“Helm, one six five, mark two five zero!” Captain Dorian Vox ordered as the Diligent shot over the dreadnought, unleashing its undermounted arrays and launchers. The Alita was one of the most tactical classes ever to roll out of drydock, and they were riding her to her limits. Again. The second time in as many weeks. But this time, they had friends with them.

“One six five, mark two five zero, aye,” Lieutenant Commander Matthew Coleman nodded, pitching the ship stern over bow and yawing it onto the new vector, treating the Diligent more like an agile Valkyrie than the half kilometer long heavy cruiser she really was.

Captain Vox glanced down at the armrest-mounted display. “TAO, give me the fourteens and tubes. Kill track zero one six. Fire!” Run after run, they’d been pounding this one spot on the shield grid, whittling it down.

“Kill track sixteen, fourteens, torpedoes, aye,” Commander Ryan Hunt confirmed as he let the big guns go, unloading the Type XIV pulse cannons and every forward-facing torpedo tube upon the Gaul class dreadnought in their sights.

The Alita was frontloaded, just like the Gaul, but in this case, she had the inside track, lined up directly at the Gaul’s broadside, the Gaul’s own polaron pulse cannons facing the wrong way. That didn’t mean she was defenseless though. She still had dozens of port side emitters, and she opened up with them.

The Diligent shook under the impact.

At the holographic battlespace display in the Combat Information Center behind the bridge, Commander Jordyn Kerrigan didn’t so much as notice though. She was focused on relaying the targeting instructions onto the rest of their strike group. “Kilo Actual,” she ordered, summoning General Kloss aboard his flagship. “Target is port side, amidship. Focus your fire.”

“We got it from here, Diligent!” came the proud and confident response of General Kloss as he brought his mighty Bortasqu’ around, targeting the same spot as the Diligent.

Unfortunately, in focusing on the Gaul, she quickly realized they’d opened the Bortasqu’s broadside. “Kilo Actual,” warned Commander Kerrigan. “Be aware, threat to starboard.” 

One of the Astika battlecruisers had anticipated the move, the wide arc it had made telegraphing the maneuver, and it was now the battlecruiser was coming around to hit the Bortasqu’s flank. 

“Kilo One and Three,” Commander Kerrigan ordered, looking to close that flank off before the Vaadwaur could abuse it. “Come about! Cut off the Astika, zero nine zero off Kloss’ portside.”

“Glory will be ours, Diligent!” came the response from the captain of the Mat’Ha designated Kilo One as he brought his Mat’Ha around to catch the flanking Astika midway through its move.

“Kilo Three, we are a bit busy, Diligent,” the second captain reported, the sound of an explosion somewhere in the background. “Cannot assist.”

Commander Kerrigan’s eyes went straight to the Mat’Ha designated Kilo Three. Immediately she understood why. Three of the Manasa class gunboats had gotten up around it, and the destroyer was mid-roll trying to shake them. The Manasas were smaller and more maneuverable though. Unfortunately, Commander Kerrigan could do nothing to help her. The Bortasqu’ was the priority. “Diligent Bridge, Kilo Actual, trouble. Double back. Engage Astika at one two five.” The general was a pain in the ass, but she wasn’t willing to lose the warship.

Up front, Captain Vox heard the call as they tore beneath the keel of the Gaul. “Helm, one two five, mark two zero!” Captain Vox ordered, the ship shaking as the Gaul opened up on her rear. He didn’t care though. “Cut that Astika off before she gets to Kloss!”

“One two five, mark two zero, aye.”

As Lieutenant Commander Coleman whipped them around again, throttle to full, the Astika came into view on their viewscreen, menacing towards the Bortasqu’s broadside. Whether it was trust in Commander Kerrigan’s calls, or just pure bloodlust, General Kloss was holding to his line though, paying the Astika no heed. They needed to cut it off before it got atop the Bortasqu’. “If we got more juice, use it!”

At operations, Lieutenant Commander Emily Essinger’s hands flew across the keys, rerouted systems to give what juice she could. “You got eight percent more, helm.”

Wordlessly, Lieutenant Commander Coleman pushed the throttle forward.

While the bridge’s focus was on the target in their sights, Commander Kerrigan came back to the Mat’Ha that had reported trouble earlier. Trouble was now an understatement. The destroyer was starting to smoke, her shields failing as the three Manasa gunboats continued to swarm her. “Drake, I need your Deltas on Kilo Three.” Otherwise, that ship was going down.

“On Kilo Three, Delta Group, aye,” came the cool response from Admiral Michael Drake. It’d been a long time since the eighty year old ambassador had stood in the center bridge in the heat of battle, but here he was, standing on the bridge of the USS Kennedy, doing exactly that. It was like putting on a familiar pair of shoes. “Ria, target is Manasas on Kilo Three.”

Captain Ria Alleyne, standing beside him, nodded and began issuing orders to her crew. “Kali, bring us about and line up on Kilo Three. Jay, get us a targeting solution.”

“Coming about, three one zero,” Lieutenant J.G. Kali Jade confirmed as she queued up the new vectors and dove them into the fight.

“We’re still out of range,” Lieutenant J.G. Jay Anders reported frustratedly. He could see the Klingon destroyer, dead ahead, her shields flickering and failing.

“Fire as soon as you have a solution,” Captain Alleyne confirmed.

While they worked, Admiral Drake was pulling warbirds from their strike group around to support as well. “Delta B’rels form up on Kennedy,” he ordered. “We’re going direct.”

“On your flank, Kennedy.”

But they were too late. Before their eyes, still out of range, they watched as the Mat’Ha’s shields failed, and as breaches and fires consumed all decks. The commander of Kilo Three gave one last call out over the squadron-wide comms: “Today is a good day to die!”

And then she was gone, exploding in a flash of light.

But Admiral Drake didn’t pull them back. Even if the Mat’Ha was gone, even if they’d been too late to save her, there were still three Manasa gunboats sitting there, and he wanted some cold retribution for the commander they’d failed to save. “Break and attack!”

Across the battlespace, the Polaris was leading the charge on the second Vaadwaur battle group, working in tandem with General Golroth’s Negh’Var and the rest of his cruiser group. 

Fleet Captain Gerard Devreux relayed the sorry news: “Kilo Three, KIA, but Delta-Kilo making progress.”

Fleet Admiral Allison Reyes heard the call, but she couldn’t pay it more than a thought. Not right now. Not with the second Gaul class dreadnought ahead of them, and the rest of the Vaadwaur swarming all around them.

“Vampire! Vampire! Vampire!” shouted Captain Bishop.

The Polaris, driving for the second Gaul, had momentarily lost sight of the two Astikas, and now those beastly battlecruisers had gotten behind her. “Countermeasures, Mister Bishop!”

“Countermeasures, aye,” Captain Bishop confirmed, already working on it.

“Reza, hard to port!” Fleet Admiral Reyes shouted, knowing it’d draw them off of their line for the Gaul, but not wanting to take a direct hit from the Astikas. The Odyssey class was a mighty ship, but the forward munitions of the Astikas were enough to challenge even her. “And dive!”

“Zero nine zero, mark three three,” Commander Omar Reza nodded as he pitched the ship down and to the left as aggressively and abruptly as her massive space frame would allow.

“Ops, anything extra, give it to shields!” Fleet Admiral Reyes begged as she looked at the tracks of the inbound munitions racing towards them. The countermeasures would distract the guiding system on the torpedoes, but polaron bursts were dumb. They’d just keep coming.

“Giving you everything I’ve…” Lieutenant Commander Elena Mattson began to say.

And then the ship shook, hard as hell, a console exploding in the back of the room, and a crewman crying out in pain as he took the sparks to the face.

“Rear shields at forty four,” Captain Bishop reported. “And those Astikas are still back there!”

“Reza, bring us all the way around!” Fleet Admiral Reyes shouted. “I want those Astikas out of my sky!” The Gaul would have to wait.

As the helmsman brought the ship all the way around, Fleet Captain Devreux relayed the information onto the rest of the strike group. “Golroth, Knight, we’re coming off the Gaul. Redirect to Astikas.”

“Juno confirms, Polaris,” replied Captain Knight as the brought the Glenn class Juno around to support the Polaris on her push.

But General Golroth had other ideas. “Negative, Polaris. You take the Astikas. We’ll finish the Gaul!” There was blood in his eyes, and he was ready to finish this, for his brothers on K’t’inga, for those on the Mat’Ha that’d just been lost, and for all those across the empire that’d come under assault from the Vaadwaur.

Fucking Golroth, Fleet Captain Devreux thought to himself as he watched the Negh’Var hold to its line, staying tied up with the Gaul rather than listening to the call. Just like last time.

“We have you, Polaris,” came the voice of Admiral Drake. He’d been tracking the situation while the Kennedy and her support group finished off the Manasa gunboats that had been giving Captain Vox and General Kloss trouble. “Releasing a Vor’cha and two B’rels to you.”

“Thank you, Kennedy,” Fleet Captain Devreux offered with a sigh of relief. At least the aged veteran still had his head on right. The fleet captain glanced down momentarily at the tactical screen, watching Golroth’s assets continue to work the Gaul, and Drake’s assets race towards them. He then looked back up at the pair of Astikas now dead ahead. This was madness. He was an explorer, not a combat controller.

But Fleet Admiral Reyes, she was in her element as she shouted out instructions. “Attack pattern whisky-zulu-four! All batteries, fire!”

The enemy responded in kind, and polarons, nadions and torpedoes crossed in the night.

The ship shook hard as the Vaadwaur’s munitions impacted off the shields.

“Forward shield integrity down to twenty seven percent,” Captain Bishop reported.

The Polaris was bigger, but together, the two Astikas had enough firepower to challenge her. Or they did up until the Vor’cha and the two B’rels tore into them from the flank. As they entered the fight, it was clear the tides had turned.

Suddenly, there was a bright flash, one of the Astikas overwhelmed.

“Splash one!” Captain Bishop reported.

“Come around on the second again!”

And a few moments later, the second was gone too.

“Splash two!” Captain Bishop confirmed.

A small victory, but a victory nonetheless. Still, they needed to get back on that dreadnought.  “Get us back on that Gaul!” Admiral Reyes demanded. It was time to clean this up.

As Commander Reza brought the ship around, a blinding flash illuminated their viewscreen, far larger than the earlier one as the Astika went up. 

As it dimmed, they were greeted by a field of debris. 

“Report?” Fleet Admiral Reyes asked, looking for Golroth’s ship.

“That was the Gaul and the IKS Qul’Val,” Captain Bishop replied.

“Golroth’s ship is gone?” Fleet Admiral Reyes clarified, although she already knew it the case for the Negh’Var had completely vanished.

“I tried to call him off,” Fleet Captain Devreux sighed as his head fell and his shoulder slumped. “Why couldn’t he have listened?”

“To die a hero,” Voragh, the Klingon scientist from Mempa V, offered from his position in the back. As much as Golroth had celebrated him and his work, the reality was that the old man was still a warrior at heart. “It was his way.”

“In stories and song,” Fleet Admiral Reyes offered. “He shall be remembered,” 

“In stories and song,” Voragh nodded. But it was hard to process. Not only was Golroth a friend, but Golroth had given him a platform. Golroth had respected him and the work he did on Mempa V. What would become of that work now? Toral’s empire was not as welcoming of him and his pursuits, those they saw as so far beneath them in their quest for glory through conquest.

Fleet Admiral Reyes wished she could offer more, but right now, the enemy was still out there. “Give me a report, Gérard,” she asked, turning back to her executive officer. “What else is left?”

“The other Gaul is flaming out. Vox and Kloss carved it up. The Manasas are in the dust, and Drake and his strike group just knocked down the last Astika,” Fleet Captain Devreux reported. “We might have…” He double checked his screens. “We might have just won.”

Not quite though, Fleet Admiral Reyes knew. Not when their entire purpose was to destroy a hub that, to this point, was still not here. “Liv, Tom, any word on our hub?” she asked, looking back at Commodore Olivia Larsen and Dr. Tom Brooks, the pair from ASTRA that stood beside the grieving Klingon.

“Actually, sort of,” Dr. Brooks replied. “While you all were tied up, we detected a fluctuation in spacetime, a partial phase shift that suggests one of the arrays may have fallen.” They needed both arrays to come down though for that hub to be brought back into phase with spacetime enough that they could actually destroy it.

“So we wait,” Fleet Admiral Reyes nodded contentedly. Their victory had been paid for in blood, but they had prevailed, and now, if Captain Lewis could just bring down the second array, they could finish this. “It’s not like that hub is going to go anywhere.”

“But we might have to,” Captain Bishop warned. “We’re not going to be able to hang around for long.” Not if what he was seeing on his sensors was accurate.

Fleet Admiral Reyes turned towards her tactical officer. “Come again?”

“The buoys we left behind in the Underspace as an early warning system,” Captain Bishop said, referencing a series of sensor beacons they’d daisy chained through the labyrinth’s corridors to detect incoming ships if the Vaadwaur called for reinforcements. “They just went off.”

“How long do we have?” Admiral Reyes asked.

“Thirty minutes,” Captain Bishop replied. “Maybe thirty five.”

“Force size?” Admiral Reyes followed up. After what they’d just been through, she was not looking forward to round two. Not if it was anything close to what they’d just faced, which had pushed them close to the limit. Close enough to suffer regrettable losses.

“Hits are intermittent as a result of the turbulence, but at least five Gauls and a dozen Astikas,” Captain Bishop answered grimly.

“Holy hell,” Fleet Captain Devreux burst out. That was more than twice the force they’d just faced, and their armada, meanwhile, had been diminished by the losses it had sustained.

Captain Bishop could see the gears turning in her head. He knew how she thought. A scholar of history, he’d read many stories of commanders like Fleet Admiral Allison Reyes, and far too many of them ended the same way. “Respectfully, ma’am, if we’re still here when they arrive here, this will be our final round.” Really, they needed to get out now. Much longer, and even if they raced back into the Underspace, they’d run headlong into the enemy within the Underspace.

Fleet Admiral Reyes didn’t want to think about that. Not when they were so close. They’d beaten the enemy, and one of the arrays had fallen. They just needed Captain Lewis to do his thing.