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Thelin leaped from his seat. “Helm! Run evasive maneuvers around the starboard-side hostile; tactical, lay down strafing fire as we pass. Force that vessel to disengage from the Excelsior.”

Wasting no time, the Copernicus swept past the Klingon ship while repeatedly firing phasers upon it before quickly withdrawing to prepare for another pass. But their efforts seemed to have little effect. The shields on the bird-of-prey held, and it continued to pummel the Excelsior mercilessly.

“Sir,” Ensign Lee shouted, holding his hand to his ear as he attempted to make sense of the subspace chatter the engagement had produced. “The Excelsior’s a sitting duck. She has to disengage.”

Thelin reassessed the situation. While the bird-of-prey remained staked out before the dock doors, the Yorktown would be unable to get clear. “All right,” he said. “Then it’s up to us to eliminate that bird in front of the spacedock.”

“Negative, sir,” Lee responded. “Yorktown is a no-go. They’re closing the dock doors.”

“What?” Thelin shouted back. “Would you mind asking Starfleet Command just what exactly we’re supposed to do out here?”

“Sir, Starfleet Command reports three available starships in the system at the Utopia Planitia shipyards. They’ve just warped out from Mars. They’ll be here in five minutes.”

“We could be dead in five minutes,” the captain fired back. Such an amount of time, Thelin knew, was practically an eternity during this type of engagement, and his crew of science specialists had certainly not been prepared to go into battle. Had Federation Intelligence been caught totally unaware that the Klingons were planning to disrupt their mission? The devastation wreaked upon Earth had apparently crippled the government more seriously than anyone was willing to admit.

But, curiously, the Klingon ships now seemed content to sit and wait. The Excelsior had circled around and come to a more defensive position, but the birds showed no signs of taking further aggressive action. Despite the lull, Thelin knew better than to relax for even a moment.

“Captain!” Lee suddenly shouted. “I’m receiving additional transmissions from Utopia Planitia. They’re reporting three more Klingon B’rel-class birds-of-prey now in orbit around Mars.”

“Over the shipyards?!” Thelin exclaimed.

“Yes, sir!”

“Put it on speakers.”

Lee flipped the necessary controls, and the confused, slightly panicked voices sounded out, overlapping one another with increasing intensity.

“-have decloaked directly above the Odyssey Depots, coordinates twenty-seven point five degrees latitude-”

“-negative communications. Klingon hostiles are not responding to hails. No heavy cruisers are in range to intercept; we are mobilizing all light cruisers and scoutships-repeat, all light cruisers-”

“Oh my God…Platform fifteen, do you have visual at coordinates one-two-seven mark fifty-five?”

“Stand by…Confirmed, we have visual evidence of multiple energy surges, bearing-”

“They’re decloaking! Red alert! Priority Starfleet Command, we count approximately sixteen…correction, approximately twenty D7-and K’tinga-class Klingon cruisers in attack formation! Incoming, bearing three-”

“Firing! Repeat, we are taking heavy fire! Starfleet Command, the shipyards are under attack! All vessels, engage at will, priority-”

“It’s a goddamn armada…”

Thelin looked about the bridge at his crew-all of them motionless, stunned, gazing straight ahead with open mouths. Carol Marcus, about whom he had nearly forgotten in the midst of the crisis, looked as if she wanted to curl up into a ball and hide.

“Planetwide broadcast to Earth from Starfleet Command,” Ensign Lee said, his voice quivering ever so slightly. “Orders are for all Federation government personnel to evacuate the system.”

“What?” Croy exclaimed. “They’re abandoning the planet?”

“Pull it together, Lieutenant,” Thelin admonished him. “It’s just a precaution.”

A drastic precaution, Thelin thought to himself. An acknowledgment of the worst-case scenario.

The Andorian gazed at the Copernicus viewscreen as desperate transmissions from the carnage