Across boundless stars they’d sprung, sprinting the length of the Federation in what felt like the blink of an eye. As if from nowhere, the ten starships of Sirius Squadron dropped to impulse speed, sliding into the space between the stars of Alpha Centauri. Into the eye of the storm.

Matt Rourke gripped his chair’s armrests tight. ‘Confirm everyone got here in one piece,’ came his first bark of an order. He felt exposed, alone in the trio of command chairs at the heart of Sirius’s bridge. Shepherd was aboard the Alhabor, launching at that very moment, while Harrian was down in StratOps, ready to oversee the battle. Sophia Hale was not with the expedition.

Thousands of officers under his command. Millions – billions – of lives of the people of Alpha Centauri at stake. His bridge crew were beside him, and there were countless points of potential failure, but Rourke was under no illusions. This fell on his shoulders.

‘All ships reporting in!’ came the call of Commander Far at Ops.

‘Incoming data package,’ reported Commander Locke, somehow sounding both youthful and collected, though he was neither green nor a seasoned soldier. ‘Pinged off a buoy at the perimeter of Proxima. It’s from Blackbird.’

The gift from Tiarith Ranicus sprawled across Sirius’s viewscreen. Seeing the reach and number of the Vaadwaur forces was like being plunged into cold water, and Rourke had to fight to keep his expression studied. It was nigh-overwhelming in its scope, not merely a vast and powerful enemy but multifaceted, spread out, a hydra they had to battle.

The next image flashed up with Ranicus’s recommended deployment for Sirius Squadron. Rourke had to marvel at the simplicity. To kill a hydra, you didn’t simply cut off its heads. You burned the stumps.

‘Long-range sensors are registering movement of Vaadwaur forces,’ warned Commander Rhade at Tactical as they studied the orders. ‘They’ve seen us.’

Rourke nodded. Scratched his beard. And gestured forward. ‘Let’s give them a better view. Confirm jump coordinates with the squadron.’ He trusted Ranicus – he chose to trust Ranicus – but some details he’d verify. At Far’s call, Rourke’s lips twisted. ‘Go.’

The graviton catapult had brought them to the expanse between the binary stars and Proxima, ten starships doing the impossible and crossing the Blackout. Already, Rourke could see the Vaadwaur reeling, rallying. Everyone should have needed a moment to react, to take stock, attackers and defenders alike.

Instead, Sirius Squadron lingered long enough to draw attention, for Vaadwaur ships to fire up their engines and head towards them, to check they were in one piece. Then they performed the first manoeuvre in Ranicus’s battle plan: a micro-jump into the heart of the Proxima system.

The stars twisted anew. In what felt like heartbeats, Sirius Squadron blinked across a vast distance before slowing in a blazing eruption of warp signature. Now eleven ships, the Alhabor riding alongside her mothership, they flared into the black within the orbit of Proxima’s outer planet, a daring deployment where even the slightest miscalculation would have scattered and devastated them.

Through the viewport, Rourke could see them: the forces of the Vaadwaur, and the Federation worlds brought under their boot, and the chaos he had thrown them into. Not yet battle, but the drawing of breath before the spark was ignited.

He stood and nodded to Far to put him through to the rest of the squadron.

‘You’ve seen the deployment. You all know your part. Trust the plan, trust the officers beside you, and trust yourselves.’ He was asking a lot of them, to fly into a battle nearly blind, to follow the instructions thrust into their hands. That problem would pass. Soon enough, it would be them and the fight. That simplified most things.

Rourke drew a sharp breath. ‘Let’s save the day. Harkon – take us in.’

Once, he’d found battles from a starship bridge felt disconnected, unreal. It wasn’t the holovids he’d seen as a youth, watching ships spin and dip through battle; nor was it the experiences of his early career, fighting Jem’hadar boarding parties face to face from deeper in a ship’s belly. With nothing but the sensor feeds to guide him, the viewscreen filled with the tactical display of the engagement, he could almost have been watching from anywhere in the galaxy.

Almost. Were it not for the hum of the deck underneath. The intensity of the voices around him barking reports and updates. The bitter taste of adrenaline in his mouth. This was not a battle fought through computers. It was here, at his fingertips. It was very, very real.

Onward thundered the sensor dots of Sirius Squadron. Liberty and her division hung back, the Sagan class escorted by the Ranger as they swept up the lesser patrol forces at the system’s periphery and protected the Memphis. With her powerful sensor platform, the Sutherland class could pierce the veil of the Blackout’s lingering presence, feeding the whole squadron the most up-to-date and detailed readings, transforming blurry image to terrifying high-definition.

Redemption Division swung about, making for the second-thickest knot of forces around Proxima V, the industrial facilities and the Vaadwaur ships defending it. With Redemption herself at the van, the Tempest headed to intercept oncoming Vaadwaur fighters, while Mercury hung back, targeting the enemy at range like artillery support.

That left the skies of Proxima II to him. Rourke eased back in his command chair, and let the battle narrow to what was in front of him. Harrian would call if he was needed.

‘Endeavour, Swiftsure.’ Rourke’s voice was clear and firm as he gave orders. ‘That wing of escorts looping in from Proxima III. Keep them off us. Alhabor, cover the fighter support and help them watch our arses.’ His eyes narrowed at the image of Vaadwaur heavy battlecruisers on the display. ‘See those bastards between us and Proxima II, Scylla?’

Captain Borodin of the Scylla managed to sound professionally bemused at the description. ‘Very clearly, sir.’

Rourke nodded thoughtfully. ‘Let’s take them.’

‘Fighters coming in, bearing oh-seven-five mark three-forty,’ Commander Shepherd’s voice blared into Lieutenant Tyderian’s ears. ‘Give them a warm welcome, Black Knights.’

Shepherd was the Alhabor’s skipper today, and Tyderian and his Black Knights had launched their Valkyries off Endeavour’s deck to join the rest of the division’s fighters, which meant with Alhabor escorting them, Shepherd called the shots. Some pilots might have felt less comfortable at the necessary change for this rarest of situations, the entire squadron deploying in battle together.

But Tyderian had flown with Shepherd at Izar. He knew the drill. And the Black Knights knew how to keep these newcomers off their backs.

‘You heard Alhabor, Black Knights,’ Tyderian drawled, setting his fighter into a lazy loop. ‘Let’s light ‘em up.’

He’d joined Starfleet to see the galaxy, see things nobody else had ever seen. Later, in the bar, he’d probably reflect on how his first contact with Vaadwaur was blowing them up. Perhaps admire the speed of their ships, their manoeuvrability despite their size.

Now, he just slid in behind them and opened fire.

The stars were a blur behind the canopy of his Valkyrie as they engaged. Everything that mattered was ahead: the enemy fighters before him, crosshairs tightening in his HUD, dozens of red threat markers bleeding across his targeting array like an open wound.

Then he squeezed his trigger, and in the blossoming explosion, everything got quicker.

‘Black Knights, report in!’ A series of calls flooded through comms. He was here. His pilots were still here. When he swung his Valkyrie back towards the main body of the fight, relief faded at once. While they’d stopped new forces from engaging, the Vaadwaur were wrapping around Sirius and Scylla like a net.

The two mighty ships looked ablaze from here, though Tyderian knew most of it was their own phaser banks pouring fire into the Vaadwaur battlecruisers. Scylla bobbed and weaved, sliding through weapons fire and volleying back with her own, while Sirius held her ground in an old-fashioned slugging match. It wasn’t the battlecruisers that worried him, though, but the fighters swarming them, his own forces struggling to keep them back, and the Alhabor in the thick of it.

‘Black Knights, this is One. We gotta clear a corridor to the Alhabor. Weapons free; let’s punch a hole.’

Tyderian didn’t need to check if they acknowledged. His squadron were professionals. They answered with throttle burns and banking vectors, a tight V-pattern peeling from the debris of their engagement like sparks from a grinding blade.

Ahead, Vaadwaur fighters came back in fast to meet them. Sleek and insectile, they were larger and tougher than his Valkyrie, and about as maneouvrable, but Tyderian had something they didn’t: formation discipline, precision targeting, and a bone-deep understanding of squadron tactics.

And, today, flying in the skies of the Federation heartlands, no small amount of spite.

His pulse thrummed as they closed to engagement distance. The Alhabor had already taken glancing hits, her shields flaring as she darted in and out of the slugging match between larger starships. Shepherd was handling that ship like a dune buggy, but she needed air to breathe, and it was the Black Knights’ job to buy it.

‘Two, Three, break right. Four, on me. We carve centre.’

Their first pass hit like a thunderclap. Polaron bursts flared past him, one slashing so close to his fuselage that it singed his portside stabilisers. The fighter bucked, and Tyderian gritted his teeth, fingers dancing over the manual trim to level out. He let his instincts take over – a twist of throttle, a flick of the stick, pulling up hard and rolling over a pair of Vaadwaur fighters so fast his sensors lost track of them.

Until one reappeared in his crosshairs. His twin phaser blasts caught the fighter across the midsection and it bloomed into orange-white light, fragments scattering through the kill-zone.

Then he saw the streak of a contrail that shouldn’t have been there.

‘Three’s hit!’ came the voice of Ensign Osman from his flank. Her wingmate’s Valkyrie spun out, venting atmosphere and tumbling towards the debris ring of a broken communications satellite hanging high in Proxima’s orbit.

No time. For neither salvation nor grief.

‘Form up, back on me,’ Tyderian ordered, jaw tight. ‘We need Alhabor clear or Sirius gets boxed in.’

They were a sneeze out of the higher orbit of Proxima II by now. From below, the Alhabor emerged at speed, dipping beneath a twisted slab of hull plating that might have once been a solar array. A pack of Vaadwaur fighters streaked after her – and right into the Knights.

‘Great timing,’ burst Shepherd’s relieved voice over comms. ‘I’m putting these guys right in your crosshairs to pick off my ass –’

Tyderian’s display filled with lock-tones and, in turn, warnings as fighters targeted him. He rolled through a tight corkscrew, phasers blazing. Two more Vaadwaur ships went down, and when the rest scattered, they blundered into the Alhabor’s line of fire.

‘Tidy work,’ said Shepherd. ‘Let’s clean up the mess around the big guys.’

Below them, Sirius and Scylla punched through the skies like wounded hammers of the gods, torpedoes lighting up the upper atmosphere of Proxima II. Tyderian watched as Scylla rolled hard and carved through a Vaadwaur escort with unrelenting brutality.

There were still more.

Tyderian exhaled as his pilots reformed around him. Ragged. Depleted in number. Still flying. This was just the start of the battle, but they’d drawn first blood.

‘All Knights. Keep sharp. Let’s give them something to remember.’