McFly

Honestly, you should give the musical episode a chance. I'm not really a musical fan either but damn if they didn't do a great job with it. :D

And I agree, they made Picard way too dark in more ways than one.

Four ships flew at high warp. Three of them maintained a triangle formation. The two on the bottom were Saber class escort ships, the one at the top, an Akira class tactical ship. In the middle was a small towing vessel. Its shape was little more than a cockpit and two warp nacelles. Behind it was the dorsal fin module of a Nebula class starship encased in skeletal cage structure attached to the rear of the towing vessel.

The ship’s Commander sat in her chair at the center of the small bridge, a room barely larger than that of a runabout. In front of her was the pilot, to her left along the wall of the bridge was her ops officer and to the Commander’s right along the opposite wall sat an engineer keeping a watch on the precious cargo.

“Eta five hours, Commander,” said the pilot broadcasting to the small crew.

“Aye, Lt.,” the Commander replied, “I know we have a while yet to go but let’s try not to get too comfortable.” She said with a smirk as she began to sip her coffee.

The engineer leaned back in her chair. “I don’t understand why everyone was so uptight about this thing. It’s not like we haven’t transported a tail fin before. They made it sound like this was some kind of top secret weapon.”

“No idea,” chimed in the ops officer, “all I know is I’m tired of people acting like I don’t know how to do my job. I’ve been doing this eight years, I think I got it figured out by now.”

As he spoke, an alert went off on his console.

“Commander, there’s a ship pulling up along our aft in the warp stream. It’s unidentifiable, no transponder signals and scans aren’t showing anything familiar about it.”

“Check in with our escorts,” said the Commander. She immediately turned her attention to the pilot. “Lt., maintain heading and speed.”

“Aye.”

“Escorts are aware and are establishing contact.” The ops officer taps a button that pipes in the comm audio to the loud speaker.

“Unknown vessel, please identify yourself,” said the lead escort Captain over the comm.

Everyone on the bridge looked at each other, waiting for something to happen.

After no response, the escort Captain tried again. “Unknown vessel, this is a Federation convoy. Please move along or you will be in violation of harassing a cargo container.”

Again, no response. The cargo crew can hear the Captain becoming frustrated over the open comm. “Unknown vessel, if you do not break off immediately, we will be forced to open fire.”

The cargo Commander looked over to her engineer. “Divert excess power to aft shields.”

“Unknown vessel, this is your final warning. Break off your pursuit immediately or we will open fire.” Over the open comm, the Captain can be heard speaking with his bridge officers. “Load torpedoes and target their engines.”

Just then, the strange ship opened up a set of bay doors near the front of the ship and lowered out what looked like a deflector dish off a Federation ship. It begins to glow.

The cargo ship began to shake and the Pilot spoke up frantically, “Commander! Our warp field is collapsing!”

“Compensate, Lt.!”

“Nothing’s working! We’re dropping out of warp!”

The cargo vessel and the three escort ships all dropped out of warp with the strange ship still behind them. But in front of them were three more ships of similar design.

“They’re blocking comms,” said the ops officer. “We can’t even send out a distress signal.”

“Divert all power to shields. Let the escorts do their job.”

The three escort ships broke formation to begin an attack run. But one at a time, the escort ships were overwhelmed by a combined attack of all three of the strange vessels until all three escorts were destroyed.

Their attention then turned to the cargo vessel. With no weapons, they had no way to defend themselves. But amazingly, the ships weren’t attacking. The fourth ship, the one that had found them in the beginning, continued to sit menacingly behind the cargo ship. Then another door opened up and a small shuttle flew out. It rammed into the cargo ship’s shields but couldn’t break through. It just pushed forward causing a disruption.

The ops officer tried to get a handle on what they were doing. “I don’t understand what they’re doing. They don’t have enough power to break through with a shuttle. Why don’t they just fire at us?”

“Please don’t give them any ideas,” said the pilot feeling helpless at the moment.

“Wait a minute,” said the ops officer. “They’re scanning someth—They’re scanning our shield frequency!”

“Lt.! Rotate shield frequency!” the Commander yelled out to the engineer.

The engineer found herself in a battle of speed between rotating the frequency and the shuttle scanning the right one at the right time. For a moment it looked as if the engineer was out witting them but suddenly the two sides stumbled on the same frequency at the same time and the shuttle slipped through the cargo ships shields.

The Commander grabbed her nearby side arm. “Everyone, ready phasers!”

Inside, they could see the shuttle fly around the front of the bridge. Suddenly something hit the roof of the ship with a loud thud. They looked around at each other as nothing happened.

Then suddenly! An electrical charge enveloped the entire ship. Inside they could see electricity arcing over every console and then… darkness. The entire ship shut down. They looked around waiting for someone or something to push its way through, but nothing.

Through the windows they could see the three ships moving in. Then they could hear the sound of metal clanking. Inside, the ship began to shutter and they could hear the bulkheads staining. Then, the ship violently shakes with the sound of something breaking apart.

The ship began to drift out with the crew still inside and no ability to stop whatever was happening from happening.

The ship twists and turns as it continued to drift in open space. It turned just enough for them to see out the side window, first debris and then, as the edges of the dorsal module came into view, multiple bright flashes with nothing left but floating bits of metal.

= /\ = USS MANTICORE BRIEFING #1249, STARDATE 52312.18 = /\ =
The Manticore-B has just finished her shakedown cruise and is
sitting at Starbase -REDACTED- preparing to receive its new PK
module.

Meanwhile, Kansas, on her new assignment as head of Presidential
security, escorted the Federation President to a diplomatic
summit on the lunar colony. While giving his speech she noticed
a sniper in the rafters and quickly dove for the President hoping
she moved him in time.

Faldek and Gila are now a year into an undercover assignment on
Cardassia. The purpose of which the crew has not been notified of.
They've met up with an old friend and continue their search for
-REDACTED- and so far have not had much success.
= /\ = END USS MANTICORE BRIEFING #1249, STARDATE 52312.18 = /\ =