Acting captain Noelle Poole sighed. She knew that it was about time for others to start noticing their appearance over the class M planet, or at the very least the rescue operation or burst of communications between the two ships. 

“Got that loud and clear,” said Noelle, putting her hand to her face as she thought of a proper course of action. 

As if on cue, Nephenee spoke up, relaying a new transmission, apparently from the same source that the Aurora had ignored. “The locals seem to be demanding for our rescue operations to cease immediately. They seem to be inclined to jam our transmissions.”

“Well shit.” There was no way she would be stopping the rescue operations now, and she highly doubted the captain of the Aurora, would, either. She would have given the command for red alert… If the ship wasn’t already at red alert. 

Giving the lieutenant a wry smile, she touched the combadge over her chest.

“Lee, the local don’t seem particularly friendly. You said forty-five minutes for shields; I need shields and weapons, now, if things come to blows.” 

“Captain, I’m sorry, but I’ll need at least five more minutes. EPS conduits don’t fix themselves,” came the reply from the seasoned engineer, followed by a loud clanging noise in the background and a profane comment.

“Weapons are still offline and will likely be for the better half of the hour, but we should be able to manually fire the torpedoes loaded in the torpedo bay,” continued the chief engineer. “We won’t have warp drive for at least a day, but thankfully our impulse drive is still as good as before this whole mess, or we’d be halfway into the Magicienne at this point.” 

Well, that was grim news, but still something she could work with. If they could delay for five minutes, they might be able to retreat out of their situation to a more safe location. 
“Thank you, Lt. Commander,” replied the acting captain, before turning to the tactical officer. “Ensign Jacobs, see to those torpedoes if you can.” 

The officer nodded before moving to the turbolift, and Noelle turned to address Alara. 

“Hopefully our phasers and torpedoes aren’t too dissimilar from yours,” she said. “If it’s not too much to ask, you would be a great help on tactical.” 

“And Nephenee, see if you can’t maintain communications with the Aurora, discreetly. I don’t care if it’s Morse code or a secure subspace message, as long as it doesn’t compromise us and gets the job done.”