The Fleet waited. Soon the Tholians would pull back their heavy ships. As soon as they realized that the Klingons wouldn't fight. Kanda' was too busy looking for the escape. They had blown the silent running gear long ago. Now they were simply running for their lives.
The mission was over, Kanda' thought. We have done enough damage. The list of kills was long. Over fifty ships, fifteen of them war ships. With only a handful lost in trade. The high command would see that his plan was the best. The invasion fleet had failed. Kanda' had scooped up the defeat and turned it into victory. Now it was time to go home. How? They were webbed into the belt zone. Cut off on all sides, and open space would be their death ground. They couldn't outrun the Tholian ships. Soon there would be no open space, the smaller patrol cruisers were busy filling the holes with web.
Hit a web with your ship and you stop. Your power energizers are sucked dry, absorbed into the web. Your ship loses it's power and you are trapped helpless. That was how they had lost the patrol ships. The mines had been protected by web. Kanda' had thought them capable of manuevering around the strands, small enough to slip between them. They had become trapped. Picked off one by one from the mining stations single phaser. It had been impossible to return fire. The web blocked all but the tholian phasers. The PF crews had died not in battle, but as an insect in a spiders web. Trapped! Caught like flies.
"There is a weakness in the web to port" said the science officer. "It seems unstable. Losing power. Perhaps the web tender has failed. Sir. I think we should try to exploit it, test it. Though it may be a trick."
"Or our only chance" said the navigator.
"Very well." said Kanda' "We'll try it. Engine room, I want full power available for movement after the weapons have been energized. Karath, signal the fleet!"
The Communications officer nodded his head and bent over his panel. The fleets channels lit up in reply.
The five ships turned on the weakened section of web. Phasers blasting out towards the smaller Tholian web tenders. One flaired and drifted into a large rock. The webbing collapsed. The other scrambled desperately to repair the anchor. The Klingon ships blasted it into scrap with concentrated fire. Beyond, the web, Kanda' could see the other Tholian ships. Waiting for the Klingons to emerge from the belt. He signalled the fleet to halt. The waiting game continued. The sciences officer had been correct.
The Hive mind was troubled. Two web tenders destroyed. The web anchor in section three had malfunctioned and the klingons had silenced the crews of the repair ships. Dias-Gran was disturbed. The royal mind had commanded that the Softbodys that had invaded the crystal mines must be ended. Too many minds had been silenced. Too much crystal lost. The inferno within his command cubicle shed little heat to warm the ice that he felt close around his spirit. More little brothers lost to the Softbody invaders. Dias-Gran did not understand hate or love, He could not realize why the softbody Klingons were so different from the softbody humans. To Dias-Gran they were alike and he could see no outward difference. The Klingons attacked and destroyed. The Humans did not. To Dias-Gran it made no sense. This galaxy was filled with softbodys and the only difference between them was that some attacked and some did not. The five Klingon ships he had trapped waited in the asteroid belt. He knew that they would come out and when they did, he would be waiting. He waited and watched the screen.
Kanda' watched the tactical display. It showed four Neo-Tholian heavy cruisers, and a host of smaller vessels. Web tenders, patrol cruisers, and other lighter ships. Tholians do not sleep. They do not grow tired of the waiting. They do not feel anticipation or anxiety like we do, thought Kanda'. They will wait until we grow too restless to remain. They know that we must make the first move. Already, more web tenders and Patrol cruisers were moving into the gap and repairing the web. Soon, the hole will be plugged. Soon it would be too late to escape.
"It may be possible" commented Shug Koran, Captain of the war cruiser Velarian. "If we can accelerate the rocks. My engineer thinks that it may be possible to modify the warp envelope to contain one of them. The problem is that the warp signature will show up on their sensors."
"Yes. We blew all of the special shielding in the battle of the moons. It was either that or be trapped." said Rak Sha Tha first officer of the war cruiser Expeidian. "We have to attempt something. We can't sit here forever."
Kanda' looked around the council table. All of the captains and their officers were gathered. Something had to be done. Shug had suggested that they throw rocks. Actually it was brilliant. Each ship would use it's tractor beams to accelerate a number of asteroids. Get enough of them moving, and the ships could use them as a shield. A moving wall that they could use to block the fire of the majority of the Tholian vessels.
"They would simply toss web in front of the rocks and catch us and the rocks. No. It wouldn't work." Rak Sha Tha slammed his fist down on the table. The Captains and officers started to talk among themselves, trading desperate ideas. Something had to be done. Soon.
"How many rocks could we toss at them if we tossed them a few at a time?" asked Kanda'.
The others grew quiet and looked to the head of the table. Shug laughed, "we could go on throwing rocks forever, here we are sitting in an asteroid belt!" He looked around at the gathered captains and grinned wickedly, he knew as the others did that when Kanda' started asking these seemingly obvious questions that something, some clever plan was being formulated.
"How many would they stop? The first few, just to see what we are up to? If we kept lobbing out asteroids some with sensor drones, they might, after a while, think that we are simply looking for weaknesses. They just might let a few of them pass. And if we kept doing it, they might even think we were trying to hit them with the rocks. Koraniss, is it possible to hollow out a few of the larger asteroids and place a ship inside? Held in place by it's own tractor beams?"
Kanda's own engineer thought about it for a moment, then said, "Yes captain, a few well placed sensor pickups, on the outside, we still have the rigs from the silent running gear. Some explosives on the inside, to split the rock when you wanted to get out. Yes, it would work. It would take time to set it up and..."
"Captain, they are closing the gap!" Called out the watch officer on the bridge. "The Cruisers are spinning the web."
"It seems, Koraniss, that we have plenty of time. What do you think?"
The Officers and captains liked it. It was at least worth a try. Desperate as it was.
The First asteroid was vaporized in miliseconds by the combined fire of over twenty Tholian ships. After five more came screaming out, they stopped firing and began to trap them in web. A few got past, and after investigating the sensor chirps, they discovered that they were simply rocks. The Klingon ships were still on the tactical display. Five blips moving around in the belt. a blip would grab a rock with it's tractor beams, and accelerate towards the gap. Just before it came within firing distance, it would drop the tractor beam and reverse direction. The rocks came tumbling out, usually aimed at the position of a Tholian heavy ship. They were easily avoided or destroyed. Dias_Gran was confused. This behavior was not efficient. Had the Klingons lost their minds? Throwing rocks with their ships? It made no sense. Perhaps they were trying to clear out an area, dig through a section of the Belt where it was difficult to manuever. Phasers would be much more effective. Dias-Gran did not understand. For two days, the Klingons kept it up. Tossing a few extreemly large asteroids, that took two ships to accelerate. These Dias-Gran let slip by. After four days, the Klingons had ceased their bizzare behavior. Only two of the five blips moved at all on the display and those circled in a patrol pattern around the other ships. After a week, one of the blips did something very strange. It left it's circleing pattern and hit a large asteroid. The blip vanished. No explosion, no energy, just simply vanished. Within an hour, all of the other blips dimmed and vanished. Lights out. Dias-Gran ordered a patrol cruiser to investigate.
The Cruiser entered the gap and was startled to see nothing but asteroids. The Klingon ships, so long bright on the display, were gone.
The Prowler and her four escorts were racing for the border at extreme speed. The engines were screaming in agony but continued to push the ships along. At this speed, they would be highly visible and easy to intercept. The sensor crews were the most important people on the ship. The Border was only a few days away now. They were crossing open space. Away from the belt angleing towards Klingon space. Not the most direct route, but probably the safest.
Kanda' noted in his log, "For two days we tossed asteroids out. Small ones then larger. We had placed sensor drones in many to confuse their sensor crews. The Engineers spent the time, making an asteroid for each ship. We scavenged the special sensor arrays from the silent running gear and with a little help from the labs, converted them into transmitters. Two of these we placed on type III drone bodys and sent them running in circles. The hardest part was simulating the accelerating ships. Korath Rouger, Chief engineer of the Tender scraped together some warp booster packs, and emplaced them on the exterior of the rocks that would hold our ships. At the correct time, when each of us were making the run out, we would use our engines to accelerate the rock, then turn on the warp booster packs to keep the rock moving, turn off our engines, and launch the Sensor package back into the hollow. It would appear to any sensor operator to look like what we had done so often in the last few days. Braking just before the gap and reversing direction.
We drifted for days. Using the booster packs sparingly and then only to correct course for the Asteroth system. Once in the system, we blew the rocks and engaged the warp engines again. The tender may not be able to keep up in our race to the border. I expect to be intercepted. The drones only have enough power for a week. We sacrificed some of our main batteries and energizers to make them appear real. The Tholians will realize the rouse and then all of them will come looking for us. Kanda', Captain of the Prowler, Out."