This is a job for Holo-Linda

"Alright. You stay. I'll go."

I blinked. I laughed nervously until I realized she was being serious.

"Wait... what?"

"They've already seen you here," she explained, "... and since this is a battle drill, they must think you're part of the programming. So, I just let you all play this out and then have Jenny shut you off with the rest of the program. Problem solved!"

She looked to be proud of her conclusion as I stood dumbfounded. Linda called for an arch and exited the holo-deck as I could only watch in dismay. She disappeared without even looking back. How could I do this to myself?! As I stood there, abandoned by my creator, the entire ship vaporized around me as I would assume the simulation was a failure this time through, resulting in an incinerated ship. I paid it no mind and found myself in my quarters again, everything reset.

It was then that I came to my own conclusion: The only way to end this simulation is to do it myself!

I got the location of holo-Jenny from the computer and met up with her in engineering. By this time, the red alert had sounded again.

"Linda? What are you doing down here?"

"I need your help. It's an emergency!"

"We're already in an emergency! It's an attack on the ship!"

"That's got something to do with it, yeah," I wasn't quite lying.

"Well, what do you need from me?"

"I need your hologram expertise..."

It took some cajoling, but I managed to convince my holo-friend to get me access to the battle program in the holo-deck's holo-deck. OK, this is cheating, but still, I wanted this over with already! Holo-Jenny explained to me how the random program generator worked, created different possibilities for any scenario. It was random, but certain things were more likely to be correlative with others. So, in a sense, every random enemy would have a sort of signature. I could spot the similarities and figure out the weaknesses, but there were thousands of possibilities. Fortunately, my friend was able to work out an algorithm to help eliminate options.

"So you're saying we're just holograms in a holographic world and this is a battle drill?" Jenny asked incredulously.

"If this works, we'll get out of this unscathed," I assured her.

"Well, what would it matter? If we're holograms in a program, we could be doing this a hundred thousand times and not remember any of it? Why try?"

"Because, hologram or not, I'm Ensign Linda Trask of the USS Ishtar. It's my job to try."

"Or so you were programmed to..."

I smirked at my friend, "Something like that..."

With the algorithm packed in my PADD, I rushed up to the bridge. If we failed on this run, I would have to do all this over again to get the information I needed. I had to make it count!

On the bridge, the crew were in mid battle, all properly attired this time. The ships were on the viewscreen. I headed to a back console and connected my PADD. It ran through the sensor sweep information and ran through the list of enemy types. It wasn't long before it beeped an identity. This ship looked to be **** to the higher band phaser frequency. A direct hit to the engines would cause an explosion large enough to take out the whole ship!

Now, to get access to weapons... Tiloth was still behind the weapons station. There was no talking my way through. I had no good reason to take her place. I could try and push her out of the way, but I knew that would just end with me **** on the floor. I sighed, seeing no other quick solution and stepped behind the Security chief.

While the giant Andorian was distracted I slipped the phaser out of her holster and set it to maximum stun. She didn't notice. I waited, watching the viewscreen for weapon fire. A beam hit the ship and I fired. The whole ship concussed and Tiloth went down! I jumped in, after her and set the phaser settings as the PADD instructed. I aimed at the engines and fired back as the enemy vessel flew overhead. It was a direct hit! The ship careened to one side and popped up with small popcorn explosions before the entire thing went off in one ball of fire!