“There were two thousand of my people on that station,” Lieutenant Commander Sena said coldly, her eyes blacker than black. They had plucked this creature from his crippled ship, the only survivor in a field of debris, and she wanted answers. Not for closure, but for revenge. She would do to his people what they had done to hers. An eye for an eye.

“Two thousand, three hundred and eighteen to be exact,” the pilot corrected, the precision suggesting he almost reveled the fact. “Plus another one thousand and eighty four on your ships that went with it. So foolish, your people were. Such a waste of material for such a simple ask.”

“An ask?” Captain Lewis furled his brow. Stranded in the far reaches of the Beta Quadrant for the last six months, the Serenity and the Ingenuity knew nothing of the great struggle that had subsumed the galaxy. It had only been by chance that they’d stumbled upon the mysterious armada of ancient ships racing through the Underspace, and unwilling to let them simply pass in the night, they had followed them straight to… straight to whatever this was. “What was the ask?”

“Why submission, of course,” the pilot smiled deviously. “That is all the Supremacy asks.”

“The Supremacy?” Captain Lewis asked. He knew what this creature was, but as far as he was aware, the Vaadwaur had been all but eradicated hundreds of years ago by those they had once subjugated. “I do not follow.”

“We have returned, captain, and this time, we will not make the same mistakes as last,” the Vaadwaur replied, his eyes alight. “By the time we are finished here, you and your people – and hers too – you will all bow beneath the yoke of the Vaadwaur Supremacy.”

Before anything further could be said, the door whisked open, and Lieutenant Commander Eidran stepped into the brig. “A word please, captain.” He had a haunted expression on his face, something clearly very wrong.

The captain and the Romulan science officer excused themselves from the cell and followed Lieutenant Commander Eidran into the security office that lay just off the brig. Once the door had sealed behind them, Captain Lewis asked, “What is it?”

“We have been monitoring SIGINT from Free State assets in the area,” Lieutenant Commander Eidran reported. “And thank you, by the way, Sena, for showing us how.” Out of necessity, given their present situation, the former Tal Shiar agent had given the Starfleet crew a way to listen in on her people’s communications. “But as for what we’ve heard, well, it appears what happened here is only the tip of the iceberg.”

“What do you mean?” Captain Lewis asked.

“The Romulan Free State is at war with the Vaadwaur,” Lieutenant Commander Eidran shared. “And they appear to be losing. Badly. Dozens of worlds have been hit, many left in shambles, and others… others have even been occupied.”

Lieutenant Commander Sena did not so much as blink. She’d already surmised as much. The graveyard had been proof of that. Her people were not suicidal, and if detonating a Valdore had been their only option, it meant things had become incredibly dire. Such a calculation implied that, not only had they determined they could not win the engagement, but that losing the station to the Vaadwaur was not an option either so their only choice had been to erase it.

“There’s more too,” Lieutenant Commander Eidran added. “The Federation appears to be at war as well.”

“We’re what?” Captain Lewis leaned in, a grave expression overtaking his face. Up until this moment, he had assumed that this had been an opportunistic hit on the Free State, which, while problematic, was not completely surprising. Ever since the fall of the Romulan Empire, the surviving remnants had been juicy targets, even the Klingons testing at their boundaries.

“The Vaadwaur appear to have launched a full-on invasion of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants,” Lieutenant Commander Eidran elaborated. “While the blackout prevents us from making contact with our people directly – we can’t reach anything beyond the local sector block – we picked up Romulan chatter suggesting that the Vaadwaur are crawling all over Federation territory too, and that they’d even managed to take and hold Alpha Centauri.”

“Excuse me?” Captain Lewis stammered. An all-out invasion right on Earth’s doorstep? No one besides the Borg and the Dominion had struck at the heart of the Federation in generations, and not even the Borg or the Dominion had ever managed to capture and hold territory in its core. But the Underspace was different. It upended borders and changed the way wars could be fought. “What the hell has happened to this place while we’ve been away?”

“It appears the galaxy has gone to hell in a handbag,” Lieutenant Commander Eidran offered grimly. “And the blackout has Starfleet’s hands tied behind its back.” He looked over at the Romulans. “Your people’s too. It doesn’t sound like any of the major powers have managed to get organized in a meaningful way – it is all but impossible when no one can move through the molasses that is the blackout – leaving the Vaadwaur free reign.”

Captain Lewis looked at the prisoner on the monitor. He looked far too content with his situation. They could change that though, and now they would. This wasn’t even just about Sena and her people anymore. Now, if Lieutenant Commander Eidran was right, it was about theirs too.

“Ekko, I think you should return to the bridge,” Captain Lewis suggested. The kid didn’t need to be here for this next part. If things were as desperate as he was describing, he and Sena needed to short circuit this discussion and get straight to some answers.

“What are you guys going to do?” Lieutenant Commander Eidran asked nervously. The Betazoid could feel a darkness coming off the captain unlike anything he’d felt before, and it scared him a bit.

“We’re going to do what needs to be done. We’re going to get answers that the quadrant needs, and an edge we can use,” Captain Lewis replied coldly as he turned for the door, the former Tal Shiar agent following at his side. “Now go back to the bridge, Ekko. I hear there’s a diagnostic or something that needs to be run.” The kid didn’t need what would come next on his conscience.