... he wanted to see what would happen. 

   He had been criticized for it before. And of course it had essentially ruined his marriage when he re-enlisted in Starfleet only ten years after it nearly killed him. Not through the medical rejuvenation introducing a 50 year age gap, but because, as Doctor Rubhal had eventually come to realize, he craved the excitement in his life.

  Now being hurried out of Medlab, between the two aliens with a tight grip on the back of his uniform, Rubhal was experiencing no shortage of excitement. These two appeared to know where they were going, transitioning from the main hallway to an access shaft before anyone spotted them: The Relentless had a crew of over 1200, but it was also a very large ship, with plenty of opportunity to move unnoticed.

  "Past here, they're going to know we are on the move, So the plan is to move faster than they can predict. If you can't keep up, doc, you will be carried. I can't guarantee that will be pleasant." 

  Rubhal reflexively put both hands up when the female's claws on his chest pressed him firmly back into the bulkhead. "I intend to cooperate fully with.."

  "I'm talking about your capability, not your intentions." She gestured down the narrow access tube. "It's a 300 meter sprint, breach across a hallway, into the next access shaft, then another 50, then a fight, and you're awfully tall for the cramped quarters."

  "I'm capable, I'll do my best." the physician answered. "It's hardly my first life-or-death situation." He watched as the whitescaled Hattoran spat something into his palm, and slapped it down onto the bulkhead.  The smell of smoke and heated metal quickly rose in the close confines.
 
  "What.. what are your names?" the Andorian asked. "I'm-"

  "Doctor Rubhal Th'eqelnas. We got a download about this ship and crew before... Before things went to complete shit." She said as they all stood, watching glowing, sparking lights spread into a circular area 30cm wide, more acrid smoke rising as it started to form a bowl-shaped divot in the metal with a small dome at the center. 

  "You can't pronounce our names, and we don't even use them that much. We know who we are." She finally replied. Rubhal could sense her tension. Her claws were, impossibly, digging centimeter-deep furrows into the metal wall of the jefferies tube, without even trying.

  "It would help." Rubhal insisted, sincerely.

  "You call us Hattorans here. That's.." This one was a deep dig into the implanted recon data that they all get before a mission, a massive informational and cultural data dump into the internal storage of their implants. A few hours in and without use and reinforcement some of the lower priority data was already starting to fade. "Earth regional culture, Japan? I guess something on that theme..." She glanced over to her brother, who was scooping five burnt-looking berry-sized spheres out of the smoking hole left by the nanoforge nanites. "Fuck, we have to make do with this?" 

  Her brother shrugged and gestured. Lack of materials, lack of time. He passed her three of the orbs. Rubhal lost track of where they went after that.

  "Fiine." She sighed, rubbing her face before pointing at her brother. "Fuyu. Call me Arashi. That'll be acceptable. Good?  Let's go."

-------

  Rubhal couldn't remember the last time he had moved so quickly, so carelessly. Just keeping up was taking everything he had, banging against walls the whole way and collecting a whole fascinating new set of blue bruises.

  The Hattorans moved through the tubes like they had lived an entire lifetime in them. A yellow alert was sounded almost as soon as they started moving, the sensors in the tubes detecting unauthorized personnel, which was quickly escalated when it became clear precisely which unauthorized personnel it was. Strangely there was no lockdown, no forcefields blocking off movement through the tubes, and most disappointingly, no suddenly finding himself in the transporter room with a security team. Since they'd started their run, he couldn't help but notice, with dell developed senses towards exactly this sort of thing, the amount of heat radiating off of the.. off of Fuyu... was dramatically higher than before. 

  Arashi hit the first hatch without slowing down, then turned a hard right. "See ya at the shuttle bay!"  Before Rubhal could get in a word, he was yanked the other direction, and pulled into the next Jeffries tube after Fuyu, whose wings were now trailing shimmers of rising, intense heat. 

  Rubhal spoke up, concerned. "Is that-Rrk!"  He was unceremoniously yanked along, stumbling after the whitescaled Hattoran until they dropped into a maintenance office adjoining the shuttlebay.  Fuyu pressed himself right up against the airlock-grade hatch, slapping his palm flat to the center, leaning in close as Rubhal watched light flicker, the Hattoran exhaling a steady flame against the door, over his hand.

"What're you... doing?"

  The Hattoran pulled back from the door and returned to Rubhal, tucking an arm around the doctor's middle. Rubhal flinched. Those scales were almost too hot to touch. Turning his gaze back to the door, Fuyu held up three fingers. Then two, then one.

Oh.

  A device had constructed itself on the center of the hatch, about ten centimeters on a side. Still smoking, slightly glowing chevrons pointed towards a similarly glowing circle in the center. There was no more time for Rubhal to ponder its purpose as a dark-scaled blur flashed past them at a full sprint at what must have been pushing a hundred kilometers an hour. 

  Arashi slammed into the hatch foot first, dead center on the device. But what should have been a loud crash was instead dead silence, the Hattoran's momentum seemingly instantly cancelled as she dropped lightly to her feet in front of the door, grinning a disturbing amount of teeth. "Let's go!" She yelled, at just about the same time that the hatch simply stopped being there, followed by a sharp blast of displaced air. Arashi launched herself so hard through the gap, that her toes left long gashes in the deck plates below. Rubhal felt himself dragged forward and into smoking chaos.

-------

  Layton was interrupted by a tremendous bang. He felt a compression wave crack past, and by the time his brain had registered that something had flown past, the deformed bulkhead hatch had already smacked loudly off of the shielded shuttlebay door 60 meters behind him as if it had been fired from a cannon. Somehow, it hadn't hit anyone.

  His initial shock felt like it dragged on forever, though it couldn't have been more than a second. The 200 kilogram door, now crushed beyond recognition, had still not come to rest, crashing through a stack of grav-pallets before wedging itself underneath a utility mover.

  "They're here! Turn on the generators!" He barked. He'd anticipated their escape attempt. Determined exactly where they would go. Convinced the security chief that lockdown would just make them unpredictable. That part was perfect. It's their movement that surprised him. It was an hour before even the most generous predictions of them waking up. When the alert went up that they had escaped holding, they were already half-way to the shuttle bay.

  Layton's trap had been hastily assembled, but at least it was assembled, barely. Portable shield generators and sonic projectors would hem them in and disable them. He had 30 marines and security in firing positions between the door and the shuttles. Wide-angle stunners, personal shields, replicated barriers, and visored helmets to protect their senses against devices like the ones used against him on the Heinlein. It wasn't perfect, but it was pretty good, and he'd had just enough time to take out a little insurance as well.

  Smoke erupted instantly all around, swirled with dark, sparkling particles. Something flashed past Layton's face to slam into the projector beside him. His eyes followed the movement to a deep gash that had been torn in the emitter. Deeper, there was a shining edge of a dark dragonscale. The projector was already starting to smoke and catch on fire. Simultaneously the same thing was happening to the other pieces of heavy equipment. 

  Layton pivoted around the modular barrier and raised his rifle, the holo scope flashing up in front of his eyes. There was pulsed fire at the other side of the bay, flashing through the smoke. The field generators had all been taken out. He could barely make out one of the Hattorans, smashing through the right flank in close combat. Where was the other one? He wondered as the rifle scope flickered and glitched into uselessness.

-------

  Modern phasers had a variety of onboard targeting assist sensors that helped steer shots towards the center of a target where they could have the most effect. The disruptive, nanite-filled smoke not only absorbed much of the energy from each pulse, but also confused the sensors, making the usual target lock unreliable at best.

  The pair of Hattorans had decided to not hold anything back in the shuttlebay. Everything depended on making it to one of the small spacecraft with their hostage. The kinetic amplifier assembled by Fuyu's nanoforge made for a fine entry and dynamic distraction tool, and the twins were fully doused in combat drugs excreted by specialized organs, sharpening their already considerable senses and reactions, everything seeming to move in slow motion around them.

  First through the door, Arashi took in the situation, even while her nanite smoke bombs were hurtling towards their targets.  

<+ Opfor with hard cover and energy rifles, fifteen left, seven front, twelve right. Heavy weapons two each. Objective 50 meters ahead. Neutralizing the hardware left and center and moving all speed for close combat left. You need to get the ones on the right. +> 

  The Hattoran combat language, efficiently designed by ancient and powerful AI minds, could articulate an entire battle situation in as little as three words. Fast under normal circumstances, the telepathic bond shared between the siblings allowed them to simply image the phrases to each other, almost instantly. 

  Arashi threw four blades in one motion, each made from scales specialized for the purpose, treated for hardness and density and honed to a perfect edge. Each one struck home into one of the shield generators or sonic projectors, ruining them.

  The defenders still had their heads turned from the bulkhead door slamming to the far back of the shuttlebay. Arashi turned hard, claws tearing jagged rents into the metal deck below as she charged in a low run, directly at the first modular barrier on the left, her wingarms pounding onto the top of the barrier as she shouldered hard into it, the shock of the impact spreading quickly over her scales and through her skeleton, overloading the magnatomic panels at its base. The barrier jolted back by a meter, sending the defenders behind it tumbling to the deck. The hot, nanite-clouded smoke was just starting to fill the area ahead of her as she charged up the line.

  Fuyu had kept a jamming signal up for nearly three minutes now. This was not a typical usage even under the best conditions. After disposing of many of their nanites before being captured, he had limited resources to work with, but had planned ahead and focused on replicating EW nanites. He was now generating an effective jamming field for at least a dozen meters or so, but the amount of waste heat it generated in doing so was immense. The fight had just started and he was already breathing hard, more blood going to his wings to help dissipate the heat. Thankfully pain wasn't a factor, those signals to his brain completely deadened for now, otherwise he'd be completely incapacitated by it. It wouldn't be long before the overheat would start to do real damage, the sort that can't be fixed in a few hours. One of those hot wings was tucked around their hostage, the cold-weather alien not taking the intensity especially well. 

  Fuyu threw his smoke beads, followed by a pair of white scales  to disable the generator and projector on his side. Unlike Arashi's direct assault, he waited a tick before running low into the nanite smoke, all but dragging Doctor Rubhal with him as he charged more or less straight for the runabout. He mentally activated the secondary function of the EW nanites as he reached the forward line of defenders and their cover barriers, as a phaser shot from the right smacked his wing, spreading a patch of hot numbness even past his scales. 

  <+ Dragon-fear is up. Stop playing with them and get in the shuttle, slowpoke. +>  A third scale was thrown, blunt end hitting the release for the shuttle's rear hatch. He dug claws into the barrier ahead of him, wrenching it up off the deck and dragging it along as he charged towards the dropping hatch.

-------

  Layton watched the squad in front of the shuttle break like a bunch of fresh recruits. At the edge of the effect, he felt the same tingle he had on the Heinlein. So it WAS some kind of psychic attack? Not unprepared this time, he fired his rifle, but these Hattorans were moving so fast, and the tracking assist had been rendered useless. His ears were ringing from the dump of adrenaline, even at the edge of effect, and he only barely heard the transporter tech through the comm's ventriloquist circuit piping the sound right into his ear to be heard at all over the noise.

"Unable to get a lock on anything in there, Commander! We can't extract the doctor like this!"

  Layton gritted his teeth and pulled the energized baton from his belt, forcing himself into a dead run at the runabout's opening hatch. Through the smoke, he nearly ran into a Karrian-shaped wall that couldn't have been anyone but the Relentless's security chief. 

  Lieutenant Ral was just over 2 meters of reptilian wrapped in smooth green hide. The Karrians had joined the Federation several hundred years ago and were generally a very respectful, peaceful people. Ral was one of those people who was the most gentle and easygoing sort, right up until the moment they weren't. Layton was pretty sure the Lieutenant deliberately requested his uniform a size too small. He granted that just added to the effect. Ral was built like a truck.

  They met eyes, seeming in silent agreement with what had to be done. There wasn't time for discussion. Sporadic phaser bolts flashed closer through the smoke-filled air, following the whitescaled Hattoran, who was moving far too quickly for dragging both an incoherently screaming Andorian and a 200kg "portable" barricade along for the ride. Echoes shimmered around the Hattoran, images generated by the nanite smoke and making his movements hard to follow.

  Layton barely had time to pass his shock baton to Ral. This close, the aura surrounding the Hattoran felt like a lead weight resting directly over his heart. Layton recalled exercises for this sort of thing. Breathe. Focus. He had to get Doctor Rubhal out, no matter what. Ral would be the distraction, taking the Hattoran head-on. Given what he'd seen, it wouldn't buy him much time. 

  Ral threw himself at the white Hattoran, a sparking baton clutched in each hand. Layton moved in from the other side, hoping to at least get his hands on the hostage. From his angle, Layton could see the Hattoran's toes flex, hard talons digging deep into the deck. In a moment, he understood what was happening, even if he could scarcely believe it himself.

"Ral, look out!"

  The white Hattoran twisted, bracing on that solidly planted foot to heave the entire barricade in a scything arc. There was nowhere for Ral to dodge something that large, unyielding alloy smacking into the Karrian security chief. Layton barely had time to tumble to the side and keep from being collected too, as both Ral and the barricade came crashing to the deck. Layton still had his momentum, pushing off and making a lunge for the hostage, almost within reach. 

  The Hattoran hopped, pulling those talons free from the deck. He should have been unbalanced, but a simple pivot pulled the hostage out of Layton's reach. At about the same time that he noticed the sound of phaser fire had stopped, Layton spotted the broad, black club at the end of the Hattoran's tail, aimed straight for his head.

  Some seconds later, lifting himself shakily up off the deck, tasting blood, Layton grabbed for the hand phaser that was, thankfully, still at his belt. He was dazed but he wasn't out, taking a moment to re-orient himself to the runabout, raising his weapon.  The dark-scaled Hattoran had just stepped inside after her partner. She had been wearing a basic hospital gown, replicated for the aliens when they were brought into medbay. Not much of it had survived the firefight, tattered remains barely hanging onto her scaled form. She seemed wholly unconcerned. She was holding two broken halves of a phaser rifle, the emitter at one end shattered, and spattered with blood.

  "Hey, it's you!" Arashi exclaimed, as she tossed the halves of the broken rifle out and punched the button to close the vessel's hatch. "Really like the tenacity, great effort! Better luck next time, hero!" 

  Layton was too confused to fire, or even to know if he should at this point. He watched as the hatch snapped shut with a solid clunk.