“Splash two, echoes one and five!”

The callout signalled that their fighter wing had dispatched two of the Vaadwaur heavy escorts in the opening salvo, but there were still three more to go. If those smaller, more maneuverable gunboats managed to come about, the Diligent would be in for a tough time. “How about the other echoes?” Commander Jordyn Kerrigan asked.

“McCormick has them all actively engaged. Only a matter of time now, ma’am.”

That’s why they’d hot-dropped Lieutenant McCormick’s squadron of Valkyries straight into the fray as they tore out of warp. By swarming the midsized escorts with their nimble starfighters, they’d tied them up, preventing them from coming around and outflanking the Diligent as she dove headlong for the pair of Vaadwaur battlecruisers. “What about the foxtrots?” The big polaron cannons on those little fighters could still be a problem.

“Foxtrots have abandoned original vectors. Starting to come around.”

Good for the trio of Klingon ships and the planet below, Commander Kerrigan knew, but not for the Diligent. Thanks to Captain Vox’s opening call and Lieutenant Commander Coleman’s maniacal piloting, the Diligent was holding her own in a two-versus-one with the larger, more heavily armed battlecruisers, but even Commander Hunt’s practiced hands wouldn’t be able to keep up with two dozen bogies if those fighters managed to swarm them.

“Alpha, break to intercept foxtrots,” Commander Kerrigan ordered. “Bravo, Charlie, Delta have got remaining echoes. I need you to slow down the foxtrots, but do not go direct. I repeat, do not go direct.” While Lieutenant McCormick and his wild flyboys were some of the best in the fleet, she knew that if his six Valkyrie flight tried to dogfight those twenty enemy fighters head on, she’d be packing twelve caskets by nightfall. “I want you all coming home tonight, Dalton.”

“Alpha affirm. Break echoes, indirect with foxtrots,” Lieutenant McCormick acknowledged. He’d have loved to go direct and to test his metal against the Vaadwaur pilots head-to-head, but he knew to trust the angel overhead. From the Combat Information Center, the seasoned combat controller could see what he could not from the cockpit of his Valkyrie.

Commander Kerrigan looked back at the holoprojection of the battlespace around K’t’inga III. Why were the Vor’cha and the two B’rels just sitting there? Those Klingon cruisers were in a perfect position to pinch the fighters from the rear, but only if they got off their butts. “Klingon ships in proximity of K’t’inga III. If you can hear me, I need you on vectors to intercept that fighter wing.”

There was no response.

“I say again,” Commander Kerrigan begged. “I need you on intercept vectors for those fighters.”

Finally, she got her response.

“IKS Meq’tagh acknowledges. We are responding.”

Commander Kerrigan breathed a sigh of relief. That was all she needed to hear to know this opening round would end in a win. McCormick’s fighter wing was in the process of finishing the escorts, Diligent had gotten the jump on the battlecruisers and was pushing the advantage, and now the Klingons were getting into the mix to dispatch those fighters and help clean up the fight. That would be enough, for now. What worried her was what laid ahead. She pulled back the projection to the full battlespace, thinking about what would come next after this battle was won. There was still the rest of the massive system that needed saving.

While Commander Kerrigan had moved on from the present fight, Captain Vox and the rest of the crew were still very much engaged.

“Helm, hard to port!” Captain Vox shouted.

Lieutenant Commander Coleman pitched the ship as one of the battlecruisers unloaded a salvo at them. The ship shook, but it was only a glancing blow, courtesy of the helmsman’s quick flying.

“Roll us all the way over and bring us around, pattern alpha three,” Captain Vox ordered. “Keep near-bogie between us and far-bogie.”

“Roll to alpha three, near-bogie as shield, aye,” Lieutenant Coleman acknowledged as his fingers danced across the controls, manipulating the ship’s movements almost as if an extension of himself. This was the rush he lived for, locked in a duel with a pair of larger opponents, his skills at the conn on full display.

A moment later, Lieutenant Commander Coleman had them lined up on target again, using the nearer of the two battlecruisers to occlude the firing angle of the other.

“All forward batteries, fire!” Captain Vox ordered.

Commander Hunt didn’t need to be told twice. He let it rip, unloading both forward-mounted Type XIV pulse cannons, all of the forward-aligned phaser arrays, and every forward-facing torpedo tube as Commander Essinger played with power ratios to manage the heavy load that the full frontal assault put on the electroplasma system.

The viewscreen lit up as high-energy nadion pulses and beams, accompanied by quantum torpedoes, ripped into their target, overloading the shields, tearing apart the reinforced hull, and cascading through the innards of their foe.

“Hard to starboard. Go around for the second,” Captain Vox ordered, not waiting for the damage report. They’d severely compromised the enemy ship’s shields on the prior pass, and even a beastly battlecruiser had little chance against the full weight of the Alita when it had failing shields.

“Starboard, around for the second, aye,” Lieutenant Commander Coleman confirmed as he weaved the Diligent around the burning remains of the now-smoked battlecruiser, pressing for the next.

“All batteries, again!”

And again, the tactical officer let a full salvo go as the ops chief kept the power flowing.

The second battlecruiser put up a bit more of a fight than the first, but eventually, the Klingons joined the fray, having finished with the enemy fighter wing. Against the combined firepower of an Alita, a Vor’cha, and two B’rels, the lone enemy battlecruiser stood no chance. They carved it into a steaming pile of metal and debris, sending her to join her sistership in the afterlife.

“Report?” Captain Vox asked as suddenly it grew calm.

“The skies over K’t’inga III are clear,” Commander Hunt reported. “All echoes noncom, and the foxtrots got eaten up by the Klingons.”

A small victory, Captain Vox knew. He’d thank the Klingons later, but for now, they had to get moving. In the distance, he could see explosions blotting the sky as the Vaadwaur continued to lay waste to the rest of the system. Out there was where he knew they needed to be. “Damage report?”

“Scrapes and bruises, but nothing that substantively compromises our lethality,” Lieutenant Commander Essinger offered, sparing him from the details for, at this moment, he didn’t need to know them. He didn’t need to know about the systems she’d rerouted, nor what the damage control teams were doing, nor even did he need to hear a list of casualties. All he needed to know, with the battle still raging, was that they could still fight at full effectiveness.

“Very good,” Captain Vox nodded. “CIC, call next target.”

“You’re not gonna need one, boss,” Commander Kerrigan replied from her position in the Combat Information Center. “We appear to have shaken the hornet’s nest, and they’re mad.”

Captain Vox cast his eyes forward. Immediately, he saw what she meant, a small armada racing towards them. The Vaadwaur were done messing around.  Now, they were intent on finishing the fight. Instead of a pair of battlecruisers, which had already pushed them to the edge even with the element of surprise on their side, now there were six vectoring for them, accompanied by a wing of escorts and a flurry of starfighters, plus… plus something else, something far bigger, something that made even the Polaris look small. “What the hell is that thing?”

“Configuration unknown,” Commander Hunt replied, not that the system had any of the Vaadwaur ships on file. “Scans indicate a kilometer and a half long dreadnought with forty five polaron burst emitters, ten torpedo tubes, and an immense power plant. Not something I’d want to tangle with if I had the choice.”

But they didn’t have a choice. Where would they run that the Underspace-capable Vaadwaur couldn’t follow? And even if they did, what would that mean for the sixty million on K’t’inga III, and for whatever was left across the rest of the system?

Captain Vox made the only call he could: “Helm, adjust heading three three zero and prepare to engage the enemy, attack pattern zulu alpha. CIC, I hope your newfound Klingon friends are down for an Alamo recreation.”

“Three three zero, zulu alpha, aye,” Lieutenant Commander Coleman confirmed.

“Klingons confirm prepared to engage,” Commander Kerrigan reported.

“Alright, then let’s give them hell,” Captain Vox said as they readied to duel the enemy. This wouldn’t be like last time. In the prior fight, they’d had surprise on their side, and they weren’t all that outnumbered. This time, neither of those things were true.