Battle of Solitude

Prelude
The colony of Solitude was a Vulcan settlement of 400,000, with an attendant outpost in the process of being upgraded and a 500 kt shipyard. The Sarek and the Courageous had been stationed there to protect the system for three months from the Biophage threat at this point, and had already fended off one attack of cloaked infected shuttles.

Sensor data of the Biophage plague mothership, the ex-T'Seren had been gathered by the USS T'Mir during its encounter with the former earlier that month, and shared with every Federation ship. This was key, as it allowed the Sarek and the Courageous to successfully detect the entry of the cloaked ex-T'Seren into the system.

The Battle
Moving in to attack, the ex-T'Seren decloaked and disgorged three waves of twelve shuttles for a total of 36 attack craft. Evenly splitting their targets between the two explorers and the outpost, the defending forces successfully destroyed the waves for the most part, with the Sarek and the Courageous taking a single hit each, while the Solitude outpost taking two, collapsing its shields.

The ex-T'Seren followed closely behind the shuttles, using its infection beam on the now shieldless outpost before turning to flee the system. In response, the Sarek and the Courageous moved in after it to engage. During the course of the battle, both the Sarek and the ex-T'Seren lost their shields and suffered significant damage, with the Sarek taking a hit from an infection beam and Captain T’Lorel forced to order internal EPS venting to cauterize the wound before the mothership was finally able to escape into warp.

The Aftermath
Though the Solitude outpost had been hit by the Biophage, the infection was successfully removed and the upgrades to the outpost completed by the end of the month. The Sarek was transferred to the 40 Eridani A Shipyards and given priority over the in-construction Excelsior there, with an estimated repair time of 6 months. In return, the ex-T'Seren took significant damage to one of its shuttle factories, as well as other structural damage.