The Serenity and the Ingenuity screamed out of the aperture, shields raised, weapons hot. They issued no proclamations, nor demands for surrender, as they knew they’d go unanswered. This would only end one of two ways: over the enemy’s dead bodies or over their own.

As the ship came around, they got his first look at their target, a gunmetal gray array hardly discernible against the night’s sky, illuminated only by a dim blue-green underglow from deep within the belly of its superstructure. That array, and its twin that their hazard team was moving against thousands of light years away, were responsible for a spacetime phase shift effect that rendered their ultimate objective invulnerable to conventional means. Until they brought the arrays down, whatever force Captain Vox and Fleet Admiral Reyes marshalled against the Vaadwaur command and logistics hub would be meaningless.

How the array worked, the complicated mechanism by which it could create such an effect and project it tens of thousands of light years beyond the galactic disc, was science far beyond what Captain Jake Lewis’ primitive brain could comprehend. 

What they needed to do though, that was Captain Lewis’ bread and butter. Get past whatever the Vaadwaur threw at them, and carve the array into scrap metal. If all went well, the hazard team would blow the other, and then Reyes and Vox would have free reign.

“Enemy ships on approach,” Lieutenant Irina Tarasova reported from tactical. “Three Manasa class assault escorts and an Astika class battlecruiser.”

Hell. That was a lot of heat. More than they’d been expecting. 

“That little shit said three Manasas, but he said nothing about a fucking Astika,” Captain Lewis grumbled, his jaw tightening. Either they’d been played, or the Vaadwaur were taking a more defensive posture now that the Fourth Fleet was pushing back. Truth be told, he hoped it was the former, because he could just space the prisoner for his lie. If it was the latter, on the other hand, that meant Reyes and Vox might be walking into more than they were expecting. “Get me a targeting solution on the Astika, and tell the Ingenuity to keep the Manasas off of us.”

“Sir, need I remind you that the Astika outclasses us in every way?” Lieutenant Tarasova asked. That battlecruiser was nearly three quarters of a kilometer long, bristiling stem to stern with polaron emitters and torpedo tubes. “A direct engagement is unlikely to end well for us.”

“I am well aware, Irina,” Captain Lewis assured her. He’d reviewed in great detail the telemetry they’d collected from when they stalked the Vaadwaur cruiser group earlier. The problem, though, was they couldn’t just pull away and request reinforcements. With no way to contact the others and warn them, if they retreated back into the Underspace like cowards, the Polaris, the Diligent, and whatever Reyes and Vox had scrounged together would be sitting ducks, unable to engage their target while the Vaadwaur pummeled them in response. So they’d just have to make it work. “We do have one thing going for us though.”

“And that is?” Lieutenant Tarasova asked, really not seeing it.

“A wise man once said,” Captain Lewis replied. “As strong as you think you are, the one thing you can’t stop is the lone gunman determined to kill you.” It was a quote, not some great hero of the past, but from an archaic entertainment program he’d once watched. Still, it resonated with him. No matter the size or capabilities of the enemy, as long as the Serenity or the Ingenuity could get past them, even just for a moment, that would be all they needed to bring the array down and open the way for Polaris and the others.

“If I recall correctly, you’re missing a key part of the quote,” Lieutenant Tarasova countered, having watched that very program with the captain. “I believe it goes: As strong as you think you are, the one thing you can’t stop is the lone gunman determined to kill you, even if he gets killed in the process.” She didn’t even bother to mention that in that specific program, the speaker was a bad guy, and he’d ended up dead without killing his target.

At operations, Lieutenant Greg Gadsden glanced over at the pair warily. He was used to their banter, but given the situation now, it made him a tad nervous. He understood why they needed to take out the array, sure, but he certainly didn’t want to get killed in the process.

“Then let’s just be better then, shall we?” Captain Lewis chuckled. “We’re faster, and we’re smarter.” He looked over at their Vulcan helmsman, Lieutenant Selik, who’d kept them alive with his focused and precise flying more times than the captain could count. “Mister Selik, you got this, right? Just outfly them.”

“The probability of success is…” Lieutenant Selik began to say.

“One hundred percent,” Captain Lewis interrupted, unwilling to entertain the real number. What was it with Vulcans citing probabilities when you didn’t want to hear them? Retreat was not an option, nor was failure. He would not hang the Polaris and the others out to dry, no matter what logic suggested the odds might be.

“One hundred percent, aye,” Lieutenant Selik replied as bemusedly as a Vulcan could. Over the last year, Captain Lewis had ordered a good many improbable things: the cat and mouse with the Lost Fleet in the Minara Nebula, the dogfight in the Ciatar Nebula, the daring maneuver in the Roche lobe of the Beta Serpentis binary, and the race through the Underspace, among others. While Vulcans didn’t believe in luck, if ever there was such a thing, Lewis had it. Plus, as another wise man had once said, the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few, and in this case, they were the few.

And so in they went.