This wasn’t like earlier. Earlier, they’d gotten the jump on the enemy, and the numbers hadn’t been so skewed against them. This time, the Vaadwaur had left nothing to chance, rallying a small armada, six battlecruisers plus a full wing of small craft. And that wasn’t even their biggest problem. The biggest problem was the dreadnaught, a ship unlike anything they’d ever seen before, one with an immense power core driving an almost incomprehensible amount of energy to forty-five polaron burst emitters.

Lieutenant Commander Coleman tried his damndest to take evasive actions, but another barrage from the batteries of the dreadnaught struck their rear quarter.

The ship shook so violently that Captain Vox wondered for a moment if the ship was about to tear apart. But it didn’t. Not this time, at least. Somehow, the shields had absorbed the impact. But barely. Just barely.

“Aft shields down to 16%,” Lieutenant Commander Essinger reported. That one hit had dropped their shield strength by nearly 40%. “We can’t take another one of those.”

“Mister Coleman, get our ass out of that thing’s crosshairs!” Captain Vox shouted.

The helmsman dove the Diligent hard, swerving to avoid the follow up barrage. And it worked, sort of. He’d gotten them out of the crosshairs of the dreadnought, but at the expense of now being face to face with three of the Vaadwaur battlecruisers, each bristling with cannons of their own. There were simply too many, and there wasn’t enough open space to work with.

This wasn’t going to end well.

“They’re fucking everywhere, boss!” Lieutenant Commander Coleman cried out frustratedly as the viewscreen lit up, the battlecruisers opening up in synchronicity as dozens of polaron emitters and torpedo launchers came to life.

“Evasive actions!” Captain Vox screamed. Not that there was really any hope of avoiding it all.

Lieutenant Commander Coleman rolled the ship, trying to flatten their profile against the oncoming fire, but what was he supposed to do against the full fury of three battlecruisers?

Polaron blasts and torpedo detonations impacted on every side.

The shields failed as the first blasts hit them, already fatigued from the prior hits. 

Next came the hull, buckling in several places as the munitions shattered its ablative armor and duranium triple hull, exposing corridors and conduit to the vacuum of space.

“Breaches! Multiple decks!” shouted Lieutenant Commander Essinger, not even bothering with specificity because there were too many. Too many for damage control teams, and enough that core structural integrity was now in jeopardy.

On the bridge, consoles exploded, EPS conduits burst into flame, and a gaseous smoke began to fill the space. The cacophony was deafening, and it was all Captain Vox could do to stay in his chair, the shaking impossibly intense as tremors rippled across the ship, first from the detonations, and then from the aftershocks as ship systems cascaded towards failure.

Was this the end?

Not in this barrage, Captain Vox knew as the shaking slowly subsided. But the next one would almost certainly be. Unless they could pull a miracle out of their ass.

The captain looked around frantically, trying to assess what was left. Lieutenant Commander Coleman was slumped over in his chair, knocked unconscious when his head hit the conn. Behind him, Commander Hunt was no longer at his station at all. Now his bulky frame lay motionless on the deck by the auxiliary science station. Fuck. This was not good. 

Lieutenant Commander Essinger was the only one still standing at her station. Nothing could knock his stalwart operations chief off her feet. Not even a hundred warheads. 

“Can we still fight?” Captain Vox asked, desperation kicking in. He could see on the viewscreeen that the Vaadwaur battle group was coming around for another pass.

“Til the bitter end, sir,” Lieutenant Commander Essinger nodded dutifully. What more was she to say? In their present state, they had but two options: roll over and die, or die on their feet. She knew which one she’d choose.

Commander Jordyn Kerrigan stumbled out of the Combat Information Center, blood running down her cheek from a large contusion on her forehead. She took in what was left of the place, and she knew, in that instant, that this would be the end. “Dorian, take the conn. I got tactical.” If they were going out, it would be on their shield. “One last time.”

Captain Vox rushed to the conn, shoving the body of the unconscious flight controller out of the chair. He didn’t bother being gentle. What did it matter? They’d all be dead in a few seconds.

He tapped his combadge. “All hands, this is the captain. I won’t lie to you. The situation is dire. But we are Starfleet. We do our duty. Stay to your stations. Answer the call.”

Behind him, Lieutenant Commander Essinger announced, “Rerouting all remaining power to weapons and propulsions.” She didn’t even try for the shields. The emitters were completely fried. Nothing she could do would fix that. They were going to die, but they were going to take as many of these bastards with them as they could. “Give ’em hell!”

From the cockpit of his Valkyrie, Lieutenant Dalton McCormick saw the Alita class cruiser, his home for the last two years, completely ablaze, its innards exposed to the vacuum of space in no less than a half dozen spots along the hull. She was going down, and fast.

“Oh my god… the ship…” Petty Officer Crissy Callegari said from next to him, her mouth completely agape. She couldn’t believe what they were seeing. The Diligent was one of the greatest combat vessels Starfleet had ever constructed, and never in her right mind had she imagined it would end this way. “Where are the escape pods?” They had to be going for them. “Get to the escape pods…”

But no escape pods shot from their hatches. Captain Vox hadn’t given that call. He hadn’t sent his crew to the escape pods. Instead, he’d committed them to the fight. To their duty. One last time. The Diligent‘s engines lit a bright red hue as she came about, angling for the oncoming horde. A horde they would never defeat.

“What are they doing?” Petty Officer Callegari asked desperately, almost choking up. She was trying to process. She knew what she was seeing, but she couldn’t believe it.

“They’re giving it one last go,” Lieutenant McCormick replied.

“But they can’t win,” Petty Officer Callegari lamented. And then reality hit her. It wasn’t just the Diligent about to go up in smoke. It was everything around them too. The sky was fire, and everything was burning to stardust. “What are we going to do?”

“We’re going to give them a puncher’s chance,” Lieutenant McCormick replied dutifully as he hit the afterburners and tore their small fighter towards the Diligent. It wasn’t as if their fate wasn’t already sealed. Over the last three minutes, he’d listened to half his squadron as their comms went to static. Their Klingons friends, the Vor’cha and the two B’rels, they were gone too.

There was nothing else to do.

There was nowhere left to run.

All that awaited them was one final fight.

As their Valkyrie tore towards the Diligent one last time, Petty Officer Callegari suddenly became afraid. She’d been riding on adrenaline until now, and a youthful confidence that their skills and their tech would see them through. But now, that adrenaline dump was about to end, and none of their skills, nor their tech, would get them to the other side. No, now she was about to die. 

She wasn’t ready to die.

And she wasn’t going to. 

Not today.

“Diligent, hold onto your hat!” came the call over the radio, a voice they both knew, the voice that had led them to victory in the skies over Nasera.

Aboard their starfighter, Lieutenant McCormick and Petty Officer Callegari glanced at each other. Of course. The cavalry had been only a few minutes behind them.

Aboard the Diligent, Captain Vox simply cracked a smile. “Right on time, boss.”

And then there she was, the majestic Polaris leaping out of warp into the middle of the battlefield, right between the Diligent and her would-be executioners. The Klingons were there too, General Kloss’ mighty Bortasqu’ and three of his Mat’Ha destroyers, the vanguard of a larger force that was on return from their mission to the perimeter of the blackout.

The sky was alight with fire once more, but now, it was their own, turned upon the enemy.

The Polaris dove forth, pushed to its limits by the daring Commander Omar Reza, the Odyssey class heavy explorer made to dance more like a nimble ballerina than the whale she was. At tactical, Captain Titus Bishop’s hands flew across the keys, keeping busy all the ship’s phaser banks and torpedo tubes, unleashing an endless wall of fire upon the enemy. They were supported by Fleet Captain Gérard Devreux, Lieutenant Commander Elena Mattson, and Commander Lars Bauer, who kept the power flowing and the tactical systems at full efficiency, while making sure the ship didn’t fall apart along the way.

Fleet Admiral Reyes, for her part, left the ship to her people. She knew they could handle that. Her eyes were on the battlespace, picking up where Commander Kerrigan left off, issuing orders not just for the Polaris, but to General Kloss’ ship and their Mat’Has, choreographing an intricate dance as they set out to clean up the messy battlespace.

The Polaris and two of the Mat’Has got on either side of an Astika class battlecruiser and carved it up. “Splash one!” announced Captain Bishop as the battlecruiser exploded in a bright blaze.

Alongside them, General Kloss’ Bortasqu’ punched a hole in another. “wo’ batlhvaD!” he shouted over the squadron-wide comms as they sent their enemy into the afterlife.

The Diligent, hanging on by only a hair, got right back at it, Captain Vox unwilling to leave the fun to the others. Supported by Polaris’ fighter wing and what was left of her own, she dispatched a third battlecruiser with her big forward guns.

The momentum had shifted, and now they laid their sights on the dreadnought. 

But suddenly, the dreadnought began to turn.

“Push the advantage!” Admiral Reyes ordered. “Reza, close the distance. It’s time to finish this.” 

But it was too late.

The dreadnought and her surviving support ships finished their turn and suddenly leapt into a previously-unidentified aperture, vanishing before the Polaris or any of the others could fire another shot. 

All around the system, the same scene played out again and again, the Vaadwaur warships, no matter what they were doing, all turning in synchronicity and retreating back into their labyrinth.

As quickly as it had started, it was over. The K’t’inga system was quiet once more, save for the crackle of fires still burning. And somehow, they were alive. Most of them, at least.

“We did it,” smiled Fleet Captain Devreux as he stepped up beside her. Somehow they’d done it. The battle was over, the Vaadwaur having turned tail.

“Did we?” Fleet Admiral Reyes asked pensively. They hadn’t done much of anything, if she was honest with herself, and as she looked forward, everything as far as the eye could see was either on fire or just straight gone. Every colony, save for K’t’inga III, had been bombarded into the ground. Every drydock, almost without exception, had been carved up into little pieces. And the ships and stations that had once been scattered throughout the system, they were all either ablaze or turned to scrap. “This victory feels hollow, at best.”

Before anything further could be said, Lieutenant Commander Mattson spoke up from the operations station. “Ma’am, General Kloss is hailing.”

“On screen.”

The scene of the destruction on the screen before them was replaced by the face of a Klingon who looked far too jovial for the somber moment.

“A glorious day, admiral! A battle fought, and a battle won!” General Kloss proclaimed proudly, a newfound energy on his face unlike any she’d seen since their first meeting. “We have them on the run! We must follow while the trail is hot!”

“And do what exactly, general?” Admiral Reyes asked pointedly. “Chase them through a labyrinth of their design, charging recklessly into a place where more are most certainly waiting?” With the totality of the forces the Vaadwaur had brought to K’t’inga, she knew the enemy could have crushed them if they’d wanted. Why they hadn’t, she wasn’t sure, but to chase them haphazardly into the Underspace, that would simply invite their demise.

“I am no coward, admiral!” General Kloss snarled as he folded his arms across his chest. “Are you?” He’d gotten a taste of blood, and now he wanted more.

“I assure you that I am most certainly not, but I intend to make my death count when at last the time comes,” Admiral Reyes replied in a cold, dark tone, one that seemed to appease the general but discomforted some of the officers standing on her own bridge. “We need a plan and a better understanding of their intentions before we go forth.”

“I suppose.”

“Right now, your people here are dying,” Admiral Reyes pushed, trying to refocus the Klingon general on the immediate situation. “Let’s start by saving them and putting this place back together.”

The general looked less than pleased by the idea. He was no humanitarian, nor was he an engineer.

“You saw what they hit us with, general, and I’d fathom a guess this is not all they have,” Admiral Reyes tried to appeal to his warrior tendencies. “If you want to do this, to strike back and to actually win, you’re going to need a functional fleet yard, and every last ship and warrior we can make ready for the fight ahead.” 

“You make a good point,” General Kloss conceded as his blood pressure began to fall. This could be good for his own imperial aspirations too, to be the great general to lead the grand armada that would deliver a mortal blow upon their new enemy. “We’ll be in touch.”

And then, without another word, he closed the link.

“Alright, now that we’ve got that settled,” Admiral Reyes said with a sigh of relief as she turned back to her people. “Commence rescue operations.”

“Not to sound a fool, Allison, but where exactly do we even start?” Fleet Captain Devreux asked as he stared at the map, still trying to process the scale of the devastation on all sides of them. Every ship was shattered. Every drydock had been either damaged or outright destroyed. Every planet was burning.

“Well, let’s get Dorian what he needs to stabilize the Diligent first,” Admiral Reyes replied. That much was easy. The Diligent was not only one of the most capable warships they had, but they were also her people. As for the rest, the choice, given the circumstances, was equally clear in her head. “As for everything else, priority goes to assets and personnel that will be helpful to our upcoming war effort.” She had no illusions about what had just happened, and what was to come.

Fleet Captain Devreux looked a bit caught aback by the instructions though. “What about the population centers, such as on K’t’inga IV and VI? The women and children…”

“They get what we can spare, but the warriors and weapons come first.” Admiral Reyes offered, knowing full well they’d have nothing to spare. But without warriors and weapons, nothing else would matter. Not against this new darkness that had suddenly come upon them.

“But ma’am, that’s not our way…” Fleet Captain Devreux began to protest. That went against everything he knew. It wasn’t the right way to do things, the moral way, the Starfleet way.

“Gérard, this is not up for debate,” Fleet Admiral Reyes stated firmly, her eyes darkening as she spoke. “It may be hard to process, my old friend, but as of this moment, we are at war.”