Saga - OT Saga - ST Accidents of Power (Star Trek crossover)

Title: Accidents of Power
Fandom: Star Wars/Star Trek (TNG/DS9/Voyager era)
Story type: Crossover
Characters: Mains are mostly OC's on both sides, but a lot of appearances by canon chars
Summary: When people try to use things they don't understand to gain an upper hand in war, there are unforeseen consequences. This is the case no matter what galaxy you are in.

Accidents of Power
Prologue​

“Now, that’s odd.”

Starfleet Captain Thanya Ferraro had grown up in Miami, and had spent an additional several years here on while working on a research partnership between Starfleet and the University. She’d have sworn that the buildings housing the Milky Way Cafe and the public transporter terminal were jammed up against each other, with barely a crack between the walls.

Yet right now, there was a third, smaller building sitting in between. No passerby commented on it, and Thanya didn’t feel like asking questions. Not yet.

On the surface, the building appeared to fit in with the rest of the campus’s late 21st Century style–compact from resource constraints after World War III, practical under the peak of Vulcan cultural influence on Earth, as little specialization as possible, just like the people of that era had to be. And yet… very different. Somehow–but not in any way she could put it in words.

An arc of silver letters stretched over the wooden door. The Captain’s Table, they read. Thanya tried to look through the window, but it was darkened to the point of only showing her reflection. Almost hoping it would be locked, she tried to turn the handle.

The door easily swung open, and Thanya found herself in a bar. Patrons–and there were a fair number–turned to her. Many different species were represented, including several completely unfamiliar ones.

Then her eyes drifted to a very familiar figure. “What the–”

The woman turned and met her eyes, instantly widening in recognition. She grinned. “Thanya!” she said. “Finally a Captain, I see!”

“Uhm…” Thanya’s feet automatically took her to the table, joining a Klingon, a Twi'Lek, and a furry four-armed alien whose species she didn’t know.

The barkeep approached. “Can I get you anything, Captain?”

Thanya hesitated and looked at her first commanding officer. “Uhm…”

“You can get anything,” she said.

“Uhm… pancakes. Swedish style. And a Rimmu cocktail.”

“Not going for exotics?” the Twi'lek asked as he knifed what looked like a roasted snake on his plate.

“Most don’t on their first visit,” the Klingon said. “Daima, Daughter of Ansher,” she introduced herself. “Captain of the T'linkan.”

“What is this place, ma'am? How can you be here?”

“First,” her former commander replied, “there’s no need for ranks. Everyone is a captain here. Just call me Cindy. The Captain’s Table… just like it says. If you weren’t a captain, you wouldn’t even see it.”

Thanya looked around. “I assume you can’t return to Earth by going through that door,” she said carefully.

Cindy sor Valetta shook her head. “Everyone exits where they entered.” The barkeep arrived with her food and drink. “Do we have to pay?”

“Eventually, you pay with a story.”

“What?”

The four-armed alien began moving all twenty-eight fingers in an elaborate pattern, and the universal translator in Thanya’s combadge interpreted the signs. “This is a place where everyone knows what the burden of command. No one gets here without something to tell.” He–she–it? pointed at Cindy. “This one never told much. I would think your species gloomy and secretive if I haven’t met–”

“We’ve heard that one!” the Twi'lek exclaimed.

“You know, maybe it is time,” Cindy said. “Especially since I don’t have to tell the whole thing by myself anymore.”

She hadn’t spoken particularly loudly, yet it appeared that everyone in the bar had heard and turned their heads. “This should be good,” a brown-haired human murmured and took a long gulp from his beer mug.

“You want to start?” Cindy asked. “It’s pretty much the start of your story.”

Thanya considered, sipped a little of her cocktail and spoke. “Do I have to explain to them what the Dominion War is?”

“Nah,” Cindy said. “The general idea is universal. The Federation was desperate, fighting against a ruthless enemy with little hope. Too bad the Jem'Hadar have been bred to be so short-lived. It could have been interesting if one of their captains was around. Perspective, you know.”

“Alright. So, like Cindy said–wait a minute.” She turned to the four-armed alien. “You said everyone has something to tell? Surely not? I mean, there are places where a captain simply inherits the ship from their parent.”

“I did that,” Daima said. “Doesn’t matter. The Captain’s Table doesn’t advertise itself loudly. It appears, but you have to notice, and care enough to go in.”

“Alright. So I was finishing up my junior year at Starfleet Academy, and all of a sudden, command decides that the war is desperate enough to invoke certain emergency protocols. One of which is graduating our class early. So instead of end-of-year exams, I end up a green ensign on the USS Vicksburg, commanded by yours truly here.” She pointed at Cindy.

Her former captain laughed. “Then we receive a report of unusual Dominion activity and are sent to investigate. That’s how it all began…"

Author's note: I'm crossposting this to AO3, FFN, and AlternateHistory.com. Please don't report as plagiarism.

 

Part I: Vicksburg
1​

“I’m sorry, Captain. I’ve lost them.”

Cindy sor Valetta sighed. Due to the war, two entire Academy classes were graduated and commissioned ahead of schedule. Ensign Thanya Ferraro should have been studying for her junior year examinations and selecting a topic for a graduation thesis, not handling a sensor console on a bridge of a starship in a warzone.

“Commander Blake,” she noted her security chief. Pale, blue-eyed, shaved bald, Ruby Blake was another new addition to the Vicksburg bridge after a ground skirmish last month hospitalized her previous head of security. Unlike Ferraro, Blake had experience to spare, and should have been a first officer. With the undercrewed ship, Cindy used her in that capacity informally.

She crossed the bridge and leaned to Ensign Ferraro, muttering quietly and pointing out details on the console. Clever, Cindy recognized. Under the circumstances, no one would fault Blake for doing the ensign’s work for her—but she merely guided the younger woman in the right direction so that she could do it herself.

“Thank you, ma'am,” Ferraro said.

“Carry on,” Blake replied and returned to her own station.

“Dominion ship reacquired,” Ferraro announced. “Course 123-22 mark 15. Range 3.2 lightyears. Speed warp 4.2.”

“What are they doing here?” Cindy asked no one in particular. “Keep your distance,” she told the conn. “It looks like they don’t know about us, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

“We can fight her, ma'am,” the tactical officer insisted.

“And then two or three of their friends will show up and destroy us. They do have cloaks, you know.”

“Are they just here to lure us?”

“They’re out of warp,” Ferraro said. “In a planetless system.”

“Take us above the ecliptic and put the star between us,” Cindy ordered. “Then head in. They’re up to something.”

XXX​

“What the hell?”

When only silence followed that remark for a few seconds, Captain sor Valetta turned to the navigation station. “Lieutenant, you’re the only Betazoid onboard. Please articulate your thoughts.”

“Sorry, ma'am.” He modified the viewscreen and several white shapes appeared near an orangish ball of flame. “There’s that Dominion war cruiser we first spotted, two cargo vessels, and a small shuttle.”

“Alright…”

“The cargo vessels appear to be dropping bombs into the star.”

“What?”

“Exactly, ma'am. What could be the point?”

“Intensify the scan.”

“We could be detected,” Ruby Blake warned.

“Intensify the scan,” sor Valetta repeated, before relenting slightly. “Keep us on the other side of the star.”

Several tense moments passed. “Ma'am, there are numerous artificial objects maneuvering in the interior of the star.”

“What the hell?” the Betazoid navigator repeated.

“They are well-shielded,” Ferraro answered everyone’s unasked question. “Dominion signature.”

“Pull one of them out with a tractor beam.”

“We’ll need to descend to within forty thousand kilometers.”

“How long will our shields last?”

“Long enough,” Blake answered.

“Then do it.”

“Yes, ma'am.” In response to the conn, the Vicksburg dove towards the star.

Blake moved to the tractor beam operator station. “Standing by.”

“Forty thousand kilometers.”

Blake tapped the key. Her console chirped. “Got—negative.”

“What happened?” sor Valetta demanded.

“Slippage vortex in the shields. Can you get us closer?”

“Shields at ninety percent,” Ferraro informed them.

“Drop to thirty thousand,” the captain ordered.

“Standing by.”

“Thirty thousand kilometers.”

This time, Blake activated both port and starboard tractor beams. “Gotcha!”

“Lieutenant, get us away!”

“Yes, ma'am!”

Two minutes later, they were back to a safe distance from the star and the mysterious object floated in space in front of the Vicksburg. “Magnify,” sor Valetta commanded.

The item was octahedral, black, about two meters tall. “Scanner can’t penetrate the interior.”

Sor Valetta had barely ten seconds to think when the Dominion device exploded, bathing them all in a flash.

“Did they spot us?”

“Negative,” Ferraro said after studying the sensor board. “It—”

Blake leaned in to see. “You’re not delusional, Ensign. They detonated all the bombs at once.”

“Why?”

“Take a look, Captain,” Blake manipulated the viewscreen. Explosion locations within the star were marked by black dots. Except for one gap, the bombs had been arranged in a ring nearly a thousand kilometers in diameter.

“I’m willing to bet that,” Blake pointed to the gap, “is where the one we captured was supposed to be?”

“But what could they do?”

“Without knowing exactly what they are, it’s impossible.”

“Ma'am, there’s instability in the star.”

“Caused by the bombs?”

“If not, it’s a hell of a coincidence,” sor Valetta said. “On screen.”

The middle of the bomb circle erupted almost as brightly as the original bomb, bright enough to be sharply contrasted against the star’s surface. “My god!” the navigator exclaimed. “Is that thing traveling at warp?”

The declaration made Ferraro jump back to her sensors. “Yes. Warp… nine point six.”

“So, that’s what this is about,” Blake declared. “A weapons test.”

“Weapons—Lieutenant, plot that beam’s course, now!”

It took several frantic minutes before the Betazoid sighed in relief. “Klingons will get a spectacular view in a couple of months,” he said. “It’ll pass within a light-year of Qo'nos. Nothing else after that until it hits the galactic core.”

“Good.”

Alarms blared. “The cruiser!”

“Evasive maneuvers!”

XXX​

“Give them a spread of photon torpedoes.”

Blake obeyed. “Their shields held.”

“Keep firing.”

The Jem'Hadar cruiser raked Vicksburg with phasers. “Shields at seventy percent!”

“Two more cruisers dropped out of warp.”

The enemy’s next shot caused a violent shudder, followed by a moan as the lieutenant at the conn smashed his head into the console, blood pouring out of his eye. “Medical emergency! Lieutenant Keroi, take the helm!”

The Betazoid navigator hit a switch to transfer the controls to him and immediately put the Vicksburg into a twist. Four Dominion torpedoes streaked past, and when Captain sor Valetta switched the viewscreen to look behind, they saw Ruby Blake fire several precise phaser bursts causing damage.

“They are faster,” Keroi cautioned.

“Uh-oh,” Ferraro muttered from her station.

“Uh-oh, what, Ensign?”

“There are more of their weird mines in the star—another circle. Much smaller this time.”

“Where’s it pointing?”

“Right now, out the galaxy. But the star rotates—”

The pursuit resumed. “Can we disrupt it?”

“Not with that thing on us. One enemy at a time,” sor Valetta said.

Keroi overloaded the engines to make a sharp turn and point Vicksburg away from the star, before firing up the warp drive. “Lieutenant!” sor Valetta had time to get out before they were engulfed by brightness again. When that subsided, pieces of the Jem'Hadar cruiser floated past.

“What happened?”

“They blew up the sunburst-inducing mines,” Ferraro said.

“And we got caught in it.”

“So did their cruiser.”

“How did you know what to do, Lieutenant?”

“I read his mind.”

“I thought Jem'Hadar were immune.”

“The Vorta aren’t.”

“What do we do?”

“We’re traveling at warp—sorry. When it’s not from our engines, the numbers don’t really make sense, and I’m getting no external readings.”

“Great. Can we pull out?”

“I think so. We can move laterally through the beam—and out of it.”

“Do it.”

Keroi tapped the controls. “Stand by.”

A minor jolt later flicked the brightness off and put the Vicksburg back into normal space. There was a background of stars, but no nearby objects.

“Where are we?”

“I don’t know, Captain.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it. This pattern of stars doesn’t exist anywhere in our galaxy.”

 

2​

“Ship on scanners, Captain.”

“Big?”

“No—it’s about the size of a runabout.”

“Approach,” sor Valetta ordered. “Lifeforms?”

“One… reading as human.”

“How’s that possible?”

“The ship is showing signs of combat damage. It is drifting.”

“Captain to sickbay.”

“Shar here,” the Andorian CMO responded.

“Stand by. You may have a patient incoming.”

“What sort?”

“Who?”

“Don’t know yet. Local, possibly. Adrift in a ship. We’ll beam him over.”

“A stranger.”

“Human, though. Yes, doctor. We’re all just as surprised.”

“Well, perhaps he can tell us a tale.”

“I intend to hear it,” sor Valetta said. “I’m heading down to the transporter room. Blake, come with me. Keroi, you have the bridge.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

In the turbolift, Blake looked at her intensely. “Do you think the stranger is dangerous?”

“It’s always possible.”

Blake checked her phaser. “Should I bring in a squad?”

“Oh, I think the two of us will be enough,” the captain said, tapping her own phaser. “I will want your first impression.”

“Alright, ma'am.”

They stepped in and nodded to the transporter operator. “Do you have him?”

“Locked on.”

“Energize.”

Cindy’s first thought was that she bothered Dr. Shar needlessly. The man who materialized showed no signs of needing medical attention, unless the intense sweat was due to illness. He smiled at them, and waved.

The hand was made of metal, which startled both women for a second. Otherwise, the stranger seemed unremarkable. He was shorter than either of them, but much bulkier—though he was dressed in a loose-fitting outfit with many straps, hoses, and a black helmet hanging on his back. Like Blake, his head was shaved; unlike her, his swarthy complexion made the whites of his eyes very prominent. He was looking straight in the captain’s eyes.

Before either spoke, the transporter console produced a sound. “Alert from the bridge, ma'am,” the operator said.

“What happened, Keroi?”

“That ship exploded.”

The stranger said something, and a moment later, the universal translator parsed the meaning. “Damn it.” He turned to them. “Thank you,” he said. “You saved my life—though I don’t understand how.”

“What do you mean?” sor Valetta asked.

“One moment, I was in my ship, trying to affect repairs, then I’m here—and just in time, it looks like.”

Blake stared. “How can he not know about transporters?”

Sor Valetta stopped her. “We can discuss this later. No matter what happens, you will not be mistreated. But we’ve scanned your ship—it was damaged in battle. What happened? I need to know if there’s danger.”

“Oh, yes there is. I was in pursuit of a dangerous terrorist. I had been given assurances by my colleagues that the rest of his group would be in no position to spring an ambush. The assurances… proved mistaken.”

“So they might come back?”

“They have no reason to, now that my ship is gone. But if they spot you—absolutely. They’d love to get their hands on your—transporter did you say?”

“Later,” the captain repeated. “First, I don’t think we introduced ourselves. I’m Captain Cindy sor Valetta of the USS Vicksburg. This is my security chief, Lieutenant Ruby Blake.”

“And I am Inspector Voss Torrel of the Imperial Security Bureau.”

XXX​

“I’m sorry, Inspector. Pulling you out of the wreck was one thing. However, using Vicksburg to chase down your enemies is a violation of the Prime Directive.”

“But you said you weren’t even in your home galaxy.”

“Irrelevant. We can take you to a nearby planet, but that is it.”

Torel murmured something unpleasant. “They’re getting away,” he added. “These are terrorists and murderers!”

“I am sorry.”

He resigned himself. “Alright, Captain. But how will you know where to go, without astrogation data?”

“He’s right, Captain,” Keroi interrupted. “Which of these stars even have planets?”

“Most do,” Torel said. “It’s been a while since I did dead reckoning like this—but I believe that is E'Krit. It has a small spaceport, which I could make use of. It’s some thirty-five lightyears away.”

“Ensign Ferraro, take the helm and set course. Ruby, you have the bridge. Lieutenant Keroi, my office.”

“And me?” Torel asked.

“We have arranged guest quarters. It’s a couple of days travel—”

“What?”

“Thirty-five light-years at warp six. Vicksburg isn’t a racer.”

“That speed is typical where you come from? Captain,” Torel declared, “you’re in grave danger.”

“How?”

“Even a rustbucket with a class four hyperdrive can make that distance in minutes. A modern fighter like these terrorists had? THIRTY SECONDS at most. They’ll get help, come in force, and steal your ship—with its teleporter that they’ll put to their nefarious purposes. And I can’t risk calling for help until I’m sure it will come before they do.”

“bull****.”

“What?”

“Ruby—”

“bull****,” the security officer repeated. “No one can travel that fast. If you could, you could unify the galaxy.”

“We have,” Torel declared. “I represent the Galactic Empire. Successor to the Galactic Republic. In one way or another, there has been a pan-galactic government for millennia. Hyperspace travel lets you go from Coruscant to the Outer Rim in hours, days on the slowest ships.”

“But you don’t have transporters?”

“No. Why are you looking at me? I’m no physicist, I have no idea how either technology really works. I am a counter-terrorist, so I can see how your machine can be used in all sorts of crimes.”

“The same Prime Directive would apply.”

Torel laughed. “Tell me, Captain, would you hold to your Directive under torture? If they take half your crew hostage, would the other half let them die rather than cooperate? Can the system be learned by trial and error?” He shook his head. “And that’s just me coming up with ideas on the spot. Who knows what someone with time and a very high incentive can think of.”

“And what would you have us do?”

“You have shuttles?”

“Two.”

“Can they travel at—warp, you call it?”

“Yes.”

“Head to E'Krit, but sit outside the system where you are unlikely to be detected. We’ll take a shuttle in, I will contact my people, and you can be placed under Imperial protection. If the terrorists attack, we destroy the shuttle.”

Sor Valetta sat in her command chair in deep thought. Blake glared at the Imperial inspector, but when she tried to speak to her captain, Cindy raised her hand. “We’ll do it. Set course, and see what would be a good location near that system to hide the Vicksburg.”

She then rose and faced Torel. “I want to make something very clear, Inspector. I don’t trust you. I will deliver you to E'Krit—but you give me reason, and you will spend the intervening time in my brig.”

Torel was unfazed. “In your place, I wouldn’t trust me, either.”

XXX
​

“We’re here, Captain.”

“You look worried.”

“It’s nothing, ma'am.”

“Your apprehensions are not nothing.”

“I can’t read his mind. Torel’s, I mean.”

“Is that unusual?”

“He’s human.”

“Well, we didn’t run a DNA test,” sor Valetta admitted. “Perhaps he has natural counter-telepathy.”

“That should be more worrying.”

“Why?”

“Because it had to have evolved for a reason. Besides, he’s not completely opaque, like a Ferengi.”

“What do you mean?”

“I got glimpses—strong feelings. He’s definitely more than he pretends to be.”

“I’ll need something more concrete, Lieutenant.”

“He was very angry when you were pondering what to do. It’s incongruent—cheerful and accepting on the outside, and I feel rage just pouring out. He’s an excellent actor.”

“I see. Just because he didn’t get his way?”

“You reminded him he wasn’t in control—you were, Captain. He didn’t like it one bit.”

Sor Valetta pondered. “I told him I didn’t trust him—and he hasn’t done anything to earn it so far.”

“But he hasn’t done anything to put him in the brig, either.”

“So—do we follow up with the scheme he suggested or do something else?”

The discussion was interrupted by alarms ringing across the bridge. “What is it?”

“Ship—big one—just appeared.”

“On screen. Red alert. Battle stations!”

Technically, for both Keroi and sor Valetta, this was their off-shift. But sor Valetta wanted her most experienced navigator to handle the approach to E'Krit, and she herself was too worried to sleep. The rest of the bridge, however, was crewed by gamma shift. She noticed the increased response time; she wasn’t usually a part of their small team, nor they of hers. More cross-shift training, she jotted in the back of her mind.

“Warship,” the weapons officer declared.

“Why that conclusion, Ensign?”

“Form follows function. Look at her!”

They had a closer look now. The ship was roughly the length of Vicksburg, but a lot bulkier. Shaped like a flat wedge with several cylindrical protrusions in the back and an island on top, it was colored dull gray, difficult to spot in deep space.

“It raised shields.”

“Raise ours—”

The ship opened fire and several bright red bolts hammered the Vicksburg. “Shield generator is disabled.”

Then their starship shook again. “Tractor beam,” the weapons officer said.“

"We won’t fit into their hangar.”

“Blake here,” the security chief reported by comm. “I’ve got my teams assembled.”

“Have two of them escort our guest to the bridge. I want some answers.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Can we trust what he tells us?”

“Lies can be useful, too.”

Torel looked disheveled when he appeared. “What is happening?”

“I was hoping your could tell us. That ship took down our shields and put a tractor beam on us.”

“Did you shoot?”

“Of course not.”

Torel didn’t respond immediately, but then Keroi interjected. “Multiple ships popping out!”

Sor Valetta turned to the screen. Some two dozen small craft, less than ten meters long, converged on the wedge-shaped cruiser.

“Captain, destroy them!”

When sor Valetta turned to him in fury, he stood firm. “Those are the terrorists. They’re going to—”

Two small explosions flashed within seconds as a dogfight between the fighters the cruiser launched and the attackers concluded in the latter’s favor. They once again took up formation and sped towards their target. They approached from the rear, so the cruiser blocked most of the Vicksburg‘s view.

A barrage of missiles. Detonations all over the hull. The Starfleet vessel jerked as tractor beams suddenly released.

Torel transformed into a storm of rage, punching both security officers with enough strengh to collapse them, throwing the ensign on the bridge weapons station out of her chair and over his head, and starting to punch buttons on that console. Phaser beams spat from the Vicksburg, hitting several craft. The others turned around, circled for a few moments, jinking to avoid Torel’s fire, and then formed up to attack them.“

A phaser beam crossed the bridge and hit Torel in the back. It seemed to have no effect, but then something tiny zipped by on the same course. It collapsed the Imperial inspector.

"Mirren, Raya, take him to the brig,” Blake ordered, holstering the dart gun alongside her phaser and taking up the weapons station herself. “How did he resist the stun?”

“A question to ask him later. What happened to the ships?”

“I’ve gone to warp to avoid the missiles,” Keroi informed them. “But engineering tells me we can’t do it again until we make repairs—and they’re still bent on destroying us.”

On screen, the formation of fighters and bombers was fast approaching. “Shields?” sor Valetta asked.

“Still down.”

“Have you tried hailing them?”

“Unsuccessfully. Once again, either their systems are too incompatible to pick up the signal, or they don’t want to talk.”

“I can shoot them,” Blake suggested.

“And carry out Torel’s agenda for him?”

“Even one missile can be catastrophic. A volley like the one we just saw—”

“Captain to engineering. Do we have transporters?”

“We do. No damage.”

“When they get within range, beam the pilots on those craft onboard.”

“Beam—”

“Before they fire the missiles.”

“Will do, ma'am.”

“Team of eight to each transporter room, now!” Blake shouted into her combadge.

“I was going to beam them straight to the brig.”

“So either the plan works perfectly, or we have armed hostiles loose.”

“Damn, didn’t think about that.”

“That’s not your job, Captain. It’s mine.”

XXX​

“Status.”

“Imperial cruiser fled. We’ve got eight pilots in the brig, and two more in sickbay—the ones Torel shot.”

“He shot more,” Cindy growled.

“They’re dead, ma'am.”

“The fighters?”

“Only the wrecks. Loss of the pilot doesn’t shut down their engines.”

“That’s not reassuring.”

“Dr. Shar? What can you tell us about our patients?”

“One’s a human male,” the Andorian doctor replied, “in his twenties. The other is a female of a mammalian humanoid species I’ve never seen, but she appears to be even younger. Both suffer from burns, but it’s not live-threatening. Their suits partially protected them from both the weapons fire and vacuum.”

“Weapons?”

“Pistols of an unknown design firing some sort of energy beam.”

“They all have them—including the ones in the brig?”

“Yes, ma'am,” Blake replied. “We just beamed them there as is.”

“Have they tried to use them?”

“A few. Some seem to have taken the capture as an opportunity to sleep instead.”

“Show the photographs.”

Blake put up a grid of ten faces on the screen. Four humans, six aliens, all from unfamiliar species. “Hmm…” Cindy considered.

“Ma'am?” Ensign Ferarro seemed worried.

She’s still a kid. “Who’s the leader?”

“What?”

“Which one of them is the leader?”

“Captain, I don’t know—we’re supposed to tell just from face shots?”

“Of course,” Blake said.

“Why don’t we just ask them?”

“Consider what happened the last time we took a stranger at his word.”

Blake tapped a few keys on her PADD and numbers appeared next to each face. “Everyone, vote for who the leader is,” she said, and tapped her own response.

“Consider this a test of your perception skill,” Cindy encouraged the others at the conference table.“

"Results are in,” Blake announced a few moments later, and displayed them. Four came in for the blonde woman in the middle of the second row, one for the injured human man, and two for the ridge-faced bulky grey-skinned alien in the last spot.

Cindy ended the meeting. “I’m going to the brig,” she said. “Blake, Ferrao, you’re with me. We’ll start with the blonde lady.”

XXX​

“Drop the containment field opacity.”

The security crewmember tapped a button and the brig suddenly got bigger as the cell walls on one side seemed to disappear, revealing the prisoners. Lieutenant Commander Blake, Captain sor Valetta, and Thanya walked slowly past them. Several reached out to touch the newly transparent walls, and jerked their hands away from the mild shock of the force field.

Those whose expressions could be read weren’t particularly angry, though they were grim. Several had obvious weapons strapped to their clothes, but no one brandished them. Captain sor Valetta gestured to her and Lieutenant Blake to stand still and stepped forward in front of the blonde woman’s cell.

“I’m Captain Cindy sor Valetta of the USS Vicksburg. On behalf of my crew and the United Federation of Planets, I apologize. Two of your comrades have been killed because of my neglect.”

The blonde woman jerked backwards. “Excuse me?”

“Who’s dead?” one of other prisoners demanded.

“You had a dozen ships,” sor Valetta said. “We recovered ten. The eight of you here, and two more in our sickbay.”

She ordered the same images they viewed in the ready room projected on the brig wall.“

"You shot at us,” the blonde declared. “We rescued you from—”

“No one on my crew fired those shots. It happened on my ship, so I am responsible—but we had no intent to attack.”

“You’re not making sense—and I never heard of your Federation, or seen ships like yours.”

“I expect not.”

“Why are we prisoners?”

Instead of answering, sor Valetta motioned to the brig supervisor, who toggled several force field controls. The opaque field in one cell across from them became transparent, revealing Voss Torel.

“Don’t worry,” sor Valetta informed the blonde. “It’s one-sided, and he can’t hear us.”

“He’s alive!”

“We found his ship drifting and damaged—and it exploded shortly after we beamed him on board.”

“Beamed?”

“Teleported. Like we did with you.”

“So what did you do with him?”

“Listened. He claims to be from the Imperial Security Bureau.”

“He is.”

“He said he was fighting terrorists.”

“Us, you mean.”

“He scared everyone with what would happen if you got our transporter. He wanted us to bring him to E'Krit.”

“From where Hue left him? That’s strange.”

“Hue?”

The blonde’s face turned to frustration at having revealed some information. “We’re in mutual mistrust, Captain.”

“Not to the point of names,” sor Valetta said. “I told you mine already; this is Ensign Thanya Ferrao and Lieutenant Commander Ruby Blake.”

“You have the power,” the blonde said.

Sor Valetta didn’t reply. “What’s strange?” she asked instead.

“If he wanted to get back to the Empire, there is an outpost in the Charinna system—much closer than E'Krit.”

“He did try to enlist us in chasing you,” sor Valetta admitted. “I refused. I offered to drop him off at any planet within reach, and he suggested E'Krit.”

The feathered alien persisted. “You weren’t even in system, and that light cruiser found you. Isn’t it obvious?”

“No,” Blake said. “Explain.”

“He needs to keep your teleporter away from us. You refuse to fight us for him, so he lures you here and summons a cruiser to hold you. The Imperial ship didn’t fire, just pinned you with a tractor beam.”

“Perhaps they wanted to capture us.”

“You’re lucky they didn’t,” another prisoner grumbled.

“Wait, go on,” Captain sor Valetta told the feathered alien.

“He does it specifically next to E'Krit, where he knows we’ll come out to see what the cruiser is up to. And then—you said it yourself, Captain. None of your crew fired on us. He did it, right?”

“Correct,” sor Valetta admitted. “He must have known he couldn’t have gotten more than a couple of shots off before we took him down.”

“Doesn’t matter. You fire on us, we fire back, there’s now blood on both sides—and you are now with the Empire by process of elimination. Plays well into the terrorist angle, too.”

“But that would mean he sacrificed all those people on the cruiser.”

The blonde laughed. “This is the Empire, Captain. They destroyed a whole planet less than a year ago. My planet.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You know,” Blake interrupted, “it almost worked. It would have if he internalized the existence of the transporter.”

“What?”

“Think about it. You only lost the two people he hit before I knocked him out at our weapons station. You live because we beamed you off. If we had no transporter, and you kept coming at us, we would have to start shooting—just as—uhm,” she looked at the feathered alien.

The blonde woman sighed. “If you let us out, we’ll tell you who we are.”

“Captain, you can’t—” Blake began.

“Take off all your weapons and place them in front of you,” sor Valetta ordered.

The blonde looked around, then nodded and took the pistol off her hip, followed by reaching in the interior of her suit to remove a strap of three small grenades. Others produced an assortment of pistols, rifles, knives, grenades, and a sixty-centimeter long sword the feathered alien had on his—her—its? back.

Blake stared. Thanya blinked a few times. “Captain to transporter room,” sor Valetta tapped her combadge. “Energize.”

The weapons shimmered and disappeared. “Keep them safe,” she ordered Blake. “The Prime Directive goes both ways.”

A combadge materialized in the place of the weapons. “Pin them on your clothing,” sor Valetta said. “If you take them off outside the quarters we provide you, security will be alerted immediately.”

“We understand,” the blonde said. When her group complied, the captain smiled and nodded at the operator. The force fields vanished.

Lieutenant Blake tensed, ready to draw her phaser. But no one rushed to attack the Captain or broke to escape. Instead, the blonde straightened herself and looked sor Valetta straight in the eye.

“I present to you Helix Squadron of the Alliance to Restore the Republic. I’m Captain Evaan Verlaine.”

 

3​

“You’re clear,” Dr. Shar said.

“Thank you,” Hue Tico shook his hand. “Ma'am,” he acknowledged Captain Verlaine who was watching from nearby. “Is everything alright?”

“Everything? Of course not,” Verlaine said. “But we don’t have any immediate worries for now.”

“Where are we?”

Another woman, one he’d never met, answered. “Aboard the USS Vicksburg. We’ve been stranded in your galaxy.”

“Our galaxy? You mean you from another one?”

“That’s right,” she said. “We didn’t believe it at first either. I’m Ensign Thanya Ferraro, by the way. Captain sor Valetta assigned me to act as liason with you. Show you around the ship, make sure you don’t get into trouble… and learn about this war with the Empire.”

“Which you’re now a part of,” Verlaine said.

“The Captain intends to adhere to the Prime Directive,” Ferraro said briskly. “And whatever happens, it’ll be up to her. Not you. Sorry,” she caught herself. “We’re all testy after Torel.”

“You have him?” Hue demanded.

Ferraro nodded. “In our brig—he attempted to provoke a fight by firing our phasers at you.”

“What about his ship?”

“Blown up shortly after we beamed him up.”

“Beamed?”

Ferraro explained. “That’s how you got us here, too?”

“Correct,” Verlaine said. “They kept us in the brig for a while, too.”

“Do you believe them?”

Ferraro looked bristled. “I do,” Verlaine said. “I saw Torel in their cell.”

“I want to see him,” Hue announced.

Ferraro frowned. “Now?”

“Now.”

“Something up?”

“A hunch,” Hue said. “Nothing more. I want to speak with him.”

“I’ll need to ask the Captain,” Ferraro said.

Verlaine nodded. “We’re on probation,” she explained. “No weapons, tracked at all times… and we can’t really do anything until we get somewhere.” She looked at Ferraro in accusation. “Your ship is too slow.”

“Even if the Prime Directive didn’t forbid it, it’s not like we have one of you hyperdrives lying around.”

“What about the replicators?”

“Need technical specifications. We—”

“What is it?”

“Possibly an idea—I’ll need to check some things.”

Ferraro and Hue exchanged looks. “What is going on?”

“No clue,” he smiled at her. “Does your captain tell you everything?”

Ferraro burst out in laughter before being interrupted by a combadge chirp. “Captain sor Valetta here.”

“Captain, Hue Tico wishes to speak with Torel.”

“Does he?” sor Valetta inquired. “Alright. Permission granted, but I want a security officer there with you.”

“Fine,” Hue shrugged. “Captain Verlaine?”

“Tell me how it goes later.”

“You don’t want to be there?”

“No. Useful or not, I don’t like hearing Imperial lies.”

Hue acknowledged and left sickbay with Ensign Ferraro. “Clean ship,” he commented.

“Thanks.”

When the turbolift doors opened, they were met by another woman, taller than Ferraro and shaved bald. “Lieutenant Commander Blake,” Ferraro half-acknowledged, half-introduced.

“Captain sor Valetta requested a security officer accompany you,” Blake said. “So here I am.”

Hue shook his head. “Is your Federation some sort of matriarchy?”

“Yup,” Blake said. “I’ve got four husbands slaving away for me on the lower decks.”

Both he and Ferraro stopped dead in their tracks and looked at the security chief as if her skin erupted with the colors of the rainbow. This lasted a few seconds before both women burst out in laughter.

“Hey, there are such places,” Hue protested.

“I’d like to visit them,” Blake declared and strode forward.

“First time I heard her make a joke,” Ferraro whispered to him.

“That’s what made it so effective,” she called out. They went into the brig. “Here we are,” Blake pointed at the opaque force field. “Do you need a moment to get ready?”

He considered. “I’m alright,” he said. “Let me see him.”

Blake tapped the control outside the cell. “This should be—”

Blake’s face contorted in shock. Ferraro gasped. Hue simply peered forward.

The cell was empty.

XXX​

“Captain, the prisoner escaped.”

“Red alert. What happened to the alarms?”

“Looking into it. Ensign Ferraro, arm yourself.”

“He was in there?”

“Ask your captain,” Blake retorted. She frowned at the brig console screen. “Computer, locate Chief Mirren.”

“Chief Mirren is in her quarters.”

“Blake here. Have a security team meet me on deck six.” She turned to Ferraro and Hue. Let’s go.“

When they got to the door to Chief Mirren’s quarters, two security officers aimed their phasers at the entrance and two other took positions on each side. Blake drew her own phaser, ensured Hue and Ferraro were standing back and tapped a key on the door’s control panel.

"Security override, alpha sigma three.”

The door swished open. Blake entered, sweeping the room with her phaser. There was no one inside. Mirren’s roommate would be on post in engineering, but if the computer said Mirren was here…

“Combadge,” Raya announced. The device had been hidden under the pillow.

“Inspect the security footage from the corridor. See when she got in and out.”

Raya acknowledged and began typing away on her PADD. “Captain.”

“I’ve been paying attention,” sor Valetta said. “I don’t think you’ll find anything.”

“Why not?”

“Because the relevant footage from the brig was erased and replaced with a repeating loop. He’s there—then he isn’t. Same for Chief Mirren.”

“You need permissions to access the security subsystem to do that.”

“Or to open up the brig in the first place. We’ll worry about how he managed to suborn Mirren once we catch him.”

“This isn’t typical of Mirren.”

Blake grunted. “Captain, a computer diagnostic will tell us where else the security footage was tampered with.”

“Torel is thorough enough to rig that, too,” Hue commented.

“He could try. But Mirren wouldn’t have access to that. Only the captain and first officer could. We’re currently short a first officer, so—”

The captain’s voice echoed through loudspeakers across the ship. “Stand by for level three computer diagnostic.”

“It’ll take a few minutes,” Ferarro explained to Hue.

When the diagnostic was complete, computer screens in the room lit up again. “Lieutenant Blake, you can terminate your search. Escape pod four is gone.”

“What? How did it escape undetected.”

“Captain Verlaine, does the Empire have cloaking devices?”

“They do. They’re rare and bulky, but they exist.”

“There we go,” sor Valetta said.

“And Chief Mirren?”

“She’s either an accomplice or—”

“Hold on, Captain. Yes. Come on. Ensign Crand says he found something.”

They descended a few and stopped in front of a hatch with a large number 4 painted in red. “This is where the escape pod Torel stole was docked.”

“Yeah,” Crand’s fists had clenched. “He was here, alright.”

He tapped the control pad. On other side of the door, attached to its top rim by the hair, was a woman’s head.

Without the body attached.

“Mirren,” Crand said.

Ensign Ferraro threw up.

XXX​

Evaan Verlaine sensed that the two companions in the Vicksburg‘s conference room with her were on edge. Samat, who was responsible for the squadron’s intelligence gathering, hid the frustration by flipping through a Starfleet datapad, looking up to glance over the others every couple of minutes. Hue Tico, who had run-ins with Voss Torel even before he joined the Alliance, exchanged a whispered conversation with Thanya Ferraro.

The other Starfleet senior officers, except for the dozed-off Lieutenant Keroi looked guarded. Dr. Shar—she’d learned his species were called Andorians—was chatting with Chief Engineer Relon about the strange coincidence about the presence of humans in two widely separated galaxies. She wished Lieutenant Tayeni had been here; she was a scientist and might have something to contribute to their speculation.

Ruby Blake had apparently ignored her captain’s orders and had pulled apart a blaster. Her blaster. Now, she was inspecting the unfamiliar components and struggling to put them back together into a working model. Verlaine didn’t offer to help—Blake seemed to be the sort who wouldn’t hesitate to ask if needed.

Captain sor Valetta walked in bearing fury on her face. She sat down at the head of the table and began speaking slowly and deliberately.

“Have you located the rest of Chief Mirren?”

“No, Captain,” Ruby Blake said apologetically. “I doubt we will, either. We found fragments of her uniform in the pod bay. My guess is, after staging his little demonstration, Torel let the corpse be tossed into the void.”

“I scanned for the sublight portion of the pod’s beacon,” Keroi informed her, “and triangulated the origin. The pod isn’t there. No debris, either.”

“They have it,” Verlaine said. “Does it have your teleporter?”

“No—and that’s about the only good thing I can say.”

“Why would Chief Mirren betray us?”

“Is that rhetorical, Dr. Shar, or do you think I can pull an answer out of thin air?”

“Before this happened—” she corrected herself, “—before we discovered it happened, you had a possible suggestion to quickly boost our speed, Captain Verlaine. You even claimed that there would be no violation of the Prime Directive—though I’m less concerned about that than I was an hour ago.”

“Captain!” Keroi exclaimed.

“Let’s see—first an attempt to provoke us into war, then murder of our crewmember, and lastly the theft of an escape pod. Starfleet got involved for far less. Yes, it’s a grey area. Should we ever get back, I will submit to a Federation court.”

“And how do we know we can trust this Rebel Alliance?”

When both Hue and Samat started to rise, Verlaine stopped them. “It’s a fair question. Trust is earned, and the only thing we’ve done when not in their power is fire on the Vicksburg.”

“My instinct says I can trust you, Captain,” sor Valetta admitted. “For one thing, you don’t try to take advantage of our ignorance. Torel scared us with you. In four days, he must have told twenty horror stories about "terrorists”.“

"How much truth was in them, I wonder,” Blake muttered.

“Probably some,” Hue admitted. “Outright lies are not Torel’s style.”

“I’m sure you have a corresponding list,” sor Valetta said. “You said they destroyed your planet. But you don’t go into details.”

“I don’t want to remember, Captain. I doubt the others do either.”

“So that’s one thing in your favor. A willingness to let us decide for ourselves. You also didn’t encourage me to toss the Prime Directive aside for your benefit. So here’s the deal. I’m not committing us yet. We need help around here, starting with speeding us up. We’re willing to help you in return. After Torel’s stunt, any cooperation with the Empire is off the table.

"Unfortunately, our comm systems are no more fit to work across the galaxy than our warp drive,” Chief Engineer Relon said.

“Don’t worry about that. Imperial Holonet nodes are quite ubiquitous, and we can slice them.”

“But won’t you get caught?”

“If we used them routinely for operations, even with encryption, traffic analysis would catch something,” she said. “A single message isn’t enough.”

XXX​

“Ship dropping out of hyperspace, Captain.”

“On screen.”

The Vicksburg crew tensed; the vessel looked to be of the same design as the Imperial light cruiser from two days ago. The only significant difference was…“

"It’s green,” Hue Tico said.

Verlaine, who hadn’t been paying attention, jerked her head up at that. “Oh, no.”

“Do we run? Fight?” sor Valetta demanded.

“No… but of all people…”

“We’re being hailed.”

“Put them on,” sor Valetta ordered.

An image of a bridge with several crewmembers of varying species replaced the starfield. Everyone seemed to be dressed in some shade of green, and in the center was a tall woman with green hair. “This is Lieutenant Commander Amilyn Holdo of the Alliance cruiser Fortitude,” she introduced herself.

“I’m Captain Cindy sor Valetta of the USS Vicksburg.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Holdo said. “Hello, Evaan.”

“Amilyn,” Verlaine said tersely.

“So what’s the trouble?”

Sor Valetta glanced at Verlaine. “Well?”

Verlaine sighed. “Did you bring the hyperdrive rings?”

“Five of them. The request was odd enough to catch my interest.”

“Alright.” Verlaine turned to Cindy. “A hyperdrive ring is an external hyperdrive that can attach to a ship without one. It works quite well if the ship was designed to be compatible. Yours obviously wasn’t—so it’ll require some tinkering.”

Holdo’s cruiser released four ring-shaped craft and a half-dozen escorting fighters. “Where do we attach?” she asked.

“Clamp on the nacelles—two each,” sor Valetta said. “Relon, see to it.”

The chief engineer acknowledged. Worry did not show up on his face, but then he was a Vulcan. Cindy noticed the hesitation, though. “Something wrong?”

“They look… small. Can they handle the mass?”

“I have the same concerns—but it’s the only real option. We won’t be pushing them. If it takes a week to get to our base, so be it.”

“If you have important business, you don’t have to stay—”

“I’m seeing this through, Captain,” Verlaine declared.

“And your squadron?”

“They won’t leave without me.”

“Meanwhile, may I extend an invitation to visit my ship, Captain? And anyone else in your crew, of course.”

Sor Valetta paused, considering. “Relon, do you have an ETA?”

“Four hours at least,” he answered. “The alloys are too different to weld together.”

“I’d be glad to,” Cindy said. “Lt. Keroi, Ensign Ferraro, come with me. Don’t worry, Commander Blake. I do intend to take a security escort.”

“Ma'am—”

“Not you. You have the ship, Commander.”

“Blake to Raya,” the security chief commed. “Join the Captain in the transporter room for an away mission.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

The three officers entered the turbolift. “Take care of her, Commander,” she said to Holdo before shutting the comm. She looked at the image of Fortitude against a backdrop of stars for a while, and then took a seat in the bridge’s center chair. “You really didn’t want to go,” she told Verlaine.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Amilyn Holdo… is my ex.”

XXX​

“Energize.”

Half of Helix squadron vanished from the transporter pads, accompanied by Ruby Blake. “We’re here,” she commed a few seconds later. “They are astonished.”

“Alright. The rest of us will be in momentarily,” Cindy sor Valetta said and joined Verlaine with the remainder of her unit on the transporter pads. “Energize.”

They materialized under a transparent dome some two hundred meters across on what was clearly a moon orbiting a yellow gas giant. The two to three story buildings nearly filled the dome’s floor in orderly rows, but they had a look of impermanence about them. Humans, aliens, robots, and vehicles bustled around; despite Blake’s claim, no one outside the small group of people nearby was paying attention.

“Captain Cindy sor Valetta of the USS Vicksburg,” Cindy introduced herself for what seemed like the twentieth time in the past week. “Thanks for your help with the hyperdrive rings.”

“General Rieekan,” a dark-haired man extended his hand. “Thank you. We were worried when Helix Squadron failed to report back.”

“And yet you sent Amilyn to find us,” Verlaine mocked.

“Hardly finding. You let us know exactly where you were. The Fortitude had the hyperdrive rings.”

“How can we help, General?” Cindy asked. “I don’t see a way for us to get home right now, and with the likes of the Empire, we won’t last long on our own.”

“Can you stay a few days here?”

“Why?”

“We may be able to obtain a hyperdrive suitable for a ship the size of yours. I don’t have one on hand right now, and from the report the Fortitude engineers gave me, this trip stressed the rings beyond anything that can be considered safe.”

Cindy nodded. “I’ll need to arrange a few things anyway.”

“Like what, ma'am?” Blake asked.

“Later. In the meanwhile… how are you on food, General?”

“Boring but sufficient… when the miners left the system, they didn’t bother to take the ration bar supply.”

“Well, perhaps we can provide a valuable service,” she said. “Since you don’t have transporters, I presume you also don’t have replicators. As long as we’re around, you can drop the boring part on your food situation.”

 

4​

“Hi.”

“Hey. You made it.”

“No, he didn’t. I’m Huee Tico, the clone.”

“Seriously?”

Hue Tico shook his head. “Cloning is real, though.”

“We have it back home,” Thanya countered.

“Did you save me a seat?”

“What, you don’t want to sit on my lap?”

Bantering, they made their way to the Rebel base’s central space. Normally, something like this would be done onboard ship, with most of the Vicksburg crew having to listen to their captain over the ship’s intercom. She was glad General Rieekan offered the opportunity; no matter what he may have said, she noticed that it put a strain on them, swelling the number of people in the dome by almost a quarter.

“Back home there are probably people wondering that ships with names starting with ‘V’ are cursed.”

“What?”

“You wouldn’t know. It’s just that in the last three years, two Starfleet vessels ended up hurled far, far from home. Vicksburg and Voyager.”

“Renaming her won’t bring you home.”

She laughed. “Yeah, and I won’t be able to collect.”

“Collect what?”

“A silly Starfleet Academy tradition,” she admitted. “Before graduation, every cadet writes down how long the first shipwide speech they hear from their first captain will be. To the second. Whoever in the class comes closest, wins.”

“And how much did you bet?”

“Three minutes eighteen seconds.”

“Short, huh?”

“We were graduating in the midst of a war, and being on the command track, I’d figured I’d end up on an established vessel. An engineer or scientist has a better chance to be placed on a newly commissioned ship right out of the Academy. The first crew typically gets a long one.”

“So you’re timing it?”

“Why? It’ll be recorded.”

The subject of their conversation stepped up to the podium.

“Crew of the USS Vicksburg and members of the Alliance to Restore the Republic,” Cindy sor Valetta began. “A moment of silence, please, for Chief Louise Eraina Mirren.”

She let the quiet last for some time and then resumed. “We’ve found ourselves in a distant, unfriendly, and in some ways, technologically superior galaxy. Striving out on our own is too risky, so we won’t do it. The Vicksburg and its crew are now part of the Alliance.”

There was a round of applause, but not one of overwhelming enthusiasm. “The Prime Directive was created to prevent Starfleet from suborning technologically inferior worlds and amassing power at those worlds’ natives’ expense. There is little danger of that here.”

“I don’t know,” Hue muttered. “Why don’t you fly to Coruscant and snatch the Emperor away like you did with us?”

“You know, if the captain isn’t thinking about that, I’m sure Lieutenant Commander Blake is.”

“I will not pretend it is an ideal situation. We’re joining because we don’t a way back, we’ve got something the Empire wants, and we don’t want them to have it. I will accept any resignation, either to join the Alliance elsewhere to live in this galaxy as civilians. I cannot even say which course of action bears the least risk.

"Now that we’re on our own, the Vicksburg needs to have all vital slots filled. Lieutenant Commander Ruby Blake, please step up.”

The security chief rose and approached the podium. She looked slightly confused, which surprised Thanya. Everyone else knew this would happen.

Captain sor Valetta took two pips from each side of her uniform collar and pinned them on her security chiefs. “Commander Ruby Blake,” she said. “I’m formally assigning you to the position of First Officer of the USS Vicksburg.”

“I don’t have a choice, ma'am?”

“This is wartime. No.”

“Thank you, Captain. I accept.”

“She isn’t happy,” Hue commented.

“I’m sure there’s a story behind that, but I don’t know it.”

There was another non-overwhelming round of applause. Ruby Blake wasn’t someone this crew knew for a long time. Their new first officer looked them over, gave a tight smile that didn’t reach her eyes, and stepped away.

“Thank you,” sor Valetta said. “Thank you all. We will find a way home. Starfleet crews have come out on top of much worse predicaments. As our new allies say… may the Force be with us.”

XXX​

“First Officer! First goddamn Officer!”

“You don’t want the rank?”

“Oh, what gave that away?” Ruby Blake snarled.

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“You heard her. No choice.”

“In the same speech,” Evaan Verlaine said slowly, “you Captain offered to accept any resignation. You could do it. Any Alliance unit will be glad to have you.”

“Sorry, but no.”

“Mind telling me the reason?”

Blake stopped pacing the small room. She didn’t take Evaan’s question as rhetorical. “Because I want a chance at love.”

“As, in, romance?”

“Yes, exactly.”

“And how does being a first officer exclude it?”

“Formally, it doesn’t.”

“So it’s not about a anti-fraternization rule?”

“Starfleet judges those things on an individual basis. There are numerous long-term couples serving together… sometimes even when one of them’s the Captain. It’s just that for me, romance and first officerdom are disaster ingredients.”

“Hmm… you’d have to clarify.”

“I don’t have to do anything.”

“No, of course not. You do if you want me to understand, though. Do you?”

Blake stopped to think again. “Want to try out an X-Wing?”

“What?”

“Flying takes away my stress.”

“I’m not stressed, I’m… well, maybe later,” Blake amended. “It won’t make the problem go away.”

“And what is, precisely, the problem?”

“I’ve been a Lieutenant Commander three times,” Blake admits.

“How old are you?”

“Forty-five.”

“You don’t look it.”

“Good genes,” she shrugs it off. “Anyway, first time was when I was promoted to night shift head on the research ship Leland. Quiet little post, not exactly what most people picture when they think of Starfleet. Crew of sixty-five. I serve there for about a year, then the captain and first officer decide it’s time to retire. I’m too young to be put in command, but the first officer slot is mine for the taking.”

“And you took it?”

“Sure did. So, new captain comes aboard. Thought she was Vulcan at first, but logic was the last thing on her mind. Probably quarter-Romulan. Gorgeous, black-haired, pointy-eared…” Evaan doesn’t understand half the terms, and the look on her face must tell her, since Blake abruptly stops. “After what happened, for a while I thought there was something to strict anti-fraternization rules.”

“What happened?”

“Distress call from freighter being attacked by pirates. Captain decides how we’ll take them. But she’s wrong, and she’s come up through the science division, and never focused on combat, and I have, and this is precisely when I’m supposed to tell her she’s wrong, but we’ve been having a quarrel and I want to make up, and I start, and she glares at me again…” Blake exhales from the rapid speech, “and I can’t, so everyone does it her way. Ten dead crewmembers, fourteen dead civilians, pirates escape with the cargo. Leland‘s lost a warp nacelle and is drifting in space. Some rescue. So. Court-martial. At which, of course, everything comes out, including our relationship. Dishonorable discharge for her. Demotion back to ensign for me.”

“You thought you deserved it.”

“Damn straight I did! Not to mention, afterwards, everyone thought I became first officer because I slept with the captain. I not only stopped dating in the chain of command after that, I stopped dating in Starfleet. But you can see how this dropped my pool of opportunities.

"Eventually, I’m back up to Lieutenant Commander and am being considered for promotion to Commander—which is typically the rank of the first officer on a large starship like Anabasis, where a first officer’s slot opens up. My captain writes a good reference, I interview with the captain of the Anabasis, looks good. Both ships come back to Earth and we plan on promotion/transfer ceremony. And because it’s on Earth, I get to invite my girlfriend. Not that her being there or not made any real difference in the end.”

“Something happened.”

“Worst. Timing. Ever. In the middle of the ceremony, news arrives that war with Cardassia broke out. And guess who my girlfriend is? A Cardassian from their embassy on Earth. Words come out. Phasers come out. When the security team arrives to detain her for the diplomatic exchange, I give her a farewell kiss. I wasn’t thinking. Everyone sees it, and because of the war, no one trusts me. Least of all my new captain.”

“I try to do my job, but I can’t put up with suspicion both above and below, so three weeks after the promotion, the captain and I have a row. On the bridge. In public. That’s it. I’m out as first officer.”

“Lost rank again?”

“I volunteered for that. I was drinking my sorrows down on Andor when Section 31 picked me up. Suggested I join them. I could be sent undercover to Cardassia, and everything that happened could be used as a cover story. Worked for a while.”

“How long is a while?”

“Five years. Then, just as the Dominion and Cardassia ally and the Dominion war starts, my cover gets blown, and I have to flee back to the Federation. A deep cover agent would be most useful, and now they don’t have one. Not exactly how you earn good references. And they don’t know what to really do with me. My history until my time with Section 31 is public. Admiral Nechaev is being nice, but I can tell—as soon as my name comes up, captains protest, and I don’t have any weight behind me.”

“Then suddenly, I get orders to report aboard Vicksburg and take the post of security chief. I’ve no idea that the ship lacks a first officer and I end being an informal one anyway. I don’t know what Captain sor Valetta was thinking. I mean, she can’t not know—”

“I know.”

Cindy sor Valetta stands in the doorway. She has replaced the pips on her collar that she gave to Blake. She folds her arms across and looks at her new first officer.

“Eavesdropping, Captain?”

“You accidentally turned on your combadge, Commander,” sor Valetta says equally formally. “I made sure no one else heard, but the words 'First goddamn officer’ don’t exactly inspire one to drop the subject.”

“So what happens now?”

“Do you want to talk in front of—”

“Captain Verlaine has heard enough already. Might as well have the rest. I trust you’ll be discrete.”

“No problem,” Evaan says.

“Now, I didn’t know you were Section 31, of course. I guessed, but officially, you resigned after the blowup on the Anabasis.”

“Is there any point to this, ma'am?”

“One question, Blake. Do you want to be a captain some day?”

“I… I never considered it after—”

“I didn’t ask if you thought you could become a captain. I asked if you wanted to.”

Blake sighed. “Yes.”

“And it’s almost impossible to do it without serving sometime as first officer. Successfully.”

“Exactly. No captain would ever—”

“Really, Blake?”

Suddenly something dawned on Ruby Blake’s face. “You wanted me as first officer. From the beginning.”

“Admirals weren’t too keen on approving it either. I chose not to fight it head on. If you really weren’t suited, it wouldn’t take long to spot.”

“You had doubts.”

“Idiots don’t have doubts. That’s what makes them idiots. You say your story is public, and it is. The thing is, most people don’t bother digging into the details, public or not.”

“Why did you?”

“I had to. Years ago, when I served on the Republic.”

“That was the ship that picked up the drifting Leland.”

“Yes, it was. And when we were dispatched back to the sector, I was put in charge of the team responsible for tracking down the pirates that attacked you. I needed information about them, and one of the best sources was the proceedings of your court-martial.”

“Not my best moments.”

“I found it very useful. Now, you know what happened in the battle five weeks ago. I lost sixteen crew, including Commander Parn and Lieutenant Commander Arik'lo. My first officer and security chief,” she explains to Evaan. “And some serious damage requiring time at a shipyard for the Vicksburg. So I do what anyone in my position does,” she smiles. “I go drinking with my fellow captains.”

“Is there a special place for that?”

Sor Valetta doesn’t answer. “It’s war, and it’s not going well. We’ve all lost people. And then I overhear two captains having outright rejected someone a place on their ship. Quite vehement. I’ve got recordings, by the way. We ever get back, I’ll let you hear the exact words.”

“I ask who the troublemaker is. And when they give your name, I remember my investigation on the Republic.”

“And just like that, you decide you want me?”

“Oh, I do my research. I talk to people who were on the Anabasis in the three weeks you were first officer there. I visit Captain Korlieo at the penal colony.”

Blake winces at that. “What did she say?”

“What I needed to make my decision,” sor Valetta deflects. “If I pushed, I probably could have made you first officer right there. But I don’t need to push—I’ve got two senior slots to fill, and no one will balk an eye if I make you security chief. So I call up Nechaev to ask her if you’re still available. And here we are.”

“There are no admirals you have listen to,” Blake says.

“Remember, we’re part of the Alliance now. There are admirals. But they won’t be telling me how to run my ship—just what they need it to do. Come on, Blake. If all I needed was a new security chief, I would have promoted Lieutenant Raya. Which I have now done, by the way.”

“Good choice.”

“Yes, it is. Just like my choice of first officer.”

“You’ve heard—”

“You know what I call your previous times?”

“What, ma'am?”

“Bad luck.”

“That’s it?”

“You’ve had spectacular strikeouts. But you also managed to climb up the ranks twice. Neither incident can repeat here.”

“How so?”

“What did you say about the Anabasis? ‘Suspicion both above and below’? Not happening. I trust you, and you now have the power to discipline anyone who comes at you with your past.”

Blake gives a sigh. “And the Leland situation?”

Sor Valetta lifts her eyebrows. “We are not lovers.”

“Do you want us to be?”

“Do you?”

“Captain, please. I can’t be uncertain. Not for this.”

“Very well, Commander. No.”

“Thank you. I don’t either.”

“See, Commander? You have absolutely no reason not to tell me I’m making a mistake.”

“You don’t have to listen.”

“No. I don’t. And if you decide to tell I’ve made a mistake promoting you, I won’t.”

Blake is quiet for a while. “I need to talk to you, Captain Verlaine, but it can wait,” sor Valetta says. “Commander, report aboard Vicksburg tomorrow at the start of alpha shift. Have a good time, you two.” She departs without another word.

Verlaine spurts. “What—”

Blake encloses her hand and pulls her up towards her. “I didn’t come just to rant—”

“Why, then?” she whispers.

“For this.” And she kisses her. “I’ve wanted to do this for days.”

Elaan puts her arms around Blake and squeezes closer before kissing back. “So did I.”

XXX​

“Append the manual,” Relon announced. “Operating hyperdrive entails yellow-alert status.”

“That serious?” sor Valetta asked her chief engineer.

“It’s the power consumption. We have to shut down most non-essential system to run it. Including weapons, by the way.”

“From what I gather, you don’t fight in hyperspace.”

“True, Captain. I’ve made sure we can reroute power quickly, but ultimately, the Vicksburg wasn’t designed for this.”

“And the hangar?”

“Been ready for days.”

“So, we can do a shakedown cruise?”

“Yes, Captain.”

Her combadge chirped. “Captain sor Valetta, report to General Rieekan’s office.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Ma'am?”

“I have a feeling there won’t be a chance for shakedown. I’ll be right there,” she replied, then switched the comm. “Commander Blake.”

“Captain.”

“Get the crew aboard. Including Helix Squadron.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Captain Verlaine answered. “How long?” Blake inquired.

“I’ve been called in to see General Rieekan,” sor Valetta announced. “If it’s nothing, I’ll apologize to the crew.”

By this time, sor Valetta was out of engineering and in the turbolift on her way to the transporter room. “Beam me down to the command building.”

“Yes, ma'am. Energizing.”

When she materialized, she resumed her stride. “Captain sor Valetta, reporting as ordered,” she said.

Rieekan stood with a number of staff officers, several squadron commanders, and Lieutenant Commander Holdo. He didn’t greet her, instead starting to speak in a grim tone without preamble.

“We’ve received this transmission half an hour ago.”

He tapped a button and a holographic image of a woman with dark brown hair appeared. “This is Princess Leia,” she said. “Four weeks ago, Alliance Intelligence learned about the Amedda project.”

When a circular ship appeared next to the woman’s image, several involuntary gasps of “No!” thundered in the room. One had been Rieekan’s.

“No, it’s not another Death Star,” Leia said. “We have been spared that so far. The ship is only a little under a kilometer in diameter. Unfortunately, there is also no convenient exhaust port that we know of.”

“That small?” an engineering officer asked.

“It is a specialized warship,” Leia continued, “extremely toughly shielded, heavily armed, and armored. The tradeoff meant slow travel speeds, no capacity to launch fighters, and a crew of only twenty, with most weapons relying on automated targeting systems.

"The likely doctrine of usage will be to place these terrors, just as capable of devastating a world as a Star Destroyer, in potentially rebellious systems. It will take an entire fleet to crack one such vessel, costing us dearly and tying up our ships, while at the same time freeing up the rest of the Imperial fleet to attack us.

"Now, the urgent matters. Six hours ago, a commando team infiltrated the first prototype vessel built at Corulag. However, for this mission, the expected crew of twenty has been augmented by a company of Stormtroopers.

"The ship is now under dual control. The Imperials have the external weaponry, and shields, while our team took over sublight engines and communications. The hyperdrive has been damaged in the initial fighting, and neither side is willing to risk sending in repair crews.

"Unfortunately, we are not dealing with a stable situation. All the Empire has to do aboard that ship is wait until our crew dies of thirst. When that happens, the Amedda will become the first in a chain of beads ensnaring the galaxy.”

“Here are the coordinates. I am calling on all available Alliance units. Help the team either take over… or destroy that ship. May the Force be with us all.”

“General, I think we’re the closest.”

“We are. And now that Captain Valetta’s—”

“Sor Valetta,” she automatically corrected. “Sorry—I—”

“The Vicksburg,” Rieekan transitioned seamlessly, “has been equipped with a hyperdrive, I think we can do far better than Leia expects.”

“Sir?” Holdo asked.

“She is ready to sacrifice the infiltration team. We won’t have to.”

“You want me to beam them off?”

“Maybe. Maybe we can drop in additional forces and actually take over.”

“I may disappoint you,” sor Valetta said. “Our transporters don’t work through shields.”

“Then we’ll have the commandos try to disable the shields from the inside. They have comms. You get there and let them know.”

Cindy swallowed. The first mission for their new allies. This would make or break their reputation, and if anything went wrong…

“Commander Holdo, you’re taking the Fortitude along. You’re in overall command.”

“Yes, sir,” Holdo said immediately.

Cindy nodded. She did prefer it when she could operate on her own, but she knew full well she didn’t know this new enemy well enough yet. “When, sir?” she asked Rieekan.

“When can you be ready?”

She tapped her combadge. “Sor Valetta to Blake. Status report.”

“Getting the last of Helix Squadron fighters into the bay,” the first officer announced. “Should be done in ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes, General.”

“Holdo?”

“If Captain sor Valetta is willing to send me up with her transporter to save time—I’m ready.”

“Gladly, Commander,” sor Valetta said.

“How does it feel?”

“What, the transporting? It doesn’t feel like anything. You’re here—then you’re there.”

“Let’s do this.”

“It’s easier if we first beam together onto my ship,” Cindy said, tapping her combadge again. “Sor Valetta to Vicksburg. Two to beam up.”

They materialized in the transporter room. “Captain,” the operator acknowledge. “And—”

“This is Commander Holdo,” she said. “Unfortunately, we have no time to properly treat a guest. Yenner, get in touch with the Fortitude and beam her over.

"Yes, ma'am.”

“Straight to the coordinates?”

Holdo considered. “Let’s arrive somewhat in front of their path and take bearings.”

“Alright.” As she left, she muttered to herself, “this had better work.”

Ruby Blake rose from the captain’s chair on the bridge when she arrived. “I take it we will not be standing down.”

“No Commander. Relan, can we make hyperspace?”

“Everything seems good, but it’s a new system for us, and—”

“We’re doing it. Keroi, take us away from the base and line up with the Fortitude.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Evaan Verlaine entered the bridge. “What’s the mission?”

Sor Valetta first made a shipwide announcement with the condensed version and then gave the rest of her bridge crew a few additional details. “Is this Princess Leia reliable?”

Verlaine stared at her. “Wow. Now I wish she was here.”

“What?”

“I don’t think anyone asked that question in a long time,” Verlaine said. “Yes. Very reliable.”

“Thanks.”

“Fortitude jumped away.”

“Coordinates set?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Yellow alert. Stand by for hyperspace.”

The bridge dimmed. “Power to hyperdrive.”

“Engage.”

In front of them, the stars elongated and then vanished. The ship gave a slight jolt, and then appeared to glide through blue-white whirlpools and clouds.

XXX​

“Realspace in three… two… one… revert!”

“Where is the Fortitude?”

“Eleven degrees to port, forty K clicks.”

“Hail them.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Amilyn Holdo’s face appeared on the screen. “Ready?”

“Yes, ma'am,” sor Valetta said. “What’s the plan?”

“Leia’s message said our people had Amedda‘s communications. Let’s hear from them.”

“This is the Alliance cruiser Fortitude. Please respond.”

A voice emerged from the speakers. “Thank the Force. They activated jammers. We’ve only got short-range comms.”

“How are you?”

“Still here. Neither side got engineering. And don’t worry. No matter what, this ship isn’t going into the wider galaxy.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re on a collision course with a wandering planet, and no one is steering the ship.”

“Listen, we’ve got a plan for getting you out.”

“What—Commander, you seriously can’t—”

“If you disable the shields—”

“If? They’ll be guarding—”

“I will do it,” a new voice broke in.

“But—”

“Time to planetary impact?”

“Forty minutes.”

“If the shields aren’t down in half an hour, assume I’m dead.” Sounds of scrambling followed.“

"Do we wait for her?”

“She’s pulled impossible things before.”

“Imperials aren’t listening in on this?” Holdo suddenly demanded.

“First thing we did when taking over was sub our codes for theirs.”

“Alright. Keep the channel open.”

The crew of the Vicksburg watched the spherical ship, pushing its engines to the fullest, accelerate past them. Vicksburg and Fortitude made another, small hyperjump to get ahead—the Amedda has acquired so much sublight speed that neither ship could give chase fairly. Then this hyperjump was followed by two others, getting closer in time. Lieutenant Keroi glared forward at nothing in particular.

“We are not in a race, Lieutenant,” sor Valetta said. “Nobody expects fairness in war.”

“Imperial carrier, forty degrees to port!”

“Captain, deploy Helix Squadron,” Holdo ordered. “I’m launching my fighters. How are things down there?”

“Not sure—she has—wait. I’m reading massive plasma leak on deck eight. That’s where dorsal shield power conduit—”

“Shields down,” Ensign Ferraro announced.

“Take us in, Lieutenant.”

“Transporter room, stand by,” Ruby Blake ordered.

The Amedda was now going a substantial fraction of lightspeed. It zoomed through the window in transpoter range in less than three seconds. “We have them,” the transpoter operator reported. “Eight recovered. Two require medical attention.”

“Dr. Shar, you’ve patients.”

“Prepare to jump,” Holdo ordered. “Fighters, break off!”

“Wait,” the commando in charge of the squad said. “Our leader, she’s still aboard.”

“Ensign?” sor Valetta demanded from the transporter operator.

“Sorry, Captain. These guys were in a cluster and we knew where on the ship to aim. But I couldn’t risk beaming up Imperials by mistake—”

“Can’t you detect a non-human?” another commando snarled. “She’s a—”

“Ensign, stand by! Lieutenant Keroi, jump calculations!”

“Captain, what are you doing?”

“Finishing the job, Commander,” sor Valetta told Holdo. “Jump.”

Before Holdo had time to reply, countermand, or protest, they were in hyperspace. The trip took barely a few seconds, and once more, the Imperial warship was speeding towards them.

“Beam up any nonhumans.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Helix Lead here,” Verlaine’s voice cut in. “Captain, Four lost hyperdrive.”

“Acknowledged,” sor Valetta said. To get the pilot back, they’d have to return, and probably face the Imperial carrier alone.

Then she smiled.

“Lieutenant Keroi, we’ll need some very precise calculations,” she said.

“We’ve got her,” the transporter operator reported. “She’s… uhm…”

“Never mind, have her join her comrades. Keroi, time till Amedda hits that planet?”

“Twenty point five eight seconds.”

“Time our jump back so that we arrive just as the flash hits the carrier.”

“Understood.”

“We’re going in, we shoot at the TIEs, we pull Helix Four into the bay, and we jump.”

“Understood. Course laid in. Timer set for jump.”

“Impact!”

The round warship impacted on the planetoid. Half the sky was flooded with light a thousand times brighter than the sun. Then it vanished as the Vicksburg jumped into hyperspace.

They emerged and had the flash behind them again. They were ready for it, though, and used the few seconds of confusion to their advantage.

“Everyone’s in,” Blake reported after hearing from the tractor beam operator who dragged the damaged X-Wing into the docking bay.

“We’ve got about a hundred missiles heading for us, though.”

“Oh, looks like we’re important now,” sor Valetta smirked. “Keroi?”

“Course back to the base calculated and laid in.”

“Jump.”

 

5​

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Thanya Ferraro said.

“I’m alright,” Hue Tico muttered.

“I’ve almost had to amputate your arm, young man,” Dr. Shar grumbled.

“Well, thanks you for not doing that, Doctor.”

The Andorian shook his head. “Pilots.”

“Come on,” Thanya stroked the newly healed arm and walked him out of sickbay.

“How’d it go?”

“Very well, according to Captain sor Valetta. NO casualties on our side, and mission accomplished. Commander Holdo is mad, but she can’t do anything about it.”

“Why?”

“She was going to abandon the commando leader on the Amedda, but the Captain went for the rescue before she could give the order.”

“I didn’t take your captain for a big risk-taker.”

Thanya considered. “She’s not in the habit of explaining herself,” she said. “But if I was in her place, I’d have felt the need to justify the trust General Rieekan placed in me. The first mission needed to go off better than perfect.”

“I remember feeling like that, too.”

“You don’t, anymore?”

“Everyone has a story of how they ended up in the Alliance,” Hue said carefully. “But most don’t tell it.”

“I don’t need to tell you ours. You’ve been there.”

“Well… you should hear mine.”

“You don’t have to—”

“It’s not a major traumatic moment,” he said. “Which might make it unusual, actually. I was a police detective on Hays Major when we got several incidents of bombs blowing up mining equipment. We learned who it was quickly enough—but we just couldn’t find him to make the arrest. It was like he could see us coming.”

“That’s… strange.”

“You’ve seen it.”

“What?”

“Voss Torel. He was our elusive bomber.”

“What?! You’ve got to tell the Captain—”

“It won’t help,” Hue shrugged. “I haven’t finished the story.”

Thanya frowned and crossed her arms. “Secrets rarely help.”

“It’s not a secret—no, really. You can tell your captain. Just tell everything. I don’t need to tell you Torel’s dangerous. Frankly, I would have given up long ago—except that eventually, we did arrest him.”

“He escaped you like he did us?” Thanya guessed.

“No. Not like you. We were very careful. Arrest, trial, conviction. This takes time. By the time we’re ready, the company our government contracted with to use their penal colony had been taken over by the Empire.”

“Coincidence?”

“I don’t know. At the time, I didn’t care. As far as we were concerned, there was only one change—a extra copy of the case form had to be made, and signed off by the commander or designated officer of Hays imperial garrison. We followed procedure.”

“And what happened?”

“For two years, nothing. Exactly two years. To the day. That night, fourteen bombs go off all over the planet. Three people are killed, but it’s clear that they were just collateral damage. The targets were the locations.

He ticked off on his fingers. "My department’s archive office. My personal safe. Richo City Police archive. Hays Major Office of Government Records. Several backup data centers used by the government.” He sighed. “After sifting through the debris, running all sorts of forensics, and restoring what we can, we end up with zerodocumentation that Voss Torel ever existed.”

“Whoa…”

“I went to the Imperial garrison, and asked to see their copy. Their facilities are separate from ours, and no bombs hit them. But they don’t have any either.”

“Uh-huh. Total coincidence, of course.”

He gave a sad smile. “There weren’t too many ways I could see this going. If I pressed, I wouldn’t be able to get far before something happened to me. Another bomb. A frame-up. And if anyone started investigating my case too deeply, they’d end up in the same place.”

She took his hand and squeezed. “Obviously you pressed anyway—just in a different capacity.”

He nodded. “I also saw that I could simply drop it. Pretend that the archives contained the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Might have been even good for my career. Lead detective, police commissioner… I might even pretend I was doing it so that once I had more power, I could open up the pursuit again.”

“Sorry,” she said. “I’ve never had anything like this to deal with. I don’t know what to say.”

“It’s my life,” he shrugged. “I don’t need to deal with it, I’ve already made my choice. Day after the archive bomb damage was declared mitigated, I resigned and took the first ship off-planet. Getting justice for Voss Torel’s victims won’t happen until the Empire is brought down. So I’m doing my part.

"You know,” he breathed out, “Can’t say why, but telling that story made me feel better.”

“It doesn’t usually?”

“It’s been a while since I did. Like I said—most people’s stories are much more traumatic. Just Alderaan…”

“I’m sure you’ve much happier stories to tell. Why don’t we spend a nice evening trading some?”

“Why, Ensign Ferraro,” he declared, “are you asking me on a date?”

Thanya laughed. “Yes. Yes, I am.”

“In that case… I’m all yours.”

XXX​

“Tell me what happened again, Doctor.”

“I haven’t seen the immediate aftermath–but according to witnesses, this woman collapsed in pain as soon as she was beamed aboard. She nearly hurt herself with her own weapons.”

“The weapons are… something odd.”

Dr. Shar nodded. “This is more Blake’s specialty,” he said, but he picked up a metal cylinder and showed it to her. When he thumbed a switch, a meter-long column of white light emerged.

“Very dangerous,” he said, and shut it off.

“So how’s she doing?”

“Not speaking much. Asked me for some technical equipment, but she won’t tell anyone what her tinkering is for. The symptoms are typical of a heavy drug withdrawal, but there’s no sign of any substance like that. She’s physically weak, but that recovery is going well. Of course, I could be completely wrong. Maybe it’s normal for her species.”

“Relon to the captain.”

“Sor Valetta here.”

“Could you and Dr. Shar come to the ready room? Our guest requested to speak with you.”

“Looks like we’re finally getting some answers. On our way.”

The leader of the commandos who volunteered for a dangerous solo mission to bring down the Amedda‘s shields was trying hard to appear relaxed.

“How are you doing–?” Cindy realized she didn’t know the alien woman’s name.

“You can call me Fulcrum,” their visitor replied. “I’m a Togruta, but I doubt that tells you anything.”

“Captain–we owe her a major apology.”

Sor Valetta raised her eyebrows. “I don’t understand.”

“Tell me Captain, what do you know of the Jedi?” she asked.

“I just did,” sor Valetta said.

“I see. A lot of background, then. Jedi Knights used knowledge of the Force to serve the Republic for millennia. The Force is an energy field created by all living things. It can be used to manipulate the world around us.”

“Sounds mystical.”

“It’s very real. And I was a Jedi once. But your teleporter took my abilities away from me.”

“The transporter?”

“Here, Captain,” Relon handed her a Padd with figures.

“What are we looking at?”

“Midichlorian counts,” Fulcrum said. “It’s a way to measure a being’s affinity for the Force. You’ve already met someone with the skills. Your encounters with Voss Torel, what he managed to do?”

“It doesn’t seem to require any energy field. Besides, he’s been beamed, too.”

“I know,” Relon said. “We’ve done quite a bit of testing to figure out what happened. Torel read as human, so the transporter used standard protocols. But we don’t have a Togruta reading on file, so Fulcrum was registered as unknown. That kicks in additional filters meant to keep out new diseases. Unfortunately, that’s what it mistook those midicholirans for.”

“My count was around six thousand,” Fulcrum said. “After this, zero. That should be impossible, naturally. Even plants have counts of fifty to a hundred. And yet here we are.”

“Imagine our transporter made someone go blind, Captain.”

“Could we restore it?”

Relon shook his head. “Not that easy. We can reconfigure the transporter so that it doesn’t happen again to someone else, but none of our experiments restored a midichlorian-depleted cell.”

“I’m sorry,” sor Valetta said. “We will do everything to help.”

“Thank you,” Fulcrum said. “It helps somewhat to know that I would have died there without you. Given a choice of death or losing the Force, I probably would have agreed. It’s just doesn’t feel right for such a choice to have been made by coincidences of nature.

"The Rebellion needs people who can use the Force, though. The Empire has Voss Torel… and others. I still have knowledge. If you really want to atone–permit me to stay aboard Vicksburg.”

That was unexpected. “Why? Please give me a full answer. I’m not in the mood for mystery agendas after Torel–”

Fulcrum lifted her hand. “No mystery. There are members of your crew who can be trained in the Jedi arts. If they’re willing, I would like to do it.”

“You think training these… Jedi would help–?”

“Help the struggle continue. Help keep hope in the galaxy. The Force can be used for great evil, as well. The Empire has such people. If I can’t do these things direclty, the best way to aid is to teach others.”

“I see.” Cindy didn’t think fear showed on her face. “If what you say is true, we do owe you. My crew aren’t children and I’m not their mother. You can make your offer and see if any take you up on it. If it doesn’t interfere with other duties, I won’t object. You can remain aboard… on one condition.”

“Yes, ma'am?”

“If you’re to become part of my crew, I’ll need your name. Sorry. Starfleet doesn’t accept coded aliases.”

“Oh,” the woman laughed. “Ahsoka. Ahsoka Tano.”

XXX​

“Well?”

“I was right,” Ahsoka Tano declared. “You could be a Jedi.”

“So what now?”

“It’s up to you,” she said. “How did your captain phrase it? 'My crew are not children and I’m not their mother.’ And even if this wasn’t the case, forcing this on someone is a very bad idea.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve told you a little about the Inquisitors and Darth Vader. They have the training, but are driven by anger. If it’s not something you want, I’ll stay away.”

“No… I’m very curious. And… I need to be sure.”

“Sure about what?”

“Uhm… what do I even call you? I’m too used to only being around people who can be addressed by rank and surname.”

The tips of Ahsoka’s montrals curved upwards. “Ahsoka will do,” she said with amusement. “Though normally, one’s Jedi trainer is addressed as Master.”

“Master Tano, then?”

“You’re taking it up?”

She nodded.

“Training in the Force requires honesty. Most importantly, honesty with yourself. You said you needed to be sure… about what?”

“Oh. Well… I know I’ve got quick reflexes… and other skills… but is that me or the Force?”

“You are the Force. A part of it, connected to the whole.”

“Somehow it feels like my accomplishments are diminished.”

“Talent with the Force can be wasted like any other, and it’s up to the person to see that it doesn’t.”

“Alright. So being driven by the need to prove oneself is fine? It’s not like anger?”

“Not at all. We’re all driven by more than one thing. If fear or revenge was foremost on your mind, I would not take you up.”

“Fear was never a problem for me. And I’m new to this galaxy. Who would I wish revenge on?”

“First of all,” Ahsoka lectured, “it doesn’t matter if revenge can’t be realized. Second… Voss Torel.”

She slumped. “You’ve heard.”

“Word gets around. Hue Tico, for instance, would not be a good candidate for Jedi training.”

“Should I tell him that?”

“I already did. He laughed. That man knows himself well.”

“I don’t think we’ve seen the last of Voss Torel. I’ll shoot the bastard without hesitation when I see him, but unless it’s an assigned mission, I won’t go out of my way to seek him out. For one thing, that lets him choose the turf.”

Tano rose and smiled. “Very well. Let’s go, Padawan Blake.”

“Padawan?”

“Apprentice,” she explained.

“You want to start now?”

“Why not?”

“I’ve a date.”

“Oh. Jedi aren’t supposed to form romantic attachments.”

“Then I’m out.”

“I figured. That’s why I’ll be ignoring that rule. Have fun, Commander. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

 

6​

Vicksburg emerged from hyperspace. “Status.”

“Escortees accounted for. Bounty IX, Sherra, Hydian Way and Summer Feast.”

“Good. Open a comm channel. Echo Base, this is the USS Vicksburg, escorting food supplies.”

“No reply, Captain.”

“Scan.”

“No active readings. And…”

“What is it?”

Ensign Ferraro gulped. “I’m reading numerous starship wrecks. Transports and starfighters, and in the asteroid field, pieces of Star Destroyers.”

“Red alert! Hail the cargo ships.”

“Channel open.”

“Captain sor Valetta here. We cannot contact Echo Base, and the system bears traces of a battle. Can you make it to Rendezvous… 12?”

Three of the vessels assented. “Hydian Way here. We don’t have the fuel.”

“Beam a concentrated fuel tank over,” sor Valetta ordered. “Then go,” she ordered. “I’m taking Vicksburg to Hoth orbit.”

“Understood, ma'am. Good luck.”

“I have a feeling we’ll need it.”

“Commander Blake, I want you to lead an away team down to Echo Base.”

“Permission to bring Master Tano along?”

“Granted. I want to know what happened here. Ensign Ferraro, what can you tell us?”

“Ion cannon destroyed by orbital bombardment…”

“How? The base had a shield—”

“Shield generator wrecked by ground fire.”

“Scan for lifeforms. If there are survivors…”

“No good.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know the minerals in that area interfere with our scanners. Without beacons, I can’t tell humans and wampas apart. Not from orbit.”

“Alright. Commander Blake, your away team will search the base. Meanwhile, scan the outlying areas. There may have been people too far away… patrols, hunters…”

“Yes, ma'am.”

The ship had made two three-hour polar orbits while the away team produced regular reports from the ground. Numerous live wampas scavenged the area, eating both rebel and stormtrooper corpses—but everyone they found had been killed by blaster fire, not teeth and claws. Not a single living soul; not a single functioning droid.

“Control computers’ memory is wiped,” Blake called in from what used to be the command center. “No record of the battle.”

“Vader was here,” Ahsoka Tano commented.“

"Captain? I don’t understand this.”

“They had warning,” sor Valetta announced.

“Ma'am?”

“Warning. They knew the Empire was coming in advance. At least a day. They evacuated as quickly as they could—but not quickly enough to avoid a fight. No trace means the Empire can’t find them again easily.”

“Neither can we.”

“We know what to look for. Alright, Commander. Gather your people and stand by to beam up. They’re not here, and the Empire has no reason to return, either. Let’s go. Sor Valetta out.”

When the channel was cut, she was met by a hard stare of Captain Verlaine. “Yes?”

“Where are we going?”

“I planned to return to Rendezvous 12 and see that the food supplies we were escorting get somewhere useful.”

“They will. The Fortitude picked them up.”

“I see. This is a warning to once again prepare to deal with the thorns of one Commander Holdo.”

“I wouldn’t put it that way, ma'am…”

“You have an alternate destination?”

Verlaine didn’t speak directly. “The Holonet is too big for even Imperial Intelligence to monitor everything, much less us.”

Sor Valetta nodded, inviting the squadron commander to sit. “You can get useful stuff by using narrow criteria,” she added. “You have to be careful your criteria don’t attract the Empire’s attention, though.”

“And what sort of information net did you cast?”

“Trouble for Alderaanians. Well, more trouble than we are in already.”

“And?”

“General Rieekan is from Alderaan.”

Sor Valetta jerked up. “What happened?”

“He’s been caught by a bounty hunter on Holminor. The Bounty hunter will turn him over to the Empire.”

“So what do you want us to do?”

“Go to Holminor and rescue him,” Verlaine declared.

“Why? If the bounty hunter already caught him, why would they still be on Holminor?”

“You don’t know what Holminor is, Captain?”

“No.”

“It’s an ocean world with the strongest tides in the galaxy. The one landmass shallow enough to ever get above the water does so for a few hours every four days. Unless our bounty hunter’s ship doubles as a submarine, we can make it.”

“Vicksburg can double as a submarine.”

“Really?”

“Not a very good one,” sor Valetta admitted. “And I’ve only made the manuever in holodeck simulations. If I wanted to go under the sea, I wouldn’t have joined Starfleet.”

“We don’t have to. Just wait till the tide goes down in…” she checked her watch, “…eighty-five hours. If we’re in orbit, we can stop that hunter.”

“Interesting,” sor Valetta said.

“Convenient,” someone interrupted.

“Ruby!”

The first officer, still in her cold-weather gear, strode onto the bridge and gave her girlfriend a quick kiss before sitting down in her designated chair. “The away team is aboard. I would say mission accomplished—but you heard the reports. There’s nothing left.”

“A lone Alliance ship, taking the Empire on by ourselves,” Verlaine smiled. “Brings back memories.”

“You said it was convenient? Why?”

“Captain, come on. A high ranking Alliance member is captured—alright. Someone we know personally—”

“Everyone knows someone personally.”

Verlaine frowned. “No, I see the point.”

“Yeah,” Blake plowed on. “He’s on a planet we can get to before we he can leave? There’s time, alright. Time enough to set a trap for us.”

“So what do we do? Abandon Rieekan?” Verlaine demanded.

“I’m saying—”

“No arguments!”

“Captain?” Blake looked at sor Valetta, who, despite the snap order of seconds before, was smiling.

“Both sides of the case have been made,” she said. “New evidence isn’t coming in—not soon enough. You can rehash the same things in different words, which is boring, you can leave the realm of ideas and get personal, which is bad for morale, or you can stop and let me make the decision, which I’d have to do anyway.”

Silence dropped. “Commander Relon, are we good for hyperspace?”

“I can give you range of 56,232 light-years.”

“Lieutenant Keroi, set course for Holminor. If we can’t make it, find a fuel depot that won’t take us too far out of the way. We need to be there in three days.”

XXX​

“Standard orbit over Holminor, ma'am. Tide outgoing within fifty minutes.”

“No Imperial vessels. No trace that anything big has been here recently.”

“Helix squadron standing by for launch,” Verlaine declared over the comm.

“I’d rather not,” sor Valetta said. “We know what we’re looking for?”

“Yes, ma'am.” Thanya Ferraro had spent the hyperspace trip with Lieutenant Samat, the Helix pilot responsible for squadron’s information, Hue Tico, and Verlaine to learn everything possible about the bounty and the being who claimed it. They had a name, Shira Kord, and a ship registry—a KR-299 highly modified yacht build at Fondor, named Honor Bound.

Sor Valetta had been there for one session, when Verlaine explained, in general, how bounty hunting worked in this galaxy. She said little, and didn’t come back, only pressing Blake to ensure that Ferraro input all the gathered information into the ship’s computers. Not that the diligent ensign needed such prodding.

“How’ll this work? As soon as water level drops far enough, they’ll open the docking bay roofs and everyone’ll blast off.”

“I doubt there’ll be many KR-299s.”

“No, but you can’t shoot at them, if General Rieekan will be aboard.”

“Tempting as it may be, I wasn’t planning on it.” She activated an intership comm. “Commander Raya.”

“Assemble a heavily armed away team, set weapons for stun, and assemble in the transporter room. Wait… make that two teams. Ensign Ferraro, have the coordinates of any KR-299 detected automatically sent down to the Chief Helie. I don’t want any delays.”

“Understood ma'am.”

“That’s it, Captain?” Blake fidgeted.“

"Do you doubt Commander Raya?”

“No, ma'am.”

“If the environment down there was different, I’d do it differently. With, shall we say, extra flair.”

“Flair, Captain?” Verlaine asked.

“Hmm. It’s really tempting to wait until the bounty walks up to his ship, Rieekan at blaster point, and destroy that vessel with a well-targeted phaser beam from orbit. Even better, to make that phaser beam imitate a lightning strike.”

“But now…”

“Everyone will already be in the ship, waiting to take off as soon as it’s clear. So, we do it this way. Beam in the away team, stun everyone, and then figure out.”

As the lone landmass started emerging, stadium-like roofs of the surface spaceports began opening up. Each one was immediately target by the full power of Vicksburg‘s scanners. Five or six ports produced nothing until…

“KR-299 detected!”

“Away team A!” Raya shouted. “On the pads!”

“Energizing!”

Raya kept her combadge active but one-way. The last thing an away team in the middle of combat needed was confusing orders from people who weren’t there. So sor Valetta and the rest of the bridge crew first heard one phaser shot, then another… and then, unexpectedly, a barrage. Blast after blast from the security team’s phaser rifles—but strangely, not a single sound typical of this galaxy’s blasters. Things went quiet after about three seconds, and were followed by numerous exhales.

“Finally,” someone said.

“Commander,” another security officer called out to Raya. “Look.”

In the next instant, the comm channel became two-way with a tap from the security chief. “Captain. There’s been a complication.”

“Is General Rieekan safe?”

“Yes, ma'am. Both he and the bounty hunter are stunned.”

“That was the plan.”

“Yes, ma'am, but—team, let’s tally up the shots.”

Each member checked his, her, or its phaser rifle and called out the number. “Nineteen total,” Raya quickly added them. “One to stun Rieekan… and eighteen for the bounty hunter. He only went down after being hit eighteen times.”

“Are you sure you didn’t miss?”

Raya didn’t bother replying to Blake. The Captain took a different tack. “So?” she demanded “There are species resistant…”

“He’s human.”

“Or he looks human,” sor Valetta reminded Raya.

“Actually, I’m pretty sure he is. You see, Captain, we couldn’t find details because Shira Kord is a false identity. Our bounty hunter is Voss Torel.”

XXX​

The silence lasted five seconds before sor Valetta spoke. Opening a new comm channel, she produced no intonation as she summoned the person. “Dr. Shar.”

“Is everyone alright?”

“Beam down a quadruple dose of thamissium to Lieutenant Commander Raya. She needs it in thirty seconds.”

Dr. Shar was heard to gulp, but then only said, “Yes, ma'am, and cut the comm. "Raya,” the captain ordered, “as soon as you have it, inject Torel.”

“Understood.”

“Blake, you have the bridge.” She rose. “Lieutenant Kuznetsov,” she called out to the second away team’s leader, “get ready to escort the prisoner.” With that, she stepped out into the turbolift.

“Dr. Shar,” Commander Blake called the chief medical officer. “General Rieekan may need assistance.”

“I’ll be ready. Quadruple dose?”

“I can’t exactly call the captain paranoid,” Blake said. “Not after what happened last time.”

“Everyone’s aboard,” chief Helie reported within a few minutes.

“Kuznetsov, get Torel to the brig. Have one of your team members cuff themselves to him.”

The captain spoke in the same, machine-like manner that she’d used from the moment the name “Voss Torel” reached her ears. Kuznetsov acknowledged the order and took the unconscious prisoner off Raya. The security chief told two of her team to bring Rieekan to sickbay and headed up to the bridge.

“Helix squadron, you may stand down,” Blake said.

“What happened?” Verlaine asked. “Did—”

“Rieekan is safe,” she assured her. Then, after making sure the comm was down, she whispered, “I’m not so sure about the captain.”

When Raya arrived, Blake preempted any questions by simply shrugging, and let the security chief take her station. “Eighteen shots,” she muttered.

“Kuznetsov here,” she received a report. “Torel’s been locked up, but then the captain kicked me out. Kicked all of us out.”

“Excuse me?”

Before a discussion could begin—and Blake really didn’t want speculation that sor Valetta decided to torture someone bandied about, no matter how much apalling sense it made, the captain returned. She was shaking her head, but didn’t seem robotic anymore. She sat in the captain’s chair—Ruby didn’t bother switching when she’d left.

“Shipwide comm channel,” she ordered the communication officer. “Crew, guests, and passengers of the USS Vicksburg, this is your captain. As of this moment, the ship’s brig is under indefinite lockdown, and access to it and all its facilities has been sealed by my personal code.

"No access will be permitted to the brig without my presence and supervision. No communication channel will be permitted to penetrate inside the brig. Nothing is to be transported in or out of the brig. Any attempt to gain unauthorized access is grounds for court-martial.

"Sor Valetta out.”

“Chief Engineer Relon, I want you to set up an improvised brig in Cargo Bay 1 for ordinary miscreants.” Blake almost smiled. The obvious joke—where would someone court-martialed be sent if the brig was off-limits—had apparently occurred to the captain, as well. It was even understandable—although disturbing. In the captain’s absence, the first officer, chief engineer, and another department head—the chief medical officer, for instance—had the authority and codes to order a self-destruct of the ship.

Now, looking inside the brig required more authority than destroying it, along with the rest of Vicksburg.

“What do we do now?”

“First things first. We need to resupply. I don’t care where, as long as it’s not an Imperial trap. I’m going to see General Rieekan. He might have some ideas. We’ll all get a good night’s sleep.”

“And in the morning?” Blake prompted.

“In the morning, we’ll speak with the prisoner.”

XXX​

“Carlist, are you sure?”

“I’ve had quite enough of his company, Cindy.”

“Are you really alright?”

“I wasn’t tortured,” he said.

“I know.”

“He will try to convince you of your own incompetence.”

“Thanks for the heads up. Now, how about you, Blake and Verlaine put your heads together and come up with the best use of Vicksburg for the Alliance right now. General,” she resumed formality as she stepped out into the ship’s corridor.

“Sor Valetta to Lieutenant Tico,” she called the pilot. “Meet me on Deck 11.”

“Yes, ma'am. Uhm, Ensign Ferraro wishes to accompany—”

“Denied. Sorry, but the fewer people come in contact with him, the better. You already know him, and I offered Rieekan a place since he was just his prisoner, but he refused. For now, it’ll have to do.”

“I… I see, ma'am. I have to do this.”

“So do I.”

She lifted a PADD, input a long code and placed it in a reception slot on the wall. The computer chirped and slid open the brig door. The two of them walked inside, and it closed behind them.

Voss Torel was lying on the mattress in his cell. Upon seeing them, he sat up, ruffled his hair, and met their eyes. His eyebrows went up.

“Why do I have a hangover?” he asked.

“What?” That wasn’t a question Tico expected.

“Normally, the knockout drugs we use have neutralizers for the unpleasant side effects,” sor Valetta said. “In this case, the patient’s comfort had been deprioritized.”

“I didn’t take you for one to enjoy power for its own sake, Captain.”

“I’m not enjoying anything about this.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Lucky,” she declared. “Believe me, Shira Kord being you came as a surprise. I’m not sure if I should consider your career change a move up or down.”

“Whatever it is, you are to blame.”

“What?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I got fired from ISB. Getting an entire light cruiser wrecked while failing to secure your teleporter wasn’t taken well.”

“Hardly sufficient punishment, but now we can arrange for more.”

“I believe your Federation has outlawed the death penalty. And any prison you put me in, I’ll escape. It’s sort of my specialty.”

“That’s a specialty?” Tico demanded.

“Yes. That’s what I did after taking care of my records from Hays Major police, detective. The ISB would set me up with a cover story and send me into a prison they wanted secure. I had a fixed time—a few days, a few weeks, once three months—after which I’d be released. But I got paid a bonus if I escaped before the time expired. I always collected. I let them know how I did it, and people responsible were punished. It’s hilarious when wardens get thrown into their own prison.”

“What happened to your arm?”

“Nothing. Synthflesh covering. Don’t want memorable details.”

“Take it off.”

“Make me.”

“What?”

He laughed. “Ahh, unexpected limits.” He gave light tap to the forcefield between them. “You won’t drop this with only the detective here as backup. I have complete bodily autonomy in this cell. If I want to, I can strip naked and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“What’s the point?” Tico asked.

“Is there one?” sor Valetta seconded.

“The point is, Captain, you are not as in control as you think you are.”

Hue looked seething. “Is that what all the bombs were about, too?”

The captain put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t need to outrun the bear,” she muttered.

“What?”

“How’d you get away last time?” she tacked.

“Sorry, Captain. You’re not paying my bonus here,” Torel said. “As for pubnishing those responsible, that already happened.”

It took a little time for sor Valetta to process. “Are you saying,” she steamed, “that Chief Mirren let you out? And you killed her for it?”

“Like I said—pay my bonus, and we’ll talk.”

Sor Valetta had to strain to not reveal anger or frustration. She turned to Hue. “Lieutenant, is there anything else?”

“I doubt it, Captain. We have nothing he wants—”

“Sure you do. My freedom.”

“Not happening.”

“—The ISB probably immunized him to truth drugs.”

“We’ll see if Dr. Shar can produce something around that,” sor Valetta suggested.

“Good luck,” Torel quipped.

“Alright. We’ll leave him alone and try again in… hang on. Computer.”

“Captain,” the ship’s voice replied.

“Stop day and night lighting shifts in the brig. Ambient light, constant round the clock. Shut down all time displays in the brig. Randomize the prisoner’s meal delivery times.”

“Acknowledged, Captain.” Several screens on the brig walls winked out. Smiling, sor Valetta turned to the cell.

“You like planning things, don’t you? Let’s see how well you do that when you have no clue how much time has passed.” And with that, she and Hue strode out.

When the brig was sealed with her personal code again, sor Valetta sighed. “It’s not enough.”

 

Trek/Wars crossover! Squee!

You have totally sucked me in. The only thing that bothers me is how you have Star Wars not existing in the Trekverse, which somehow does not make sense to me. But on the other hand, that choice does make for an intriguing and dramatic story.

 

Thanks! It's a bit hard to gain traction with a story that's mostly OCs. As for SW not existing... it's quite an interesting concept to nerd out over.

1) Convention. It's a generally accepted idea that the fictional work doesn't exist within its own universe--i.e. Harry Potter books don't exist in the Potterverse, and Star Trek doesn't exist in Star Trek. This also generally extends to the related material; Smallville is not only without itself, but also without all DC comics and their spinoff works. Exceptions are rare and often make the whole thing the focus of the entire work (Once Upon a Time). We can extend this in crossovers to both works (not an issue for lack of Star Trek in SW, obviously).

2) Tradition. This is Trek-specific. There are certainly no canon references to SW in any ST show, movie, or novel that I know of; moreover, ST usually makes no references at all to real cultural material that postdates Trek itself (1960s). We have characters listening to classical music; and watching movies in several episodes of Enterprise, but the writers either made movies up, or picked ones from the first half of the 20th century. Having such a reference would be out of place now (though there is one to a non-SW work later in this story).

3) In-universe justification #1. There is a lot of "future history" ST made up that is now in the past, and didn't happen. This means ST takes (will take) place in a parallel universe, and if history is different, so is the culture.

4) In-universe justification #2. A lot of human culture had been lost in WW3 and its aftermath, including SW.

5) In-universe justification #3. George Lucas is Q.

 

7​

“Interesting,” Cindy sor Valetta studied the bright lights outside.

“Beautiful,” Ruby Blake seconded.

“What is it?” Thanya Ferraro asked.

“It’s a dense ring of ice fragments, like those commonly found around gas giants,” Evaan Verlaine explained. “Only this one is much bigger, and surrounds a small black hole. The accretion disk is very bright, so all the shards sparkle like gems.”

“Very pretty,” sor Valetta agreed, “but I’m not in the mood for sightseeing.”

Verlaine laughed. “I imagine not,” she said. “There’s a station in the ring called the Diamond Depot. We can get refueled there.”

“And they won’t sell us out to the Empire?”

“Even if they do, we’ll have ample warning to get away. You see, the station is deep inside the ring.”

“We have to maneuver through all these rocks?” Keroi demanded.

“What, you not up for it, Lieutenant?” Verlaine countered. “I can—”

“Sorry. Stick to you starfighter,” Keroi snapped. “I’m the one flying the Vicksburg.” He considered. “If we slow down and have tractor beams knock the rocks out of the way, we can do it.”

“Why there?”

“Same reason it’s pretty. The accretion makes the energy practically free—so you can use it to synthesize fuel out of raw ice. You try this anywhere else, and you’ll burn more fuel than you make.

"Fortunately, we still have food containers that didn’t fit on the transports in the cargo bay. That’s what they need the most. Well, that and labor.”

“Labor?”

“Yeah. Warn your crew, Captain. While it’s not as bad as it could be—the managers despise slavery—you could easily find yourself on a years-long contract for the ice mining and refining, because of the fine print. And it doesn’t pay well at all.”

“And the Empire?”

“It’s not a big enough operation for them to bother with. And if they come chasing us, they’ll have to slow down to get through the ring, giving us time to get away.”

“Right. Lieutenant Keroi, take us in.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

The navigation seemed to go smoothly for the first twenty minutes, with only a few impacts from small fragments that harmlessly shattered on the Vicksburg‘s shields. Then, without warning, the viewscreen flashed with white light and the entire ship shuddered.

“What was that?”

“I don’t know,” Ferraro said. “I didn’t see anything until—”

“Do a sensor backlog trace,” sor Valetta ordered.

Another impact and flash. “Lieutenant!”

“It’s coming out of nowhere, Captain.”

“Nothing comes out of nowhere. Stop.”

“Stopping, ma'am.”

They were hit again. “Engineer Relon, damage assesment.”

“The incidents do not carry sufficient energy to penetrate the shields—”

“Good.”

“—unless they were sustained.”

And almost as if the words made the event, the barrage began.

Strike. Flash. Strike. Strike.

“Mines,” Verlaine said. “I guess the Empire found a way.”

“Increase power to shields. Relan! How much can we hold?”

“An the current rate, two minutes seven seconds.”

“Red alert. Reroute all available power.”

“I think I’ve isolated the mine’s thruster signature,” Ferraro said. “We can target them—”

“Fire at will.”

Blake was already at the weapons station and coordinated the counterattack. The mine assault reduced in intensity as Vicksburg lashed out, but lasted almost three more minutes before stopping. Sor Valetta kept the ship on red alert longer than the attack afterwards.

“Any more out there?”

“If their engines are inactive, there could be thousands,” Ferraro said. “Scanners aren’t worth a damn in this soup.”

“Maybe we can bargain a reduced fuel price for finding this minefield,” Verlaine suggested.

Sor Valetta shrugged. “If you can, fine. But if they get the bright idea to enlist our services to clear it out—tell them to get lost. The Vicksburg is not a minesweeper.”

“Got it.”

“Blake, you have the bridge. Verlaine, I’m leaving fuel negotiations to you. She tapped a combadge. "Commander Raya.”

“Something wrong?”

“I’m giving a standown from red alert, but it’s not for your people yet. This is too good an opportunity for someone like Voss Torel.”

Blake and Verlaine exchanged a look, but no words as the Captain left.

“You think it’s possible?”

“It’s unlikely,” Blake replied. However, she made a quick check that all weapons on her person were in working order. “I’m pretty sure I would have felt it in the Force.”

“Would Master Tano call that arrogance?”

Keroi interjected. “I wonder if what you train to do is anything like telepathy?”

“Speaking of that, why didn’t Ahsoka offer to train you?”

“She did. I refused,” Keroi said.

“Why?”

“Isn’t it obvious? The last thing I want is to enhance my mental perceptions. Heightened sensitivity is just as problematic for a Betazoid as total lack of telepathy. Especially since she explained that as a Jedi, I’m likely to find myself fighting close up. Feeling someone who dies. Feeling someone I kill.”

“Oh. I didn’t think—I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright. So as I said—from the few glimpses of Torel’s mind I got—and because I got so few—I know he can control himself. So I’d hesitate in my confidence, Commander. You may be feeling what he wants you to feel.”

“Well, he hasn’t felt his way out of the brig,” sor Valetta declared from the turbolift. “But speaking of—Lieutenant Keroi, if you are willing, I’d like you to use your abilities on Torel.”

“Read his mind.”

“Yes. From outside the brig. He won’t be aware it’s happening.”

Keroi considered. “Not right now, Captain. Once we leave this ring and we can hand Vicksburg to a less experienced pilot, and I’m rested—why not? Did he say anything?”

“Asked what happened,” the captain said. “I told him we destroyed a couple of hundred Imperial ships. Technically true.”

“There it is,” Ferraro said as they moved into a clearing within the ring. At the center was a metallic octahedron with long booms extending from each vertex. “Diamond Depot. It does look a little like a diamond.”

XXX​

“Can I come in?” Captain Verlaine spoke into the intercom outside sor Valetta’s ready room.

“Enter.”

Sor Valetta wasn’t alone. Her office desk had been cleared on one half and topped with a modest array of plates. General Rieekan sat in one of the visitor’s chairs and drank something hot from a white mug.

“Oh. I didn’t know you had company.”

“Please. You said it often enough—the replicators make us the best-served ship in the Alliance. You can have breakfast with us. What can I do for you? If there’s problem with the fuel—”

“No, no problem—though Ruby did have to firmly refuse paying with mineclearing service.”

Sor Valetta grinned. “So what’s the problem?”

“Once we arranged the fuel, I went to the station.”

“I’d have thought you’d want to spend time with Commander Blake, and she’d not take shore leave without me knowing.”

“I went by myself,” Verlaine said. “It wasn’t about recreation… well, not only that. I did want an opportunity to watch the spectacle from a large port than what we have on the Vicksburg.

"Wouldn’t it be most spectacular from your cockpit?”

“Probably, but the station would never authorize a launch. Anyway, I’d gone for another reason. We have an undercover agent on the station. I made a signal, and a few hours later, made a dead-drop pickup.”

She reached into her pocket and placed a datacard on the captain’s table. “I could tell it’s legit, but nothing beyond that. I don’t have the decryption codes.”

“Let me see,” Rieekan said. He slid the card into his datapad and began to read. “Interesting,” he finally said. “Something right up your alley, Captain.”

“What do you mean?”

“We have a scouting team on Peral,” he said. “They were going to gather the information, and then launch a liberation campaign.”

“Peral, Peral… ” sor Valetta thought. “That’s right next to Fondor.”

“That’s right,” Verlaine said. “Were going to? Not anymore?”

“The Empire brought in an expanded garrison and started a crackdown. An attack now would only cost lives.”

“So what do they want?”

“Peral is covered in perpetual mist, making most orbital assets useless. The Empire has a robust air defense network and tightly controls the spaceports. Rescue by anyone else would be dangerous. But the Vicksburg doesn’t need to land.”

“We can beam them right out,” sor Valetta finished. “And where then?”

“Another neighbor of a major industrial world,” Rieekan replied. “Probably a better chance there. Sulon.”

There was a pause. “You are hesitant, Captain,” Rieekan said. “I don’t want to order you—”

“No… we’ll do it. It seems worthy.”

“But?” Verlaine prompted.

“I don’t like having these agents effectively decide our destinations. Intelligence is vital, but it’s always been a supporting service for the military. When it’s the other way…”

“I don’t know what I can do to reassure you,” Rieekan said. “Considering the last time you followed an intelligence tip…”

“We rescued you.” That’s the most important thing that happened.

“You’ve already decided to do this.”

“Yes. Yes, I have. I still worry.”

XXX​

“I just can’t get it out of my mind!”

“The sensor anomaly you saw?”

“What else?” Thanya Ferraro snapped. “Hue, listen—what if this proves something dangerous, something I didn’t alert the captain in time about?”

“Why didn’t you when you—”

“I couldn’t pinpoint it—and everyone was more concerned with the mines.”

Hue rose. “Alright, Thanya. Obviously we’re not going to have fun until you get this out of your head. Come on.”

Power requirements forced Vicksburg to shut down her holodecks while in hyperspace. When this policy was first made, it prompted a scramble for alternate forms of entertainment; one of which Thanya decided to put to a more serious use now. It was a small holoprojector that could fit on a desk; while lacking the immersion effect of a full holodeck, you could still program it with arbitrary visuals to inspect. There was still a limited number, but at this late hour, securing a booth with one wouldn’t be a problem. Thanya loaded the data from her PADD and began examining the sensor logs while the projector displayed Vicksburg and her surroundings at the time. The surroundings were haphazardly floating shards of ice, with ability to discern individual objects falling off rapidly with distance.

“So where’s this anomaly?” Hue asked.

“That’s just it—right now, I don’t see it; too much noise. The most important thing is when exactly it happened.”

“How so?”

“When I saw it, we were already being attacked. The question is, did it precede the bombardment? Maybe even caused it?”

“You mean a signal?”

“Can we find records of other ships stopping at Diamond Depot? If we weren’t the first—”

“Sure. Of course, Diamond could have erased or faked them.”

They whittled away several hours before Thanya tripped something. “Gotcha!”

“You found it?”

She nodded. “The initial burst is just over a second long, but see here and here,” she pointed on the signal graph. “Things got echoed in the icefield—probably off these large fragments.” She put her finger through two ring pieces in the holoprojection above the table, slightly to port of Vicksburg. “And look at the timing. It wasn’t a signal to the mines. The attack came first.” She breathed a deep sigh of relief.

Hue inspected the recording, then began tapping keys on the PADD. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to isolate the 'burst’ as you call it. It wasn’t a signal to the mines, you say. So what was it?”

She nodded. “Here,” she said. “I am more familiar with the Vicksburg background noise.” This effort proved relatively easy, though not perfect. “Here we go. Something familiar?”

Hue blinked several times and his face lost all cheer. “As matter of fact, yes. It’s an Imperial code.”

“What?”

“A relatively rare one, tailored for short, barely detectible burst transmissions. Your Vicksburg‘s instruments are a lot more sensitive than most private or even Alliance ships. But yes, it’s an Imperial transmission.”

“From whom?”

“I’d guess the minefield automation system. They began the attack and let the Empire know in case they wanted to sift through the debris later. Or a covert operative on Diamond. We had one. They might have too.”

“Can you find what it says?”

“Not from one transmission. And it’s not that it’s hard. It’s designed to be impossible to retrieve the content when you only have one signal. Depending on the key, the encrypted signal can mean anything.”

“Mystery solved, then?”

He shook his head. “Not until we find out what it was about. It won’t happen tonight, though.”

“Alright. Thanks for sticking with me on this.”

“Your worries are mine, Thanya. It was even fun, though not how I envisioned my evening.”

She grinned. “Yeah… let’s catch up on that.”

XXX​

Ahsoka and Ruby Blake, packed for a wet outdoor track, stood in the Vicksburg’s transporter room. “Now remember, check in every hour,” sor Valetta instructed. “If you’re even a minute late, I’m beaming you out.”

“Captain—”

“The Empire down there already knows we’re here. I’m sure they’ve called the fleet, who are on their way. We want to be out of here before the trap is sprung. Get down there, find these scouts, and we’ll take you away.” She half-glared at Ahsoka. “Do you need my first officer?”

“We need very little,” she admitted. “I’ve gone in too many dangerous situations alone to do it again when I don’t have to. If it was your mission, who’d be your first choice for a partner?”

Cindy smiled. “Ruby.”

“Hey, it’s my first chance to use what I learned about the Force in a real setting.”

“Everything is a real setting,” Ahsoka lectured. “But I understand. I couldn’t wait to leave the Temple…” She cut off her reminiscence. “We’ll see you in a little while, Captain.”

“Good luck.”

The two Jedi stepped onto the transporter pads. “Energize,” Ruby ordered, and the operator tapped a few controls. The figures shimmered and were gone.

Sor Valetta breathed out carefully and left the transporter room. It wasn’t her duty shift; showing up on the bridge without an emergency was bad form—like she didn’t trust her night crew. She generally could exercise firm control over her body; the one exception was that she never could will herself to sleep. If she wasn’t inclined for it, like now, she’d stay awake, stressed out and running nightmare scenarios through her head, until she exhausted herself. That wouldn’t be good for anyone, least of all the crew of the Vicksburg.

Instead of heading to her quarters, she stopped at the ship’s holodeck. Physical exhaustion as a sleep agent was much more preferable to the mental variety.

XXX​

The PADD produced a loud musical number, echoing across Thanya Ferraro’s quarters. She blinked her yes open and collided with Hue as she tried to get out of bed. “Sorry.”

“That’s your alarm?” he grunted.

“What, you don’t like it? I need to introduce you to the Federation’s musical heritage.”

“It’s…”

“Never mind.” She looked about. “It’s not time for the alarm yet.”

“Shipwide emergency?”

“Trust me, that would be anything but musical. No,” she said as she picked up the device and shut off the sound. “It’s something of mine. Or rather,” she corrected herself, “something of ours. Another signal like the one from the minefield.”

That prompted Hue to rise and look over her shoulder. “You set an alert? I don’t remember.”

“It’s something I did automatically. My 'phenomena of concern’ arrangement in the sensor monitoring computer. Just added—well, I suppose it’s not a surprise. We are in orbit of a whole planet of Imperials.”

Hue frowned. “Can you transfer it to my datapad?”

“Sure,” she said. “Sensor logs are generally public on Starfleet ships.”

He picked up his own device and studied the contents. Thanya tweaked a couple of settings—yes, this was something she was interested in, but not to the extent of being woken over it in the middle of the night—and almost made it back to bed when Hue murmured in apprehension. “No…” he said and was quiet for a few seconds.

“What’s wrong?”

He met her eyes. “The signal of the burst transmission is digital,” he explained. “But the world is always analog—we generate modulations of a carrier wave using physical hardware.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“The material is never perfect—the manufacturer specifies tolerances, but below those, each transmitter has unique deformations, which affect the signal in a unique manner. It’s not too well-known, but sometimes our forensics team at Hays Major Police used it. If you have a good enough record of the received transmission—with all the noise in the analog signal—the pattern of that noise can be used to prove that two transmissions had been sent by the same physical device—or not. Like a fingerprint.”

“Alright…”

“The Vicksburg‘s recordings are good enough. The signal from the ring and this one match.”

“You’re saying,” Thanya said slowly, “that these two Imperial bursts were made by the same device?”

“Yes.”

“And if I understand the nature of this comm system,” she continued, “this is a local signal. It needs to be transformed to be sent across the galaxy—something usually done via a holonet node.”

“That’s right.”

“Except that one was made at the Diamond Depot, and another many light-years away, here at Peral.”

“Exactly.”

They said it simultaneously. “The transmitter is aboard Vicksburg.”

“Crap. You know what this means.”

Thanya picked up her combadge on the nightstand and tapped it. “Ferraro to security.”

“Kuznetsov here,” a voice said.

“Uhm, where’s Commander Raya?”

“Asleep, I suppose,” Kuznetsov replied. “You called security, Ensign. It’s my shift.”

“It’s Lieutenant,” she said tensely. “We have evidence of an Imperial spy aboard.”

“This is not a joking matter,” Kuznetsov said.

“I’m not joking, sir. Considering the nature, do you think it’s a good idea to speak of this over the comm?”

Kuznetsov relented. “Very well. Bring your evidence to the security office.”

“On our way,” she said and closed the connection. “Let’s go.”

“This is not going to end well,” Hue said.

“We have to.”

“We don’t have to like it,” he grumbled.

Despite what he said, Kuznetsov clearly took the matter seriously. By the time they arrived in the ship’s security office, he was there with Lieutenant Commander Raya, disheveled, drinking coffee, and with a phaser clipped on her belt. “Lay it out, Lieutenant,” she said in lieu of greeting.

They did—the anomaly investigation the night before, the alert now, and how Hue determined that the two transmissions they recorded have been produced by the same hardware, which had to be aboard Vicksburg.

“What does the transmission say?” Raya asked.

Ferraro got angry. “Haven’t you heard? It’s not possible—”

“I’ve heard everything. You,” she pointed to Hue, “explained that a single signal cannot be decrypted. But we now have two.”

Hue slapped his forehead. “Should work,” he said. “Why didn’t I think of this.”

“You would have,” Thanya assured him. “Eventually.”

“Thanks… but bigger thanks to Commander Raya,” he said. “I’ve been away from detective work too long.”

“You were a detective?” Kuznetsov asked.

“No time for stories,” Raya cut. “Well?”

“Jedi gone. EH.”

“What?”

“That’s the second transmission. Jedi gone, signed: EH,” Hue said.

“Jedi? You mean Ahsoka Tano?”

“It’s a singular plural,” Hue said. “Doesn’t matter in our case. Both she and Commander Blake are down on the planet.”

“EH,” Kuznetsov said. “I don’t think we actually have anyone with those initials aboard.”

“And I don’t think anyone’d be stupid enough to put their initials in the message. Probably just a code.”

“So whatever this person is planning, he or she was afraid the Jedi could stop it.”

Hue snorted. “That’s covers most of what the Empire does.”

“What does the first—”

The room was pierced by a screech of the security alarm. Kuznetsov turned to the console. “Explosion on deck four!”

“Brig,” Raya declared. “They’re trying to break Torel out!”

 

8​

Lieutenant Keroi wasn’t enjoying the glimpses into Voss Torel’s mind.

For one thing, he was getting far less than what Captain sor Valetta had hoped when she asked him to try this. He’d known already that Torel was extremely mentally disciplined, and nothing his telepathy provided contradicted that. He was certainly not getting actionable intelligence. Torel was determined, believed in the Empire, and despite the captain’s efforts, retained his sense of time and the pathological brand of optimism he’d cultivated during his first stay in order to get the Vicksburg crew on his side.

All the thoughts he did get from the prisoner were disturbing, in one manner or another. Torel had nothing but contempt for the Federation, for the Alliance, for all enemies of the Empire. He also found Captain sor Valetta sexually attractive, and the mixture of contempt and lust was almost too much to bear. Keroi wondered how he should phrase his report on this matter to the captain.

He glanced at his watch, sighed, focused himself and prepared to once again enter the former Imperial agent’s mind. Concentrating on that, the spike of triumph he felt in the prisoner obscured the noise of the blast in his ears. He realized something was wrong when a ring of smoke emerged from the brig’s door, which fell a second later, permitting Voss Torel to step out. In the next instant, Keroi dropped from a blow to the solar plexus. By the time he understood where he was again, Torel’s foot was pressing down on his chest, hard enough to make breathing slow and painful.

“I did not give you permission to read my mind, Lieutenant,” Torel pronounced. He looked at his right hand—one Keroi knew to be artificial despite its appearance—curled his fingers in a peculiar manner, and extended it. Suddenly, there was a loud hiss and a meter-long shaft of orange-white light emerged from Torel’s palm. Jedi Tano had talked a little about lightsabers, but hadn’t shown one in action.

Torel swung the blade down and across Lieutenant Keroi’s neck. He walked away calmly as the head rolled.

XXX​

Lieutenant Commander Raya watched the murder of Vicksburg‘s chief pilot in five seconds on the security cameras. “Murdering bastard! Kuznetsov, I’m leading the squad. Alert the captain and keep monitoring us!” Rage fueled her; she’d be shocked if the time it took for a security team to assemble for combat up didn’t break all Starfleet records.

Unfortunately, deck four housed not just the brig, but also one of the entrances to the shuttlecraft bay. Torel was inside already, and when her people beamed in, he managed to deflect back every phaser beam fired at him with the integrated lightsaber. How did we miss this? went through her mind.

A deep rumble shook the ship, making a couple of the security stumble for a moment and cease firing. Torel instantly took advantage, leaping nearly ten meters high, over the startled people, and jumping on top of a shuttle, falling through the hatch seconds later. The shuttle fired torpedoes, blasting open a hole in the Vicksburg’s hull. Her squad was caught by the air rushing out. Raya managed a last shot from her phaser rifle, hitting the shuttle but doing no damage, and then had to trigger an emergency beamout.

The squad panted on the security office floor, some coughing blood from the seconds of vacuum exposure, others clutching limbs where phaser beams bouncing off Torel’s lightsaber had hit. “Get everyone to sickbay,” she ordered Kuznetsov. She then tapped her combadge, dreading what she’d have to say. “I’m sorry, Captain.”

XXX​

“Never mind,” sor Valetta snarled. “Take care. Relon, report.”

“The second explosion produced a surge in power conduit G, forcing it to shut down. We have no phasers at this time.”

“Of course we don’t,” she said. “Verlaine, your fighters are faster than our shuttle. Launch immediately. Shoot him down.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Turn the ship, Ensign Boleyn,” she commanded. “We are also faster than the shuttle.”

“Helix squadron in pursuit,” Verlaine reported. “We’ll get him.”

“Permission to take sensor station, Captain?” Lieutenant Ferraro entered the bridge.

“Actually, I want you to get the ship’s internal scans. See the damage Torel did and how best to reroute power to get our phasers back.”

“On it, Captain.”

“Star Destroyer!”

“TIE fighters… four, no, five squadrons!”

“They’ll get slaughtered!” Ferraro gasped.

“No. Boleyn, give me helm control.”

A panel on the armrest of the captain’s chair popped open and a joystick slid up. Sor Valetta encased it in a tight grip. “Arm torpedoes. Transporter room, we’ll drop shields for one second. I want Helix squadron out.”

And with that she pushed the stick forward to the maximum.

“What was that?”

“Warp 0.8,” sor Valetta informed Relon.

“That’s straining the hull too much!”

“It’ll last long enough. Full torpedo spread on that Star Destroyer’s bridge—then the one second shield drop.”

“Roger, ma'am.”

“Verlaine to Vicksburg. I’m breaking off. Helix Squadron, jump away.”

“No, we’ll beam you—”

“Handle Four, Six, and Nine. They lost their hyperdrives.”

“Hue is Four,” Ferraro whispered.

“Coming up. Target acquired.”

“Fire.”

The mile-long ship’s bridge was first obscured by the flash, then erupted in flames. For a little bit, turbolaser fire looked more haphazard.“

"Transporter!”

“Got them.”

“Shields up!”

“We’re hit! Shields at eighty percent!”

Sor Valetta twisted the joystick and had the Vicksburg loop around the big ship, close enough to avoid being targeted by its full power.

“Increase power to rear shields,” she ordered and turned to speed away. TIE fighters had destroyed the abandoned Helix Squadron craft, and other survivors jumped away. There was only one X-Wing still in the system. “May the Force be with you, Captain,” Verlaine said before her ship streaked away.“

"It better be with us,” sor Valetta grunted as she piloted the Vicksburg away from the Imperial behemoth. The TIE fighters, having no more Helix opponents to dogfight, made to pursue her.

“Shields at seventy percent!” Constant small jolts from the TIEs’ laser cannons made it hard for anyone to maintain fine control. The only one who didn’t seem to notice was the captain, steadily flying the Vicksburg, evading the occasional bolt from the Star Destroyer further back, and once, when a TIE Interceptor approached very close, making a tiny deceleration and causing it to shatter on their shields.

“Captain, why aren’t we leaving?”

“We still have people on the planet, remember?”

“We can’t go—the defenses—”

“We’re not leaving them behind. Prepare for atmospheric flight.”

“Captain.”

“This better be good news, Relon.”

“I can give you starboard phaser banks.”

“Fire at will on the TIEs.”

Beams lashed out, causing the squadrons to scatter. The instability from enemy fire dropped slightly, but very quickly, Vicksburg was shaking worse than ever as it started battling atmospheric currents. “Ferraro, track down Ahsoka and Commander Blake.”

“Heading 319, approximately sixteen hundred kilometers.”

Sor Valetta changed course without acknowledgement. “Transporter room, stand by to beam our people out. Take anyone within a hundred meters. Raya, have a security platoon there by in case we bring in hostiles.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Several unusually severe shocks thundered through the Vicksburg. “What was that?”

“Air defense missiles. Shields at fifty percent. They’re indiscriminate. One of those missiles hit their own TIE.”

“Defenses ahead?”

“Not directly, but in range.”

“How many torpedoes do we have left?”

“Seven.”

“Target them with phasers. Do we have the port banks?”

“Not yet.”

“I’m changing course to put the closes defense complex to starboard.”

“Uh-oh.”

“What is it?”

“Two more Star Destroyers arrived in system.”

“TIE fighters broke off pursuit.”

“I bet the fleet captain and the ground command are having a spat over friendly fire right now.”

“Captain, I’ll need at least three seconds without shields to beam everyone up.”

“Right. We’re nearing the defense complex. Prepare for impacts. We’ll be flying close. Phasers, target the missile origin points as soon as the launch is registered.”

The Vicksburg shook so violently that several supposedly fixed pieces of equipment weretorn off the bulkheads and flew around the bridge, hitting people. Two had to be hauled off to sickbay. “Twenty five percent shields!”

“Drop them,” sor Valetta ordered. “While they reload. Transporter!”

“Commander Blake is aboard. So is Jedi Tano and… fifteen others. Don’t look like imperials—”

“Keep them under guard for now. Ruby, I need you on the bridge.”

Sor Valetta pulled back on the joystick, pitching the Vicksburg away from the planet. “They’re trying to catch us in the crossfire.”

“Load up those seven torpedoes.”

“It’s not enough.”

“Not enough to harm. Enough to blind. Light up half the sky, and we safely clear the gravity well. As soon as we do, get us out of here, Boleyn.”

Ruby Blake arrived on the bridge. “Here,” she said, and put in the torpedo targeting solution. “This gives us the best cover.”

“Torpedoes ready.”

“Fire!”

The weapons detonated simultaneously, all between the Star Destroyers and Vicksburg. Sor Valetta ordered side shields strengthened and plunged through. Even accidental hits were numerous enough to shorten out the shields completely. “More TIE fighters!”

“Gravity well clear!”

“Boleyn, now!”

XXX​

Disasters don’t usually happen through one big mistake. More often, they happen through many small mistakes compounding on each other, typically in ways impossible to foresee.

Tired, worried, angry Captain Cindy sor Valetta had taken it upon herself to fly the Vicksburg. That in itself was probably necessary—sor Valetta was an excellent pilot, and knew her ship better than anyone else. But there a brain has limited throughput, and having to fly and command, while under emotional duress, something had to give.

This would never have happened with Lieutenant Keroi at the helm. Sor Valetta knew Keroi was better, and would never take over in the first place. Keroi had acquired experience with the way the Vicksburg‘s hyperdrive had been integrated—tacked on, jury-rigged—into her systems, and was confident in its operations. Finally, Keroi had been a Betazoid, and thus had a double channel of communication with his captain. If the words were ambiguous, the thoughts could clarify what was needed.

None of that applied to Ensign Kari Boleyn, the night shift pilot. So when the captain ordered action, intending to jump to hyperspace, Boleyn went with the reflex ingrained by Starfleet training and channeled power into the warp nacelles, intending to use the propulsion the Vicksburg had been created with.

If that was all she did, there would probably be little effect. They would go to warp, realize their mistake, drop back into normal space—and would likely be able to jump away for good before the Imperial Star Destroyers caught up. But Boleyn had realized her mistake as soon as she made it, and activated the hyperdrive as well.

Then the fact that the Starfleet vessel hadn’t been designed with the hyperdrive in mind came into play. Hyperdrive speeds were so much faster than what they were used to that control requirements made it necessary to have the new system respond very quickly. Chief Engineer Relon did the logical thing, and optimized those control paths. The difference was on order of microseconds, but it was there. Thus, even though Ensign Boleyn actived the warp drive first and the hyperdrive second, the shorter control path on the latter meant the order in which the two engines fired was reversed.

The Vicksburg was already in hyperspace when its native propulsion activated. Even if they thought about what might happen in such an event, they couldn’t test it—long before they even had a hyperdrive to install, it was clear that she didn’t have a power supply sufficient for both to operate at once. The operating manual Relon put together made it quite clear. But no one reads the manual in the heat of battle.

The stars weren’t even quite replaced by the blue swirls before Vicksburg underwent an unexpected burst of acceleration. The hull audibly groaned under increased stress, making everyone on the bridge, including Captain sor Valetta, turn their heads in confusion. Two and a half seconds later, another sound reverberated through as the warp core gave out from powering the two engines simultaneously. Then everyone was plunged into darkness and lost control as the artificial gravity vanished.

Vicksburg was a dead ship with a live crew. Unlike the other combinations of these states, this one couldn’t last long.

XXX​

Ruby Blake steadied Hue Tico after he ended up in an uncontrollable rotation in the zero-g. It was amazing how many people who spent their lives in space had never experienced this aspect of its nature. The floating vomit in the Vicksburg’s corridors testified to this. She knew some unusual history—and this really struck her as the return of the eighteenth century phenomenon of most sailors not knowing how to swim.

Hue Tico and Thanya Ferraro apparently had two of the most sturdiest stomachs aboard. Certainly better than any of the engineering crew, who’d normally be doing this sort of work. Relon, being a Vulcan, probably could have handled it, but he’d been badly hurt in one of the shakeups. How Dr. Shar would treat him under these conditions…

The Vicksburg originally had four shuttlecraft. One was lost to the Dominion before Ruby came aboard, one had just been stolen by Torel, and the other two were torn off their moorings during the battle. One apparently, after bumping around, found the hole in the hull that Torel blasted, and was lost. The last one was still here. Their last hope.

The three of them put on vac-suits, and spent a better part of an hour sealing off a portion of deck four so that they could force open the entrance to the hangar without endangering the rest of the ship. After that, they had to navigate around all the equipment floating about, and suffer a bout of fear when they had trouble finding either shuttle.

While normally, it would be easy to use her PADD to operate the shuttle remotely, this was done through the Vicksburg’s internal comm network. This was a built-in security feature: you couldn’t take control of a shuttle through a lost or stolen PADD. One would be able to use a PADD to communicate with the shuttle, but first, they had to get it online—and that could only be done within.

Ferraro was in the process of doing that, and she and Tico had to wait. She tried to remember if the relevant course was typically taken junior or senior year at the Academy. Ferraro was graduated early. She had the manual on her PADD, of course… manuals. And while Thanya Ferraro proved to be able to handle weightlessness, she wasn’t good at maneuvering around in a vacuum suit. Twice she’d made a miscalculated firing of the suit’s engine that made lose control. Once this loss nearly caused her to float out through the hull breach. To make sure this didn’t happen to the shuttle, they had to secure it again—a job requiring lots of maneuvering. Leaving Ferraro inside to handle the startup was the logical choice.

“There’s something odd about this, Commander,” Tico whispered.

“There’s something not odd about any of this?” she ribbed.

“Look out there.”

“Where?”

“The hull breach,” he explained. “Look.”

“Black space,” she commented. “What’s odd? It would be odd if this wasn’t the case—a random location in the galaxy is likely to be far outside any planetary system.”

“Yeah—but you’d expect to see some stars. It’s just black out there.”

“Maybe we’re in a relatively dense gas cloud that obscures faraway stars and there aren’t any nearby ones.”

“That’s not likely either. Gas clouds are where stars form.”

“I got it!” their conversation was interrupted. In the next moment, the bay was flooded in bright light from the shuttle’s headlamps.

“Fantastic!” Blake declared. “Now, open up panel 14A on the starboard side. It’s one meter behind the mid-section, Lieutenant Tico. You can spool out the power cable from it.” She considered. “Lieutenant Ferraro, you need to move about three meters aft and five meters to starboard, or there won’t be enough of that cable.”

“Right. Never had to fly this precisely,” she mused.

Ruby moved to the bay’s corner and found what she was looking for. Unfortunately, the panel’s manual release had been damaged by the battle, leaving her unable to grip anything to slide the panel over. The automatic controls, were, of course, nonfunctional. Under gravity, the panel could probably be dislodged by a good kick—but here, such a kick would more likely send her hurling in a spin across the shuttle bay. She drew her phaser, switched to a cutting beam setting, and removed most of the panel in a few seconds.

She was just about done when Hue Tico dragged the tip of the shuttle’s cable to her. Now, it could be plugged into the ship’s power supply. Usually, the energy went the other way, but the interface was flexible. She switched the comm channels in her suit.

“Blake to Captain sor Valetta.”

“Go ahead, Commander. Please tell me you have good news. Life support failure is beginning to tell. We’re at seventeen percent oxygen already.”

“We’re going to give you power. I’m not sure how much the shuttle can produce…”

“We can stagger. Restore the atmosphere, then take life support offline again for a few hours later if we need it.”

“Right. Stand by. Emergency power is sufficient for life support and gravity.”

“Alright. At least our combadges function, so I can warn people they might fall suddenly.” She laughed. “If we were on one of those Star Destroyers, they wouldn’t have the range.”

“Perhaps something to consider in future combadge designs,” Blake said. She waited for the captain’s warning announcement, then connected the cable to the outlet and prepared to flip the switch. “Power in three… two… one…”

Loud crashes all over the bay—all over the ship—were testimony to this first success.“ With the comm channel to the bridge still open, loud cheers emerged though her helmet.

It took almost a day of work, taking life support down twice to route power for another purpose, before the warp core was back online. Bone-tired, Blake didn’t bother going to her quarters—she lay down in her bridge chair and fell asleep on the spot. She was surprised to find herself shaken awake by the captain.

"What’s happening?”

“Nothing good.”

Sor Valetta nodded at the comm station and rose to stand in front of the main viewscreen. It lit up with an image of space that had never been seen by human eyes before.

“Crew and guests of the USS Vicksburg, this is your Captain. We have found out exactly what happened and where we are right now.

"This,” she gestured at the screen, “is the view outside Vicksburg right now. As you see, we’re no longer in any galaxy, but sitting in intergalactic space. We’re some two hundred fifty thousand lightyears from Coruscant.

"It seems apparent that our warp drives can warp hyperspace as well as normal space, which is how we managed to travel this far in the few seconds before our warp core was overloaded. The good news is that now that we know this is doable, we can use it to travel even faster than hyperdrive speeds allow. We can go home, and it will not take decades or centuries of travel.

"The bad news is that we cannot do any of that right now. Our hyperdrive is wrecked. At warp speeds, just getting back to this galaxy will take over a hundred years.

"We do not have supplies for such a trip, and there are no planets in between.

"We will try everything we can, but decisions have to be made for the possibility that this is beyond us. We have about four months worth of food onboard. I will grant another month with reduced rations and supplements.

"After that, none will be able to live and still consider themselves part of civilization. Nor will there be any point; the last survivor will still die before reaching any planet or outpost. I will not allow our dignity to be marred like that, nor to provide such an introduction to us for anyone who find the Vicksburg adrift.”

She tapped a key on her padd, and both the main screen and all the crew’s PADDS lit up with a series of numbers. 150:00:00:00. “Five months,” she said. “One hundred fifty days.” She tapped a key, and the numbers began to change. 149:23:59:59. 149:23:59:58. 149:23:59:57.

“If we’re not on our way to any other people when this timer hits zero,” she declared, “I will order the self-destruct of the USS Vicksburg.”

 

9​

"Last meeting, huh," Lieutenant Commander Raya tried to joke. "I'll miss these."

Since they were stranded beyond the known galaxy, Captain sor Valetta had her senior staff in for an all-hands meeting every ten days, as marked by the countdown clock that was omnipresent aboard Vicksburg. Everyone in the ready room involuntarily looked at the corner of the viewscreen. 9:18:43:34. The ten day mark had been passed in the night.

"No miracle work?" Ruby Blake suggested to Relon. The Vulcan merely lifted an eyebrow.

"Miracles are illogical, Commander."

"Anyone got news—good or bad?" the captain brought them back to the fold.

"Not really," Dr. Shar said. "I've got another petition for me to declare you medically unfit for command."

"I thought they'd given up on that," sor Valetta muttered. "How many signed? Anywere close to a majority?"

"Does it matter? This ship is not a democracy," Blake said.

"No, but it could be a concern."

"Likely just a way to vent off," Dr. Shar opined. "Maybe there would be more if anyone really thought I'd grant it, or that Commander Blake would do anything different."

"And a mutiny won't work in this case. If you're not removed officially, your codes will still work, and you can authorize the self-destruct from anywhere."

"Something wrong, Commander?"

"Dr. Shar is right. You made the right decision, and I will follow through if you can't. But something like this would not occur to me in the first place. I would probably wait too long for something to happen. Eventually it would. Something bad, chances are."

"Bad things happened, don't you dare doubt it." As far as they knew, no one had talked about what exactly happened on the bridge that day in orbit of Peral. But three days after, Ensign Kari Boleyn had sat down in the main mess hall, drank a glass of water, and then, instead of eating lunch, pulled out a phaser, put it in her mouth, and thumbed the activator, sending a beam through her brain. With modern medical science, suicide could be hard to pull off. Boleyn chose one of the surefire methods.

There were a dozen other similar incidents in the first weeks of their isolation, as well as five fatal accidents from attempts to repair the hyperdrive. When that happened, Relon closed down engineering to everyone but himself for a period, and held a private gathering of the entire engineering crew. Nobody outside Engineering, not even the captain, was allowed in, and nothing was recorded. But the accidents stopped; there had been many variations on 'I had no idea Vulcans could be scary' muttered about in the hallways.

'Clever' suggestions that the time on the clock should be increased to account for the dead people no longer needing to eat had to be shut down in force. After all, people buying more life at the expense of others was what they were trying to prevent. Sor Valetta was suprised and more than a little proud that her crew held together for so long. Before the end, she would be sure to tell them so.

They were interrupted by a transmission. "Bridge to Captain sor Valetta," the duty officer said. "There is a… delegation here to see you."

"How many?" sor Valetta inquired.

"Three."

"And it can't wait?"

A pause. "They say it's urgent."

"I'm having a senior staff meeting," she said. "If it's something just for me—"

"No, captain—in fact, I think they'd be glad."

"Really? Now that's curious enough. Send them in," she said. "Let's see what this is about." She blew up the timer on the main screen from the corner to full size. "A nice reminder for anyone with the inclination to waste time."

The trio that came in wasn't who she expected. Raya's nighshift deputy, Pavel Kuznetsov, her main sensor operator, Thanya Ferraro, and one of the Helix squadron pilots, Hue Tico. Raya raised her eyebrows. With no fighters aboard, Tico put in the training to fly the Vicksburg after Boleyn's death, but the bridge shifts of the past months, composed of staring at nothing on the screen, nothing on the sensors, and flying nowhere, weren't too conductive to getting to know the crew.

"Lieutenants," sor Valetta addressed them. "What can I do for you?"

Ferraro fidgeted. Kuznetsov was senior in rank among them, but she was taking the lead. "I suppose there are three things," she started.

"I'm listening."

She took a deep breath. "We know Torel failed in his mission. We know you kept it secret. We know why."

XXX​

"I don't understand," General Rieekan said.

"Neither do I," Ruby Blake seconded.

"What mission?" Raya asked.

Dr. Shar remained silent, but the surprised look on his face mathched the other three senior officers. The remaining ones… Relon was a Vulcan and sor Valetta…

"Alright," the captain finally said. "You all know Torel has been interested in acquiring transporter technology for the Empire ever since he learned of its existence. I made it hard for him."

"What do you mean?" said Commander Raya.

"He stole an escape pod, and probably learned too late that ours don't have transporters. He said he was fired for that failure."

"But he wasn't," Tico retorted. "Shira Kord was a cover story."

"Yes. He used it to get back onboard, let the Empire know when he was ready, as you found out—"

"When the two of us were off the ship," Ahsoka said.

"And he stole a shuttle. Our shuttles do have transporter units. At least, they normally do."

"But not our remaining one, or the one Torel stole," Kuznetsov said.

"No, they don't. I ordered Chief Engineer Relon to remove them shortly after we got the hyperdrive installed."

"Why?" Dr. Shar asked.

"To prevent the very thing Torel tried. Not that specific," sor Valetta anticipated. "But since it's far more likely that a shuttle gets lost, stolen, or abandoned than the starship, I minimized the risk."

"Except that Torel knows by now, and is still trying to get the transporter."

"He doesn't know where we are."

Ferraro and Tico exchanged a look. "You made sure no one sends out any comms, because the Empire is more likely to respond than the Alliance, or to detect a very weak signal like ours would be."

"All true."

"Except to get the transporter, which they don't have yet, they'll need the Vicksburg intact."

"If anyone found out that contacting the Empire wasn't the death sentence for us—"

"Stop," sor Valetta raised her hand. "You came to me, instead of broadcasting this shipwide. Why?"

"Because—" Kuznetsov stammered, "—because we agree with you. We can't give the transporter to the Empire. Not even for our lives."

"But that sentiment may not be universal. And if we found this out, so might someone else."

"Thought it was prudent to warn you, ma'am," Tico said.

"Thank you," sor Valetta answered. "I doubt there's much I can do." She sighed. "We have no more Betazoids, and even if we did, none of them would agree to mind-read the entire crew. Plus… the underlying reasoning is questionable. They don't need us alive once they get their hands on the transporter itself. Certainly not all of us."

Ferarro gulped. "I haven't thought like that."

"I have," Tico said.

"But this brings us to the next point," Ferraro said. "We may get out of this yet."

That brought stares from everyone. Even Relon's face produced a change. "How?"

"We've got a transmission," Tico said.

"Receiving communications isn't a problem."

"This was specifically to us," he said.

"How do you know? And how do you know it's not an Imperial trap?"

"It's encrypted with a Helix squadron code. Specifically, it came from Samat."

"The bird with the big sword?" Ruby asked.

Tico laughed. "That's one way of putting it. Anyway," he pulled out the datapad. "Here's the message. Very tightly compressed, and it's just text. No holograms."

He had it projected onto the room's screen. While speaking through universal translators was fine, written Basic had to be learned the old-fashioned way, and not all the Starfleet officers had time to spare. Tico read it out loud.

"Torel still after Vicksburg. Believes he knows the location, and has ackquired an Interdictor cruiser for pursuit. Launch planned two days hence. We have tracker aboard, will pursue. You must hold out for two hours. May the Force be with you."

"Not very detailed."

"I wouldn't be either. They don't want to be discovered. If we get out, they'll tell us everything. If we don't—we can't reveal what we don't know. When was this made?"

"Yesterday."

"How fast would an Interdictor get here?"

"A day, maybe a little more."

"We don't have much time, then. This is our one chance."

"An Interdictor has almost as much firepower as a Star Destroyer. Fewer fighters, but some," Rieekan said. "More than we do, and there's no tricks of terrain to use."

Sor Valetta produced a feral grin. "We'll see about that," she said.

"You sure your grandfather was Denobulan and not Klingon, Captain?"

"I won't have anyone impinge on the marital fidelity of my grandmother here," she deflected with amusement. "I'll assume the Interdictors do the same thing to warp travel as they do for hyperspace. We don't have much use for that, anyway." She looked at the three young officers. "Thank you."

As the department heads prepared to leave, Cindy held them up. "Hold on," she said, and looked over the visitors. "You said there were three things you wanted to bring to me. What else is up?"

"Now that that clock isn't a certainty," Ferraro began, "it no longer feels like a stupid idea. Even if we die in the upcoming battle, it'll be worth it." She smiled, and placed her hand, clasped in Lieutenant Tico's, on the table. "Captain," she said, "we want to get married."

XXX​

"Everything set, captain. Just the wait now."

"The hardest part. Thank you, Lieutenant Ferraro," sor Valetta said. "This isn't my idea of a good honeymoon, you know."

Thanya grinned at her husband at the conn station. "We'll manage. Though it's Lieutenant Tico now."

"Not when both of you are on this bridge," she declared. "I don't want any confusion. Lieutenant Tico's the helmsman."

"That wouldn't be a problem if our ranks differed."

"Gunning for a promotion? You're rising very fast as is. And do you really want to be legally superior to your spouse?"

"Oh, so that's why you haven't married General Rieekan."

Sor Valetta froze. "I have no idea what you're talking about," she pronounced and turned to the comm station. "Patch me through to the assault teams. Sor Valetta here. Report."

"Alpha team, standing by," General Rieekan's voice echoed. Ferraro watched the captain carefully. No idea what I'm talking about my ass. The captain acted so calm that it was obvious she was acting.

"Bravo team, standing by," Commander Blake reported.

"Charlie team, standing by," announced the strangely eager voice of Lieutenant Commander Raya.

"Delta team, standing by," Ahsoka Tano echoed before appending, "If we meet Voss Torel, I'm killing him."

"Echo team, standing by," Lieutenant Kuznetsov answered before anyone produced a reply to the Jedi's announcement.

"Defense team, standing by," Ensign Crand finished the lineup. "That bay will be impassable."

"Shuttle remote pilot feeds right into the holodeck," Ensign Caruthers said.

"Take her out," the Captain ordered. "Ferraro, you got automatic alert setup?"

"Everyone will know as soon as that Imp jumps in."

"Good. Open channel to the entire ship."

She waited for the comm officer to acknowledge and then stood. "Twenty-four hours ago, you were prepared to sacrifice your lives for civilization. That required more bravery than any battle. You proved yourselves time and again to be the finest crew in the two galaxies. I'm honored to be your captain through this. Whatever happens, we're at the end of our greatest trial. We have surprise, we have friends coming for us, and we will see it through. Thank you."

Sor Valetta sat back into her chair, and watched the viewscreen, where the remotely piloted shuttlecraft—their last—was now visible in front of the galactic disk. "Time?" she asked.

Thanya looked at her station. There were now two timers running down. One was the same they had been looking at for months, now down to slightly over eight days. The other was their best estimate of when the enemy would arrive, based on their knowledge of Interdictor speeds and the timestamp on the message from the Alliance. She breathed out. The second timer hit zero and the console emitted a beep.

"ETA for the enemy."

"Red alert."

XXX​

Alarms blared in the holodeck recreation of the shuttlecraft cabin, but even without them, Blair Caruthers was springing into action. The beautiful view of the galaxy she was admiring had suddenly been obscured by the white-gray wedge of an Imperial warship, jumping out of hyperspace. Her sensors informed her that the shuttle was in a heavy gravity well centered on the ship, much like the neighborhood of a planet. Warp controls lit up in red, indicating they were dangerous to use.

"Caruthers here. Captain?"

"Go."

On Caruther's command, the shuttle fired its impulse engines at full strength, accelerating towards the Interdictor. Green turbolaser bolts streaked to meet it, impacting the forward shields, bringing them down to twenty percent in two hits. Caruthers instinctively winced, despite not being in any danger. The actual shuttle flying in space didn't even have life support.

"Arm warp core for self-destruct. Ten seconds. Authorization Caruthers Fifteen Eight Theta."

"Ten seconds to detonation. Nine. Eight," the gentle computer voice counted down.

The Interdictor loomed large. Another bolt wrecked the shields and torn up half the cockpit. Blair would be dead had she been aboard. She watched the gray metal fill the entire view and made out a couple of small details on the hull.

"Three. Two."

Unfortunately, the next bolt destroyed the datalink, and instead of witnessing the end of the countdown, she wound up standing on the black-and-yellow holodeck grid. She felt the Vicksburg starg moving even before her combadge chirped.

"Good work, Caruthers. Their shields are down."

Caruthers whooped.

XXX​

"Take her in, Tico," sor Valetta ordered. "Target weapons emplacements as we approach."

The Vicksburg dipped down and made a twist as it approached. "Tractor beams standing by," Ferraro announced.

"On my mark."

Phaser and turbolaser beams criss-crossed space. "Shields at sixty percent!"

"Approaching the launch bay."

"Rake it. Bombers are trouble."

"Targeting the bay."

Tico had manuevered to not just have Vicksburg underneath the Interdictor's lauch bay, but to turn over, with the two ships' bellies facing each other.

"Tractor beams powered up. We're pulling in."

The ship shuddered and strained. "What's that?"

"They're countering our tractor beams with theirs."

"Ferraro, do you have the emplacement positions?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Beam in the mines and detonate."

"And… we've landed," Tico announced. "Ships are in contact."

"Defense team, into the bay! Stop any attempts to operate any fighter or bomber here. Assault teams, beam to your designated points and start breaking the ship apart from the inside. No prisoners. The only way we'll last the two hours our friends need is to keep constant pressure on them."

Thanya, frowning, turned to her captain. "What if they don't get here?"

"Our people will get tired, while the enemy still has fresh reserves. They'll move into the bay, cut the hull open from close range, and flood the Vicksburg with stormtroopers."

"And then what?" Tico asked.

"And then I will beam our antimatter reserves into their reactor room and drop the containment field."

 

Lol.

 

You need some humor when you're in a desperate situation.

 

10​

“Blake?”

“Another stormtrooper squad down, another sector exposed to vacuum. We’ve got three seriously wounded. Dr. Shar?”

“Beam them in,” the Andorian said in a flat monotone. “I suppose the sickbay was the one part of Vicksburg you haven’t pushed beyond the limits in the past year, Captain.”

Sor Valetta switched channels. “Crand, report.”

“I don’t think there are anymore TIEs in the bay to try to operate,” the junior security officer said. “But there are wrecks everywhere, good to hide behind. For both sides.”

“Snipers?”

“There’s less than three hundred meters wall to wall. Doesn’t deserve the name.”

“Alright. Let me know if the ship’s phasers can target anything useful.”

“Wish there was a phaser mirror, to deflect the beam. Then we coudl just transport it around and shoot anything around—”

“Crand?”

“T'Rava here. Crand’s dead. Bolt through the head.”

“Hold on.” End of call. Curse. Another channel switch. “Raya?”

“No! You can’t do this!”

“You lost your arm, Commander! How’re you going to fight with one arm?!”

“Raya, beam aboard Vicksburg! That’s an order!”

“Energize!”

“No—”

“Get on that table, Commander,” Dr. Shar’s voice broke in.

“I can’t—Captain, listen you can’t leave them. My team’s full of rookies, and we found our way into the most dangerous part of the ship. The Imps are bringing in small walkers. They’ll get slaughtered with a green officer in charge.”

“Understood.”

“But there isn’t anyone—”

“Sedate her, doctor.” When that comm ended, the captain looked ahead. “Liuetenant Ferraro.”

The operations officer’s confusion was felt even by her. She certainly wasn’t the sort of experienced infantry commander that Raya implied was needed. If she was the best among those remaining—

“You have the bridge,” sor Valetta simply said before strapping on a phaser and departing.

XXX​

“Well, it’s handy, I’ll give that,” Ruby Blake commented as several more of the stormtroopers’ blaster bolts glanced off her lightsaber. She wasn’t skilled enough yet to send them back at their enemy; mostly, they just hit the corridor’s walls. But it provided protection for her people, who could shoot from behind her sword.

“That’s the last of this bunch,” someone from her team said, noting the Imperial corpses. He lifted a tricorder. “No lurkers.”

“And that,” she said, pointing forward, “is the outer hull. We can make another hole in the ship and move on.” She nodded at the others. “Get ready to beam out.” With that, she walked forward, lightsaber at the ready.

Something nearly fell on top of her and she sprang back. Another blade, an orange one, pierced the gloom. “I don’t think so,” Voss Torel snarled and launched himself at her.

XXX​

They did not waste breath on words. Her team attempted to shoot, but with a wave of his hand, phasers were torn from their grasps. She blocked a strike and staggered from the sheer force, then fell back as Torel attempted to kick her in the belly. Nimbly, she climbed up onto the walkway, locked her blade, and hurled it, spinning, at the imperial. He let the weapon approach and then moved quickly to strike at the blade, changing its course towards the remaining Starfleet personnel. Realizing the danger, Ruby reached out and summoned the weapon back to her, but this gave Torel time to get on the same walkway. He tore away a length of handrail and approached, weapon in each hand.

Each parry she made generated a painful shock in her hands and another step backwards. He wielded the lightsaber with one hand, and she had to use both to even hold on to her weapon; meanwhile, he used the metal rod in the other hand to try to cut under her legs and trip her. At one moment, she managed to pin the secondary weapon down with her foot and make a side-kick at Torel’s chest, but his bulk let him retain the balance and then he leveraged the piece of railing, forcing her to shut down the lightsaber as she rolled on the floor, lest she impale herself. When she stopped, he was standing over her, swinging down—

And then he was kicked sideways by a figure flying across her field of view, two white blades moving in a blur. By the time she breathed out and rose to watch, the metal rod from his right hand was lying on the compartment floor in three pieces, and it was Torel who had been forced on the defensive—and, Ruby realized, was now at a disadvantage because a weapon that was embedded into one arm couldn’t be wielded with two.

Ahsoka Tano moved fluidly, stopping each lightsaber strike, stepping away from every kick and punch despite Torel’s longer reach, and finally got exactly where she wanted. Putting slightly more force into the lightsaber parry than usual, she made Torel extend his arm outward, leaving an opening through which she stepped through—and, anticipating the blocking fist, stepped out of the way left and forward before pivoting. For a fraction of a second, she was mere centimeters away from Torel, facing his back, and with one free hand. It took only a short turn of her wrist for the lightsaber in that hand to slice across his Torso and make the body drop in two halves.

“Are you alright?” Ahsoka called out.

“Yeah. You?”

“Well, I won,” she said. “Even without the Force, the combat training is still there.”

“It’s over.”

“No, it’s not. Take a look.”

Frowning, Ruby climbed down and joined her master next to Torel’s corpse. Ahsoka unceremoniously lifted the lower half and pointed inside.

Instead of organs and blood, there was metal and circuits.

“Torel’s a droid?”

XXX​

“Ship jumping out of hyperspace!”

“About time,” Thanya Tico breathed in relief.

“They’ve launched bombers. Y-Wings.”

“We’re being hailed.”

“Onscreen.”

They were greeted by a familiar face. “USS Vicksburg, this is Alliance carrier Memory of Alderaan,” Evaan Verlaine introduced her ship. “Lieutenant Ferraro?” she inquired. “You’re the senior officer?” A frown of dread came upon her face at the idea.

“I’m the acting captain. Everybody senior had to go lead assault parties on the Interdictor.”

“I think they can stop,” Verlaine said. “I’ve been hailed by the Imperial captain. At the sight of our bomber squadron, he’s offering to surrender the Entangler.”

“You think it’s genuine?”

“Yes, it is,” Commander Blake’s voice barged into the conversation. “Torel—or what they thought was Torel—is out, and we’ve rattled this ship with holes anyway.”

“Ruby!” Verlaine exclaimed before returning to business. “What do you mean, what they thought was Torel?”

“Human replica droid,” Ahsoka informed them.

“But droids can’t use the Force.”

“Which is why I’m sure the real Torel is still alive.”

“Wait—he pulled those blasters—” Ruby began.

“Magnetic attractor. Only works on metal, far shorter range than the Force.” Ahsoka laughed. “Maybe I should look into getting gloves like that to compensate.”

“So what do we do?”

“The only thing we can,” sor Valetta stepped in. “I’m on the Entangler’s bridge. I’ve accepted their offer of surrender. I assume, Captain Verlaine, that you intend to send a crew aboard and make use of this ship for the Alliance?”

“That’s what usually happens when a vessel surrenders.”

“I’m afraid I can’t permit it,” sor Valetta said. “We’re going to beam the Imperials aboard the Memory of Alderaan in small groups. Disarm them and make sure none of them are Voss Torel. In case anyone is, I want Ahsoka and Ruby present.”

“Understood, ma'am,” Ahsoka said.

“All movement between ships will be by transporter. No shuttles. No escape pods. If any launch from the Entanger, shoot them down without hesitation.”

“In case it’s Torel.”

“Once we’ve got everyone, we’re overloading the Entangler’s main reactor. I’m sorry,” she said. “But any use the Alliance might have made is not worth the risk of letting Torel escape.”

“If he’s here,” Verlaine’s first officer muttered.

“Not worth the risk. Ferraro, release the tractor beams and move the Vicksburg away so no one sneaks aboard. Then let’s beam our prisoners over, blow this thing, and get out of here.”

She was answered by a chorus of “Yes, ma'am”‘s from the Vicksburg’s officers. Verlaine appeared more skeptical for a few seconds, but then resigned herself. “You’ve been through enough. Though now that you’ve got his droid, I have a feeling Torel had never left the Empire.”

“Probably not,” Ahsoka said. “But the captain’s right that it’s possible he’s here. I can’t feel him, Ruby is inexperienced, and those senses aren’t perfect anyway, and can be fooled by another Force-sensitive.”

“Exactly,” sor Valetta agreed.

“Vicksburg holding five kilometers form Entangler,” Ferraro announced. “Captain, are you returning?”

“You seem to have things well in hand, Lieutenant,” she said. “Commander Blake and I will remain here until the last of the prisoners is away. And Ferraro?”

“Captain?”

“Stop the damn countdown.”

XXX​

“How’d you even know we were here?”

“Because Torel was still looking for you,” Verlaine explained. This not being a formal officer’s meeting, the carrier’s captain permitted Ruby Blake to share a chair with her, and the two entwined themselves. Neither sor Valetta nor Rieekan were inclined to order decorum under the circumstances. “Nice trick, captain, with removing your teleporter from the shuttles.”

“Given his failure twice, I’d have assumed the Empire would do our work for us and execute him,” Ruby muttered.

“If he was an ordinary operative, they probably would,” a woman with waist-length white hair said. “I’m Winter, by the way.”

“Pleased to meet you,” sor Valetta shook her hand.

“You’re a spy.”

“Ruby!”

“What? She is.”

Winter laughed. “Won’t be asking how you know,” she said. “I didn’t think’d I’d need a cover story here.”

“He was punished, in a way,” Winter explained. “That’s why he could summon a fleet of Star Destroyers at Peral, but managed only a lone Interdictor here. Partially my doing. When Verlaine told me about you, I fed the information about the failure to an agent I ran in Imperial Intelligence. Service rivalries did the rest.”

“Rivalries between II and ISB?”

“ISB is a cover for Torel,” Winter said. “Technically, he’s outside any chain of command. His title is… Emperor’s Hand.”

“EH!” Raya exclaimed. “That’s it means.”

“Only Palpatine can punish him. He must have done something to convince the Emperor that the punishment wasn’t death. So we made sure we had the Entangler tracked and monitored. And then, when we found out they were ready to move out, we risked a message.”

“That only leaves one mystery, then,” sor Valetta said. “How did Torel find us?”

“The Force,” Ahsoka answered. “Assuming no one made a transmission from Vicksburg, I don’t see any other way.”

“Why did it take so long?”

The ex-Jedi shrugged. “I’m not big on speculation without evidence. There’s a rather elegant idea, but that’s all it is—he’s never done this sort of thing, tracking at such a distance. He needed additional training, and he had the replica droid made so that it would supervise his subordinates for him.”

Several people blanched. “Well, every prisoner we talked to is shocked to learn they were following a droid for months.”

“I hope they weren’t,” sor Valetta said. “If the real Torel was on the Entangler, he’s dead now.”

“Where are we going, by the way?”

“There’s been a fleetwide summons,” Verlaine said. “We’re assembling at Sullust. Good place to drop off the prisoners, too. A planet where a bunch of humans won’t blend into the local population even if they escape. And it’s an industrial world, so you can get the Vicksburg repaired.”

“It’s in no shape for battle, but I’m sure the crew will want to help finish the job. And we can start the work needed for us to return home.” She gave a deep breath. “Thank you,” she said. “We are in your debt.”

“Ruby told me about the literal deadline you imposed there,” Verlaine said.

“Please don’t,” sor Valetta pleaded. “I’ve done it, I’m sure I would have followed through if it came to it, but I don’t want to even think about it now that it’s in the past.” She breathed. “I can’t control how this spreads, but if the entire incident is forgotten, I won’t be unhappy.”

“Why?” Verlaine’s hereto quiet first officer spoke up. “The reasons made sense—why hide?”

“What’s your name?” sor Valetta asked.

“Jan. Jan Ors.”

“Well… Major Ors,” she noted the rank, “two things. Our situation was pretty unique. Starfleet does provide guidelines for when the captain should order self-destruct, but it’s very uncommon to know when a situation calling for it is going to arise with any warning, much less months in advance. I think it’s sufficient that every captain, with the consent of two of his, her or its senior officers, is authorized to do it. Everything surrounding is up to discretion based on the specific situation and the captain’s inclinations.

"Second,” she tapped her finger, “until you’re in the situation, you can’t know if you’re able to do something like this. The deadline is tempting; it gives an illusion of putting off the decision while still getting the same result. You have to be ready to shoot, or don’t draw the phaser.”

“But you won’t try to stop anyone from talking about it, either.”

“I don’t think any of my crew want to relive these months. Imposing silence won’t be good for them, either, though. I’ve done a lot of things since I arrived here that I never thought I’d do in my Starfleet career, starting with breaking the Prime Directive. At this point, I’m satisfied to follow my sense of right and wrong and accept the judgement of history. And of a Federation court, should my case ever come in front of one.”

Several people laughed. “It’ll be a while before it comes to that. Vicksburg refitting will take time, and I’m not leaving a war right before it ends.”

“And if ends badly?”

“Not even then. You think I want to give the Empire a path to follow us home?”

 

11​

“Sorry, Hue. You could come with us, you know.”

“I’m not a scientist, and it’s not like there’s much need for fighter pilots anymore,” he smiled. “When your experiment succeeds, and intergalactic travel is real, I’d love to see your home.”

“As much as I loved seeing yours?” she teased. Hays Minor wasn’t her idea of a vacation spot; if it felt a little like one, it was that for the first time in over a year, people weren’t trying to kill her.

Like all across the galaxy, the Empire left scars on the Otomak system; some obvious and some much more subtle but potentially as dangerous. With his background as a local detective who’d left before the gears of law enforcement were taken over by the Empire–who’d left because the gears of law enforcement were taken over by the Empire–her husband had been tapped by the new democratic government for the task of setting up a new justice system. She wasn’t tapped into that world at all, anymore than he was into her research. One of the things that surprised her was that they didn’t seem to need that to love each other.

“Who asked to meet us?” Thanya glanced at her watch. “If they delay longer, the Captain will get impatient.”

“Ahsoka,” he said. “At least, it was her personal code.”

“I haven’t heard from her since Endor.”

Two figures approached them. “No way!”

“Hello, Lieutenants,” Ahsoka greeted. “I’ve caught this one with plans to the Assembly building and an incomplete bomb.”

“Jedi lies!” Voss Torel shouted. Ahsoka had bound his hands was pointing a blaster at his back.

“Is he real?”

“Oh, yes.”

Torel turned to Hue. “They made you Otomak’s Minister of Justice, didn’t they?”

“So they did,” Hue acknowledged.

“I was born here. I am a citizen of Otomak. This off-world religious fanatic has kidnapped me, tortured me, and is about to hand me over as a political prisoner to a tyrannical galactic government. How about some justice your proclaim yourself to be minister of?”

“Is he serious?” Thanya had to use all her will to not burst out in laughter.

Ahsoka did produce a giggle. “Torture? I took a blood sample to make sure he wasn’t another replica droid. As for the rest…”

“We have a word for that back on Earth,” Thanya said. “Chutzpah.”

“And I have a word for you here,” Torel retorted. “Hypocrites.”

Hue produced an enigmatic smile. “Are you sure you want to go that way, Torel? Because we have plenty of things to try you for even before the Empire came to Otomak.”

“Do you? Any evidence? Oh, right. All the records are gone.”

Thanya then saw her husband make a wide grin. “I suppose you needed to get off the comms for a while to avoid getting captured,” he said. “Figures you wouldn’t hear the latest news.” He took out his official datapad. “Amedda surrendered Coruscant, so all Imperial archives are now in possession of the New Republic. Some was purged by loyalists, of course, but your sabotage here wasn’t important enough. Plenty to arrest you. If the sentence the New Republic isn’t severe enough, we can always hold an additional trial here.”

“Nice. I suppose after the experiment, we can make a small detour. I doubt Captain sor Valetta will want him in the Federation.” Thanya tapped her combadge. “Ferraro to Vicksburg.”

“Vicksburg here,” the voice of Ruby Blake replied. “Something wrong?”

“On the contrary. Ahsoka captured Voss Torel.”

“The real one?” Blake demanded.

Torel laughed. “Everyone will doubt my ‘captors’ from now on. I love this.”

“The attitude argues for it,” Blake said. “Very well. I’ll have Raya in the transporter room and prepare the brig.”

A few minutes later, the combadge chirped. “We read your position.”

Thanya kissed Hue and he stepped away from the other three. “Ferraro to Vicksburg,” she said again. “Three to beam up.”

The shimmer took them and they emerged in the transporter room with a half-dozen phasers pointed at Torel. “Thank you, Jedi Tano,” Raya said. “Take him away.”

“Have we jumped to hyperspace?” Ferraro asked.

“Captain wants this experiment done soon.”

“I didn’t realize there was this much hurry. I would have–”

“We all needed the rest. We’ve had it… and we’ll have more once we’re home. Until then…” Raya sighed. “Caruthers left.”

“Why?” Thanya exclaimed.

“Says she’s got nothing to come back too. I don’t either, but… came as a surprise.”

“Alright. I’ll be prepping the shuttle for the experiment.”

“Luck, Commander,” Raya said.

“Thanks. Thanks for catching him, Ahsoka.”

The Togruta shrugged. “It was my duty.”

XXX​

Thanya took the Starfleet shuttle out. The Vicksburg had taken position in the sparse outer fringes of the galaxy, many lightyears away from populated systems.

“Science officer’s log, Stardate 52198.5, aboard the shuttle McPherson attached to the USS Vicksburg. This will be a first attempt for deliberate intergalactic travel via warping hyperspace. If successful, this will allow the crew of the Vicksburg to return home, and for permanent relations between the peoples of two galaxies. Aiding me in navigation is astromech droid R2-G3, who will be recording sensor data in backup for the McPherson‘s internal databanks.”

The droid chirped something. “Thank you.” She still wasn’t sure what to make of the ubiquitous automatons of this galaxy. She also wasn’t sure what the Federation would make of them, or of anything they’ve done here. Now that return was imminent, these concerns were no longer easily ignored. Possibilities included from commendations to prison sentences for Prime Directive violations–precedents existed for both.

“Vicksburg, this is McPherson. Onboard navicomputer and R2-G3 concur that the Milky Way is directly ahead.”

“Acknowledged, McPherson. Remember, hyperspace first, then warp, not the other way around,” Captain sor Valetta replied.

Thanya felt her eyes rolling. “I know, ma'am. Initiating jump.” She flipped the hyperdrive lever.

Things started happening, and not what she expected. For a moment, the control panel flashed and then shut down, and the shuttle began to turn its nose back into the galaxy.

“McPherson, what is going on?”

Thanya blinked, and worked the pilot controls. “I don’t know.”

Beep from the droid. “Locked out? By–”

“Voss Torel,” sor Valetta growled over the comm. “He still wants to steal transporter tech.”

“I thought you removed it.”

“I had it reinstalled so you wouldn’t be stranded without,” the captain exclaimed. “I have no idea how he uploaded anything into the computer system–”

“Geethri, plug in and try to restore controls.”

“There are still remnants of the Empire,” Blake commented. “We can’t let them have it.”

“Right,” sor Valetta said. “Hold them with a tractor beam.”

The shuttle stopped turning. “Can you re-orient us?”

“Generally, but precisely…”

“I can do it.”

“Ruby? You never--”

“The Force.”

“Ahsoka? Can your magic be used for--”

The former Jedi bristled, but answered. "Yes, Captain. Precision piloting with the aid of the Force is a Jedi skill."

“Take the controls.”

The tractor beam resumed pushing McPherson around, overpowering its thrusters and pointing the bow once more out of the galaxy. First the turns were large, then became more gentle and precise, and finally subsumed to almost imperceptible nudges. “Got it.”

“Lieutenant Ferraro, this was just to prevent the shuttle from falling into enemy hands. I am cancelling the experiment. As soon as you restore controls, proceed to return to the Vicksburg.”

Thanya felt like protesting, but she knew the captain was right. “Acknowledged, Vicksburg.”

Geethri whistled. “He says he found the trip. Control will be restored shortly.”

She was about to turn the McPherson around when the shuttle jerked and the starfield in the viewport vanished.

“Ferraro, what the hell?”

Thanya cursed. “The launch command must be in the control buffer. Lifting the lock carried it out.”

Alarms rang out before sor Valetta replied. “These engines can’t handle the stress! McPherson wasn’t designed to tow a ship the size of Vicksburg!”

And then, as if to prove her point, the warp core activated and an energy shock ran down the tractor beam. When it hit the Vicksburg’s hull, the a small explosion destroyed the emitter, severing the connection between the two ships. McPherson, carrying Lieutenant Thanya Ferraro, rushed forward into warped hyperspace making tens of thousands of light years per second; and Vicksburg was left behind.

Just like the experiment they planned out, and utterly, utterly different.

 

Interlude​

The United Federation of Planets had been merciful, practical, respectful and utterly inconsiderate, Arlina Cantrell thought as her long-distance shuttle left behind Sivao XII. That world’s terraforming had been completed–in the sense that it was fit for human habitation under open skies–less than two decades before. That gave it two qualities common separately but very rare in combination: a very small population and a location deep in Federation territorry, far from any borders.

Perfect to host a prison.

Technically, Arlina’s husband was no longer a prisoner of war. Not even the easygoing–by her standards, at least–Starfleet would permit him to return where a chance of him contacting his former masters existed. She, on the other hand, had to go.

Damn them.

The orbit of Mars was a busy place, and it took a little while before her craft was able to find a docking space. Arlina didn’t like the matter transporters used here, even though she had gone through one without apparent problems. She didn’t mind much; a lifetime habit of arriving early gave her, absent any issues arising, time to scope out the new place. The behemoth of her ultimate destination, changed and yet familiar, attracted interest from her fellow passengers and, judging by the traffic, from many others as well.

The Utopia Planitia Station 4 welcomed her with more traffic, pedestrian this time. She considered what she could do in the several hours before she had to report. Unlike Deep Space Nine, there didn’t appear any gambling establishments, and she just wasn’t in the mood for immersing herself in a fictional adventure in a holosuite. She’d had more than enough real adventures lately.

A door attracted her attention. It was out of place in these corridors of plastic and metal; made of black wood with letters of polished brass arcing at the top, imitating a hand script. The sign was doubled up–larger writing at the top in a version of the most common local alphabet, and a smaller phrase underneath in Basic using Aurabesh. The Captain’s Table.

“I am the only one who can read that here, probably.” She had to make an effort to stop talking to herself. There were a smattering of others, but hardly enough for someone to make an effort like that. Not that the sign in either language drew significant attention. Everyone she saw passed the strange door by without a glance–like it was something that had been there for years.

Arlina doubted an installation like this, with a nearby major shipyard deep in the heart of the Federation, would contain serious danger. Gliding through the crowd, she approached the door, turned the handle polished just as bright as the letters, and stepped inside.

After she closed the door and let her eyes get used to the darkness, she realized she was in a cantina. That brought her instincts up. She instantly noticed that proportionately, there were far fewer humans here than outside; her experience said such differences always had reasons behind them, and not knowing them could be dangerous.

Then, however, she recognized one person. He had been on the committee that debriefed her, in an advisory role, they said. She liked his questions.

“Admiral Picard,” she greeted.

“Captain, please. Or just Mr. Picard. The rank… never really fit me.”

“Captain, then. What’s this place?”

“A most curious institution. And usually an enjoyable one.”

She blinked. “That’s a Wookiee,” she said carefully, glancing across the table at which several games of chance were going on. “But that doesn’t make sense.”

“The Captain’s Table has doors in many places,” Picard said. “And it has proven immune to use as shortcut, weapon of war, or tool of intelligence gathering. I would advise not to attempt such subterfuge.”

“What is its use, then?”

“Shared experience. Captain.”

“I’m not a captain of anything, sir.”

The Wookiee lifted his shaggy black-furred head and erupted with a series of barks. Arlina frowned. “I wouldn’t see the door–you mean, we’re in some interdimensional pocket?”

“Indeed,” a Ferengi said from behind. “Drink for the lovely lady?”

“No, thanks. Are you saying everyone’s here has a ship?”

“Or used to have one,” Picard said. “For the moment, I’m still allowed.”

“Strange.”

“Yes, but wonderful. There are always stories worth hearing.”

“Stories?”

“The owner there,” Picard pointed to the bar, “has no use for money. And captains hardly use the same currency, or any at all. You pay by giving stories and taking those of others’.”

“I see.”

“Come on, Picard,” the Ferengi demanded. “You can gabber with a rookie all night. Let’s begin and get some more substance.”

“If it falls on me, Joum, I’ll tell the story of when you were the rookie,” a high-pitched voice said.

Its owner stepped out from behind the refresher door. “Iloo Wermi,” a female Pantoran said. “You’re from our galaxy.”

Arlina looked about. Humans were decidedly in the overall minority, but a substantial one, and she never noticed differences that could allow someone to instantly clock which galaxy’s branch of humanity someone belonged too. Specialists said even genetic tests could make that determination only probabilistically.

Then she spotted a lightsaber at the Pantoran woman’s belt. “You’re a Jedi.”

“Sort of,” she said.

“What’s a Djedi?” the Ferengi asked.

“Spin the wheel, Joum, and maybe you’ll find out.”

A disk split into sectors was brought out and placed on the table. A metal pole was thrust through it and an arrow was attached to it, allowing free spin, which everyone verified. “Ready?” Picard asked.

“Do it!”

The Wookiee took the tip of the arrow, drew back, and swung his arm forward, releasing it. The silver rod became a blur as it spun, and it took several minutes before friction even began to slow it down. While the improvised roulette worked, Picard explained.

“Each sector has a description of a person written underneath, but in relation to others. ‘The tallest’. ‘The oldest’. ‘The one with the fewest hairs on his head’,” he mused. “Whoever matches the description will be the one telling the story.”

“It’s not always how we choose,” Wermi interjected. “But some people love gambling, even if it’s not with money.” She pointedly glanced at the Ferengi. “You, Joum, like it because it’s the only way for anyone to agree to listen to you.”

“Why?”

“He’s only got two stories,” Wermi dismissed. “I went to a new planet, and scammed the natives out of a lot of money. I went to a new planet, and the natives saw through my scam, and cost me a lot of money.”

“I’m here.”

Picard motioned at them to stop. The spinner’s arrow was now hovering over a bright turquoise sector. The barkeep reached, picked up the card from it, and turned over.

“The one with the shortest tenure as captain.”

Arlina sighed. “I doubt it’s anyone but me.”

“Really?” Joum demanded. “This is a pretty old crowd.”

The Wookie made a growl of protest. “Four months,” Arlina mused. “Try… four minutes. And that’s generous.”

That brought up a lot of heads. “This should be worth hearing,” Wermi said.

“I suppose so. I had been chief engineer of the First Order Star Destroyer Punisher…”

 

Part II: Punisher
1​

“Lieutenant Commander–”

“No.”

“What?”

“I know what you’re going to say,” Arlina told the officer who requested to see her. “When are you fighter jockeys going to get it through your thick skulls that safety protocols exist for a reason?”

“When are you safety maniacs going to get it through your thick skulls that war is risk?”

“Risk, yes. Stupid risk, no. She tapped her datapad. "I’ve got damage reports from Penalizer, Exterminator, Ripper, and Voidmaker where they pulled the trick you’re asking me to, and–”

“I didn’t ask–”

“–that’s just in the last month. Please, Colonel. Like I said, every new head of the starfighter contingent asks me to do this. No.”

“It’ll–”

“Speed up TIE launch time by a factor of three to four by overloading the magnetic launch racks with power from the main reactor. The key is overloading. I.E., above the specs these racks were made for. Which increases fatigue and results in unexpected breakages.”

“That never happened in the Empire.”

That snapped her. “One. Yes it did, it was just hushed up. Two. The Empire had access to resources of most of the galaxy, and so could more high-quality metal. Three. You’re talking like you’d been there.”

“I was.”

She looked him over. “I’m sorry, sir. You appear far to young to have been even born before Endor.”

“I know that, Commander Cantrell. There is a story. If I tell it, will you bulge?”

“No. Because guess what–the fatigue doesn’t kick in at standown. It does so during operation, putting at risk your TIE crews as well as my damage control parties. I’m looking out for everyone’s safety here.”

“Except when time is critical to hit the enemy.”

“That isn’t predictable. Breakages when you abuse the machinery are.”

“What if the captain orders you to do it?”

“He won’t,” Arlina declared. “Now, how about that story?”

He smiled. “I created the First Order pilot training program, when we were just starting to build up,” he said. “I knew it would be years, and I wanted to be old enough to fight the Rebels when the time came. So I asked General Hux–Brendol Hux, that is–to freeze me in carbonite and have me revived for the war.”

“Spreading Rebel propaganda, are we now?”

“Hux said that, too. But he agreed. So here I am. And you still won’t boost my TIE racks?”

“Nice try, Colonel. But, no.”

“Then maybe you can give me something else.”

“Oh?” she raised her eyebrows. “What?”

“A date.”

That was unexpected. “Hmm…” she said. “I’ll need to think. You’ve just said you’re thirty years older than me, and I don’t even have your name. Both are points against.”

“I was as old as you when I went into the carbonite, so it doesn’t count. And the other problem is easily fixed.” He extended his hand. “Nash. Nash Windrider.”

XXX​

“Are you sure they’ll be here, General?”

“As sure as things ever are,” Sabine Wren answered.

“Ship emerging!”

“See. Nothing to worry about.”

“It’s a Star Destroyer!”

Sabine laughed. “You need to learn your ships better. Hail them. New Republic Interdictor Harmony, this is Mandalorian cruiser Ghost III. Thanks for coming.”

“Ghost III, acknowledged. This is Captain Thane Kyrell, commanding Harmony.”

“General Sabine Wren of Mandalore,” Sabine introduced herself.

“What’s this about?” Kyrell asked.

“The First Order,” she said. “They’re planning to attack the Republic.”

“We all know that, even the boneheads in the Senate,” Kyrell growled.

“The scheme is different. They’re moving ships into Republic space first. The invasion precedes the attack, and the attack, when it comes, comes from all directions, not just the border.”

“I see.”

“This a chance to ambush them first, and have clear proof of invasion. It’s a chance to spoil their surprise. Power up your gravity wells, Captain Kyrell.”

“Will do, General.”

“Fleet, stand by.”

The wait felt far longer than it was, but then there was a bright flash in the viewport.

“Star Destroyer!” someone cried.

“For real, this time?” Sabine demanded.

“Yes, ma'am. Resurgent-class–”

“Map,” Sabine ordered. A holographic image filled the empty center of the bridge. Nearly fifty sleek Mandalorian ships flying in formation glowed green; slightly off to the side was the blue image of Harmony, and some thousands of kilometers away, the First Order’s red behemoth.

They weren’t in any star system, per se, but this cluster was dense enough that instead of pitch darkness with star as points, the sky contained several more or less stable glowing regions. Gravity was also erratic, forcing ships to compensate or start drifting.

“Begin broadcast,” Sabine said. “First Order vessel, your presence in Republic space is illegal. Remove yourselves, or you will be considered invaders and dealt with accordingly.”

“You really think that’ll work?” Kyrell asked.

“Never hurts to try,” she muttered. “But no, I don’t.”

“There’s trouble,” he said.

“What about?”

“I can… sense it.”

“You’re no Jedi, Kyrell,” Sabine said.

“I could have been,” he joked. “Ciena objected to the ‘no attachment’ thing.”

The First Order ship remained silent—no surrender, no threats, no taunts. Sabine was about to order an attack when the entire sky seemed to rupture with light. Everyone on the Ghost III‘s bridge was blinded. When sight returned, they were treated to an impossible sight. In between the Mandalorian fleet and the Star Destroyer lay a violent swirl of white and purple nearly ten kilometers across.

“What was that?”

“What is that?”

“Why are we moving?”

The last question triggered something in Sabine. “We are?”

The Mandalorian at the conn station nodded. “That thing’s got gravity, and it’s pulling us in. Pulling them in, too—look.”

The First Order ship was indeed tilting towards the phenomenon. “Harmony, report.”

“My gravity projectors got overloaded,” Kyrell said. “They pulled whatever that was from hyperspace and the interaction–it’s a major gravity well, and getting stronger.”

“That’s imposs—”

“He’s right, ma'am,” another officer said. “Either that thing’s denser than a neutron star, and getting more stuff in it, or—”

“Harmony, can you move?”

“Thrusters only.”

“Tractor beams,” she ordered. “Pull her away! NOW!”

“Yes, ma'am.” The Ghost III’s engines fired up, and the Mandalorian fleet locked onto the Republic Interdictor before thrusting away from the phenomenon. The ship first stopped drifting, then, agonizingly slow, began to pull away. Sabine monitored engine power readouts to make sure they were alright, then ordered up a zoom up on the enemy.

The Star Destroyer was a lot closer when the interaction between the Interdictor’s gravity well and whatever it pulled from hyperspace produced the phenomenon, and was under stronger gravity. It had turned sternward to them and was firing all its engines at full thrust—to little effect, as it was still falling towards the phenomenon.

“We wanted to destroy it,” her first officer commented.

“We also wanted prisoners and their hardware,” Sabine said.

As if to underscore that that wouldn’t happen, they watched, riveted to the display, as the tip of the Star Destroyer’s bow vanished within the swirls, leaving no mark to indicate it was ever there.

Then came the third big shock, after the Star Destroyer’s arrival and the phenomenon itself. The purple light ball vanished as well, leaving empty space. The Ghost III, along with Harmony and the rest of the Mandalorian fleet, suddenly free of the gravity field, accelerated away until they dropped the tractor beam and the pilot shut down the main engines and stabilized the trajectory. Everyone was absolutely still; so was the space outside. No streak across the sky, no swirls of purple light, and no Star Destroyer.

“General, we have a Priority One Alert coming in,” Kyrell informed them. “I don’t believe it.”

“What happened?”

They listened in even more stunned silence as the Republic major, stuttering every third word and unable to hold himself together, informed the galaxy of the destruction visited on Hosnian Prime by a First Order superweapon. All planets in the system, the fleet—just gone.

“The weapon. It had to have used hyperspace to just destroy Hosnian Prime,” Kyrell stammered out. “We must have intercepted a portion of it. That was what it was.”

“Probably,” Sabine agreed, gathering herself, clenching and unclenching fists several times, and keeping tears away by force of will. “Prepare a message buoy. Drop everything our sensors recorded here into it. When it’s ready to launch, send it to my console so I can input the destination.”

No one joked, as would usually happen when she did this on previous occasion. Everyone knew the information was going to the Resistance—and this was more urgent than anything they sent before. Sabine watched the automated probe disappear into hyperspace before giving out the next order.

“We’re returning to Mandalore. This is what that Star Destroyer was waiting for. We know they weren’t the only one—and we probably got lucky here. Thank you for your help, Captain Kyrell. I’m sorry–”

“Don’t,” he pushed his distress down. “I… I felt it happen. The deaths.”

“A lot of people did. Something this big doesn’t take a Jedi.”

“No… it’s not that. I only felt the distant ones.”

“What do you mean?”

“That Star Destroyer had thousands of crew. I didn’t feel them die.”

“Is that reliable, Captain?”

“Possibly not,” he said. “I only have these sporadic instincts, not formal training. But it’s very possible that that ship is intact and had just gone somewhere. Assuming it was going to attack Mandalore…”

“I see what you mean. We’ll keep that in mind. You need an escort?”

He shook his head. “I’m leaving now. May the Force be with you, General Wren.”

XXX​

“Hard to port,” Filia Ren ordered.

The crew—those that had them—raised their eyebrows, but obeyed promptly. The Mandalorian cruisers were lining up into formation, but they were still too far to do much damage—and the timing was perfect.

“Starkiller has fired,” someone reported.

“Stand by.”

The enemy would soon receive the news… and chances were, they wouldn’t be thinking clearly. That was the best way to fight a battle, Filia thought.

But instead of a report on the destruction of Hosnian Prime and chaos among the enemy that would follow, their viewport lit up with a flash of purple light and the Punisher lurched.

“What did we hit?”

Captain Vand scanned the officers at sensor stations. “Yes?”

“Nothing, sir,” one replied. “Gravity changed. That thing has a lot of mass, whatever it is.”

“Then what are you waiting for? We’re facing away from it now—full speed ahead!”

“Yes, ma'am.” And the captain looked at her strangely. They were facing away because she ordered that turn—before anything happened.

Even though the mask hid any expression, the Knight exercised discipline and avoided a physical smile. An opportunity to show to her crew that she deserved Snoke’s favor and her post. Such knowledge made the crew more willing to fight, and more watchful of their activities, all without extra effort on Filia’s part.

“It’s not working, ma'am,” the captain said. “The engines are only slowing us down, but we’re still falling in.”

“Tactical.”

A hologram lit up in the middle of the bridge, showing the phenomenon, the Punisher, and in the distance, the Mandalorian fleet that had broken formation. She felt a burst of anger—none of their ships were in their predicament.

“Fire up the hyperdrive.”

“In this gravity?”

“If it’s gravity and not some sort of tractor beam.”

“Yes, ma'am. Jump”

A loud rumble and series of vibrations pierced the ship, but no starlines appeared in the viewport.

“Damage report.”

“Sir, the drive coil cracked.”

“Guess that answers the question.”

“Contact with the phenomenon in twenty seconds!”

“Brace!”

“Contact!”

Unlike previously, they felt nothing. “Report from aft!” the captain shouted.

Crewmembers responsible for other parts of the ships acknowledged their presence. “The ship is intact, sir.”

“Shut down the engines,” Filia ordered.

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Aft sensors register nothing.”

At this point, the edge of the phenomenon, passed over the bridge. The viewports got flooded with a steady, featureless, purplish light with occasional swirls of orange.

“That is not nothing.”

“I think it’s more than the sensors can handle, ma'am. We’re still getting data from the forward sensors. Everything’s normal there.”

“Not for long,” she said. “When will the bow be inside?”

“Twelve seconds, ma'am.”

“Brace!”

“Pretty colors,” someone whispered.“

"Silence!”

On schedule, the last sensor data vanished as the Punisher plunged completely into the phenomenon. At that moment, a jolt came, much like what happened in normal transition to hyperspace. The viewport imaging also changed to something more familiar, though the swirls were green and black rather than the usual blue and white.

“I have an idea, ma'am,” a young man from one of the engineering stations said.

“Speak.”

“We fire up the backup hyperdrive, and then attempt to drop out, like we do when we reach our destination.”

“Do it.”

The work was done quickly, but had no effect. Several seconds of silence passed. “Aim forward turbolasers,” Filia Ren ordered.

“Yes, ma'am,” the captain said. Filia walked behind the weapons control officer and saw the indicator lights in orange on her console. “Ready, Lieutenant?”

“Yes, ma'am,” the woman stammered out.

“Fire!”

“At what?”

“Fire!” she yelled and the officer hit a key. Bolts flashed forward and vanished, being the same bright green as the background. But then a white flash appeared and grew rapidly until they passed right through it. The ship made a small jolt.

“Stand by, Lieutenant,” the Knight said. “There’ll be more. No questions next time. Fire.”

Nothing happened ahead. “Ma'am?”

“No questions. That was a test. Fire!”

This time, a flash appeared slightly to port. The shudder came from that direction two seconds later.

Silence descended on the bridge, interrupted only by Filia Ren’s harsh commands.

“Fire!” Flash. Shudder.

“Fire!” Flash. Shudder.

Over two minutes, the turbolasers destroyed about fifteen targets of unknown nature. Then, things transformed again. The swirls remained green, but became calmer, lazier, and brighter. Then, in the middle of that white field, a human face appeared.

Filia studied it carefully. Male, dark skin, bald but with a thick beard and mustache framing his mouth. He looked solemn and his large brown eyes pierced her. The Force rumbled. She could feel nothing from the stranger but he apparently had the same effect on her crew.

“Filia Ren, you brought violence to this realm,” the stranger pronounced.

“I sensed a danger to the ship,” she justified. “I eliminated it.”

“You could have avoided it.”

“Do not lecture the First Order,” she snapped.

“Turn back. All of you.”

“Why?”

“Things will not end well for the First Order regardless of your actions. You could avoid being caught in the calamity.”

“The First Order is triumphant.”

“You have your home galaxy, Filia Ren. I have the power to return you home. And to keep you safe there.”

“Then do so.”

“I have a price. You will agree to surrender every weapon on your ship. You will not return to the First Order, but lead peaceful lives.”

Filia snorted. “Peace is a lie. What will happen if I refuse?”

“You will enter a new galaxy. One that was my home before I joined with other beings in this realm. There you will meet your end and the end of the First Order.”

“But we will have our weapons?”

The head nodded.

“What is your name, stranger?”

He paused. “Benjamin Sisko, Captain, Starfleet, United Federation of Planet, Emissary to the Prophets of the people of Bajor.”

Filia straightened herself and looked straight at the apparition. “We will speak, Benjamin Sisko, when your former home belongs to the First Order.”

“One more chance, Glayna Werrak,” the name from long ago rang in her ears.

“My name is Filia Ren!” she declared. “Grant your chances to our enemies. They will need them.”

Sisko’s face vanished. The swirls turned from green to purple and then vanished, replaced by a regular starfield. The purple swirls remained in a ring astern, straight ahead floated a space station composed of two concentric rings, a hub in the center, and six arched pylons extending above and below the outer ring.

The captain of the Star Destroyer paged through several screens on his console. “Shielded and armed, but no match for us,” he announced.

“Blast it with ion cannons,” Filia ordered. “Then deploy a stormtrooper company and take control. Set weapons for stun.

"Have the intelligence section prepare for a lot of interrogation work.”

 

2​

Thanya Ferraro’s comm chirped the moment she exited the Captain’s Table. “Ferraro to Trident,” she snapped out. “What is it?”

“Secure message from Starfleet Command,” her first officer replied.

“Understood. One to beam up.”

She made in quickly into her ready room, and activated the comm screen. The grim face of Admiral Riker put her on alert. The Commander in Chief of Starfleet didn’t usually give orders directly to ship captains.

“Admiral.”

“Captain, I am very sorry. Two hours ago, we lost all contact with the Bajor system. Deep Space Nine came under attack first. They’ve managed to send out a few images. I’ve never seen anything like that, but I remembered reading about something similar. In your report, Captain, shortly after you returned aboard the shuttle McPherson, the lone survivor of Vicksburg.

He tapped a key, and photos appeared on her screen. There was a portion of a curved pylon from Deep Space Nine, and behind it, a grey shadow that was all too familiar. "Star Destroyer,” she said, not believing it. It was bigger than the standard Imperial ships she remembered, and looked somewhat flattened, but undoubtedly part of the same design tradition.

“I don’t believe it,” she said. “How did it arrive?”

“Through the Bajoran wormhole, apparently.”

“That’s… not possible.” She scrolled through a few more images. Shuttles, TIE fighters–new variants, but not that different.

“It is what you encountered when the Vicksburg was swept into another galaxy?”

“Yes, sir,” she said. “Iterated design. But it makes no sense!”

“What do you mean?”

“We won. This is our enemy’s design. The Galactic Empire.”

“Last refugees fleeing justice?”

She considered. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“I’ve ordered Tokyo to investigate–”

“No–you have to call her back!”

“Why?”

“They will destroy her, take the crew, and torture everything they know out of them.”

“Tokyo is a full–”

“Sir, re-read my report. In detail. That ship is the most powerful single vessel that we know of in our galaxy, and that includes Borg cubes and Species 8472 cruisers, which we really can’t count on to be our allies, can we? It’s also capable of much faster travel, which means it can show up anywhere at any time, as far as we are concerned. We need to force them into battle, we need to bring in every ship we can to bear, and we need to do it soon. Before they start up a shipbuilding program here and we lose numerical advantage, too.”

“Surely they can’t crew–”

“Cardassians,” she declared. “If their leadership has any brains, that’s where they’ll go. Their culture is quite compatible with most Imperial ideology, and there are a number who want revenge for the Dominion war. And they’re nearby.”

Riker was taken aback. “A full-scale war with one ship?”

“That’s right,” she said. “It’s unfortunate I was unable to bring back any of their technology. If this is the first prong of an invasion, we’re doomed, and it’s time to prepare to turn guerilla. But if it’s an accident involving one ship–what happened to Vicksburg, but the other way–then we have a chance. If we take it now.”

Riker nodded. “Return to Earth,” he ordered. “You are the expert on this enemy.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, straining.

“I’m sorry, Captain. I know you have a wife and son on Bajor–”

“Going off on my own will hardly help them,” she said. Besides, she gave an internal laugh, Laren’s paranoia, which I teased her about all these years, is about to pay off.

XXX​

The ship, prominently visualized on one of the main screens, looked familiar to those who’d studied the captured files from Deep Space Nine. A saucer front section with two pairs of nacelles trailing behind, bright white, as if it didn’t care who saw it from aways. Starfleet.

“Anything?” Filia demanded.

“They made a transmission.”

“Play it.”

On another screen, a woman with dark skin and black hair appeared, wearing a black uniform jacket with a wide maroon stripe on each sleeve and four solid gold pips on the collar. She made a short speech in a strange language, the voice soft but calm and firm. “What did she say?”

“Replay the message with translation overlay,” an officer ordered. “Ma'am,” he told her, “they—the locals—have technology to do this in real time, but I don’t trust it.”

“Good, Lieutenant. How’d you get this, then?”

“Standard module same one protocol droids use. Requires recording, but it’s reliable, and makes independent verification easier.

The woman now appeared to speak Basic. "Attention, First Order forces. This is Captain Sabrina Keating of the USS Tokyo. Your presence in Federation space is illegal. You have committed an act of aggression against a Federation member. You must leave immediately, or face the consequences.”

“What can she do to us?”

“Nothing. Not with the shields up, at least.”

“Weapons?”

“Missiles loaded, turbolaser batteries armed and ready.”

“No.” Filia tapped a button on the ship’s intercom. “Colonel Windrider, launch First and Sixth squadrons and go out there yourself as group leader.” She turned to the conn. “Turn our dorsal side to the Tokyo and keep it so. I don’t want them to see the TIEs until they’re on the way. Ion cannons stand by.”

She looked out the viewport as the order was obeyed. When the two squadrons—one of TIE fighters and another one of bombers—launched, she nodded at the general.

“Number Four ion cannon, fire.”

A red bolt lanced from the Punisher and struck Tokyo.

“Their shields are down, they’re dead in space,” the report came in. “Sir, if they drift, they’ll fall to Bajor—”

“It won’t take that long,” Filia Ren declared. “Squadron Six, breach their hull.”

Flashes of the bombardment reached them through the viewport. Filia Ren stood, hands behind her back, watching the procedure.

“Report, Colonel Windrider.”

“Hull breached, they’re launching escape pods.”

“How many?”

“Twenty-four.”

“Squadron One, destroy them.”

“Unarmed—”

She used a gentle, caressing voice for her next order. “Any fighter who fails to shoot down at least one will be denied landing on the Punisher. That includes you, Colonel. Report when it’s done.”

The report was not long in coming. All fighters of Squadron One were permitted to land.

“Major,” she turned to the officer in charge of the bridge electronic systems, “I’m assigning you temporarily to Lieutenant Colonel Milanka. Take any of your personnel you need, collate the sensor records from the Punisher and Squadrons One and Six, and put together a holorecording of this battle. All of it, from the moment the Tokyo came out of lightspeed. Edit out the use of the ion cannon,” she grinned in a feat of inspiration. “Then have Colonel Milanka show you how to convert the result into format various systems in this galaxy can read, and have it broadcast widely.”

“Understood, ma'am,” the major reported.

“Good.”

The general seemed skeptical. “What will that give us?”

“Fear. Two squadrons of fighters take out one of their starship with no losses. They’ll estimate how many such squadrons we carry, and how much more powerful than the fighters the Punisher itself must be.”

“And if it causes them to unite against us?”

“We move faster, too. So when the big fleet arrives here, we leave to strike out at the undefended homeworlds.”

“We only have one ship, though.”

“For now, general. For now.”

XXX​

Ro Laren hugged her son. “Go,” she whispered.

He tapped a combadge and beamed away. Ro dropped into her chair and pretended to read a PADD. The wait wasn’t long. Eight stormtroopers came in first, then a uniformed officer, and finally, the black-robed, metal-masked Knight of Ren.

“Ro Laren,” the dark warrior barked at her.

Ro ignored the summons.

“Ro Laren!” Filia Ren raised her voice.

Ro continued pretending to read the PADD until it flew out of her hands and smashed into a wall. Then she felt herself being raised by an invisible force. Her neck landed into Filia Ren’s gloved palm and Ro received a slight but painful squeeze.

“You are Ro Laren, founder and director of the SMB Shipbuilding company?”

“I am,” Ro said.

Filia threw her back into her chair. “We’re taking over.”

“Really?”

“We are. But in the interest of efficiency, we’d like to retain you as director. I assure you, we mean no harm to the people of Bajor.”

“We’ve heard that song before.”

“We intend to use it against the Federation.”

“That’s the problem, then. Bajor is a member of the Federation.”

“They don’t seem to care. Many Bajorans opposed the union.”

“People have different opinions.”

“You were one of them.”

“I never got a chance to cast my vote,” she said. “It’s certainly preferable to being part of your First Order.”

“You refuse, then?”

“I do.”

“Kill her.”

The stormtroopers opened fire. Ro’s body collapsed… and their surroundings transformed. the room they were in was empty of all furniture and decoration, and its walls, floor and ceiling exhibited a black-and-yellow grid pattern. There was no body, but just then, the figure of Ro Laren reappeared.

“Greetings. I set up this holodeck office personally, and told no one so you couldn’t torture that information out of any of my employees. These surprises will happen to you over and over until you leave Bajor, so you might as well do so now. As for your offer—the answer is still no.” The image of Ro lifted a small device and hit a button. The room the First Order delegation was in, the building it occupied, and many square kilometers of the shipyard were consumed by a simultaneous blast of the self-destruct mechanisms.

XXX​

Filia Ren felt unbalanced. She let her eyes flicker and took in the sight of the Punisher‘s sickbay, herself on the ed, and the worried-looking face of Dr. Grumio, the ship’s chief medical officer. “My Lady,” he acknowledged.

“What happened?”

“An explosion—”

“To me, doctor! I am alive, but…” she tried to verbalize the feeling, but there was no standard of comparison.

“I had to remove the damaged—”

“WHAT. DID. YOU. DO?”

“Here.” He handed the Knight a hand-held mirror and carefully stepped back. Fear poured off him in the Force. Filia shook her head and held the mirror up.

A familiar red-skinned face with large brown eyes and a thin nose greeted her. Familiar except for what wasn’t there. A long flexible headtail still extended from behind her on the right side, but the corresponding left lek was gone. The left backside of her head was covered by synthskin, slightly mismatched in hue from the rest of her, and protected with a plasteel plate. She rubbed the skull and triggered several yelps of pain from where bone met the plasteel.

“I’m sorry, ma'am. There are no… prosthetics.”

She dragged the doctor and pushed him down to his knees with the Force. “That is an abomination, human.” She rose. “Bring me my clothes.”

“Ma'am, you still need—”

“You can do your quackery when I sleep. My time is valuable.” She spotted a commpad on the table and summoned it. Tapping in her access, she initiated the call.

“General.”

“Ma'am? You—”

“I want Ro Laren captured. No bounties—our forces only. Alive.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“I want it to be very clear, General. Letting her go is preferable to killing her in the raid.”

The general blinked, then looked and realized what happened. “You mean—understood, ma'am.”

She nodded. “She will wish she was dead long before I will.” Background noise alerted her. “What’s going on?”

The general turned away for a few seconds. “A Federation starship has arrived in system.”

“I’m heading to the bridge. Do nothing.” The medical staff had laid out the black robes, mask, and lightsaber while she talked, and soon, Filia Ren was out in the hallways of the Punisher with no one except the general and those directly involved in surgery knowing what befell her.

XXX​

Lieutenant Commander Arlina Cantrell, chief engineer of the Punisher, was surprised to see her boyfriend outside her quarters when she answered the knock. He was on first duty shift, she on third, meaning he was on duty right as she was going off. She often wondered if such scheduling was deliberate, aimed at putting strain on a relationship. She was, in fact, about to go to sleep when Nash showed up.

“May I come in?” he whispered hoarsely.

She nodded. “You look… terrible. What happened?”

“Later.” He rushed to the refresher and vomited. “Got something strong? Corellian brandy? Commenor gin? Port in a storm?”

“None of those,” she replied and pressed a cup into his hands. “Try this.”

He gulped down the powerful alcohol like it was water. “Thanks.”

“If I give you more, it won’t get out by the time you have to fly tomorrow.”

“I flew more than enough today.”

“So what happened?”

And Colonel Nash Windrider poured everything out. How the two squadrons were ordered out to fly against a Federation ship rendered helpless. How once the hull was breached, they had to watch bodies expelled into space. How Filia Ren ordered the massacre of the escape pods. How he had to pump himself full of anti-nausea drugs to avoid throwing up in the cockpit.

Arlina listened and held him in a hug, and made no objection when he poured another mug from her bottle of confiscated hooch and swallowed it. Then she helped him lie down on their bunk and lowered into a chair at his side, caressing his face. “Who else knows?”

“Didn’t you pay attention? Filia Ren ordered a broadcast of it prepared. No one is keeping it secret.”

“I meant your feelings.”

“No one.”

“Good. You understand the danger, then?”

“Go to Major Rull if you want.”

“If I do, I might as well shoot you myself.”

“That doesn’t sound bad right now.”

“It’s bad. For one thing, it won’t accomplish anything.”

“Accomplish—what should it accomplish?”

“Making sure this doesn’t happen again.”

He snorted. “That can mean a lot of things. Filia Ren believes fear will make sure of it.”

“It might at that. I don’t see it as an improvement.”

“It’s order.”

She stared.

“I always hated Alderaanians who defected to the rebels after our planet was destroyed. The rebels brought it upon themselves; survivors’ anger should have been aimed at them. Our galaxy was plunged into chaos, and this one looks even worse. We have to—”

“Stop, Nash,” she whispered. “You can say all these things. Do you believe them?”

He produced no answer. “You drinking yourself blind with me instead of celebrating a great victory with pilot buddies. As far as I’m concerned, that proves you don’t. And the people I hate most are those who try to make others believe what they don’t believe themselves. Don’t make me hate you, Nash.”

He smiled for the first time. “I won’t. But I still don’t know what to do.”

“Isn’t it obvious? This rule by fear comes from Supreme Leader Snoke and his Knights of Ren. We’ve got a unique opportunity—cut off from all but one. From our perspective, the problem is Filia. At least, for now.”

Nash frowned. “What do you mean, for now?”

“She isn’t stupid. We are the most powerful ship in the region, maybe in this galaxy, but we’re still only one ship. There are plans to remedy that. Filia will soon do the same for the Knights of Ren.”

“She will take on an apprentice.”

She nodded. “And in a few years, two galaxies in fear—Supreme Leader Snoke and Supreme Leader Filia.”

He chortled. “Do we hope for reconnection and mutual destruction?”

Arlina shook her head. “Not good. We will be their weapons in such a war. No, Filia Ren needs to be destroyed while she is still the only one.”

“How?”

“It will only happen if her choice of an apprentice backfires. If instead of continuing the Knights, the apprentice destroys her with the very skills she teaches, and will not train their own.”

He understood. “We can’t confide in anyone.”

“No. She has to choose you or me. So if you encounter an order to conduct some unusual training evaluation, try to do well. It may be a secret admission test.”

 

3​

A bright green turbolaser bolt lashed out from the Star Destroyer and struck the runabout. Everything was awash in green light, and then the black-and-yellow holodeck grid reappeared all around Captain Thanya Ferraro and her astromech droid, R2-G3.

“Simulation concluded,” the computer voice pronounced. “Mission failed.”

“Thanks, I really couldn’t tell,” she spat. “And that new ship is bigger than the ones we fought,” she commented. “More heavily armed.”

A chirp from the droid. “Yeah,” she said. “I wish he was here, too.”

An arch popped into existence and the doors slid open. “Captain?” her first officer’s voice echoed.

“Come in, Commander,” she said, and Harry Kim walked in. “Did something happen?”

“Hi, Genie,” he greeted the droid by the nickname she gave him. “No, but we’re concerned. You’ve been spending a lot of time here, and it’s not like you to lose yourself in fantasy.”

“I am not,” she said. “I’m training.”

“For what?”

“A mission I have in mind.”

“Let me guess. It’s not one command would approve of.”

“Astute, Mr. Kim.”

“What else is in the way, ma'am?”

“Huh?”

“I need some details to help you, Captain. Command is the unimportant obstacle. What else is there?”

“You would–”

“You know my service record,” he said. “You know who my first captain was.”

She did, of course. She also remembered the harrowing aftermath of their transition to a new galaxy, and how Cindy sor Valetta acted with so little going for her.

And now I’m the captain. “Command needs to know about our enemy, and their sources are quite limited. There’s this fellow’s memory core,” she padded Genie’s dome, “and there’s my brain. So the Trident is going to sit here, safely in Earth orbit, because they’ll not risk either.”

“That even makes sense.”

“No, it doesn’t, Commander. You’re forgetting that whatever the two of us remember, it’s been thirty years. It’s useful to know what our enemy’s predecessor was like, but it’s far more useful to know what they’re up to now.”

“And you have a way to find that out?”

She padded the droid again. “It involves this little guy,” she said. “The Empire always used a lot of droids, and they’re never noticed unless they draw attention to themselves. I want to get Genie aboard the Punisher.”

“How?”

“An ionic charge in one of our quantum torpedoes. It will distrupt their shields for a few seconds, and we can use that window to beam him in. But that requires getting quite close and lasting long enough. The Trident is too big, it’ll get pulverized.”

“So you’re going to use a shuttle?”

She nodded. “I’m running simulations against an old version of the Star Destroyer,” she said. “And I still fail. Every time. I’m not a good enough pilot.”

Kim snorted. “Is that all, Captain?”

She looked at him. “I’ve been rated. I’m good, I know that. To carry this off,” she gestured, “needs someone extraordinary.”

Kim nodded. “And I know just the man.”

XXX​

“Captain, we’re being hailed.”

“On screen.” Thanya tried to occupy herself with general administration of her ship, while they were under orders to remain in the Sol System in case command needed her expertise on the enemy’s home galaxy. The work was just as boring as usual, but there suddenly–impossibly–seemed to be not enough of it. She noticed that she was jumping at any interruption, and was struggling to control herself.

The viewscreen showed a Defiant-class starship, in one of the newer modifications. Then the view was replaced by a Tellarite female in the uniform of a Starfleet Lieutenant Commander appeared. “Captain Ferraro,” she said. “This is the USS Nereid. Our captain requests permission to beam aboard the Trident.”

“Granted,” Ferraro said. “Lieutenant Troca,” she informed the comm officer, “you have the bridge. She tapped the combadge. "Commander Kim, meet me at the transporter room.”

“I’m already there, ma'am.”

She wondered what this meant over the turbolift trap. She exited to find Kim in an embrace with an older man, a Captain like her. She then recognized him from the old footage of the USS Voyager.

“Tom, meet Captain Thanya Ferraro of the USS Trident. Captain, Tom Paris.”

“I know,” she said, and shook his hand. “Hello. I was under the impression that Defiant ships were considered too small for full Captains.”

“Hence, they saddle us with extra duties,” Paris said. “I’ve got Nereid and the squadron she’s part of to look out for. Harry says you need some tricky piloting?”

“Do you want to rest, Captain?”

“If you’re right, time is not on our side, Captain,” he said. “You don’t intend to throw me into the mission blindly, do you?”

She shook her head. “No, we’ve all had too much of that.” She led them to the holodeck. “Program Thanya-Z-11,” she ordered.

They stepped through the door and were greeted by beeps from Genie. “Hi,” she said to the droid. The holodeck had recreated the internals of a Starfleet shuttle. Paris took the pilot seat. “Brace youself,” she ordered the droid, who rolled to the back, positioned himself on the transporter pad, and clamped down to the floor.“

"We need to fly up to the Star Destroyer, momentarily disable their shields with an ionic torpedo, and beam Genie aboard,” she explained.

Paris nodded, then looked at her. “You plan to use the robot to spy?”

“Precisely. I know how much you like being green, Genie, but you’ll need a new paintjob before you go there.”

The droid produce a sad whitle. Paris flipped through screens on his PADD where mission parameters were described.

“Captain, were you trying to do this entirely by yourself?”

“Yes, why?”

“Because that truly is impossible. No matter how good a pilot you are. The pilot here will need to be just a pilot. Firing the torpedo, operating the transporter–that must be someone else.”

“Alright,” she defered to Paris’s experience and took the copilot seat. “Let’s see. Computer, start simulation.”

Three and a half minutes later, they were all once again sitting in a blank holodeck after getting torn apart by virtual turbolasers.

“And this ship is less powerful than what we’ll be facing?”

“It’s smaller and older, so likely.”

“And unlike the old Star Destroyer, you don’t know exactly how many weapons it has, how they’re positioned, and how powerful they are?”

She nodded again. “That’s one reason I want to send Genie over. To find these things out.”

“Understood. Here’s the crux, Captain–I could train myself for the mission you programmed in, and succeed–with a copilot–pretty quickly. If your program copied the real mission exactly, I’d go for it. But not with so many unknowns.”

“Some vicious circle,” Kim commented. “We need information to get the information.”

Paris said nothing. “We can reduce the margin of error,” he said finally.

“How? Old-time spies?” It’ll take too long.

“I was thinking of using something tougher than the shuttle, but just as maneuverable. The Nereid.”

Ferraro blinked. “Just as maneuverable? I didn’t think–”

“The standard Defiant isn’t. But I’ve got a very good chief engineer on the Nereid, and we’ve been pushing limits on her for years.”

“You’re volunteering your ship?”

“I just did,” Paris said.

She nodded. “But I’m coming along.”

“Captain!” Kim exclaimed. “Command ordered you to remain in the system?”

“No,” she said. “Command ordered the Trident to remain in the system.”

“The intention was to keep you here, ma'am.”

She smiled. “I know. They won’t like it. But this needs to be done, and I’m going to waste time arguing my case. The Trident is yours, Number One.”

Kim nodded, and they returned to the transporter room. “If you really want to help,” she said, “I have a backup of Genie’s data.” She looked at the droid when he beeped in reply to his name. “There’s a lot of it–I don’t know where the Rebellion got him, but he’s had at least a couple of decades with no memory wipes. But the data isn’t in any format we can easily read–you’ll have to go into a holdeck and talk to his simulation. Not very efficient, but maybe a fresh look will give us something.”

“Unless the enemy shows up to attack Earth, I think I can make time. Good luck, Captain.” He then hugged Paris again.

The two humans and the droid positioned themselves on the transporter pads. “Paris to Nereid. Three to beam up.”

XXX​

“Entering the Bajoran system.”

“Low power,” Paris ordered. “Passive scan.”

“Not going to work,” Ferraro said. “We never could hide the Vicksburg.”

“That Romulan treaty will kill us,” Lieutenant Commander Tolesh declared. “A cloaking device would make this so simple.”

“Unless their sensors can penetrate it. That would be worse.”

“We’re taking risks so those who follow won’t need to,” Paris said. “What do we have?”

“Star Destroyer where DS9 used to be,” the officer at the sensor station reported. “Lots of TIE patrols all over the system, and several fortified installations on Bajor itself.”

“They really mean to stay, then?”

“Yes they do, but I’m pretty certain this wasn’t intended. For now, they’re spreading themselves thin, and securing power as best they can.”

“Let’s disrupt it, then,” Paris said. “Ensign, I will take the helm.”

The junior officer rose from her chair. “Yes, sir.”

“Ferraro to transporter room. Do you have R2-G3?”

“Yes, ma'am. The robot is on the platform.”

“How’re you doing, Genie?”

Short whistle. “Alright. Good luck. Energize the moment you detect a breach in enemy shields.”

“Setting up scan–”

“We’ve been detected!” Tolesh announced. “TIE patrols changed course!”

“Weapons control, arm phasers! Target fighters only, at will. Don’t bother with firing at the Star Destroyer.”

“They’re still quite far off,” Ferraro said. “And TIE fighters don’t–”

Alarms blared and several of the sleek craft popped out right in front of the Nereid.

“–have hyperdrives,” Ferraro finished. “They didn’t,” she commented.

Paris wasn’t replying as he twisted the Nereid out of the enemy line of fire. Phasers lashed and hit one craft, causing it to veer off, but doing no apparent damage. The others raked their ship with green bolts.

“Shields at eighty-two percent!”

“They will overwhelm us if we waste time in a dogfight,” Ferraro said.

“Tolesh!”

The XO understood. The only way to do this was if Paris could be just the pilot. Ferraro was a bit miffed that he didn’t put her in charge, but it was his ship, and his first officer.

“Short warp to the Star Destroyer!” Tolesh commanded.

Several phaser beams concentrated on a TIE and blew it up. “Yes!”

Paris flew through the cloud of debris and manevered the ship’s prow to face in the right direction. “Engage!” Tolesh ordered.

Space bent around them as the Nereid went past the speed of light. Most of the bridge gave a sight of relief, but Tolesh cut it off. “Stay sharp!” she barked.

“They’ll have tractor beams,” Ferraro warned.

Paris nodded.

The Star Destroyer on the screen was growing rapidly. Then, without warning, the Nereid was struck and tumbled out of control. Several fires emerged around the bridge. The hull groaned as Paris fought to regain maneuverablity.

“Damage report!” Tolesh demanded. She turned to Ferraro. “What happened?”

“They targeted us in warp,” she said. “We weren’t scanning, and at faster than light, couldn’t see the fire until we got hit.”

“More TIEs incoming!”

“Hang on!”

“Warp core is offline!”

“Can we repair it?”

“Not under fire!”

“Arm ionic torpedo!”

Rapid-fire phasers were keeping TIE fighters at bay, and Paris’s manuevers, unpredictable in the moment were making a general spiral nearing the battleship.

“Target acquired!”

“Fire!”

A swirl of color, mostly bright green, flared up on the Star Destroyer’s shields.

“Hit!”

“Transporter is engaging!”

More shaking as TIEs peppered fire on the Nereid. “Transport cycle complete!”

“Shields up! Get us out of here!”

Paris pushed the ship past the Star Destroyer’s stern, counting on the fact that the aft section had the least firepower. “Can we go to warp?” Tolesh demanded.

“We need to power down entirely!”

“Not an option! Captain?” Tolesh asked.

“Only one thing to do,” Ferraro said.

“I wasn’t talking to you.”

Paris turned. “She’s right,” he said. “We’ll have to land on Bajor.”

XXX​

R2-G3 materialized inside the Punisher and instantly got a proximity alert. Fortunately, Master Ferraro prepared him well for the mission, including adding weapons to some of his appendages. He aimed one and prepared to fire.

“Hey! I’m on your side!” the stranger demanded.

The droid emitted a series of questionable beeps.

“Yes, I understand you,” he said, and the droid processed sufficient data to identify him as a male Cardassian. He chirped another question.

“Same as you, I suppose,” the stranger commented. “The Federation wouldn’t agree to me coming along, so I had to do it underhanded. Programmed the transporter to send me along with you, covertly. But it’s a matter of degree, don’t you think?” He looked around. “Now, I’m not going to bother you. Separation is good tradecraft.”

He handed the droid an isolinear rod. “If you need to contact me,” he said.

Genie wailed a warning. The Cardassian twisted around just in time for a pair of stormtroopers to enter the corridor. They raised their rifles.

Two phaser beams lashed out first, knocking them down. The Cardassian grinned at the droid. “Nice work,” he commented. He looked over the stormtroopers, picked one, stripped off his armor, and put it on. When the head disappeared behind the helmet, he turned to the droid.

“Do I pass?”

Affirmative chirp.

“Excellent.”

Something passed over the droid’s circuits, and he made a decision. He ripped out a data circuit from the second stormtrooper’s helmet, and plugged in. Wiping out the contents, he transfered some information of his into it, and then extended the manipulator to the Cardassian.

“Oh?” the Cardassian took the chip, and put it in a secure pouch on the belt. “What is it?”

Genie told him.

“I see. We’re even, I guess.”

The droid disputed that.

“My name. Hmm.”

R2-G3 chirped out something organics almost always ignored. Whatever the galaxy, that didn’t change.

“Oh, no,” he said. “Torture doesn’t happen in the body. It happens in the mind. You’ve got a mind, my friend. You can be tortured. See to it that you aren’t.”

And with that, the Cardassian departed.

 

4​

“Ma'am?”

Ro jerked out of bed, phaser ready. “What happened?”

“Mom?” her son’s voice muttered through sleep.

“Ma'am, a Cardassian came through our lines and insists on speaking with you.”

“What the hell?”

“He refuses to speak to anyone else. We searched him for weapons…”

“Never mind. I’ll see him.”

“Mom?” Dale was fully awake and had his own phaser on his belt.

“Come on. Starfleet is taking its sweet time, so if we look elsewhere for help…”

The Cardassian sat inside a camouflaged tent. He wasn’t tied to his chair, but a heavy table stood between him an the entrance, three armed Bajorans stood behind him, and two others on either side of the flap covering the exit. His hands lay on the table, exposed. Despite the unfriendly surroundings, he was smiling.

Ro focused on the Cardassian. “Who are you,” she demanded.

“My name is Elim Garak,” he said. “Orinoco. Sunflower. Nepotism. Huntress.”

“What nonsense is this?” someone growled from behind. Dale tightened a grip on his phaser.

“Oh, relax,” she said. “Yes, Dale. It’s one of our family codes.”

“You and mother haven’t told me all of them?”

“That’s how codes are supposed to work.”

“Couldn’t she be coerced?”

“Under duress, she would give him an alternate code. If he said it, I would shoot him on the spot.”

“Good to know,” Garak seemed indifferent to being discussed as if he wasn’t there. “But now that it’s established that I am trustworthy, maybe you ought to listen?”

Ro nodded. “I’m listening.”

“Captain Ferraro decided to send her astromech droid over to that ship,” he pointed at the sky. “I hitched a ride without her knowledge.”

“So the robot gave you the code?”

He didn’t answer. “The droid is still there, and in contact with both me and Captain Ferraro. It’s not instant, but it is a channel the First Order doesn’t know to look for. Also,” he reached into his jacket and drew a sealed transparent bag covering the black twenty-centimeter tablet. “I had to take precautions, because these things have locator chips embedded in them. Unlock it at least a hundred meters below ground,” he said. “I’m sure you know such places.”

“What’s on it?”

“Meeting instructions. There isn’t as much unity in the First Order as they want us to think. Apparently, someone wishes to contact you.”

“Me specifically, or just the Resistance?”

“You specifically.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

Ro focused. “What’s your game?”

“Game? Whatever could you mean? Can’t a humble tailor simply work for the liberation of Bajor?”

Dead silence filled the tent. “That,” Lieutenant Firno hissed, “isn’t funny.”

“No joke. After all, if you believe some people, one day the Bajorans and Cardassians will be fellow members of the Federation. I’m just several centuries ahead of my time.”

“Let it be, Lieutenant. Amuse yourself with the war of words if you care, but I’ll make use of you, Garak.” She picked up the enemy datapad. “I’m going into the caves and will see what this is about,” she said. “If I don’t return by morning, you are to do two things. First, alert the cells,” she said, pulling on on a warm coat and covering her head with a special hood that would fool automated facial recognition. “Second, shoot this traitor.” She pointed at Garak.

Then she stepped into the night.

XXX​

“Captain on the bridge.”

“Status,” Paris said.

“We can go to warp, and the TIE patrols are back to routine.”

“Contact with the droid?”

“Channel is in operation. We’ve got a lot of data already.”

“Captain Ferraro, are you sure about this.”

“My wife is here. My son is here.”

“Not quite here,” Tolesh suggested. “A planet is a big thing.”

“I can make it. I can learn more about exactly what the First Order is doing, and pass it on. That’ll be far more useful than the obsolete stuff here,” she patted her head.

“Harry won’t like this.”

“Commander Kim can handle the Trident.”

“That isn’t what I’m talking about.”

“Nevertheless, if I’ve learned something in that war with the Empire, it’s that you don’t force events into plans, you adapt plans to events. We didn’t plan for anything on Bajor. We were forced. But we must adapt.”

“If I order you to come with us, will you?”

“Do it and find out,” Ferraro retorted. Paris laughed.

“Good luck,” he said.

“You too.” She went down the Nereid‘s ramp with her survival pack on her back and made some distance before looking back. Paris had returned to the bridge and watched her give them a thumbs up on the viewscreen.

He sat down in the helmsman’s chair rather than the captain’s.

“I seem to be commanding the ship more than you do, sir,” Tolesh commented. “Are you angling for a demotion?”

“The holodeck just isn’t enough,” he said. “Every once in a while, you need to do some real flying.”

“Never saw the appeal, sir.”

“Why do you think I picked you?”

She said nothing, but tapped the comm control on the captain’s chair. “Engineering, power her up. Stand by for liftoff.”

“Standing by.”

“Weapons.”

“Armed and ready.”

“Shields.”

“One hundred percent.”

“Enemy status?”

“No change.”

“Captain Paris,” Tolesh turned to the helm. “Take her up.”

XXX​

The contact instructions Garak brought were to drop a high-frequency hydrophone into lake Pag two hours after midnight for the next five nights and listen for fifteen minutes. Yesterday and the day before, Ro only heard fish. She had returned every time exhausted and glowered at the Cardassian spy. She wouldn’t take him up on the offer to go in her place, and was planning severe consequences if all five nights proved frivolous.

“Greetings, Ro Laren.”

The nature of the voice, transmitted through kilometers of water, told Ro nothing. She was recording the conversation, though, so maybe detailed analysis would turn up some clues about the speaker later. She activated the transmitter that would take her speech and play it at high frequency underwater, with no one able to eavesdrop unless they just happened to have a listening device inside the lake. “I am Ro Laren,” she said. “What do you want?”

“Good. No names. Your alias is Riishi, I’m Commenor. I want to aid in victory over the First Order.”

“Why?”

“In case you are not aware, your self-destruct failed to kill Filia Ren, only causing grave injuries. She has vowed personal vengeance against you. The standing order is that you are to be captured alive.”

Ro didn’t reply, and kept listening.

“The massacre of the USS Tokyo and its publicity was also made by the explicit order of Filia Ren. There are those aboard the Punisher who don’t wish such practices to conquer this galaxy. Our transition here is mysterious, but it provides a unique opportunity. She is alone. We can work together against her.”

No matter the inflections, the voice was heavily modulated so that Ro couldn’t tell even the gender, much less the accent.

“Why help us?”

“Like I said, unique opportunity. Filia Ren is alone.”

“My people better not die for nothing.”

A long pause. “I’ll be careful. Do you keep contact with Starfleet?”

“Not me personally,” she evocated. They don’t need to know that one of the channels is actually a droid aboard their* ship. “But yes. You had the poor luck to come to the one place that was prepared to conduct a guerrilla campaign.”

“Makes sense, with the wormhole,” the unknown voice murmured. “Our hyperdrive will make it useless.”

“That has pros and cons,” Ro said. “Mostly cons, as far as I see. Why do you want to know about our contacts with Starfleet?”

“Because our only hope is a coordinated offensive. Starfleet needs to be there at the right time. Your transporters—a marvel, but we took control of most planet stations. You don’t have the capacity to beam up thousands of troops to the Punisher, right?”

Ro didn’t reply at first. “No,” she finally admitted. “And if we run over enough stations…”

“Power outage. No, that will have to be Starfleet. On the other hand, the Punisher can slaughter the local ships. I’ll help your people bring the Punisher’s shields down.”

Ro didn’t ask how, not yet. “Very well. And Filia—”

“That’s where you come in. Personal revenge—something to distract her. And I hope you have a way to kill her.”

“What’s so special about her?”

There was a snort. “You’ll find out.”

“I want details.” Thanya might spot something from her experience.

“Alright. Is there anything the Cardassians might want on Bajor?”

“Besides the whole planet?”

“I mean something feasible. Anything that might tempt some Cardassian commander to make a raid.”

Ro raised her eyebrows. “Nothing comes off the top of my head. However, I’m sure we can find something.” There’s a use for Garak.

“Good. Next contact, same time in four days. Commenor out.”

“Riishi out,” Ro said and pulled the sonic transmitter from the lake. Good, she thought. Of course, a coordinated offensive was just common sense, not some brilliant strategy. But it’s easier if there’s an insider working for us. If they really do, that is.

 

5​

“What is it this time, Garak?”

“A prisoner, ma'am,” the Cardassian smiled. Ro’s orders kept the Bajorans from outright attacks, but they made no effort to pretend friendship over the past weeks. Garak took it in stride, and continued to expand and elaborate his argument that he was simply serving the future Federation in which both Cardassia and Bajor would be members—and no one was sure if he did it on orders from superiors, to annoy the traditionalist Bajorans who were reluctant to make what ties with the Federation there were, or because he really believed it—especially since none of these reasons were mutually exclusive.

No Bajoran would accept him as leader, though, so the work he did for the Resistance was either the type that he could do alone, or as part of a large effort where he would commit himself as an ordinary fighter. This was one of the former occasions—early yesterday afternoon, he abruptly left the hideout, claiming he had a vital tipoff. Ro was away, and wasn’t pleased when she returned—but no one else wanted to try stopping him.

The prisoner had her head completely covered by a black mask. Garak whispered something, and the woman knelt—apparently, there was some sort of communicator underneath so that he could be directed. When a number of Bajorans approached, Garak holstered his phaser.

“Should we keep her blinded?” he asked Ro.

“Nah.”

“You can take it off,” Garak declared. The prisoner did just that. “Look, I’m on your side—”

“Unbind her,” Ro commanded. “Now!” She didn’t wait to be obeyed, but instead rushed over, whipped out a knife, and cut her bonds before pulling her up in a kiss. “Thanya,” she whispered. When awareness of audience returned, she glared at Garak. “That’s my wife you captured–”

“She was in a First Order uniform–”

“So were you,” Thanya retorted. “And I told you–”

“So you did,” he agreed. “If everyone who told me they were a Federation spy actually was one, the Punisher is run by Section 31.”

Ro raised her eyebrows and gave a look at Thanya. “He didn’t–”

“Just restrained and blindfolded. Thanks a lot,” she snarked at the Cardassian. “I have no idea how you got out of that base. How’d you end up here anyway?”

“Believe it or not, captain, I came on your ship. I heard about a planned infiltration mission, and I couldn’t believe the Federation didn’t ask me for my services. I took it upon myself to rectify that.”

Thanya couldn’t help but snort. “Is this what you’ve been putting up with, honey?”

Ro laughed herself. “When he’s around. Did you authorize Genie to give him the family codes? Because that’s how he got in with us in the first place.”

Thanya frowned. “Not explicitly. I didn’t forbid it, of course. All the time in that galaxy, and I never got used to the droids, and how they really think. Something must have made it seem like a good idea,” she commented.

“You would have been made eventually,” Garak said.

“Oh, and you wouldn’t?”

“Yes. But I expect to be, so I’m always ready. You wouldn’t be.”

Thanya didn’t see how to argue her way out of this, so she changed the subject. “Is Dale–”

“He’s fine. Sleeping after a night on patrol.”

“You let him–”

“He’s a teenager. He’s a Bajoran teenager, raised on stories of heroic Resistance fighters.”

“Half-Bajoran,” Thanya corrected, and smiled at her. “Usually, when a kid does something reckless, a parent blame’s the other’s heritage, not their own.”

“Hmm… well, it’s your old enemy up there, not mine.”

“It’s neither,” Thanya corrected again. “The little time I spent among them–it feels different. I can pass well enough if I imitate Voss Torel, but they don’t work like the old Empire. I’m not sure if it’s better or worse.”

Ro had nothing to say. “Dale would run off to some other Resistance cell if I refused to take him in,” she said. “He’s far better off than I was at his age.”

“Low bar.”

“Can’t argue that. So what’s the plan from Starfleet?”

“None, yet. We still need information. Genie can’t do everything.”

“Ah,” Garak commented. “Why don’t we work on just that?”

Both Thanya and Laren stared at him. “What?”

“It will require some of Starfleet’s vaunted negotiation skills. You can spend the night here, and get a fake nose ridge, then we can leave. I’ll keep us away from the First Order, and you will know what offer is acceptable to the Federation better than I.”

“Who are we negotiating with?” Thanya asked. “Who else is here besides us and the First Order?”

“Ferengi,” Laren answered.

“Exactly.”

“What are they doing here?” she asked.

“Seeking profit, of course.”

XXX​

“Oh, what is it now?” Laren groaned as she untangled herself from her wife and rubbed her eyes. Thanya murmured something profane.

“Moms?” Dale called. “I think you better see this.”

“I’ll be right there. Sorry, hon,” she told Thanya before strapping on her phaser. “Let’s see.”

A number of her cell sat around a makeshift Dabo table. Lieutenant Firno was being held up by a pair of friends. “Ar-r-re-re-st hi-hi-m,” he stuttered, and tried to point a finger.

“For what?” Garak retorted. “Since when is winning at gambling a crime?”

“For–”

“Silence!” she said. “Winning at Dabo is indeed, not a crime.” She looked over a pile of cash next to the Cardassian. “Dabo isn’t easy to cheat in.”

“My dear Ro,” Garak said. “Don’t you know that this crowd gambles on everything? Firno was making a living at it.”

Ro considered. This was indeed a very common hobby in her cell. She let them have it–it was far less likely to harm their cause than overindulgence in drink or sex.

Firno’s speech recovered some lucidity. “What the hell did you do to me?”

“As you see, it’s wearing off,” Garak said, and handed Ro his phaser. It was clearly a Cardassian design, but not a model she knew. “An extra setting?”

“Good eye,” he complimented her.

“Weapons are my thing, you know. What does it do?”

“You’ve seen the effect. It’s milder than a full stun–doesn’t knock someone unconscious, but impairs judgment and motor control. Basically, instant inebriation.”

“Why?”

“The Federation, of course. Newest bioscanners in secure facilities actually require the person submitting a fingerprint or eyescan to be conscious. This is the response in that arms race.”

“And it isn’t top secret?”

“Why, of course it is. My job is to find out secrets.”

“And why exactly did you inebriate him?”

“Lieutenant Firno suggested we gamble on the outcome of the war.”

She turned to Firno. “Did you?”

“Not for us. For the Federation.”

“We are in the Federation.”

“Doesn’t look like it to me,” he gestured. “At least be honest to yourselves. Bajor will never have the same status as Earth, Vulcan–”

“Well, if it’s not the classic mistake,” Garak smiled.

The comment was so out of the blue that everyone fell silent. “I’m not interested in Cardassian riddles,” Firno said.

“It’s natural. There are always people–everywhere–who just go along with whatever happens. Including among Bajorans. I’m not talking about active collaborators,” he said, staving off angry yells. “I’m talking about the apathetic ones. But these types, by definition, are underrepresented in guerilla movements. This place is full of Bajoran patriots, such as Lieutenant Firno.”

“I’m not supposed to be one?” Firno demanded. “That is some–”

Ro blinked several times. “Now this I have to hear. Your entire culture is about service to the state–”

“Patriotism isn’t a compliment among Cardassians.”

She blinked several times. “Now this I have to hear. Your entire culture is about service to the state—”

“Patriotism is a feeling that interferes with objectivity. It’s a source of dumb ideas, like gambling on the outcome of the war you’re fighting.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You’re gambling already by fighting it. Throwing money on the same table distorts things. I had to put a stop to it.” He took the phaser back from Ro and holstered it.

He then met Firno’s eyes. “If we were sitting on a neutral world without stakes in the conflict, I would take your gamble.”

“Really?” Ro was surprised and encouraged. “It doesn’t look too good.”

Garak laughed. “I understand perfectly the frustration people can have with the Federation. Always trying to make friends. It’ll cost them, of course. But not enough to lose to someone constantly making enemies.”

XXX​

Libby materialized on the transporter pad, and Harry tried to surprise her by a hug from behind. She piroeuttted instantly, though, and shook her head.

“I’m not making a social call, Harry.”

“Sorry. What can I do for the Director of Starfleet Intelligence?”

“I need to speak to your captain.”

“In real time? Not possible.”

“She’s on Bajor, isn’t she?”

“Tom didn’t report it?”

Libby snorted. “What do you think?”

“I would love to read the report and see how he omitted that,” Harry admitted.

“If you like,” she said. “Riker is furious. Fortunately for you, he’s too busy to ream you out himself.”

“Seems like an overreaction. Without us sending her droid there, all we could get from her would be thirty years out of date.”

“She didn’t need to go herself. That was pure personal indulgence. And she didn’t think about the converse. Her knowledge about us isn’t obsolete.”

“She’s stubborn. Like some other people I know.”

Libby shook her head. “How are you holding up?”

“Bored out of my mind. Is it possible to get the orders for the Trident to stay here rescinded? Now that the reason for them is invalid? The enemy is doing a lot of scouting.”

“I think it’s all a distraction. If they strike, the logical place is Earth.”

“We are not fighting Vulcans. I’ve got something to show you, though.”

“It’s not another marriage proposal?” she joked.

“No. Have you studied Captain Ferraro’s reports on the other galaxy?”

“Everything I could. What’s this about?”

“The Force.”

She frowned. “You’re taking all that seriously?”

“Captain Ferraro–”

“She saw something unexplained. That doesn’t require mysticism. She’s written about how this involves some sort of microscopic symbiont–one no one here, from any species, has ever detected. We can’t verify it, because she didn’t happen to have the relevant equipment on the McPherson.”

“But you’ve read it? About their history, the Jedi, and the Sith?”

“It’s a bit… disjointed.”

“Limited primary sources, as Professor Shim would say. Captain Ferraro’s memory, stories others told her from their biased perspective, and stuff in her droid.”

“Which also might have a biased perspective.”

“Right. Before she left, Captain Ferraro suggested I delve into that more deeply. I think I found something that actually might serve us here and now.”

“I’m all ears,” Libby admitted.

“Computer, fire up program Kim-Beta-33 and play recording 121-17-Z.”

A holographic replica of the astromech droid popped up in front of them. It produced several trills and turned the dome to Libby.“

"R2-G3H, this is Admiral Elizabeth Webber,” he said.

The whistles were pleasing. “Alright,” Harry interrupted. “Play it.”

The droid projected an image of a humanoid alien with a spiked head. “The following is an excerpt recovered by the Jedi from the Sith training manual of Darth Valkyr, estimated time of writing is between 420 and 435 post-Ruusan,” he said.

“Six hundred fifty years ago, give or take,” Harry said. “It’s quite disgusting, Libby,” he warned. “Forward to the relevant parts.”

A new voice, deeper and more musical, flowed from the droid’s speakers. The words were carefully enunciated; this was clearly a rehearsed and prepared recording.

The Force has no favorite (or unfavorite) species; the Sith Lord should not make biology a consideration when choosing an apprentice. Nevertheless, being a product of life, the Force interacts with biology, and can produce unusual effects under specific circumstances. The Sith Master must be aware of the possibility of such effects as regards to their own person, and must choose how to best employ those effects allowed by the biology of their trainee—as tools, training aids, or weapons.

Libby raised her eyebrows. “Even assuming the Force exists, where is this going?”

Instead of answering, he showed her a padd with an image. “Here’s something we got from the real droid,” he said. “The enemy leader. She calls herself Filia Ren, and the accounts we have match what Captain Ferraro told us when she returned. She’s using the Force.”

“Great,” Libby sighed. “More advantages to the enemy.”

“There’s a lot of descriptions of species-specific Force aspects,” Harry said. “We’re interested in Filia Ren’s species.” He turned to the droid. “Play it.”

The lecturing voice resumed.

TWI'LEKS. The natives of Ryloth are rarely considered biological exotics, being common throughout the galaxy, and, like the humans, mammalian in origin. Nor are they considered special by schools of the Force; the proportion of Force-sensitives among their population is well within the norm. However, the Twi'lek’s most distinguishing feature—their braintails, or lekku—conceal a peculiar potential—one that is little known because of the rarity of the events required to bring it about, and further protected by cultural taboos.

Lekku are sensitive both outside and inside—they contain large amounts of nerve endings and are an important element of the Twi'lek hormonal apparatus. There is generally minor asymmetry between the right and left braintail, in terms of length, thickness, and texture, analogous to one hand being dominant in most humanoid species—and like that asymmetry, which lek dominates varies from individual to individual. Both extreme disparity and near-absolute symmetry are rare but known, and some Twi'lek subcultures attach great significance to individuals exhibiting either or both; beauty standards, where they exist, usually favor the symmetrical.

Removing both lekku is a potentially debilitating injury to a Twi'lek; hormonal supplements are often required following such removal. However, one lek is generally sufficient for proper biochemical functionality, and removing one usually produces no ill effects. Most Twi'lek subcultures frown on the use of prosthetics; nor is it considered polite to ask where the one-lekked Twi'lek lost his or her other braintail.

However, the bioneural loop that activates when an individual accesses the Force passes through the lekku in Twi'leks—unless both have been removed. Under those circumstances, the body finds an alternative, possibly the same one used by species without lekku—and if it is impaired compared to the normal way, then this is part of the general impairment a Twi'lek suffers from the loss of lekku. However, when only one lek exists, the loop passes through it doubly—and this interacts with other features of Twi'lek biology (other species with lekku do not exhibit this) to produce a very interesting Force effect.

The Twi'lek’s capabilities related to mental interconnection are shorted out, but rather than simply not being present, they operate on a virtual construct within the Twi'lek’s own mind. This prevents the usage of the mind trick, detection of deception, and telepathic communication—but none of this is noticed through the person’s own senses; the Twi'lek simply tries to mind-trick, detect lies by, or communicate with him- or herself, believing the manipulation is being applied to the other person.

Extensive training after the loss of a lek will allow a skilled Twi'lek student of the Force to once again perform mental exertions, but they will be weaker, and can only be operated on a conscious level. Under emotional stress, such as the heat of battle, applying these techniques is difficult for even the most skilled minds and strongest wills; the Twi'lek is likely to revert to the natural, nonfunctioning neural loop without noticing that the mental capabilities no longer affect other people until this lack of influence is demonstrated through the person’s behavior.

When this was first known, a common foolish notion arose that, depending on which lek is removed, either the mental or the physical capabilities (telekinesis, jumping, lightsaber skills) will be shorted out. This has been experimentally proven to be false.

“What the hell is that last supposed to mean?” Libby demanded.

“Someone–possibly the author of this tract–had done some sick experiments on sentient beings,” Harry said.

Libby pushed the revulsion down and thought. Then she looked at Filia Ren’s photograph.

“She only has one lek.”

“We have our Captain’s wife to thank for that,” he replied. “When she set off the self-destruct on her factories.”

“So Ro Laren is a personal enemy?”

Harry nodded. “That’s what we hear. She even ordered her capture alive.”

“Interesting,” Libby said. “Thanks, Harry. We might make use of this.”

XXX​

“Fleet incoming.”

“Red Alert. Ma'am,” Captain Vand contacted Filia Ren. “Plan seven-beta?”

“Go ahead,” the reply came.

“Colonel Windrider, go.”

“Yes, sir.”

The ships slowed down to below lightspeed and battle sensors on the Punisher‘s bridge lit up. “Not the Federation.”

“They want to talk.”

Vand snorted. “Let’s hear it.”

“This is General Tarok of the Klingon Empire,” a voice came through the speakers. “Your conquest of Bajor was without honor.”

“Windrider here. Ready.”

“Execute.”

The Punisher jumped to hyperspace. However, the computers were set to terminate the jump almost immediately—so the distance was only a few tens of thousands of kilometers. The jump took the Star Destroyer straight through the Klingon fleet—after having launched its entire starfighter contingent, which was left behind. This put the starfighters on one side of the Klingons—and the capital ship on the other.

“Cowards!” General Tarok was shouting over the comm channel, before understanding what happened.

“Fire,” Vand said calmly. Turbolasers struck.

Nearly half of the Birds-of-Prey were destroyed or damaged by the first volley. Vand’s crew triangulated Tarok’s transmission and made sure to concentrate on the flagship to disrupt the enemy control. Once that was done, the fleet no longer operated on a single plan.

The Klingon ships were less powerful than the Star Destroyer and less maneuverable than the TIE fighters and even bombers, and now, the remnants of the armada had split to fight both groups at once. The battle was finished in twenty minutes.

XXX​

“Oh, what were they thinking?!”

“They’re Klingons,” Firno announced. “They likely weren’t.”

Ro grunted. “Rescue parties, on the double—get to the crash sites before the First Order.”

“You think there’ll be survivors?” Dale demanded.

“Yes. The fighters’ weapons won’t destroy the ships outright. And we could always use more heavy weapons.”

“Of course,” Garak appeared silently next to her, “it might give some Bajorans respite if the First Order interrogators are busy trying to break Klingons.” He pointedly gazed at Firno.

“Get on it,” Ro snapped. “I need at least one intact warp core.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

She didn’t reply, grabbing her comlink instead. “What is it, Thanya?”

“Rida City is on fire. Got hit by turbolasers—”

“They’re bombing civilians?”

“Negative—just stray bolts. Their ground bases raised shields, but the cities—”

“Dry steppe, high winds… yeah. You’re the hacker. Bajor’s weather control—they would change access codes, but otherwise… Get to Sindar as quickly as possible.”

“On my way.”

“Mom? Are you alright?” Dale looked up.

“Just tired. And angry. They just wasted all those ships and warriors.” She waved her hand. “Go. It’s a defeat, and don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. But we must keep going.”