“Time on target, one minute,” reported Captain Bishop as the Polaris raced the labyrinth. “One Astika, three Manasas to its defense. They’re breaking away. Coming at us.”

“Of course they are,” Fleet Admiral Reyes smiled. “We’re a juicy a target. Too juicy to ignore.” Exactly as she’d intended. “Are Diligent and Kennedy ready?”

“Captain Vox confirms one two zero seconds out,” Lieutenant Commander Mattson replied. “Just beyond sensor range down the other branch.” Their target, a Vaadwaur Underspace beacon, lay at a node where two Underspace corridors connected, the Polaris racing towards it from one, the Diligent and the Kennedy from the other, the latter slightly offset in arrival time.

“You ready, Omar?” Fleet Admiral Reyes asked as she glanced over at their helmsman.

“Helm, aye,” Lieutenant Commander Reza nodded as he began to inch the Polaris towards the starboard side of the corridor, trying to eke out every last meter of space without slamming the flagship into a hyper-energentic wall of the Underspace. They’d modeled this out and run it a dozen times in the holodeck, but nothing compared to doing it for real.

“At your discretion, execute,” Fleet Admiral Reyes ordered.

Watching his gauges, Commander Reza waited for the right moment, a calm spot among the eddies and currents, and when he saw it, he went for it. “Executing!”

Commander Reza cut the port impulse drive and pushed the starboard full forward, simultaneously lighting up port side stern and starboard side bow thrusters. The ship cut hard to port, and in a blink, they were staring dead on, not at a corridor, but at the portside wall of the labyrinth.

Commander Reza let the rotation continue on, the ship propelled counterclockwise by angular momentum and a continued application of thrust. But as they came about, the ship began to roll, the currents of the Underspace, now orthogonal to the ship, pushing its port side upward.

No orders were given. There was no need. This had been anticipated in pre-prep. Commander Reza aggressively applied ventral thrust on the port side and dorsal thrust on the starboard side, leveling the ship back out as the rotation continued.

Not even five seconds later, the maneuver was complete, Commander Reza applying thrust on the port side thrusters, cutting starboard impulse, and pushing port impulse, to belay angular momentum and straighten out again, the ship now facing straight down the Underspace corridor again, but in the opposite direction. A clean about-face of the kilometer long whale within the narrow walls of the Underspace.

Now it was time to run, the Astika and three Manasas in hot pursuit.

“All ahead full!” Fleet Admiral Reyes ordered as the Manasas and the Astika screamed towards them.

Meanwhile, over on the Diligent, the calls came fast.

“Vaadwaur defense group in pursuit of Polaris,” Commander Kerrigan reported from the Combat Information Center at the back of the bridge. “Target wide open.”

Exactly as anticipated, Captain Vox thought to himself.

“T minus four zero seconds,” Commander Hunt announced. “We’re about to be in range of…” Suddenly, his console began to beep, alerting him to the fact they’d just gotten hit by a narrow-beam high-resolution tactical scanner. “They can see us coming now.”

“Too late,” Captain Vox smiled. The ships in hot pursuit of the Polaris would not be able to come about in time. Their enemy had made a mistake. A big one. They’d abandoned their post, chasing what looked like a juicy kill. Who wouldn’t want to kill an Odyssey? But now they were going to lose an outpost for it. “Shields to full, weapons hot!”

“Shields, weapons, aye,” Commander Hunt confirmed.

The outpost still had defenses. It wouldn’t be a free ride. But the Diligent could take it. They’d already killed one of these, and they were about to kill another.

“Is Kennedy keeping pace?” Captain Vox asked.

“Kennedy, affirm,” Lieutenant Commander Essinger confirmed. The Norway class light cruiser, Admiral Michael Drake standing center alongside Captain Ria Alleyne, had accompanied them on this sortie, just to add a bit more umph. It would’ve been nice to have the Juno too, but as the fastest of them all, she’d run ahead to deliver their special operations team to its rendezvous with the Lucre. They were stretched so thin.

Looking forward out the main viewer, Captain Vox could see it now, the disc-shaped outpost nearly two kilometers across with its large central pillar facing straight up, a massive tachyon emitter that was causing deconstructive fluctuations in subspace harmonics. The root of the local Blackout effect. But not for much longer.

“Defense group abandoning Polaris pursuit,” Commander Kerrigan reported from the back. She couldn’t see the enemy on sensors yet, still too far down the adjacent corridor now, but she’d received the notification from Polaris via the Underspace signalling mechanism the Advanced Science, Technology and Research Activity had developed. “Coming back around. Anticipate seven zero seconds.”

“This’ll all be over before they can make it back,” Captain Vox smiled. Dead ahead now, the outpost was growing larger and larger at that node where the two corridors met, now filling almost a quarter of the screen. “TAO, prepare to release on all tracks. Fire when ready.”

“TAO, all tracks, when in range,” Commander Hunt confirmed. 

A few seconds later, his console went off, notifying him it was time.

“Firing now!”

And with that call, the Diligent unloaded with her forward pulse cannons, forward phaser arrays, and forward launchers, a hellstorm of fire racing towards the outpost. Beside her, the Kennedy opened up too.

The outpost responded in kind.

“Vampire! Vampire! Vampire!”

Warheads raced towards them, but this wasn’t K’t’inga, nor was it even the battle beyond the galactic plane. This was just a lone outpost, its defenders drawn away, left to muster what little it could before it died.