“Hard to port!” Captain Lewis shouted as a maneuverable Manasa gunboat came around on their starboard flank. “Where the fuck is my screen?!”

“Getting chewed up by the other two Manasas and the fighters,” Lieutenant Tarasova frowned. They’d gotten split up from the Ingenuity as they raced the Vaadwaur line, and the smaller, research-oriented Pathfinder was now in hot water, her phasers and torpedoes unable to keep up with all the bogies swarming over her.

“Dammit,” Captain Lewis grumbled. “Bring us back around! Let’s give her some cover!” He wasn’t about to leave the Ingenuity behind. They were going to finish this, together.

“That’s gonna give the Astika another shot at us,” Lieutenant Tarasova warned. They’d managed to get past the heavily armed but less maneuverable battlecruiser on their mad dash for the array, but if they came about, they’d give the beast another shot.

“I get it,” Captain Lewis acknowledged. “But we don’t have a choice.” Those were their people back there. Those were his people. He remembered his adage of the lone gunman, but now, he wanted to have his cake and eat it too. They were going to destroy the array and open the way for Polaris, yes, but he was going to make sure everyone made it home safe too.

Aboard the Ingenuity, it was pure chaos as the ship began to fall apart.

“Losing cohesion in the portside emitters!” Lieutenant J.G. Rafael Cruz shouted. “We can’t take another hit like that!”

“Rebalance the shield matrix, Kellan!” Commander Cora Lee ordered as she glanced over at operations. The young man looked just about how she felt. Totally overwhelmed. There were bogies everywhere, and she couldn’t see a way out.

“I’m trying, commander,” Ensign Kellan Seltzer lamented, his fingers flying across the keys. But nothing useful was coming from it. “I’m really trying, but I don’t have anything to work with.” Under standard operating parameters, adjacent emitters could be overlapped with failing ones, but everything was failing now. He didn’t have enough left to cover the hole that was forming.

“They’re coming around again!” Lieutenant J.G. Cruz warned, panic in his voice. He knew exactly what was going to happen if the Vaadwaur got another clear shot.

“Evasive actions!” Commander Lee shouted. They needed to get out of the line of fire.

The problem, though, was there nowhere to go. That Manasa gunboat was bearing down on their port side again, and to their starboard, there was another, while both fore and aft, there were Pythus starfighters swarming.

Still, they had to try. 

Ensign Elyssia Rel, at the conn, pitched and rolled the ship.

But it was too little, too late.

The Manasa on her portside let her big forward guns rip, and this time, as the first polarons hit, the shields failed. The rest of the barrage tore unopposed into the Ingenuity‘s duranium double hull.

To say the ship shook would be an understatement. 

Polarons melted metal, and torpedoes detonated within the ship’s superstructure, unseating her from her track, tilting the Ingenuity on her axis and pitching her forward as the stern began to roll over the bow. 

Tearing sounds echoed through the ship as the hull buckled under the strain.

On the bridge, lights flickered, consoles exploded, and a fire broke out as smoke began to fill the room. With the shift in inertia, anything – and anyone – not strapped down went flying. 

Commander Lee, who’d been standing center stage, was thrown ten feet forward, slamming into Ensign Rel at the conn. But at least Elyssia had softened her landing.

Lieutenant Commander Sherrod Allen was less lucky. Standing behind the master systems display, he was launched clear over a safety railing, and before he could get back up, a support pylon came falling down right on top of him. The large hunk of metal crushed his diaphragm, snapping his ribs, fragments of bone puncturing his lungs as the weight of the beam compressed his heart, his liver and his spleen.

But no one came to his aid. 

No one could.

Everyone else, all they could do was hang on for dear life, and even as the impacts stopped, secondary explosions rumbled from within, plasma conduits rupturing, gaseous tanks losing containment, and decks depressurizing as their innards were exposed to the vacuum of space.

Lieutenant Commander Allen died before the shaking stopped.

When at last the tremors died down, Commander Lee struggled back to her feet, her eyes still forward, not yet aware of Lieutenant Commander Allen. “Report?”

“Hull breaches, saucer section, port side, decks 3, 4, and 6. Port side forward shields, gone. All upper phaser arrays, inoperable. Tubes one, three and four, down,” Ensign Kellan Seltzer reported, his voice trembling with fear. He’d never been through anything like this. Not except his Kobayashi Maru. But that had been a simulation. This was real life. This was his life.

Commander Lee glanced back to assess the state of the bridge, and that’s when she saw her executive officer lying motionless, a support beam splayed atop him, a crewman standing helplessly over him with a tricorder. 

“Is he?” Commander Lee asked, already sensing the answer.

“Dead, ma’am,” the crewman responded as his face fell.

Fuck. But there was no time to mourn. Not now. Not unless they wanted to join him in the afterlife. Instead, she spun on her heels. “Elyssia, can we still fly?”

“Yes ma’am,” Ensign Rel nodded, still remarkably composed given the situation. The reality, though, was that this wouldn’t be the first time in Rel’s collective memory that she had died. Or at least that a host had died. Rel would probably go with her this time. “Thruster control and impulse still online.”

“Do your magic then!” Commander Lee ordered, not really sure what else to say.

Ensign Rel went to work, but maneuvering would only get them so far.

“Commander, they’re coming about!” Lieutenant J.G. Cruz shouted, terror in his eyes as the Vaadwaur lined up again, Ensign Rel’s attempt to get them out of the way proving futile. “Zero five zero!” He was powerless to stop them, not a single weapon or defensive system still operable along their angle of attack. His console lit up as they fired. “Brace! Brace!”

As the crew collectively flinched, waiting for the end, suddenly the massive underside of the Serenity filled the viewscreen, the Duderstadt class fast cruiser cutting straight across their bow, exposing its topside to the enemy to take the hit.

Aboard the Serenity, the ship shook as the Manasa’s munitions impacted against its shields. But Captain Lewis didn’t give a shit. In comparison to the Ingenuity, the Serenity could afford to take the hit. Another hit on the Ingenuity though, and it would be her end.

“Kill track one two, one four!” Captain Lewis ordered, his eyes full of fire and rage. These bastards had tried to kill his people. Now he would kill them all. “Fire!”

“One two, one four,” Lieutenant Tarasova repeated back as she let the topside arrays rip, nadion beams slicing through the vacuum, the shields of the Manasa flickering as the Serenity reached out and touched her.

“Rear tracks, kill with birds! Fire!” Captain Lewis cried out as the Serenity‘s rear came into a firing angle of the Manasa.

“With birds,” Lieutenant Tarasova acknowledged as she lobbed two full spreads of torpedoes in the direction of the Manasa.

The first torpedoes impacted the Manasa’s shields, but already weakened by the phasers, those detonations caused what was left of the Manasa’s shields to fall. The remainder cut straight into the hull of the Vaadwaur gunboat, and they did their job. The gunboat began to flame and smoke as she spiraled out of control.

“Splash one!” Lieutenant Tarasova reported. But the Ingenuity wasn’t out of harm’s way yet. “Other Mansa has a line on Ingenuity, starboard side!” Dead opposite from where they were.

“Mister Selik, two two five, max G!” Captain Lewis shouted. They had to come around and get on top of that second gunboat before it got a clear shot at the Ingenuity.

“Two two five, max G,” nodded Lieutenant Selik as he pulled the ship around, the movement far more aggressive than what the inertial dampeners could manage comfortably.

Everyone not strapped in had to grab onto something to stay in place, and one ensign was too late, his feet coming out from under him as he slid across the floor. No one even looked over at him. They had bigger things to worry about.

“I have a lock!” reported Lieutenant Tarasova as the second ship came into view.

“All batteries, fire!” Captain Lewis ordered, no restraint at all in his call for this was not a time to be restrained. Not with that Manasa about to finish their sistership off.

Again, the Serenity coughed fire. Nadions and quantum torpedoes slammed into the second Manasa’s shields, and Lieutenant Tarasova just held down the trigger, continuing to unload until they sliced through the broad side of the gunboat, killing it just before it could kill the Ingenuity.

As the second Manasa exploded, the Serenity suddenly shook. Not hard, but still noticeable. 

The Pythus class fighters had come about, and now their focus was the Serenity. Captain Lewis was okay with that. As long as they weren’t shooting the Ingenuity, it was a win in his book.

“Astika’s about to be back in range!” Lieutenant Tarasova reported.

That was less okay. The beefy battlecruiser had originally been chasing them, but they’d thrown it off momentarily when they’d doubled back. Now, she was barreling back towards them, and as opposed to the measly starfighters, the Serenity wouldn’t be able to survive long in a head on engagement against the warship’s 72 polaron barrage emitters, 4 polaron cannons, and 8 torpedo tubes.

That meant they needed to get moving. Speed was the only advantage they had.

“Serenity to Ingenuity,” Captain Lewis said as he called up Commander Lee. “We can’t stand and fight the Astika. You need to turn for the aperture and run!”

“What about the array?” Commander Lee asked, not following where he was going. The array was the whole reason they were here. They needed it down. If they didn’t, the Polaris‘ entire mission would fail. Fleet Admiral Reyes and the others were counting on them.

“We can still run and fight,” Captain Lewis replied. “We’ll finish off the array.”

“We’re not leaving you behind,” Commander Lee replied firmly. They weren’t splitting up. Not now. Not against that monster of a battlecruiser that was bearing down on them.

“You’re good as useless here,” Captain Lewis countered. Maybe worse, in fact. If anything, Lee’s ship was just a liability, something they’d have to try and cover while closing the remaining distance. “We’re fast and maneuverable enough that we can probably still kill that thing.”

“Probably?” Commander Lee asked skeptically. She didn’t like the sound of that. Not from a captain that was always so confident in his calls.

“We’ll be right behind you,” Captain Lewis insisted. “Now get outta here kid!”

Sitting there, listening to the exchange between her captain and her lover, Ensign Elyssia Rel felt real fear for the first time. She hadn’t been afraid to die, but to leave Lewis here? He might be able to reach the array, but would he be able to get back to the aperture after? Even after everything they’d been through, it was the first time it really dawned on her that he could die. But she knew he was right and so, breaking from protocol, she spoke to calm nerves, repeating the promise she’d made to him in his quarters: “Through fire and brimstone.”

“We will see victory,” Captain Lewis finished the statement, his heart actually aching now, brought to the reality that those might be the last words they’d say to each other. “Now GO!”

And so she did, the ensign turning for the aperture before the commander even ordered it.