"qablIj Hi'ang!" Ngara snarled the traditional challenge at the approaching Son of T'Mokh. She crafted a dance of fast precise spins to the tempo of her anger. Sweat dripped off the glistening ridges of her forehead, beading on her eyelashes. "I will toast my father's honor over your corpse, you sniveling p'takh!"

A master of the spear, Lughor did not fear her. Blow for blow, he would match her dazzling display of warrior-craft."qabwIj vIso'be!"he growled, revealing himself as one well schooled in the ways of battle. In one deft motion, he rent in twain her sleeve from shoulder to wrist. She roared in anger.

Weapons clashed. Lughor pushed against her. Ngara deflected each blow. Grunting, she gained ground on him. She raised her spear over her shoulder, heaving the point into Lughor's thigh. In pain, he staggered backward. Calling upon Kahless, he found the strength with which he could combat her fiery fury.

The struggle began in earnest: thrust, parry, spin away. Weapons locked as the combatants matched rippling muscle against rippling muscle.

Her pulse, pounding through her ears, deafened her to Lughor's mocking provocations. She cried, "On this night, I will stand in hot black pools of your blood, spilled when I slit your throat!" Ngara flew through the air, her spear before her, aiming for his throat.

Lughor's eyes narrowed. In a feline crouch, he leaped up to intercept her chonnaQ with his own. Ngara's weapon snapped in two. Roping his arm around her waist, Lughor wrested her to the ground. In one swift movement, he stripped her of the knife strapped to her thigh.

A battle cry rang from her throat. Ngara broke free of Lughor's grip. Flipping him onto his back, she straddled his waist, curling her sharp fingernails into his skin. Lughor bucked, but Ngara bored him down, pressing his shoulders to the ground. The sticky sweat-slick cohesion of their bare limbs fused their bodies together as they wrestled on the forest floor. Pungent air, heady and thick with their mingling musks fed their desire.

The smell of Lughor's blood on her hands suffused Ngara's senses; she longed to flick her tongue in his wound, greedily lapping the droplets from his skin. Hunger for her burned in his dark eyes. Pinning her arms above her head, Lughor slid his d'k tahg beneath the lacings of her leather corset, blade against breast. "I will have you!" he growled. And with a swift up-thrust --

"Nog, what the hell are you reading?"

The padd Nog had been holding with white-knuckled intensity almost flew out his hand when he heard the voice in his ear. With a clatter, he slammed the padd facedown on the mess hall table and rested his arm on it protectively. All things considered, Defiant' s embarrassed chief engineer felt like he'd come precariously close to leaping out of his own skin.

Nog looked up to see Ezri Dax's upside-down face smiling mischievously at him as she leaned over the top of his head. "At ease, Lieutenant," she said. "I can only assume that wasn't the engineering status report I asked for."

Eyes still fixed on Dax, Nog felt around the top of the table with his free hand, past his bowl of tube grubs and his Eelwasser, and found the padd in question. "Umm, no. That would be this one," he said, handing the padd to Dax. Blessed Exchequer, please spare me this humiliation...

"Thanks," Dax said, straightening up to examine the contents of the report. "I've got Bowers running a diagnostic from the tactical side. With any luck, we can identify where those false readings are coming from when we line this data up with his."

"I'm sure we will," Nog agreed. She's not gonna embarrass me! Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you...

"That must have been some fascinating reading on that other padd," Dax said at length. "You don't often encounter references to leather corsets in Starfleet's engineering manuals."

Ears flushing, Nog winced. The jig, as Vic might say, is up.

"Oh! Burning Hearts of Qo'noS!" exclaimed Engineer Bryanne Permenter, pointing at Nog from across the mess hall. Bringing her tray with her, she plopped down in the chair beside her boss. "Have you gotten to the part where Ngara has the bat'leth duel with the minions of the House of Rutark?"

Nog looked up at Dax. She folded her arms and raised a teasing eyebrow as she waited for Nog's answer.

"Yes, all right! I'm reading Burning Hearts of Qo'noS! There, I said it! Are you happy?" Turning to Permenter, he said excitedly, "That was great! I never thought she'd make it past the bewitched targs guarding the moat, did you?"

Dax rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Is this what all engineers do between duty shifts?"

"Hey, not fair, Lieutenant," Permenter said. "I got it from T'rb in sciences. So they started it. And if the text was in the library computer and not copy-protected, none of us would need to pass the same padd around from one person to the next." Turning to Nog, she said, "Didn't Richter have it before T'rb?"

"No, Richter asked me to pass it to her when I was done," Nog said. "Ensign Senkowski gave it to T'rb."

Retrieving his chef's salad from the replicator, Jason Senkowski announced loudly, "Don't you dare bring me into this. I wouldn't waste time on that poorly written excuse for a novel. Imagine it, Lieutenant," he said, addressing Dax, "a Klingon bodice ripper. I tell you, it's the end of literature as we know it."

Permenter snorted. "This from the man who practically begged me to read Vulcan Love Slave."

Nog looked at Senkowski, surprised. "Really? Which version?"

"The classic original, of course," Senkowski said. "By Krem."

"That's never been proven," Nog pointed out.

Senkowski shrugged as he sat down, one table over from the group. "Never been dis proven, either. I know Iskel is the popular favorite, but I'd say the evidence that Krem was the original author is compelling. Regardless of who actually wrote it, though, I'll take Vulcan Love Slave over Burning Hearts of Qo'noS any day." Senkowski turned his attention back to Defiant's first officer. "And for the record, Lieutenant Dax, I happen to like Starfleet's engineering manuals. I find them pithy, concise, and thorough."

"I appreciate your candor, Ensign," Dax intoned solemnly, trying not to smile. Senkowski had made no secret of his ambition to earn a second pip by the mission's end.

"Still miffed Mikaela got the shift chief promotion, eh, Senkowski," Permenter noted.

"I take my engineering duties seriously," he said, raising a forkful of salad.

"As well you should," Dax said, elbowing Nog.

Taking the hint, Nog added, "You're an invaluable member of the team, Ensign." Pulling the padd close to his chest, he sneaked another look.

Ezri laughed.

"What!" Nog protested. "I'm at the good part!"

The mess hall doors opened, admitting Lieutenant Sam Bowers. "Lieutenant Dax," he called when he saw her, waving a padd.

Whew. Dax can bug someone else for a few minutes. Nog returned to his novel. I just need to see what happens when Lughor's brother...

"Results of the tactical systems diagnostic?" Dax asked, weaving around several empty tables to meet Bowers halfway.

Reluctantly, Nog tore his attention away from Ngara and Lughor's heated encounter. Though he was off duty, the weapons systems problems could spill into the next shift; an advance notice of what he was facing could be helpful.

Holding up the padd triumphantly, Sam told Dax, "Turns out we had a redundant programming problem. Nothing serious after all."

Dax took the padd and scrolled through the data. "That's a relief. Last thing we need in a firefight is a malfunctioning torpedo bay," Ezri said.

Sam nodded in agreement. "Tell me about it. I like to think I'm good at improvising, but I prefer having a full arsenal at my disposal."

Satisfied that the Defiant' s most pressing problem had been resolved, Nog settled in to find out whether Lughor had yet managed to break Ngara's clavicle. Permenter leaned over to see what part he was reading, "oo-ing" and "ah-ing" appropriately.

Unexpectedly, the lights dimmed. Every crewman in the mess hall froze in anticipation.

Nog's sensitive ears heard EPS conduits changing amplitude before plummeting into unhealthy silence. With Burning Hearts of Qo'noS tucked under his arm, Nog was on his way to main engineering before the call from the bridge rang out over the comm system: "Red alert! All hands to battle stations! We're under attack!"

Acrid smoke filled the corridor, stinging her eyes. Half blind, Dax and Bowers rushed onto a bridge in chaos. Along every wall, stations flickered and sparked as crewmen worked to contain fires and route control of key systems to other consoles, only to contend with new malfunctions at those stations. "What the hell happened?" she muttered, unable to hear her own words over the cacophony.

Through the smoke, she made out Vaughn standing in front of the command chair, issuing orders to engineering over his combadge. She stumbled over burned panels thrown aside to facilitate repairs, crunching pieces of shattered control interfaces and carbonized isolinear circuitry. The dim lighting wasn't making it any easier. She heard Sam curse when he saw the condition of tactical.

"Captain," Ezri said, raising her voice to be heard over the Klaxon.

Vaughn pointed toward one of the pulsing red alert lights as he struggled to hear the report coming in. Ezri got the message and found a working panel from which she could mute the Klaxon.

Nog's voice was suddenly audible to her, but he sounded frantic. " -- targeted our energy systems with millions of nanobots. They're eating through our EPS system like acid, bleeding our power. Warp core's down and we're running completely on the auxiliaries. But at the speed the nanobots are working, it won't last long."

"Understood," Vaughn said. "Do what you can, and keep me posted on your progress. Vaughn out."

"What do we know so far?" Dax asked.

"We tripped some kind of sensor web. The instant we penetrated the field, the nanobots just shifted out of subspace and converged on Defiant, entering through the plasma vents. We didn't know what hit us until it was too late. I want a shipwide status report immediately." Turning to Bowers, Vaughn said, "Sam, make sure that whatever we've stumbled into is the end of something and not the beginning."

Seeing that sciences was vacant but at least partially functional, Ezri took a seat and attempted to assess the scope of the damage. Nearby, Prynn Tenmei knelt beside an unconscious Ensign Leishman, the bridge engineer on duty when the attack came. Judging from her injuries and the condition of her station, Ezri concluded at a glance that Leishman's console must have blown right in front of her.

Ezri moved to initiate a site-to-site transport to sickbay, but discovered transporters were down. She relaxed when Ensign Richter entered the bridge, carrying a medkit. Tenmei moved aside to give the nurse room to work. Satisfied that Leishman was being taken care of, Dax returned her attention to coaxing information from the uncooperative ODN.

"Lieutenant Dax," Richter said, removing hyposprays from the kit. "Dr. Bashir wanted me to let you know that high-level radiation is flooding every deck. The whole crew will need hyronalyn inoculations. But we don't have the medical staff to cover."

"I'm not sure who's available," Ezri said.

"I can help," Tenmei offered.

Richter gingerly eased Leishman up off the floor, attaching a neuromonitor to the back of her head. "I don't think she'll need surgery, but Dr. Bashir will have to make that call."

Dax called to two crewmen working by the aft wall of the bridge. "Rahim, M'Nok -- get Leishman to the medical bay." Dax looked at Tenmei. Her face and hands were smudged black, and she looked as though she had a nasty burn on her jawline. "You sure you're up to volunteering, Prynn?"

"I'm fine. Honest," Tenmei said.

Richter shrugged at Dax. "It's her call."

Ezri nodded to Tenmei as the two crewmen saw to Leishman. With Rahim on one side and M'Nok on the other, they lifted the unconscious engineer between them and draped her arms around their shoulders. Richter followed right behind them after handing a hypospray to Tenmei, who stayed just long enough to administer hyronalin to Vaughn, Dax, Bowers, and the remaining bridge officer, Ensign Cassini.

Ezri finally succeeded in calling up the engineering stats. Preliminary readings indicated that the nanobots had become inert. So they were designed to cripple us, not necessarily to kill us, Dax mused. The question is, how much damage have the little monsters done? The diagnostic results, illustrated by green bars, one block stacked upon another, flashed onto her screen, but the data stream stalled with only two or three bars lit. "Come on, you can do it," she urged the damaged Defiant. She watched, waited, and after a few moments that felt like eternity, her heart sank. "Captain," she shouted, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. "We've got a situation."

Vaughn, working with Bowers on tactical, crossed over to the science station.

"Report," he said, resting a hand on the back of Ezri's chair.

"What you're looking at on this screen is the sum total of our power resources, including all backup and auxiliary systems," she said soberly.

Vaughn frowned at the readings. "Three or four hours tops?"

"I'd put it closer to three, but if we shut down all nonessential systems, we might be able to squeeze out a bit more time."

"Do it," he ordered. He returned to the captain's chair. "Mr. Bowers?"

"Yes, sir," Sam responded.

"Send out a broadband distress call--"

"Sir," Cassini said, working from a sensor display. "There's a ship approaching, four-hundred thousand kilometers and closing."

"On screen."

The viewer sputtered reluctantly to life, and Dax's first thought upon seeing the starship was that it looked like a fat metal wheel preparing to roll over them. An oddly configured drive unit formed two flat slabs mounted on the aft curve of the wheel, one atop the other. The part of Ezri that was Torias and Tobin, a pilot and engineer respectively, began to appraise the ship's design for visible signs of its strengths, weaknesses, and functions. How fast can it fly? Are those weapons ports? Friend or foe?

"They're deliberately skirting our trajectory, sir," Bowers reported. "My guess is that they're trying to avoid triggering the sensor web that got us. That may mean they're the ones behind it."

"They could have seen what happened to us and are just looking to avoid the same fate," Cassini pointed out.

"Except that they're closing on us. Down to one hundred fifty thousand kilometers and slowing."

"Hail them," Vaughn ordered.

Sam tapped in commands, waited, and tapped in more commands. He slammed his fist into the console. "Our transmitters are off-line, Captain," he said.

"We're being scanned, sir," Ezri announced, watching the Defiant' s internal sensors register the probe.

"What's our tactical situation, Sam?"

"Phasers and torpedo launchers off-line. Cloaking device and deflector shields nonfunctional. I'd have to say we're sitting ducks, sir."

Vaughn scowled and tapped his combadge. "Bridge to engineering. This would be a good time to tell me our propulsion systems are back on-line, Nog."

"Eighty-five percent of our EPS system is shot, sir, and power levels are plunging. We're doing what we can, but the truth is, we're not going anywhere anytime soon."

"Unknown ship now ten thousand kilometers and closing," Bowers said. "They're hailing us. Receiving a message, but I can't make heads or tails of it. If we have the algorithms necessary for decoding, the universal translator can't find them."

"Audio," Vaughn ordered.

The guttural gibberish blaring over the comm system sounded like no language Ezri had heard in any of her lifetimes. Intermittent static contaminating the stream didn't help matters.

"Unknown ship is coming to relative stop above us, z- plus three hundred meters away, matching our momentum. Distance is now constant." Bowers suddenly cursed and announced in a rising voice, "Transporter signal detected inside main engineering!"

Phaser in hand, Vaughn was headed for the door before the word "engineering" had escaped Bowers' lips. "Dax, you have the bridge. Sam, you're with me."

Cold and dark as a tomb, thought Nog, wishing he could trade his hypersensitive hearing for better night vision. Between the plasma coolant leaks and the EPS system, Nog had enough work to keep his entire staff -- hell, the whole crew -- busy for a week.

"I need more light here," Nog said, up to his elbows inside an access panel alongside the main engineering console. If he could get the primary EPS junction functional, the Defiant might stand a chance. Flat on his back, he gazed up at the singed circuitry, searching for reasons to be optimistic. A sharp, barky cough caused his hands to shake; the hyperspanner clattered to the floor. "Dammit!"

Lying beside him, Ensign Permenter flashed her own light in his direction. "You doing okay, boss? That last burst of plasma got you in the face," she said, concerned.

He coughed. "Without power, coolant is the least of our problems. Pass me that laser drill."

She slapped the tool into Nog's hand, retrieved the hyperspanner from where he dropped it and replaced it in the toolkit. "Heard from Nurse Juarez. Mikaela's gonna be fine."

"One piece of good news," Nog sighed deeply. "See if Senkowski and his team have managed to shore up the auxiliary power."

"Yes, sir," Permenter said, scrambling to her feet.

In the midst of the hum of tools and engineers speaking in hushed whispers, a shimmering light appeared, emitting a metallic buzz.

"Transporters!" Permenter shouted, slapping her combadge. "Intruder alert! Security to engineering--!"

Two tall alien figures in luminescent environmental suits materialized, carrying a coffin-size box between them. Nog peered in the half-light, trying to see behind the dark-tinted face shields.

One of the aliens panned the room with what to Nog's eyes looked like a scanning device, then pointed at the primary EPS junction where Nog had been working. They lifted the box between them and started forward.

"No you don't," Permenter said through gritted teeth. She held her phaser threateningly before her and stepped in front of the aliens, blocking them from approaching the junction. "Drop that thing and back up. Now."

The aliens stopped and looked at each other. One of them jabbered something incomprehensible to Permenter. He unhooked something from a utility belt and pressed a button, causing the device to glow green.

"Turn that off!" Permenter shouted.

Dammit! Nog stepped forward, drawing his own weapon. "Stay back," he warned. "Take another step and I'll fire." The alien continued to speak in its unknown language as it eased closer to Nog. I don't want to do this, I don't want to do this, he chanted in his mind.

The alien kept coming.

He fired his phaser. The intruder approaching him jerked and collapsed to the ground.

The shot distracted Permenter, giving the intruder she was covering the opportunity to lunge forward and spin her around. The alien hooked an arm around the engineer's neck, pulling her head back against his shoulder, using his free hand to wrestle the phaser out of Permenter's hand. Suddenly the phaser was pressed against her temple. Nodding his head toward Nog's phaser, the alien made a guttural noise. The message was clear. Drop the weapon.

Unwilling to risk Bryanne's life, Nog complied, then kicked his phaser off to the side.

The main doors suddenly opened and every face turned.

"Stand down!" Vaughn barked.

Bowers pivoted into the room after Vaughn, holding his phaser out in front of him. Three security officers and Dr. Bashir came racing in after Bowers. Perhaps overwhelmed by the superior numbers, the intruder threatening Permenter dropped the phaser, released her, and dove for cover behind the warp core.

Dropping to his knees beside the wounded alien near Nog, Julian Bashir opened his tricorder and performed a scan. "Our environmental conditions are suited to his physiology," he reported, easing off the alien's helmet. "Their biology is..." Bashir frowned and trailed off, looking as if he'd just seen something on the tricorder that puzzled him. The doctor abruptly removed a hypospray from the medkit, applying it to the alien's neck.

"Will he be all right?" Nog asked, crouching beside Bashir.

"Should be. I'll know in a minute," Bashir replied.

Okay, so who or what did I just shoot? Nog wondered. From what little he could discern in the half-light, their alien guest had leathery, hairless brown skin, a mouth as wide as his eyes were apart, and filmy membranes over his eyes. He looked amphibious, down to the ridges of cartilage where humanoid ears would be. Weird. Earless humanoids always looked odd to Nog.

"The stun hit him pretty hard," Julian announced to his shipmates, all of whom watched him intently. "It was close range, but fortunately his environmental suit diffused most of the blast."

Hidden in the shadows behind the warp core, the alien who had assaulted Permenter had found a ripped-out section of damaged EPS conduit and hefted it over his shoulder, obviously screwing up his courage to attack anyone who approached him. He jabbered away incoherently.

"Why are you here?" Vaughn asked, cautiously approaching the agitated alien. "What do you want with us?"

The alien responded by swinging the conduit out in front of him and shouting something long but totally incomprehensible. Vaughn backed off, maintaining a respectable distance between them.

Bashir's patient inhaled sharply, sputtering and coughing; the membranes over his black-brown eyes lifted. He lurched up, bent over and retched on the floor. Soothingly, Julian patted his back.

"I'll give you something for the nausea." He scanned his patient once more with the tricorder, frowning again before applying another hypospray. The intruder's head swayed and tipped backward. Julian braced his fall, easing him back onto the floor. Searching the medkit, he found an emergency blanket to cover the alien. "You're going to be fine. When your temperature stabilizes, you'll feel better."

"Nijigon boko nongolik attack us?" the alien gasped, wiping its mouth with the back of its gloved hand. "We were trying to help."

"Finally," Bowers muttered, relieved that the universal translator had succeeded in decoding the aliens' speech.

"We haven't understood your language until now," Vaughn explained to the pipe-wielding alien. "Our ship has recently come under attack. For our own protection, we had to assume that you set the weapon that damaged our vessel, and that you and your companion had hostile intentions. I'm glad to find out we were wrong. We have no desire to hurt anyone." Vaughn holstered his phaser and spread his hands, stepping forward. "I'm Commander Elias Vaughn of the Starship Defiant, representing the United Federation of Planets. We're on a peaceful mission to this part of the galaxy."

The armed alien dropped the conduit and detached his helmet from his environmental suit. No, Nog saw, her spacesuit. Save her greenish-gray skin, she closely resembled her colleague. She ran long, knobby fingers through a profusion of violet colored braids attached to a headpiece. Skin pockets hanging off her jaw alternately inflated and deflated with each breath.

"We saw what happened to your ship," she said, her voice low and percussive. "When the snare activated, it registered on our sensors. We're quite familiar with what these weapons can do, so we came to assist you. We brought with us an energy source and were about to integrate it into your power systems when that one--" she pointed at Nog " -- attacked my partner."

"Lieutenant Nog, chief engineer," he said. "And I'm very sorry. After what we'd just been through, I had no way to know you were trying to help us."

A long silence elapsed. The alien riveted her attention on Nog. She took a cautious step toward him. "If you couldn't translate our message, it was an understandable error." Her lashless lids moved up and down over her eyes several times. "I, also, am my vessel's technologist. My name is Tlaral."

Nog grinned. Her statement told him all he needed to know. Suddenly he was at her side, examining her equipment. "As engineers, we already speak the same language. Show me how this device works," he said, tipping his head back to look up at Tlaral. "Is this a duranium casing?"

"Looks like we're done here," Bowers shrugged.

Folding his arms, Vaughn chuckled and shook his head as he watched Nog and Tlaral commiserate. "Witness here, first contact -- engineer style."

Within the hour, the alien technology poured energy into Defiant' s auxiliary systems. As Vaughn learned from Tlaral, the temporary fix would power environmental and computer systems until they could reach a safe port. What would come after? Vaughn called an impromptu strategy session in his ready room to make that determination. He invited Tlaral to join them while her companion, a "technologist" named Shavoh, recovered in sickbay under Julian's watchful eye.

As the meeting progressed, Vaughn realized their options were slim.

"Other than your world--" Vaughn began.

"Vanìmel. Where there are repair facilities, supplies -- whatever resources you might need," Tlaral interrupted. "I've been authorized by my chieftain to offer your ship and its crew our world's hospitality. He awaits your decision."

"You've stated my crew has few alternatives beyond Vanìmel," Vaughn said, repeating Tlaral's assertion. The technologist had been adamant that the Defiant come to her homeworld. From Dax's review of the sensor logs, Vaughn had learned of multiple M-class worlds with warp-capable civilizations located within a few days of their current locale. Why Vanìmel and not one of the others was a question Tlaral had yet to answer.

"Of course there are other worlds -- most are some distance from here -- that might be willing to offer aid to strangers. Assuming they didn't first shoot you down for trespassing," Tlaral left her chair to point out several planetary systems on the starchart displayed on Vaughn's viewscreen. "Here, and toward the Wiiru system. And that's hoping you make it that far without encountering another one of the weapons that caught you today."

From a padd, Bowers examined the preliminary data Tlaral had provided on the web weapons. "What are the odds of us being hit again?"

Tlaral explained patiently, "This whole sector is webbed. Vanìmel and my people, the Yrythny, are under siege. That's how we know these weapons so well. They are meant to ensnare us, but they do not distinguish between our ships and others. You might not see any ship-to-ship combat, but make no mistake, this is a war zone."

Vaughn folded his hands together, rolling the day's cumulative knowledge around in his head. The stopgap power bridge Tlaral had installed in engineering had already proved the effectiveness of Yrythny technology. Even Nog had been impressed. Pragmatically, the Defiant was days away from the closest advanced civilizations, assuming they could restore warp drive without further assistance. Vaughn disliked having limited options to choose from, but from appearances, Vanìmel was a solid one. He made his decision. "We gratefully accept your chieftain's generous invitation, Tlaral. From there, we'll determine how to go about repairs."

"Our government will be very accommodating," she said earnestly. "The present struggle has isolated us from our neighbors. I know our leaders will be grateful to have an ally."

Ally, Vaughn thought, musing on Tlaral's word choice. Perhaps these Yrythny have motives beyond offering aid and comfort to weary travelers. Which begs the question... what will they expect in return?