The Farragut hung dead in space. Her nacelles were dark, her running lights extinguished, and only the occasional flicker of emergency red told of the life that still clung to her frame. Aloran stood in the half-light of the bridge, feeling far away from any notion of command or control. An irony, he thought, in light of the promotion he had received only an hour ago.

“All systems remain on emergency routing,” Jevlak reported, her Cardassian confidence reduced to a kind of strained stillness. “Environmental controls are stable. Life support is fluctuating in the lower decks.”

“Engineering?” Aloran asked, turning toward the young lieutenant at the engineering station.

“No word yet,” she said. “Internal communications are still fragmented. The backup power relays didn’t like the energy wave.”

The ship felt wounded. The hum of its heart – the warp core, the systems, the crew – had gone flat.

It was Kincaid at the tactical station who first noticed it. “Reading transporter signatures,” he said, frowning. “Not ours. I repeat, not ours!”

Minogue’s head snapped up from attempting to coax life from an adjacent security console. “Can we stop it?”

“We have no power,” Kincaid said, his voice thin with disbelief. “Prepare for boarding!”

As the small bridge crew reoriented themselves, some grabbing phasers from the holsters at the waist, others moving toward a console as cover, the dim red light was lost in a blinding surge of white-blue light that rippled through the bridge. Three figures stood in the centre of the bridge.

The Pilgrims of the Veil had come aboard.

They were tall, all angles and lean grace, wrapped in dark cloth that hung like ceremonial robes over scavenged armour. They wore off white masks, obscuring their faces with a mockery interpretation of eyes and a mouth. Around their necks hung small reliquaries: those small, obsidian cubes, faintly humming, each one pulsing in time with the other.

The bridge crew froze.

For a moment, there was little sound, and then the lead Pilgrim moved, fast and athletic, drawing what looked like a ceremonial blade. It hissed against the air with his movement.

The first slash of the plasma blade caught Jevlak across her chest and hurled her backward into the bulkhead.

The rest of the Pilgrims moved with deliberate precision. Silent, practiced. No war cries, no commands.

Across the Farragut, chaos erupted. Four more flickered into being on the lower decks, while another team appeared in engineering, then the shuttlebay, then the fighter pod.

In main engineering, the air filled with screams. Lieutenant Velkar, leading the defence, saw one of the Pilgrims stride directly through the fire suppression mist, reliquary burning in his palm. The console lights around him flared and died.

“Surrender!” he shouted, firing his phaser into the haze. The beam struck one of the reliquaries squarely and the result was worse than a miss. The energy fed into it, vanished, then spat back as a cascade of white sparks that tore open the deck plating.

On the bridge, Aloran ducked behind the command chair as Kincaid fired again. His second shot caught one Pilgrim full in the chest. The robes burned away, revealing the lean musculature beneath, a lattice of implants and old scars. The body fell, twitching.

“Keep firing!” Kincaid yelled, his voice sharp, military, desperate.

The remaining two Pilgrims pressed the assault. One vaulted over the conn, blade flashing. Aloran met it halfway with a console access panel conveniently detached during their previous repair attempts, slamming the makeshift shield into the Pilgrim’s mask. The impact cracked the surface, revealing a flash of smooth pale skin and sending the attacker sprawling backwards.

“Fascinating,” he said, almost calmly, before grabbing what appeared to be a disruptor from the fallen Pilgrim and rolling behind the helm station. He fired low, three disciplined shots. The energy hit the cracked helm, and this time the creature fell properly, body jerking once before collapsing into silence.

The last of them – smaller and faster – let out a sound like a mechanical exhale. It triggered something on its reliquary. Instantly, the air filled with static. Every light on the bridge flickered. The tactical console spat sparks.

“Stop!” Kincaid yelled, lunging forward. He fired again, twice, point-blank. The figure fell backward, sparks exploding around its body.

And then there was quiet. Just the hiss of cooling circuitry. The hum of dying panels. And the faint, rhythmic pulse of three black cubes, lying where the bodies had fallen. It was over so quickly.

Aloran wiped his sleeve across his face. “Report,” he said.

“Many of the consoles are useless,” Kincaid answered, looking around them, and moving toward the only feint glow of an auxiliary panel. “Engineering is not responding and internal sensors are unreliable.”

Aloran stepped forward, crouching by one of the fallen invaders. “Seal the bridge,” he said. His voice had that low, command certainty that settled others. “Activate the emergency localised transport inhibitors. And then use whatever communications methods we can harness to order the crew to shelter in place and barricade themselves in.”

Kincaid nodded. “Aye, sir. Manual lockdown.”

As the officers worked on revealing and then manipulating the manual security measures, the sound of the seals engaging was oddly comforting. The metallic thump as automated systems were disengaged.

When it was done, Aloran straightened. “They are certainly coordinated,” he said quietly. “They knew exactly where to strike.”

Kincaid exhaled, setting his phaser down on the console beside him. “Bridge, engineering, probably our auxiliary craft. They mean to take the ship.”

The reliquary nearest him pulsed once, faintly, like a dying heartbeat. Then again, a little brighter.

Kincaid stepped closer, weapon back in his hand. “Sir?”

Aloran raised a hand. “Hold, commander.”

The cube made a sound like static whispering through a radio. It was not discernable speech but had the pattern of it.

Kincaid swallowed hard. “Aloran, we should jettison those things.”

Aloran looked at the cube, then at the dead figures. He could feel something faint, like a memory trying to speak through the back of his skull. A rhythm that was not his.

“We will,” he said. “But not yet.”

He turned toward the centre chair. “We hold the bridge, let us use that advantage while we have it. Jevlak, see if you can ascertain how those boxes communicate?”