“They’ve launched another ship,” Brek announced from his station with all the same emotion he’d use for telling someone the time.

“Hey, that only makes four of them, we still got this,” Rosa said with derision as the Laurentia rocked under another phaser blast from the increasingly accurate fire that was filling the space around them. “One minute till we hit that storm wall.”

“If we make it that long,” Mitchell growled, doing his best to wrestle the runabout on its course and around as much of the New Maquis fire as he could.

The space around New Barataria wasn’t calm to start with, but by comparison, was placid compared to the storm that raged just past the magnetic field of the gas giant the moon base orbited. The roiling orange, yellows and browns made it look like they were plunging towards a wall of fire, which wasn’t too far from the truth.

“Amber, tell me you’ve-” Mitchell stared.

“I’ve been broadcasting since I sat down,” the purple-haired woman snapped back. “Wait…I’ve got something! It’s Atlantis’ carrier signal. And some sort of transmission to go with it.”

“On speaker.”

There was a snap followed by demonic hissing. The wild electromagnetic tumult of the Badlands was impacting even subspace communications this deep into the storms and off the safe paths. “…we like…” A squeal washed out whatever was said next before a series of tones and beats, clearly unnatural compared to what else they were hearing but heavily garbled nonetheless.

“Repeat that Atlantis,” Amber shouted. “We like what?”

“…party…” Only the one word was made out over the static, another squeal punctuating comms as a phaser blast grazed Laurentia’s shields.

“Movement in the cloud ahead,” Rosa announced, causing Mitchell to look up from his controls and screens to see what was happening.

“…get ready…through…”

Three small disturbances could be seen on the cloud wall, all equidistant from each other. They looked like small vortexes. A few taps and one was brought up on a monitor, zoomed in and perfectly framing a Valkyrie-class starfighter bearing the Harpy Flight logo on the nose.

“Harpies? Then that means…” Rosa trailed off as a larger disturbance made itself known in the stormwall.

A long, flat disturbance this time, as the plasma clouds were forced to move by something pushing through. Slowly a curve appeared along the disturbance’s upper edge before it broke completely and the leading edge of Atlantis’ saucer, wreathed in gauzy azure as her shields shrugged off the Badlands’ plasma, pierced through as the mighty ship sailed into the calm around New Barataria.

“The Vengabus is coming!” blared forth from the open comm channel, crystal clear now that Atlantis was free of the storm.

“What in the name of-” Mitchell declared.

In contrast to the hectic and rushed atmosphere aboard Laurentia, Atlantis’ bridge was calm and collected, if filled with blaring, loud dance-pop from over four hundred years ago.

Tikva Theodoras couldn’t help but tap her left foot to the music, her right hand accompanying it, complimented by a grin on her face as Atlantis tore through the plasma shroud around New Barataria, summoned by Silver Team’s distress call. “Steady on the helm, Kelly,” she ordered.

“Aye ma’am, no traffic jams. Ahead full and steady on the helm.”

Vilo Kendris leaned over, an eyebrow arched. “You had a much better choice in music at Deneb. This music is…frivolous.”

“Serious music for serious foes. These clowns get the fun stuff.”

“Is the intent to insult them as we disable their ships?”

“I want them dazed and confused at just what they’re hearing before Gantzmann-” Tikva cut herself off as a lance of phaser fire filled the viewscreen, emanating from Atlantis and casually licking at one of the Ju’day-class couriers pursuing their wayward runabout. The courier’s shields flared briefly before breaking, the rest of the beam passing between the ship’s nacelles, causing the crew to choose the better part of valour and turn away from the coming fight.

“Does that,” Tikva finished after a couple of seconds, admiring the handwork of her tactical officer.

“Just keep running, just keep running,” Rosa was chanting as Laurentia sped towards its mothership, fire abating as the New Maquis were opting now to fire on the much larger threat.

“Working on it,” Mitchell answered. “Wait…is that…”

The roiling plasma front hadn’t had a chance to settle down in the wake of Atlantis’ passing before it frothed once more, something new and larger pushing it aside. Another azure front breached the clouds, parting them for the light grey hull of a Galaxy-class starship riding in Atlantis’ wake. First the saucer, then ominous red glowing paired with a blue light as the drive section of the starship Perseus pushed through, the mighty ship barely three hundred meters behind the squadron flagship.

“Amber, did you mean to call this much help?” Rosa joked over the music still blaring from the open comms with Atlantis.

“I think there’s still more,” Amber answered.

Brett Caplan was not having a good day. It had been a good day, even a great day. Then someone had to blast their way out of the New Barataria docking bay and wreck his day. Still, it hadn’t been bad, just not a good day anymore. He and his fellows outnumbered, outgunned and if their engineers had done their jobs right, could outrun their prey, even amid the Badlands.

But all of that had gone out the window with the all frequencies broadcast his comms tech had picked up and pipped through. It was confusing and wild. Someone trying to say something interspersed with tones and sounds no one recognised.

It was, to put it bluntly, distracting.

Distracting enough that instead of shooting at the fleeing runabout properly, he’d been trying to parse what was coming through over the static-filled comms. And any focus he did have was completely ruined with just four words.

“The Vengabus is coming!”

He looked up from his screens, out the window, to see the sleek, curved hull of a Sovereign-class starship slicing through the barrier of plasma around New Barataria with contemptuous ease. He watched as it idly slapped aside one of the other courier ships, not even bothering to damage it after smashing the shields away.

“Son of a-” he swore. “All ships, target that cruiser!” he ordered over the New Maquis channels.

The order went out just in time to see another ship on the heels of the first.

“Oh crap,” he muttered.

Normally he’d have said that was where his day was ruined. The first shoe drop was the runabout shooting out of the docking bay. The second was the Sovereign. But today of all days brought more than one pair of shoes. It turned out however that the Galaxy-class had merely been shoe number three.

The fourth shoe dropped, spelling the complete and utter ruination of his day.

He squinted as a third large cruiser arrived, following on the heels of the Galaxy-class with utmost precision. It looked somewhat similar to the Sovereign, but with just enough differences it had to be different. He’d never in all his years seen a ship quite like it though. “Is that some sort of Sovereign-class variant?” he asked.

The question distracted even more people, his pilot especially. In hindsight, he never should have asked it.

That was when his day was ruined completely. There wasn’t a screech of alarms, shouted reports or even time to try and figure out what was wrong. There was just a blinding light, a force slamming into the front of his ship, a single screaming alarm and then darkness as main power failed instantly, batteries kicking in straight away and bathing the bridge of his diminutive command in red light.

“Well,” the man next to Brett spoke up as that third Starfleet ship sailed closer to them, a tractor beam grabbing at their hull, “I’m pretty certain that’s not a Sovereign. Damn pretty ship, whatever this Sundiver is.”

Turns out, today wasn’t just wearing two pairs of shoes, they were also steel-capped size twelves.

Luckily he wasn’t going to be the only one to have them all dropped on him today.