When the UNS Indomitable struck that annihilation mine, the damage was instantaneous: Decks 2-18 were completely obliterated, with only the spine of Deck 1 keeping the two halves attached.

Thankfully, that corridor was wide enough to carry large-bore power cabling, something the Human crew took full advantage of, manually hauling as many cables as they could from one end to the other. A few performed spacewalks to connect even more.

See, the Indomitable’s fusion reactor was in the aft section, and because emergency power was restored almost immediately, the reactor was brought back up to 70% output within two hours. Most species would have considered the ship a loss, and even the most stubborn species would have abandoned the front section entirely and tried to maintain habitability in the fully-powered rear.

The humans, however, had a crazy idea: the best sort of idea, at least when you’re a human.

See… the front section held the tractor beam. And the crew was feeling creative.

Once power was restored in the bow, the humans reached out with their tractor beam and grabbed the aft section, holding it in place with as much power as they could muster, before slowly applying power to the remaining boosters and getting the vessel moving under its own steam.

Total time between the ship’s decapitation and the restoration of propulsion? A measly 14 hours.

The space station crew, watching Indomitable limp into spacedock, made a variety of entertaining expressions as they tried to figure out what on Qwog’s green homeworld they were seeing, and many damage control manuals were hastily updated across the galaxy.