Timing was everything. Captain Lewis had said 1200 hours on the seventh day, and they had arrived at 1200 hours on the seventh day. Somehow she’d corralled the Klingons, those who had as much beef with each other as with her, and they’d made the long journey through the Underspace without so much as a hiccup. It was a miracle, all things considered, and now the time was upon them to strike back, to inflict a critical blow against their common foe, an enemy that threatened all free peoples of the galaxy.

The Odyssey class USS Polaris raced out of the aperture first. Fleet Admiral Allison Reyes wouldn’t have it any other way. She led from the front, always. The Polaris was flanked on one side by the Glenn class USS Juno, Captain Anthony Knight a relative unknown to her, and on the other was General Golroth’s Negh’Var class IKS Qul’Val and the rest of his cruiser wing.

Right behind them, the Alita class USS Diligent led the second strike group. At its side was General Kloss’ mighty Bortasqu’, accompanied by a flight of Mat’Has that had survived the battle for the fleet yard. Reyes trusted that Captain Dorian Vox and Commander Jordyn Kerrigan, both veterans of combat and highly capable combat controllers, would reign in General Kloss’ more troublesome tendencies.

At the rear, Admiral Michael Drake led the third strike group from aboard the Norway class USS Kennedy. Composed of ships salvaged from K’t’inga, and those that had responded to their call to arms, the random assortment of ships was a bit of a wildcard, but Reyes figured Admiral Drake’s cool composure might be enough to keep the ragtag group together.

As the unlikely allies raced forward, they saw the enemy dead ahead.

Right away, it was clear this would be nothing like the fleet yard. In the K’t’inga system, the Vaadwaur had been spread out, hitting dozens of planets, moons, stations and drydocks at the same time. Here, while their forces were fewer, they were highly concentrated, organized into two battle groups, each led by a massive Gaul class dreadnought and composed of a pair of Astika class battlecruisers and a half dozen Manasa class escorts.

This would be a tough battle, no question about it.

That wasn’t even the worst of it though. The biggest problem was that there was something missing, the entire reason they’d made the long journey beyond the galactic plane.

“Where’s the hub?” Fleet Admiral Reyes squinted, as if somehow she was just missing the massive station that should have been just off their bow.

“Nothing on sensors,” Captain Titus Bishop reported from tactical.

“Was their intelligence wrong?” Fleet Captain Gérard Devreux asked from his seat beside the admiral. Captain Lewis and Lieutenant Commander Sena had come upon this intelligence by interrogating a Vaadwaur pilot they’d captured, and maybe their prisoner had told them a ghost story? Maybe this was all a feint?

Fleet Admiral Reyes shook her head. There was no way. She knew firsthand what Lewis could do, and Sena was former Tal Shiar. Plus, there was another reason to be confident. “If he was wrong about the hub,” Fleet Admiral Reyes pointed out. “Then why would the Vaadwaur be vigorously defending this uninteresting pocket of space in the middle of nowhere?”

Huddled with Commodore Olivia Larsen and Dr. Brooks at the back of the bridge, it was Voragh, the Klingon astrophysicist from Mempa V, that offered an explanation: “Because it is here. It’s just phase shifted so we can’t see it.”

Fleet Admiral Reyes and Fleet Captain Devreux turned towards the trio.

“Typical particulate density in deep space ranges from tens to hundreds of picograms per cubic kilometer,” Commodore Larsen explained as she reviewed the telemetry coming off the Polaris‘ sensor suite. “But from zero six zero to zero six six at fifteen to twenty five thousand kilometers off our starboard, the density is zero. Literally zero.”

“Because it’s simply been removed from our spacetime,” Dr. Brooks stated, putting it in simple terms. The station was there, but the Serenity and the Ingenuity had not yet destroyed the pair of alien arrays that were causing the phase shifting effect. “Our friends are late.”

“Or they failed,” Fleet Captain Devreux frowned.

Either way, they had a problem. 

The Vaadwaur were advancing on them, and if they stood their ground and fought, they would certainly take on losses. There was no doubt about that. They’d lose good men and women, and probably ships too. In war, you had to make each engagement count, and if the Serenity and the Ingenuity had failed, this fight would be meaningless. 

Still, if they turned and fled back into the Underspace, and it turned out the Serenity and the Ingenuity were late by just a few minutes and got the job done, they’d have blown their opportunity to land a critical blow on the enemy.

Sometimes you just had to take a leap of faith. 

“They’ll come through for us,” Fleet Admiral Reyes insisted. Captain Lewis hadn’t let her down yet. “Signal the others. We’re going in.”