Secrecy was of utmost importance. All non-essential systems were offline; the USS Liris was running in grey mode. The only things running at full power were the passive scans, looking out for any Cardassian ships, be they from the legitimate government or the True Way.

The mission briefing received some hours before by Commander Sh’ill had been incredibly clear: do not get detected by anyone at all, proceed to the Marva IV base and collect intelligence, but do not get detected.

Sh’ill, sitting in his quarters, read the briefing and his orders once more. He questioned why it was his ship that had been sent on this mission, but he had to admit that there was a certain logic to it. The Liris was small, manoeuvrable, hard to detect, and with a good crew. In addition, Sh’ill himself had some experience with these “grey-ops” style operations. A call came in for him.

“This is the Bridge to Captain Sh’ill. We’ve detected a Union ship.” While it may’ve officially come from the Bridge, the Captain could’ve recognised Delvok’s monotone baritone anywhere.

“Understood. I’ll be right there.” The Commander threw down the PADD with the briefing and rushed out of his quarters and to the Bridge, all the while quickly zipping up his uniform jacket.

On the Bridge, the space in front of the ship was as empty as ever, but the Ops console at the back of it was beeping incessantly. The Captain stepped over to it, accessing the full sensor readings. Sure enough, a Cardassian ship.

“Galor-class, travelling at… Warp 3. Are there any signs that they’ve detected us?” Sh’ill enquired, all the while considering his options.

“No, Captain. However, they are actively scanning the region. I would recommend that we find somewhere to hide until they have left the sector.” The Vulcan suggested, sticking to the Starfleet protocols for situations such as these.

“I concur. There’s a star system near here, we’ll find a metallic asteroid there to hide us. Adjust course to 15 mark 215.” The Captain was not willing to take any chances with this.

“Adjusting course to 15 mark 215.” Delvok confirmed the new course, and the Liris tilted hard to port, shooting into an Oort cloud.

Sh’ill, carefully stroking the fur on his chin, sat down in his chair behind Delvok and silently called his XO, Lieutenant Erti Jatia, to the Bridge with a few button presses on his armrest’s console. “Find us that metallic asteroid, something ferromagnetic that refracts sensor beams, iron, duranium, tritanium. Set us down on it.”

Delvok gave a confirmation, just as the XO stepped onto the Bridge, all the while putting on her rank pips. “Sir, there had better be a good reason for calling me.”

“There is, Lieutenant. We can’t keep hiding like this. We’ll hide when we’re there, but I don’t want to be hiding on an asteroid every time a ship appears on our sensors. Options?” Sh’ill stated clearly, he had a thing for immediately demanding options for solving a problem.

“Alright, lemme just…” She moved to the science station and took her seat, logging on. Promptly opening a map of the region, Jatia gave it a cursory look. “If we’re going for maximum secrecy, I can use the Starfleet Intel ship movement report they gave us, but I’m not sure how accurate and up to date it is. And then there’s the problem of hiding the ship…”

“Agreed, but it’s the best we have. Once we’re on the asteroid, adjust your sensors to compensate for the magnetism, and then scan, sector by sector, for ships. Plot all of the trajectories on the map and find me a course that doesn’t get us found. I’ll be down in Engineering.” With that, the Caitian left, shooting down the decks to meet with his Chief Engineer.

—

The ship that the present Sh’ill was on silently jumped to warp. He had been elaborating on his mission orders and the science behind them sitting on the asteroid for the better part of 30 minutes now.

Commodore Uzoma Ekwueme had been patiently listening, all the while both of them had been sipping mint tea – Uzoma because he liked it and Sh’ill because it helped calm his nerves.

“Yeah, this is where it gets a little chaotic. I guess that I got a little tired of sitting in asteroids.” The Captain slowly admitted, as he looked over and walked to the window, staring out at the stars.

“Captain, what’s past is past. You weren’t found out by anyone, you found them and you came out of the whole ordeal alive.” Uzoma calmed the Caitian, continuing to calmly observe from his desk, following Sh’ill with his eyes as he paced the room.

“I suppose. Although I do still… place blame on myself for the risks we took, we should’ve been a lot more careful.” Sh’ill returned to the desk and his cup of tea.

Uzoma simply continued observing, taking another sip. He could very much appreciate the self-reflection that the Captain was providing. Makes sense for him, he thought, he has counsellor training.

—

Down in Engineering, Bok Xasin had been hard at work keeping them hidden. As the Captain entered, he was adjusting the plasma interflow ratio, another in a series of tricks up his sleeve that he had been gradually revealing.

“Ensign. How much speed can you get me without revealing us?” The question startled Xasin a little, but he jumped back into his normal self quite quickly. This was something that Sh’ill had noticed, how easily Xasin seemed to be startled, mostly by him, and it was something that Sh’ill had been meaning to bring up during his next physical.

“Top speed, fully hidden?” The Bolian quickly ran some calculations on his PADD while keeping seated in his chair by the warp core. “Warp 3 is the best I can give you, if you want to be 100% safe and sound, sir.” Xasin pulled up some schematics on his console and compared them with his PADD. “Maybe Warp 3.3, but nothing more than that, that’s when our sensor dampening field starts to become ineffective.” He added.

“I’ll take it.” The ship set down on the asteroid with a thud, igniting some warning lights in Engineering. Bok, however, wasn’t too worried about them and so Sh’ill wasn’t worried about them. “Get me that Warp 3.3. Once you’re finished, take a break, you deserve it. Before you say anything, consider those the doctor’s orders, I believe was the saying.”

“Got it, sir.” Sh’ill could only watch as his CE practically flew across Engineering, PADD and orders in hand, performing miraculous engineering feats. If I ever get to command anything bigger, I’ll be sure to take this man with me.

The Commander exited the room, making his way back to the Bridge, content to leave Bok Xasin to his modifications, which would be necessary for them to achieve that Warp 3.3. Within the space of 5 minutes, he was back in his chair.

“Well, Captain, I have your scans. They’re as accurate as I can get them with this asteroid in the way. Everything is as it should be in terms of ships, but the True Way base…” Erti’s demeanour had been its usual cheery for most of that sentence, but it soured towards the end.

“Well?”

“We scanned the sector where that True Way base is supposed to be… it’s not there. We would have, should have, picked up a starbase, a repair station, anything like that. There’s nothing there, I did a triple sensor sweep just to make sure.” The tone in which she was speaking was completely unnatural for her.

“Perhaps they’ve masked it, or something to that extent. Starfleet intel…” he picked up a PADD from his armrest, “shows True Way ships going into that sector, and they can’t be disappearing. A base is there, I’m sure of it, we just can’t see it. Scan again once we’re in the sector.” He tended to trust what Starfleet gave him, but this was an interesting revelation. “Perhaps we’ll be able to see them there.”

Jatia, however, wasn’t done with her report. “Sir, I’ve also detected lots of ships, from both sides. If we want to use this course I’ve plotted, we’ll have to be incredibly precise, we can’t deviate by more than 10 thousand kilometres, otherwise we’ll be in the sensor range of one of those ships.” Now the Lieutenant was done with all the bad news.

The Captain pondered a bit, before arriving at his next orders. “Then we’ll use your course, if there’s nothing better, and we’ll stick to Warp 3.1 for extra safety. Work with Xasin, try to break their comms encryption. Knowing the Cardassians, they won’t make it easy, but it is imperative that you succeed. We have no room for error, so I need you to provide me with some.”

The crew jumped into action. The course was laid in, final scans were finished, encryption breaking algorithms began turning their gears. The USS Liris lifted off from the desolate rock upon which it’d been thrust, and spread its wings.

“Lieutenant, is this asteroid on any star charts?” Sh’ill calmly asked as the ship lifted off with a grunt.

“Not… that I can find, sir. It seems that we’ve discovered it.” Jatia reported from her station, after a quick search in the Federation database.

“Then enter it into the database, mark that we discovered it, and add that its name shall be “Hornet’s Haven”.” A small smile passed over his fluffy face, but quickly disappeared.

Jumping to warp, Sh’ill stood up and walked over to the MSD at the back of the Bridge, he wanted to give the critical systems a quick cursory look, just to make sure that nothing was going wrong. “Delvok,” he said, “ETA?”

“At present speed, estimated time of arrival is 7 hours, 45 minutes and 47 seconds.” Stated Delvok’s cold voice from the helm. “Good. Remember, no deviations from the course for any reason.” The Captain sat down in the chair by the MSD/operations console, mentally preparing himself for a long night of: worrying about being detected, worrying about his crew buckling under the stress (even though he knew that any one of them could face down a Klingon army without the slightest hiccup) and battling sleep. To fight off the final enemy, he had various hyposprays at the ready, hidden in his jacket.

For the last couple of hours, everything had been quiet, peaceful, even. The stress was still there, of course, but it was less palpable. Some 30 minutes ago, Jatia had left for Engineering to work more closely with Bok, they both felt that they were close to breaking Union codes – this faction of Cardassians was quite a bit more lax with their encryption, only switching the codes around every week or so.

On the Bridge was only Delvok (at the helm) and Sh’ill (at the MSD), who’d both struck up an “intellectual discourse” about battle tactics, both to pass the time and also because they were both interested in what the other had to say about these sorts of things.

“Even considering your argument about the element of surprise, the underpass is still superior, due to the fact that it poses less risk to the attacker.” The Lieutenant postulated, calmly considering the various risk factors and variations of this attack manoeuvre.

“Does it really? Either way, the attacker is getting pummeled, there’s no doubt about that. Besides, historically speaking, the overpass has been more popular, at least in the engagements in the logs of Tactical Command, ever since it was invented in the 2380s.” The Captain was quite dispassionate, as always, now playing the “famous captains” card.

“Statistically speaking, only 52%. The 2% may well be a statistical anomaly, of Captains picking at random in the heat of battle.” Statistics, of course, could be interpreted in a myriad of ways.

“A Captain never picks at random, perhaps they do really prefer it. I’d like to put my faith in the fact that no decision in battle is made based on a mental coin flip.” Said Sh’ill. “Hold on for a moment, we have something on sensors.” He switched his console over to display the full sensor readouts, trying to ascertain what exactly he was looking at.

“It’s a particle fountain, class-3. Must be pretty young, because it’s not on our maps.” He checked its position against their course. “Damn, it’s right in the middle of where we’re heading, couple light-years ahead.”

“Our shields will not survive going through it, Captain, we will have to fly around. I am also detecting a Union ship, Galor-class, diverting from its course to investigate, heading towards it.” Grimly added Delvok.

“This is Sh’ill to Lieutenant Jatia and Ensign Bok, report to the Bridge on the double.” The Captain commanded, tapping his combadge.

“Captain, I recommend waiting until the Cardassian ship leaves, it would be the safest option.” The Vulcan, ever so logical, suggested, knowing that Sh’ill was about to ask for options.

“Unacceptable, we’d be waiting too long and just waiting for detection. We don’t know when they’re planning to leave, it could be in 15 minutes or in three days, if they have nothing better to do.”

Just then the two missing members of the Liris’ crew arrived and quickly took their stations – the Lieutenant at Science and the Ensign at ops, while Sh’ill moved to his seat at the centre of the Bridge.

His age-old question was asked, now with a little more context than usual. “We have a class-3 particle fountain and a Galor-class cruiser from the Union coming to investigate. Options?”

“We could fly around them.” Bok suggested.

“No, takes too long and is too dangerous, we’d risk detection by some less friendly people.” The Captain shot it down quickly.

“Well, we have a particle fountain, may as well use it. We could fire a polaron beam at it, that’d cause it to emit a large burst of particles that would blind them for a time.” Jatia, the scientist, offered her two cents.

“For how long would they be blind? We need some leeway.” The Commander turned in his chair, giving her his full attention.

“10, 15 minutes at best, knowing Cardassian sensors. We should blind them, slip past and get the hell away.” Jatia completed her plan with some rough back-of-the-envelope calculations on her console.

“Excellent. Do it. Quickly. We don’t have long before the time window for our perfect course closes. Delvok, get us moving, Warp 2.” Sh’ill turned to face the viewscreen and slightly leaned forward, clasping his hands together.

Soon enough, the deflector was charged with polarons, ready to fire them.

“Jatia, get ready to shoot. Delvok, once we’re finished with the beam, accelerate to Warp 3.2 and get us past them. Bok, monitor the sensors, make sure they don’t spot us.” Sh’ill’s commanding voice boomed across the Bridge, pausing for a moment. “Now, Lieutenant!”

The following seconds were intense. For just half a second, the deep, undulating bass of the polaron beam firing broke the unending silence of space. Then, the sudden jump to a higher warp factor pushed everyone into their seats just a little more. Once more, the silence of the Universe.

Ensign Bok Xasin could see in his sensor readouts how the fountain “jumped”, spewing out a mass of particles, indeed blinding the Cardassian ship. “We’ve got them, sir, they’re blind!”

“Don’t celebrate just yet, Ensign. Keep a sensor lock on them, and let’s just slip by. Lieutenant Jatia, finish breaking their codes, I want to hear what they’re doing and what they’re saying.” The Captain grumbled out, still tense in his chair.

“Aye, sir.” Was the response from both of them. Neither’s task was easy, cracking Cardassian encryption or keeping from being prematurely excited, but both were going to do their best.

Once more, the USS Liris was sliding through space. Painfully slowly, yes, but they were moving. However, so was the Cardassian ship. “Captain, they’re moving!!” The Ensign saw the ship icon moving on the small map of his console as he confirmed the readings, some 20 minutes after they’d passed them and their particle fountain.

“Calm yourself. Where are they going and does it look like they’ve detected us?” The Captain kept his gaze fixated on the viewscreen, still as a rock.

“Heading is 15 mark 32, that takes them slightly past us. No indication that they’ve detected us.” The Ensign’s teeth were practically clambering as he gave the answer.

“We’re their allies. If they have spotted us, which I doubt they have, they would’ve hailed us. Another possibility is that they think we’re supposed to be here. Anyhow, keep our sensors trained on them, just in case.” Sh’ill’s voice, though imposing, could be incredibly calming to some.

Once more, the Liris shot through the silence of space, not seen or heard by anyone.

“Commander, we have their codes! I’ve broken through them! It took half a dozen fractal algorithms, all working in unison, but it’s done. Applying them now…” Lieutenant Erti Jatia was quite excited, more so than usual.

“Confirmed, CUS Ghemor, logged on star charts. What class is it?” Asked an obviously Cardassian voice with its characteristic hint of paranoia.

The CUS Ghemor responded. “Class 3, command. Hit us pretty bad, our sensors are offline, my CE tells me they’ll be offline for another hour.”

“Acknowledged, CUS Ghemor. Do you need us to dispatch a repair vessel?”

“Shut that off, we’ve heard enough, they haven’t seen us. Delvok, slow to Warp 3.1, I want that margin for error. Jatia, keep listening in, in case their Chief Engineer is better at his job than we think.” The Captain slowly stood up and walked to the back of the Bridge, giving the MSD a quick glance. “I’ll be in my ready room. Lieutenant, you have the Bridge.” He nodded to her, before walking out and taking the few steps to his office.

Once inside, he sat down on the little sofa and picked up his PADD, opening up their course on it. Another hour, he thought to himself, until we reach that infernal sector.

Now seemed like a good time, at least to him, to catch up to some paperwork and let the crew relax from his presence. Even though his office was, due to a design flaw or some Starfleet engineer’s immense intellect, windowless, Sh’ill still felt the stars sliding by in the deep, dark void.

—

“Yes, well, that’s all excellent that you can feel space without seeing it, but this is a debriefing, not an art competition.” Commodore Ekwueme had, by now, finished his tea, but Sh’ill still hadn’t.

“I apologise, it’s just how I remember things. How far along are we on our course? Sh’ill enquired.

“Just passed Betazed. Now, continue, Captain.”

—

While Sh’ill sat in his office, where everything was as calm as him, the atmosphere on the Bridge was, to say the least, tense. Being discovered by either side laying claim to this area would mean humiliation for the Federation and, at least in one case, almost certain death.

“Lieutenant, we are coming up on the sector of the Marva IV base. Shall I begin scanning for it?” Delvok’s faceless voice said from the helm.

“No, scans would only attract attention, we’re dealing with Cardassians, remember. I’ll begin looking for large background EM distortions that would indicate many ships or at least something of note.”

In the meantime, the Bajoran began scans of the sector, whose preliminary results did not show anything of note at all here, friendly or not. At this news, she tapped her combadge and called the Captain to Bridge, as First Officers so like to do.

Soon enough, he was there. Sh’ill was one of the people who did not at all like to be disturbed while he was working alone. “This had better be something important, Lieutenant.”

“It is, sir. Previously, we couldn’t detect anything here and put it down to the long distance. Well… I just completed my background EM distortion scans, the best for covert searches and there’s nothing here, no bases, no ships, just… nothing. Do I have authorisation for active scans?” As usual, she added some dazzle to her sentences.

“Hmm.” The Captain, in all his fur-coated glory, sat down in his chair, considering things for a moment. “You do, but only those that are necessary, no triple-scanning just to make sure. Report when you’re done”

“Aye, sir.” Jatia quickly began her scans, leaving the Bridge in total silence, except for the low hum of the warp engines and the beeps from LCARS commands being input. Just how all of them liked it in this stressful situation.

Sh’ill, once more, descended into a meditative state, entranced by the stars on the viewscreen passing by and the monotone nature of the paperwork on his PADD. Silence was one of his favourite things in life, partly being the reason why he had chosen Starfleet Medical – the sick say very little, the dead even less.

Something prodded him. Then again. Again. Again. After the fourth one, he finally jumped a little in his chair, turning to face Jatia who had been trying to get his attention with a PADD.

“I apologise, Lieutenant. None of us has slept particularly well during this mission, these conditions only amplify our collective sleepiness. What do you have to report?” Even though he was tired, Caitians sleeping more than Terrans, his voice remained entirely unchanged.

“No worries. Here’s those scans. It’s still not looking good. However, my scans revealed a pretty well hidden concentration of ships in one system, and with more on the way there.” The Lieutenant quickly explained, slightly embarrassed at having half-woken up her Captain like that. She handed him the PADD with the report on it, letting him take a closer look.

“Huh… Starfleet has thi system marked as Stere J59. Delvok, lay in a course, Warp 4. Keep us at least half a light year away from any other ships. Engage.” Sh’ill’s voice and he himself had now properly woken up and the deep bass inside him flooded the Bridge.

The ship jumped into warp, leaving everyone pondering what they were getting into now. The constant Union comm chatter served to reassure everyone that at least one of the powers in this area wasn’t aware of their presence. Perhaps this was all an elaborate deception by the True Way, using duranium shadows, sensor echoes and deception at the highest level. Perhaps not.

Some hours later, the Liris dropped out of warp at the edge of Stere J59, and Captain Sh’ill jumped to his feet just as the warp engine’s hum weakened and the impulse engines kicked in.

“Lieutenant Jatia, mask our impulse emissions. Nobody must see us. Delvok, silently scan the system for where most of the ships are concentrated. Use only the scans that you have to use, use passive ones first.” The orders were clear, and everyone set about fulfilling them.

The emissions were masked and Delvok’s logical voice informed that the ships were, most likely, concentrated around the fourth planet, 90 AUs from where they were now.

“Set a course, one half impulse. Does the planet have any moons?” A plan was already cooking in Sh’ill’s brain for how they could approach this mission now that they were here.

Indeed, there was one moon around the planet. Now the Captain turned towards Jatia at the science station. “Tell me, any asteroids near here that are flying into the inner system?”

“Indeed there are, Captain. 100 thousand kilometres from here there’s a cluster of small to medium space rocks on a trajectory to impact the star in… a week or so.” Jatia had already deduced what his plan was just from those two questions, she had read about the crew of the NX-01 doing something similar before the UFP.

“Send the coordinates to the helm. Delvok, take us to those asteroids. Bridge to Ensign Xasin, is the tractor beam available? More precisely, can you make it a repulsor?” Both of the people on this comm line knew that “no” was not an acceptable answer to either of these questions.

“Yes, sir, it’s online and operational. What do you need repulsed, sir?” The chirpy Ensign reported from Engineering.

“Just an asteroid. And, tell me, can we survive a rough landing on a moon?” A smirk appeared below all the fur on Sh’ill’s face, a smirk that only he noticed, but one that made him quite happy. The answer from below decks was affirmational and the Captain closed the channel, now ready to execute his plan, a rather diabolical plan of which only the ingeniousness of Starfleet could ever conceive.

Sh’ill sat back down in his chair, itching to get to a less risky position where he could properly consider his options. “Delvok, lock onto one of those asteroids with the tractor beam and give it a little nudge towards the moon. Keep us within its wake and be ready for a hard landing. Jatia, alert me if anyone spots us.” Precautions still had to be taken, even if the Captain and entire crew felt that no-one could spot them inside the asteroid’s wake.

Just like that, the Liris began pushing the asteroid. The viewscreen was soon greyed out by all the dust and asteroid chunks, but Delvok was quite used to flying only on sensors. 20 minutes passed like this, Jatia kept nudging the asteroid just a bit every few minutes, making sure it stayed on course for the moon, Delvok kept in the wake and Sh’ill considered his options in his head.

“Captain, we’re approaching the moon.” Came Jatia’s voice from behind both Delvok and Sh’ill.

“When the asteroid is within 10 000 kilometres of the moon’s surface, stop nudging it and let it crash by itself. Keep us within its wake the whole time. Delvok, you’ll land us in the dust cloud kicked up by the impact. Let the dust bury us and make us undetectable.”

“Yes, sir.” Was the response from both of them as the plan sprang into action.

At the aforementioned 10 thousand kilometres, the tractor beam was shut off, leaving the asteroid and the Liris following it in the mercy of the moon’s gravity.

The atmosphere on the USS Liris was one of thorough suspense and tenseness. Every 100 kilometres, Jatia called out their altitude. Going by the Starfleet manual, this was the proper procedure to follow, but she was raising her own blood pressure every time she called out.

900.. 800.. 700.. 600.. 500.. “All hands, prepare for impact!” 300.. 200.. 100.. and a dust cloud, interspersed with rocks and boulders kicked up in front of them – that was the asteroid impacting.

A moment later, the signature creak and thud of the controlled crash landing, simulated perfectly to make them look like nothing more than a big asteroid chunk, rushed through the hull. They had landed, and only a few minor alerts had gone off – no systems had been majorly damaged.

“Sh’ill to Engineering, lock down all plasma exhausts and send auxiliary power to the structural integrity field. Delvok, activate the front dorsal camera, show me the planet.” Sh’ill commanded, relaxing his grip on his chair’s armrests.

What was on top of them was a dust cloud, slowly settling. Little by little, the planet appeared. It was almost completely dark – it was just in that goldilocks zone where habitable planets with life could exist – with a glowing settlement near the equator. Around the planet, when zoomed in, the Bridge crew could see True Way ships, many of them – Galors, Keldons, Hidekis, etc.

“It’s not a space station we’ve been looking for – it’s a whole damn planet!” Jatia exclaimed.