War had come again to the Federation. Commander Lewis flashed back to the torture he’d endured at the hands of the Jem’Hadar, to the countless battles they’d fought, to the lifeless colleagues he’d stepped over to finish the fight. He still remembered giving the order to leave the dead where they fell, to focus on the task at hand, to bolster the line as it threatened to fail. His eyes grew dark as he came back to the present, to the reports from the front lines as planets once again fell under the yoke of the Dominion.

“How can they reject reality?” he exclaimed angrily as he chucked a PADD across the room, furious at the fact the Federation and Starfleet Command were insisting it was just a mild border crisis with the Breen. This was a full on resurgence of a wretched alliance that had nearly destroyed the quadrant.

Fleet Admiral Reyes didn’t flinch as the PADD hit a vase and shattered it. She understood. “It is as unfathomable to me as it is to you.” Like Lewis, Reyes had her own history with the Dominion. As a young Lieutenant, she had seen the worst of their aggression, and in response, she had enlisted with the darkest elements of Starfleet Intelligence for the remainder of the war. They did things that would have repulsed any civilized member of society. She had sold her soul to ensure they would never be a threat again, and yet here they were.

“I assume we will not sit on the sidelines?”

“Absolutely not,” she assured him. “I have been in contact with Starbase Bravo. Ramar is ignoring Starfleet Command and responding with the full force of the Fourth Fleet. I assured them that nebulas can wait, and we are at their disposal for anything to put an end to this.” Whether direct combat assignments, dirty special operations, or turning ASTRA’s brilliant minds towards unscrupulous ends, she had no qualms of anything they were asked to do – except sit idle, as Starfleet Command had suggested. At least Fleet Admiral Ramar was having none of that.

For Commander Lewis’ part, he hoped to slit the throats of a few Jem’Hadar soldiers before this was all done, to watch them bleed out on the deck in retribution for all the suffering they had wrought. He cared not that the Lost Fleet was a fleet out of time. If anything, it made it sweeter, because it was almost like going back in time to inflict retribution on those who still meant to inflict suffering. He also cared not that the Jem’Hadar and Vorta were pawns of the Founders. You always had a choice. He knew that better than most.

The admiral could sense the dark thoughts of her longtime friend. “Jake, promise me you’re in this for the right reasons? That you’re not going to let vengeance cloud your judgment?”

“Allison, I won’t lie to you,” Lewis conceded darkly. “I will take pleasure in felling our aged foes, to honor all those in the Deneb Sector who have fallen under their yoke, to avenge all those that fell alongside us all those decades ago. But it will not cloud my judgment. You will have my counsel on the battlefield, and when it comes time to shoot, I will hit my mark.”

That was all Reyes needed to hear. Sometimes, she wondered why she’d dragged the old operator back into the field to spend most of his time sitting bored while they explored far off mysteries of the galaxy. But now she knew. In times like these, they needed people like him, even if the rest of the time, the ever-wary Chief Intelligence Officer did little more than stalk around making the scientists, research and analysts of ASTRA feel uncomfortable.

Commander Lewis approached the window to look out beyond. The starscape looked so peaceful, but out there somewhere, millions were suffering the violence of the Dominion.

“What about the crew, Allison? Many of them have never seen war.”

“And now they will,” she replied with a tinge of regret as she stepped up next to him at the window. “Neither you, nor I, had seen true war before the Dominion came upon us. But we rose to the challenge. And they will too.”

“Your optimism…” Lewis began to say before a chime at the door interrupted him.

“Enter,” Reyes said as she turned to face the new arrivals. Captain Devreux stepped through first, followed by Commander Henderson and Lieutenant Hall. The former two wore worried looks, the latter one of conviction, and all three appeared a bit shocked at the news. None so much as noticed the broken vase in the corner of the Ready Room.

“I assume you each have had a chance to review the preliminary intelligence out of the Deneb sector?”

“Yes. It’s beyond concerning,” commented Devreux. “I gather we’re turning around and heading that way?” He knew Reyes too well to expect anything less from her. He wasn’t looking forward to it though. As a young officer who’d ventured to the stars for exploration, not conquest, he’d gone so far as to take a Medical Assistant role on an Oberth-class survey ship to stay out of the Dominion War. Years later, he came out of his shell, and he’d seen his fair share of skirmishes in the Delta Quadrant and during his time on the rim with Admiral Reyes, but that didn’t mean he didn’t lament what was to come.

“As is our duty,” the admiral responded with conviction. “The Fourth Fleet will rise to the call, as we always have.”

“What’s up with that crap on the Federation News Network about this being no more than a Breen border skirmish?” Lieutenant Hall asked bluntly, not one to beat around the bush. She had no personal experience with the Dominion, just a child fighting her own demons on Turkana IV at that time, but she knew how to read an intelligence report. She also studied her foes for a living, and she understood exactly what the Dominion represented. How anyone could think otherwise was beyond her.

“It’s the same old Federation,” Commander Lewis spat with disdain. “Idealism and ignorance over the hard truth of reality. We do our jobs so they can continue to live in that daydream of theirs.”

“What cognitive dissonance…” Hall commented, shaking her head as her voice trailed off.

“Indeed,” agreed the admiral. “And that BS has rubbed off on Starfleet too. HQ has reverted to their old ways, minimizing and deflecting. This will be a Fourth Fleet only operation.”

Devreux raised his brow, and Commander Henderson stroked his chin in thought. Reyes debated sharing the second message that had accompanied Fleet Admiral Ramar’s, the one from Vice Admiral Beckett that read ‘Trust only the Fourth Fleet’, but she held off on sharing that for now. She wasn’t exactly sure what to make of it yet.

Turning to address the ship’s Chief Medical Officer, Fleet Admiral Reyes then got straight to business: “Doctor Henderson, once things get going, I fear it will get mighty busy for you and your staff. So let’s make what preparations we can ahead of time, cancel all upcoming non-essential procedures, get non-critical patients moved out, and stock the crash carts and storage bays for the wounds of war.”

“We will be ready,” Commander Henderson assured her dutifully with a determined nod. While an exobiologist and specialist in interspecies medicine by trade, the Dominion War had turned him and all his colleagues into battlefield medics. He dreaded what was coming, but he and his staff would do their part.

“Dr. Hall, we have a crew of young sailors, an average age of 26 if you exclude ASTRA’s research teams,” continued the admiral as she turned to the Chief Counselor to address an issue that could undermine their success if not managed. “Many of them weren’t even alive when the Dominion ravaged our quadrant, and they were only kids for First Contact Day. They know death only through stories and old people, and they’ve never seen war. The closest they’ve ever come is a holodeck training program with safeties turned on. Give some thought on how you and your counseling staff can prepare them for what lies ahead, and to address acute crises as they present.”

“Absolutely,” replied Lieutenant Hall, although inwardly she had no idea how to execute on that assignment. She had known conflict, death, and abuse from before she could walk. What could she say to a bunch of children whose greatest struggles up until this point had been homesickness, workplace stress, and their romantic relationships?

“And Gérard,” Reyes concluded as she turned to her closest friend of the last seven years, feeling a tinge of regret she’d put him in this place. It was not what the lifelong explorer had signed up for. “It’s time to prepare the ship for war.”

The Ready Room was covered in PADDs, each one containing relevant reports from the Deneb Sector. She hadn’t gotten much sleep last night, not after the news broke about return of their greatest nemesis, and Fleet Admiral Reyes had spent the whole diligently pouring over every last piece of information she could get her hands on related to the developing situation along their trailing coreward border in the Alpha Quadrant.

Federation colonies from Nasera to Izar to Sevury had fallen. Numerous ships from Task Group 514 were no longer responding. And the rapid surge of Dominion and Breen ships and manpower was astonishing. The veteran of the Dominion War was certain, beyond any doubt, this wasn’t a mere border skirmish as described on the Federation News Network. These were not a handful of leftover Dominion ships repurposed by the Breen as some in Starfleet claimed. That was all lunacy in the face of the fact that Jem’Hadar legions now prowled the streets of so many once-free worlds across the Deneb sector.

A wall-mounted terminal flickered to life, drawing the admiral from her thoughts. On the screen was the seal of Fourth Fleet Command. This was the call Reyes had been waiting for. A younger officer might have straightened her collar, adjusted her pips, or cleaned up the mess of PADDs littering the office, but Reyes did none of that. She simply walked over to the terminal and accepted the call from the Task Force 93 Commanding Officer.

Aboard the USS Verity, Commodore Imya Jori sat at her desk waiting for the person on the other end to pick up, thoughts running through her head as she’d never had to give orders to a higher ranking officer before. A few seconds later, the viewscreen came to life with the face of Fleet Admiral Reyes. 

“Good afternoon Admiral,” Jori offered with a soft smile as she adjusted a slight bit in her chair. “Hopefully I am not interrupting anything important.”

“Not one bit Commodore. I’ve been waiting for your call ever since news of the Dominion reached us. We’re itching to get in the fight. Where are we headed?” Reyes asked, getting straight to the point. It wasn’t that she wasn’t friendly or didn’t want to get to know the Commodore, but her proclivity towards niceties was overcome by a hunger to strike back at an enemy that was now rampaging across their space.

“Right,” Jori replied. The admiral was clearly getting straight to business, which was fine by her. Tapping her console, Jori sent Reyes an information file over the encrypted carrier wave. “The Nasera system has fallen into Dominion hands,” Jori began, before taking a breath. “I am sending the Polaris to retake Nasera II as it is vital to our ongoing efforts.”

“Nasera… if I recall correctly, one of our oldest colonies in the Deneb sector, and an industrial powerhouse,” Reyes mused, recalling a report she’d read earlier stating it had been one of the first colonies to fall in the Dominion blitzkrieg. That same report also suggested that the Dominion had gained control of Nasera II’s substantial planetary defense infrastructure, and that a not insignificant fleet of Dominion ships still lingered in orbit. “I read the sitrep earlier. The Dominion is pretty dug in there. Tell me there’s more to this than than just ramming my boat into that fortress on a suicide mission?”

“There is,” Jori began with a bit of a pause. “A small number of other Fourth Fleet ships will link up with you en route, but we need a flag officer to lead the assault wing,” Jori responded as she sat there looking at her.

“By a small number, I assume you mean not enough to easily overwhelm the Dominion fleet and the planetary defense system?” Reyes probed, her tactician mind already hard at work thinking through how this would go down. Depending on the disposition of the ships joining them, they might be able to outflank the Dominion ships; however, the planetary defense network was a wholly different problem. You couldn’t outflank dozens of orbital batteries encircling the entire surface of the planet, spaced equidistantly in high geocentric orbit. They’d been designed to defend against Breen aggression after the war, but now they’d pose quite a challenge to those who’d originally put them there.

“Starfleet Intelligence recommends a covert operation to disable the planetary defense network before you go in for the counterassault,” explained Jori. She had read the Polaris’ manifest and knew Reyes had officers well-suited for a covert action like this.

“That could certainly be arranged.” Reyes’ mind went straight to Commander Lewis, who would finally have something to do. Most days, the former spook just stalked the corridors looking for ghosts while the Polaris charted nebulas and explored ancient ruins. “Would a covert ops team expect any support on the ground if we can get them inserted?”

“There are no sanctioned activities that we know of on the ground, and the Jem’Hadar are keeping very close watch over the populace,” Jori responded with a sigh, knowing it wasn’t the answer Reyes’ was hoping for.

“We’ll find a way, Commodore,” Reyes assured her colleague calmly, sensing the regret Jori must have felt at the lack of information she had. The TFCO had probably been asked the same sorts of questions a dozen times over today, each by a CO hoping to get a clear picture of the battlefield, and each time, Jori had probably lacked the information to sufficiently answer their questions. It was why they called it the fog of war. “Don’t worry about us, seriously. We will free Nasera and then hit you up for our next target.” Reyes offered a meek smile.

For a moment, there was silence. Both flag officers had enough experience to know it wouldn’t be that easy. It was unlikely that the USS Polaris and her sister ships would all return intact and without casualties.

Changing the subject, not letting the awkward silence fester too long, Reyes then asked: “How’s everyone at Fourth Fleet Command holding up?” She’d once sat where they now sat, and she remembered what it felt like to carry the weight of the galaxy’s survival on your shoulders. She didn’t envy them. She much preferred to be out among the stars or, in times like these, down in the trenches. But she could certainly feel for them and the hard choices they had to make, especially as many were old friends.

“I can’t really speak for the others,” Jori replied as she looked at the admiral with a heavy sigh. “I was never a part of the Dominion War, but I had family members who were. Never would I have thought we’d be facing them again,” Jori replied somberly.

“We have one big advantage this time,” Reyes offered optimistically. “We remember how we beat them, while the Lost Fleet has no memory of how we won.” 

The Breen may have shared what they knew with the Lost Fleet, but that wasn’t the same as if the new arrivals had spent the intervening two decades analyzing what went wrong last time, and how the tides had turned against them. Instead, the Lost Fleet were soldiers out of time, using decades old technology, and fighting with decades old knowledge. That gave Starfleet an edge. But the Dominion of the seventies was still a very hostile and lethal force.

“That doesn’t make the task before us any less daunting though,” Fleet Admiral Reyes continued, her expression darkening, emotion carrying through every word. “Not every officer you order to the line this week will come home alive. If you’re not already at peace with that fact, make peace with it now, before the caskets start arriving. Otherwise, this war will eat you alive.” She didn’t mince her words. The TFCO needed to understand what lay before them.

Jori let out a huge sigh, though louder then she really had wanted to. “I know,” she simply replied as she didn’t have much else to respond at that very moment. Thoughts running through her mind, officers she was ordering into the fight against an enemy they had fought once before. She knew that not everyone would make it home.

Sighs and platitudes didn’t cut it for Reyes. She wouldn’t let her colleague off that easily. “But do you really know, Commodore?” Reyes asked pointedly, flipping the script on the Trill officer who was, at least on paper, her boss. “You were a cadet last time we asked our sailors to go into battle against the Jem’Hadar.” In fact, Jori hadn’t even gotten her first command until the early nineties after Starfleet had already closed in on itself. “This will not be like our skirmish with the hunters of D’Ghor, nor the echoes of T’kon or the Century Storm. Those were child’s play. The Dominion is ruthless, a force truly rivaled only by the Borg.” Thankfully, all indications were that this was just the Lost Fleet, and they’d not been joined by the Dominion of today, but she could only hope it stayed that way. It had taken the great powers of two quadrants to repel the full might of the Dominion last time, and it had scarred Allison Reyes for life.

Jori looked at her counterpart with a raised eyebrow, caught off-guard by the Admiral’s swift change in tenor. The Commodore chose her next words carefully: “You really think I am so naive to believe there won’t be lives lost? I might have been a cadet during the time of the Dominion War, but that doesn’t mean this is going to be any different just because we know how to defeat them.” Jori’s tone had shifted, notably different from the more pleasant one she’d had earlier. “I think about that with every call, with every order I have to give to these commanders under my command,” Jori admitted as she sat there looking at the woman on the screen.

They’d finally gotten to where Reyes had wanted to get, where she could offer some advice to the younger officer.

“If you take anything from our conversation Commodore, take this,” Fleet Admiral Reyes urged with gravity and deep sincerity. “Make peace with the fact that the orders you give must be given, and that those who lay down their lives do so to safeguard all we hold dear. Choose the missions wisely but keep sending them. Do not question yourself when the body bags start piling up, for if you balk at continuing the fight then, all those sacrifices, including possibly my very own, will be in vain. These young officers may not fully understand what you are asking of them as you send them to war – many of them have never seen more than a dust up with local raiders – but know that I do understand, and that I go willingly for it is necessary.”

All was said that needed to be said. They had their orders. Now it was time to get on with it.

Except for the few that would join them en route, the team that would infiltrate Nasera II gathered in the Hazard Team Briefing Center, a room much too large for the small team Commander Lewis had assembled. He’d intentionally kept it small. He only wanted those who would not be liabilities, those who were already tested, those who would not crack under pressure. He’d also dropped from consideration anyone from Security, Tactical or Strategic Operations. He didn’t want to leave the Polaris short when it went into battle. When the list was whittled down, it left him with only a skeleton squad.

“For the assault wing to have any chance at retaking Nasera II, it will be essential to disrupt its fixed defenses prior to their arrival,” explained Commander Lewis. “Starfleet Intelligence believes, with a high degree of confidence, that the Dominion has control of the planetary defense platforms, as well as an old orbital station. These are our two primary objectives. Unless they’re disabled, the liberation mission will fail.” The stakes were clear. If Starfleet had rallied its full might, it could probably have overwhelmed both the Dominion fleet and the stationary defenses, but the assault wing would be only a half dozen capital ships and supporting vessels, which was not near enough to handle both. Remove the formidable stationary defenses from the equation, and the odds improved significantly.

The screen behind the Chief Intelligence Officer came to life, displaying a large industrial urban area. “This is Nasera City, population eight million, currently living under the subjugation of the Dominion. Our first target is this facility,” he explained, highlighting a large complex in the city center. “This is the control center for the planetary defense network. Destroy it, sabotage it, or take it over. The choice is ours, and we’ll figure it out once we get on the ground and gather some intel. But the one thing I can guarantee is that it will be well guarded, as it is why the Dominion has assumed they don’t need a larger fleet of ships to hold Nasera.”

Chief Petty Officer Ayala Shafir, a data systems specialist from Advanced Science, Technology and Research Activity, made a note to contact the Corps of Engineers to get schematics for the digital systems and communication protocols they’d used when they constructed the planetary defenses as a deterrent against any interest the Breen might have in the nearby system. She’d also pull the construction plans for the control center itself, in case they lent any information about vulnerabilities they could exploit to get inside, ideally without having to shoot their way through.

The first question came from Petty Officer Jason Atwood, with a classic Texas drawl that had become his trademark on the team: “An’ what can ya tell us ’bout the secon’ objective? The orbital station?” Growing up a rancher in the southwest before joining Starfleet after his uncle was killed in the First Contact Day Massacre, Atwood was a sport shooter in his youth. At Starfleet, he’d struggled with regulations and process to the point that, thirteen years after enlisting, he’d only reached Petty Officer 2nd Class. But that didn’t take into account his skill with the rifle, which was the reason he had been picked for this team.

Commander Lewis motioned with his hand to pan the display out. As the world of Nasera II came into full view, an orbital station was highlighted above. “This is our second target, an aging orbital facility in geosynchronous orbit above Nasera City. Intelligence has determined the Dominion converted into a large-scale weapons platform, one that can be directed either at incoming forces or turned to decimate Nasera City if they’re going to lose the planet. They have no intention of ever letting us retake the industrial capabilities of Nasera,” he explained, thinking back to how the Dominion had turned their weapons on the Cardassians as the tides turned against them. That strategy could play out again here if they didn’t stop it. “Your guess is as good as mine as to how we’re going to get up there.”

A couple people glanced around the room, surprised by the lack of a plan. They knew the leader of the Hazard Team to almost always have one, if not several, and his admission of no such plan was more than a little concerning.

“Let me be very clear with you all,” Lewis said, leveling with his small team. “Intelligence is beyond spotty on Nasera. We have no idea how entrenched the enemy is, what state our citizens are in, or if there’s any support waiting for us down there. The first step will be to get on the ground and build out a situational understanding. After that, everything will depend on what we learn.”

Lieutenant Commander Jordan raised his hand. He was one of Lewis’ closest confidants on the ship, the man Lewis had partnered to build out the Intelligence department he wanted to see for the Polaris. The detail-oriented Assistant Chief Intelligence Officer had no hesitation over what was to come. It was what they’d trained for. He just had a question about the logistics. “We can’t exactly just ride in on a Starfleet runabout. How are we inserting?” 

Commander Lewis made a swiping motion in front of the screen, transitioning it from the image of the planet to one of a Ferengi freighter that had seen better days. “Nasera lies close to the Ferengi border, and the Ferengi have been delivering the supplies the Dominion needs to operate Nasera’s industrial plants and factories,” Lewis explained, the distaste evident in his tone. He hated war profiteers. “Because, to quote the thirty fourth Rule of Acquisition, ‘war is good for business’. Since the Ferengi ships are thus still a regular sight in the system, we have a way in.”

From where he sat, Crewman Nam Jae-Sun nodded. Prior to signing up with Starfleet at the launch of the Osiris Initiative, Nam had done time with the Fenris Rangers, where they had occasionally paid the Ferengi large sums for special services. If you came with enough latinum, the Ferengi would do just about anything for you. “Ferengi services don’t come cheap. How much is this going to cost us?”

“Not a cent,” smiled Commander Lewis. “You see, no matter how much we paid, it would be just as likely that those slimy bastards would double cross us to double up on their profit.” Now the team looked lost. “But you see, nothing is less interesting than another boring Ferengi supply ship, so during my time outside the Fleet, I came into the possession of one.”

Dr. Lisa Hall, the head of ASTRA’s Cultural and Psychological Research unit, chuckled softly. The old Commander always had a surprise up his sleeve. What a strange path he’d taken, an Intelligence officer in Starfleet, then the runner of a private outfit that did things Starfleet could not, and now back in Starfleet, standing here proposing using the very private outfit he’d left when he renewed his commission. As unconventional as it was, it made sense. All the benefits of Ferengi camouflage, without all the risk of Ferengi greed.

“Two members of my old outfit, Sebold Logistics, are currently en route with the Lucre, a small Ferengi freighter,” Lewis explained. “She may look beat up, but she’s a dependable little boat that has gotten us through a few tough spots over the years. Joining us will be Grok, a Ferengi pilot and master of deceit who turned his back on the Rules of Acquisition for greater thrills, and T’Aer, a ruthlessly-accurate sniper, the best I’ve ever known.” Grok was a necessity in case the Dominion hailed them on approach, and T’Aer was a luxury he felt warranted due to the firefight they were certainly walking into. Neither had so much as blinked when he’d called on them.

“So pretend we’re a bunch of big lobbed traders, get on the ground, gather some intel, blow some shit up, and clear the way for the Polaris?” summarized Lieutenant J.G. Jace Morgan with his arms crossed, looking remarkably content with the plan. He was an Operations Officer by trade, but he’d spent years in the borderlands, tinkering with alien technology, and there was little that phased him. “Sounds simple enough.”

Commander Lewis looked around the room for any more questions. But there were no more, only a group of highly motivated men and women, officers and crew, all ready to get on with it. He’d spent the last two years training them for something like this, and now it was time to execute.

“The quartermaster has prepared your loadouts for this mission, including attire suitable to blend with the civilian population,” explained Lieutenant Commander Jordan, who would serve as the number two on the mission. “Pick up your gear and get prepped. We leave from Shuttlebay 1 at 0200.”

Commander Lewis then brought the briefing to a close: “Our mission will not be easy, but it will pave the way for the liberation of Nasera. Millions of Federation colonists on Nasera, and the crews of the Fourth Fleet preparing for the counter-assault, depend on our success.” He didn’t say the other bit, that if they failed, their colleagues would very possibly all end up dead because Fleet Admiral Reyes would still launch the counter-assault, even if the planetary defense systems were still operational. It wasn’t in her character to let millions of Federation citizens suffer, no matter the cost.

The small team funneled out of the briefing room, leaving Commander Lewis and Lieutenant Commander Jordan standing there alone.

“You ready Brock?” the Commander asked. Twenty years Lewis’ junior, Brock Jordan had never locked horns with the Jem’Hadar, but he’d cut his teeth working intelligence in Klingon and Romulan territory, and he’d stood by Lewis’ side loyally for the last two years.

“Of course boss,” he assured his role model. “We’ll get it done.”

Lewis nodded. Of course they would. The Lieutenant Commander took his leave, and after a few moments alone in quiet contemplation, the Commander did the same.

As Commander Lewis stepped out of the Hazard Team Briefing Room, a voice caught him by surprise: “I want in Commander. You don’t have even a dozen shooters there to take on an entire Jem’Hadar legion. I know you could use another.”

Commander Lewis turned to see Ensign Elyssia Rel, a petite Flight Control Officer who’d joined the Hazard Team as soon as she came aboard a couple months ago. Not for a moment had Lewis considered her for this mission. They already had a seasoned pilot meeting them en route, and Rel was too green, only a year out of the Academy. She had taken like a natural to his Hazard Team training program, but she was no cold-blooded veteran. “Ensign, I appreciate the offer, but I’m not going to put you through what waits for us down there.”

“If by what awaits us, you mean stepping over the bodies of dead Jem’Hadar as we liberate the hurting people of Nasera, count me in,” she replied with a zealous hunger in her eyes that stood in stark contrast to her soft features.

The battle-hardened Commander gave her a quizzical stare, sizing up where this young Ensign was coming from. Only her Trill spots gave any clue.

“You stand there looking at me, and you see an innocent Flight Control Officer, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, fresh out of the Academy,” Rel said, channeling the thoughts of her symbiont through her. “What you don’t see is the lives I lived before. I fought the enemy we now prepare to face. I was captured by them, tortured by them, and escaped from them. Then I came back for more, and I paid the ultimate price. Commander, I died in a lifepod fleeing the Chin’toka system as they watched. The same monsters that are now putting our colonists on Nasera through literal hell. I’m ready to go again… although this time I’d rather them be in the body bags.” She gave a little smile at that last bit.

The Trill experience fascinated Commander Lewis, and the story she told caught him completely off-guard. He had not recalled this experience from her file, but then again, Trill were not always clear about their symbionts in official records. The conviction emanating from her entire being though was very clear.

“Why do you think a first year flight control officer can hit a perfect score in your marksman course?” Ensign Rel probed further. “Did you really think I just instinctively took to phaser marksmanship, hand-to-hand combat, squad formations, field simulations, and everything else we drill?”

It was true. The Ensign never missed a step when they cleared rooms, only lost hand-to-hand when she sparred their best, and had not once slipped her cover in an infiltration exercise. And, from her symbiont’s experiences, she certainly had the motivation. When everything looked most dire, your motivations were all you had to hold onto. It was hard to argue with someone who’s prior host had literally died at the hands of the beasts they were about to face. 

“You could use me on this mission.”

“Alright Ensign,” conceded Commander Lewis, against his better judgment. “Swing by the quartermaster and get your gear. Meet at Shuttlebay 1 at 0200.”

Commander Lewis watched the Trill Ensign hustle off with purpose. As long as she was good to her word, he could really use another pair of hands on the team. For a ship as large as the Polaris, the pickings had been mighty slim. This was not the same Starfleet it had been in the seventies.

“Aren’t you afraid?” asked Lieutenant Emilia Balan, approaching the front of the room as the rest of the Polaris’ counseling staff and ASTRA’s behavioral specialists cleared out.

“Come again?” Lieutenant Lisa Hall, Ph.D. looked up from her PADD.

“During the departmental briefing you just gave our staff, you said you weren’t going to be here with us, that you’re going ahead to Nasera with Commander Lewis,” Balan clarified. Usually, the young cultural affairs officer loved away missions, the opportunity to mix and mingle with other cultures, to see their world through their eyes, but the Dominion? Nope, she’d pass on that. Even the optimist in her knew they were bred for a singular purpose and that she’d find no beauty in the souls of the Jem’Hadar or the Vorta.

“Oh yes, that is the plan,” Dr. Hall confirmed with not even the slightest hint of concern in her voice. After reading so much about the Jem’Hadar and the Vorta, she looked forward to the opportunity to observe them firsthand and, if the opportunity presented itself, to interrogate and break them. Their genetic coding, their addiction, their conditioning, it would all make for an interesting experiment. She didn’t have any worries about what could happen to her. At worst, she’d be captured and killed, but death would erase the neural pathways of any pain she’d suffered along the way.

Lieutenant Balan looked at Dr. Hall like she was crazy, fear evident in the younger woman’s eyes for what her colleague was off to do. Lieutenant Balan was no fighter, but here she was, about to go to war, and she was utterly terrified. The woman in front of her seemed completely unphased. And while Balan was going to be tucked away behind the regenerative shields, ablative armor, and dozens of security and tactical officers aboard the USS Polaris, Dr. Hall would be going into the belly of the beast, creeping around the streets of Nasera City surrounded by legions of Jem’Hadar with little more than the clothes on her back.

Dr. Hall set down her PADD, sensing this conversation wasn’t just going to go away unless she took it head on. 

“Lieutenant, we come from different worlds,” Dr. Hall explained. “You grew up listening to your mom sing opera at Teatro alla Scala, and you joined the Polaris to find magic in the stars. I spent my early years on Turkana IV, knowing nothing but the grotesque conflict that had subsumed my world and invaded my home. I joined the Polaris because, after Starfleet told me that I lacked appropriate compassion and care for my patients, Reyes offered me an opportunity to analyze, interrogate and manipulate for greater purpose.” Unfortunately though, she spent way more time offering a shoulder for these children to cry on than she’d been led to expect.

“But all that talk you just gave us about caring for the crew and their mental health?”

“Hate to break your idyllic vision of a ship’s counselor, but that care and feeding is just part of the job description,” explained Dr. Hall bluntly. “It is my duty – and yours – to ensure that our shipmates keep their heads on straight, and that when the time comes, our people will be combat ready, not crippled by anxiety over the possibility of death or grief from the reality of it.”

If she was trying to help Lieutenant Balan’s psyche, it certainly wasn’t working. But that wasn’t her intent. She expected the Lieutenant to handle herself like the officer she was, and she just wanted her to go away. Dr. Hall had exotic cocktails of psychoactives to prepare before she set off with Lewis and the covert ops team in the dead of night.

“That is a very pessimistic way to describe our job as counselors.”

“But is it not an accurate one?”

Lieutenant Balan frowned. That certainly wasn’t how she saw her non-ASTRA role. Before she joined the USS Polaris, Emilia Balan had been a mediator and diplomatic attache, but never a therapist. Nonetheless, she’d taken to her secondary duties on the counseling support staff with vigor and passion. There was something so fulfilling about healing the wounds of a person’s soul, watching them overcome their pain and blossom into a greater version of themself. She loved it, and she certainly saw it as more than just a job description.

“Look on the bright side Lieutenant,” Dr. Hall added grimly. “If I don’t make it back, you can rewrite the definition of counseling psychology to your liking.”

That didn’t help.

“And don’t worry about me. If I’m dead, I won’t be alive to know it.”

Again, her words offered no comfort.

How could someone think this way? Emilia Balan wanted to find a way to take away the excruciating pain that must have existed to turn her colleague into the shadow she was today. She had to believe that, somewhere deep down, there was a normal human heart beneath her colleague’s tough exterior. She’d be wrong though. Turkana IV had taken all of that away from Lisa Hall before she’d even come of age.

Disquieted and discomforted, Lieutenant Balan retreated from the briefing room without another word. She had no idea what to say. Lieutenant Hall, for her sake, returned to her work without another thought.

As Emilia Balan walked the corridors, she started to tear up. She wasn’t ready for this, wasn’t ready for war, wasn’t ready to lose her shipmates, wasn’t ready to relinquish her humanity. There were beautiful days ahead, and she wanted to see them. This would pass. Or would it? What if none of them made it back? Or what if it turned them into shadows like Dr. Hall and Commander Lewis?

She sat down on the cold floor and began to cry.

The Volga-class runabout hurled towards the Ichedat system at maximum warp, a team of Starfleet officers turned covert operators sitting shoulder-to-shoulder in the cramped passenger hold. Adorned in dirty streetwear with backpacks and duffels meant to blend in with the day laborers of Nasera City’s industrial center, they sat in silence with a mix of nerves and determination. Over the uncomfortable eleven hour flight, they’d had plenty of time to think about the difficult task that lay ahead.

Commander Lewis hovered behind the cockpit. In the pilot’s jumpseat sat Ensign Elyssia Rel, the last minute addition to the team, while in the copilot’s jumpseat sat a Midshipman, the only member of the crew in a regular Starfleet uniform. He would be the one to bring the runabout back to the USS Polaris after the rest of the team disembarked.

“Bring us out of warp on the dark side of the moon, close as you can to the surface,” instructed Commander Lewis. “Without crashing us straight into the lunar moonscape, of course.” He’d selected the Ichedat system for the rendezvous because it was uninteresting and uninhabited, off the beaten path of common shipping lines. That didn’t mean the former spook’s guard was down though. No reason to tip their hand before they were even on the ground.

“No pressure,” Ensign Elyssia Rel laughed lightly. She then turned her focus completely to the task at hand. Her fingers flew nimbly across the controls, making micro-adjustments to ensure they’d decelerate from one thousand times the speed of light to a near stop with kilometer-grade precision.

A few moments later, the streaking stars were replaced by a dark lunar surface as the ship emerged from warp right into the lower exosphere of Ichedat II’s sole moon. Commander Lewis peered over the pilot’s jumpseat, nodding contentedly. Hard to see in the darkness, the moon completely eclipsing the Class IV star at the center of the system, but it appeared they were only fifteen or twenty kilometers above the moon’s craterous landscape. To any passing ship, they would completely blend with the surface below.

“Bring non-essential systems offline and begin low energy scans,” the Commander ordered swiftly, his eyes looking out warily as if searching for threats that might lurk beyond.

The copilot worked the controls of the sensor array, being extra diligent with the Chief Intelligence Officer of the USS Polaris breathing down his back

“Sir,” the Midshipman reported after a minute or so had passed, “we are detecting only a single ship within the system, a small Ferengi cargo ship broadcasting ident as the Lucre.” Counter to their stealthy approach, the Lucre needed to appear like a completely normal merchant vessel if anyone spotted it, which meant universal ident on and systems running at regular power emission levels.

“Ensign Rel, bring us up slowly and head for the Lucre at one quarter impulse.”

The runabout pulled up from its low orbit and crept towards an orange dot in the distance. As they neared, the beat up exterior of the Ferengi merchant vessel came into view.

Lieutenant Commander Brock Jordan rose from his seat in the passenger hold to come alongside Commander Lewis for a better view. “They couldn’t bother to give it a wash before we picked it up, huh boss?” he chuckled. “That piece of junk looks like she’s seen better days.”

“That piece of junk has gotten us out of more than a few bad spots over the years,” offered Commander Lewis, thinking back to one particularly rough op they’d run in Tzenkethi space. “I tell myself the battered hull gives it character.” Slowly, the runabout came alongside the Lucre and began docking procedures.

Lieutenant Commander Jordan spun on his heels to face the team in the rear hold. “Saddle up folks,” he ordered. “Let’s get this show on the road.” Gordon grabbed his backpack and headed for the docking port, the rest of the team following behind. Ensign Rel climbed out of her jumpseat, grabbed a duffel from under the control station, and followed them out.

Commander Lewis was the last to depart. “Godspeed to you and the Polaris,” he offered the Midshipman before leaving the cockpit, noting the look of grave concern on the young man’s face. He recognized that look, the same one soldiers had received from their families for thousands of years as they went off to war. The young flight controller had done little more than routine patrol duty before joining the Polaris, and now he was watching his fellow crew members head into a Dominion stronghold. “We’ll see you on the other side.”

A few moments later, the Commander climbed through the docking port into the familiar musky hallways of the Lucre. His team had already gone ahead to get situated for the journey, but waiting there at the entry were two old friends. 

“Grok! T’Aer!” Lewis said with a smile. “Good to see you both again. It’s been a while.”

“Three hundred and twenty seven days, to be exa…,” T’Aer stated with her usual precision.

“My friend, my friend,” Grok said, cutting her off as he leapt forward to give his boss a bear hug. “It has been far too long! But glad you thought of us for your little adventure.” The Ferengi had a lobe-to-lobe grin on his face.

“Always a good excuse to get the band back together,” Lewis replied, using a metaphor that looked lost on both of his alien colleagues. As long as the three of them had worked together, some humor still just didn’t translate.

“Our Vulcan friend here,” Grok teased as he glanced over at T’Aer. “She tries to play it cool, but ever since the Lost Fleet reappeared, I know she’s been chomping at the bit to put a Jem’Hadar or two in her crosshairs.”

“A Vorta would be more strategically rewarding,” T’Aer corrected condescendingly. “But I’ll take a few Jem’Hadar trophies while we are at it.” While her composure was always fairly stoic, Lewis swore he could see the slightest hint of a smile and sense the slightest tinge of sarcasm. T’Aer toed the line of Kolinahr more than most, a consequence of the sort of work she’d done with Sebold Logistics over the years.

“Our cover story in order?” Lewis asked as the three of them began walking down the corridor towards the bridge.

Grok handed him a PADD. “The Lucre is scheduled to deliver fifty tonnes of Diranium, twenty palettes of Boridium, sixteen palettes of Pergium, and four crates of 10 mil Polaron lattices to Nasera Municipal Spaceport in two days time.”

“We’re helping them build armor, mines, power cells, and rifles?”

“The Dominion is not exactly shopping for the materials to build pleasure baths and hospitals,” grinned the Ferengi. “We are selling goods in demand to willing buyers at the fair market place, plus of course a little markup for our coffers, since, you know, war is hard on business.” Commander Lewis chuckled. Leave it to a Ferengi to turn a profit on a cover story.

“What time does our flightplan have us getting in?”

“1930 hours tomorrow. An hour after sunset.”

Commander Lewis nodded. Good timing on arrival, the cover of darkness to more easily slip away, but still early enough that there’d be a crowd to disappear into.

“I know how you roll, my old friend,” Grok laughed. “I’ve also arranged for a large suite above a musky tavern half a click from the spaceport, as an enterprising Ferengi merchant like myself needs plenty of space to kick up his feet after a long flight.” 

Lewis gave him a stare. 

“For our safe house, you dunce,” Grok clarified, as if it wasn’t apparent. “And you lot, your cover story is that you’re a bunch of destitutes I conscripted at Freecloud to carry all my goods. These hands,” he said, raising his calloused, veiny appendages, with their pointy, chipped nails, “they’re just too lathered up in Risan oil to lift anything themselves. And T’Aer, she’s my secretary.” The Ferengi winked at the Vulcan.

Lewis was glad to see that even a Dominion invasion couldn’t quell the Ferengi’s sense of humor. T’Aer, for her part, didn’t react in the slightest. After years working along Grok, she knew not to feed into his energy. Any reaction, and he’d just keep going.

As they neared the bridge, the double doors slid open to reveal an unexpected passenger. Commander Lewis recognized the blue skin, white hair and antennae immediately.

“Ryssehl! I didn’t expect you to find you here. Thought you’d join us on our little soiree?” Lewis remarked as they stepped through the threshold. It was a happy surprise. Ryssehl Th’zathol had been his second-in-command at Sebold Logistics, the man he’d entrusted the operation with when he returned to Starfleet. The Andorian was a master of explosives, a slippery sleuth who could bypass any security system, and a solid shooter to cover your back.

“Now, now, Mr. Commander,” Ryssehl laughed, emphasizing Lewis’ rank as if to mock him for putting the pips back on. “You didn’t really expect me to let you three have all the fun, now did you? I hear we might need to make something go boom.” His eyes lit up at the thought.

“You always did have a thing for explosives.”

“Yes, and I brought a few special treats for our Dominion friends. Picked them up off a Cardassian arms dealer.” The poetic justice was not lost on him. It would add to the enjoyment of blowing some Jem’Hadar to pieces. Hopefully a Vorta too.

Right then, Lieutenant Commander Brock Jordan stepped onto the bridge.

“Ah, Lieutenant Commander, let me introduce you to our colleagues for this trip,” Commander Lewis offered, gesturing at the merry band of three. “Ryssehl is a master demolitionist, and my replacement – an upgrade, most would say – at Sebold Logistics. T’Aer is the best shot this side of the Delta Quadrant. And Grok is our boss, or so he says.” He shot a sarcastic look poking fun at the Ferengi. “Folks, this is Lieutenant Commander Jordan, ACIO on the Polaris and our number two for this mission.”

“It is a pleasure to meet each of you,” Lieutenant Commander Jordan offered kindly as he shook hands with the three contractors that would be joining their team. “The Commander here speaks so highly about each of you, and sometimes over a bottle of ale, he avails us with old stories of all the trouble you lot got up to together. Looking forward to adding this to the list.”

“How’s the team doing?” Lewis asked of the Lieutenant Commander as everyone took their places, Grok at the helm, T’Aer at navigation, and Ryssehl and Gordon flanking him on either side.

“Everyone’s settled in below deck. Won’t lie and say there aren’t some nerves, but everyone seems ready for the task at hand,” reported Lieutenant Commander Jordan. “And Shafir, she’s already fast asleep. Nothing phases that woman.”

“Good for her.” Commander Lewis was unsurprised. Senior Shafir had spent five years with his private outfit after Starfleet unceremoniously spit her out, only returning to Starfleet with Lewis when he threw in with Fleet Admiral Reyes. Shafir was young, but she was a veteran of conflict more than any of the other officers he’d brought along. What she’d gone through with the Consortium, the choices she had to make to maintain her cover, it was something that even he would have struggled with. “Everyone should try to get some sleep while they can. Once we arrive, the opportunities to do so will be sparing at best.”

From the pilot’s jumpseat he’d climbed into while the Starfleet officers talked, Grok interrupted: “Runabout is disengaging docking clamps.”

Commander Lewis looked forward as the Volga-class runabout peeled away. Then he took a quick glance around the bridge, enjoying the nostalgia of his old team back together again. It was like old times, except, instead of being backed up by a team of former Maquis and Fenris Rangers hardened by their time on the violent frontier, this time they had a dozen or so young Starfleet officers below deck to back them up. Lewis still worried how they’d hold up when they came face-to-face with the inevitable terrors waiting for them on Nasera, but having T’Aer, Grok and Ryssehl along would help.

It was time. Lewis gave the order: “Let’s get this show on the road. Set course for Nasera II, and engage.”

“I detect eleven other life forms aboard. Seven humans, one Bajoran, one Trill, one Andorian, and one Vulcan. Explain their purpose,” demanded a surly Jem’Hadar flight controller over the video feed.

“The hew-mons and the rest of the scum – except the Vulcan – they’re junkies I picked up from the bowels of Freecloud to carry my wares,” Grok spat with palpable distaste for those who had failed in the pursuit of wealth acquisition. “A wealthy and successful businessman like myself cannot be seen doing such manual labor himself.”

The Jem’Hadar airspace controller did not look amused. It wasn’t due to any sort of disbelief though. He just despised the Ferengi. They were a self-obsessed culture who believed victory was the number of trinkets one could collect. He, on the other hand, knew higher purpose. Victory was life, combat was the vehicle, and Ketracel-White was sustainment. Nothing else mattered.

“And the Vulcan? What is her purpose?”

“She’s my bookkeeper.”

“Because, let me guess, a wealthy and successful businessman like yourself cannot be seen keeping the books either?”

“Now you’re catching my drift, Mr. Jem’Hadar! I acquired her from an Orion trader, and boy, oh boy, can she do math and so much more,” bragged Grok with a wink. “Have you ever seen a fee-male Vulcan during pon farr? What a treat, let me tell you! Maybe after these goods are unloaded, I’ll introduce you to one of my other fee-males.”

“That will not be necessary,” the Jem’Hadar responded flatly. These unrefined primitives had such pitiful needs. But the might of the Dominion required the goods they bore, and so they had to be tolerated. That was the Vorta’s instructions. “You are cleared, third in line, behind the Tzenkethi freighter, flight path 2A to Nasera Municipal Spaceport for Docking Bay 14.” And then the Jem’Hadar flight controller cut the channel without another word.

“Where was the ‘thank you so much for your kind offer’ or ‘have a wonderful day’?” exclaimed the Ferengi exasperatedly into the void.

Commander Jake Lewis, Lieutenant Commander Brock Jordan and T’Aer emerged from the alcove where they’d stolen away out of sight while Grok was on the call. 

“No manners with those guys, let me tell you!” Grok scoffed, turning to his friends.

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you Grok?” asked Lieutenant Commander Jordan incredulously. The Ferengi almost seemed to be having fun in the face of the Jem’Hadar.

“I’m just playing the part,” Grok declared coyly before glancing over at the Vulcan. “But T’Aer, my lady, if ever you require my services to resolve a private little situation of yours, you just let me know. We are teammates after all, and that’s what teammates do for each other.” T’Aer shot him an ice cold stare.

“Come on Brock,” said Commander Lewis, ignoring the banter. “Let’s gather the troops and get ready to start moving some freight like the tired dayworkers we are.” He headed for the exit, the second-in-command tight on his heels, leaving Ferengi and the Vulcan alone on the bridge to continue their quarrel.

“Sure it’s safe we abandoned T’Aer back there with him?” joked Lieutenant Commander Jordan as they walked through the corridors of the Lucre.

“Oh, I’d be far more worried for Grok, if I was you.”

“It’s crazy how they can joke around like that as we fly straight into the hornet’s nest,” commented the younger officer, still a bit in shock over the sheer number of Dominion ships they’d just casually flown past.

“Grok and T’Aer, they’ve done this a hundred times,” Lewis offered calmly. “Wait until you see them in their element.”

“That’s not their element?”

“No, that’s just foreplay. Wait until the shooting starts,” Lewis laughed. “The heat of a disruptor pulse whizzing past really gets them going.”

That was when Brock Jordan realized who exactly he was going into battle with. When he’d said he was a field operator for Starfleet Intelligence, that just meant he’d tossed a few dumpsters on Freecloud, hacked a Klingon communications array near Narendra, and connected with a Romulan informant on Nimbus. To casually make jokes in the face of a Jem’Hadar commander while a Dominion Fleet loomed with their polaron emitters trained on you, that took a different kind of insanity altogether. Lewis and his Sebold Logistics colleagues were something else, and Jordan just hoped that he and the Hazard Team could live up to what they needed them to be.

A lone man, dressed in dirty civvies with a backpack, hunched shoulders, and a tired expression, made his way down the dark streets. He walked slowly, taking his time, as would be expected of a man who’d spent the day pushing pallets at the spaceport. But that labored gait, as much as it would throw off any wandering eyes that might steal a look his way, was also a tactical choice as it allowed him plenty of time to observe his surroundings.

He stepped into a small, dimly lit tavern where a few tired men drank their miseries away over a large pitcher.

“Can you believe what they’re making us do?” asked one man to the others. “Mines, man, mines. I used to make circuit boards for medical equipment…”

“Quiet,” one of his colleagues cautioned, stealing a glance around. “They’re always watching. Don’t forget what they did to Jerimiah. Just be quiet and drink your beer.”

The new arrival passed by the patrons without so much as looking up, coming upon the barkeep in the back who also doubled as innkeeper. “I’m with the Ferengi,” he said gruffly, sounding more like a man who smoked three packs a day than one who ran twenty kilometers a day.

“Oh yes, more of his help,” remarked the barkeep. “It’s mighty nice of you he puts you all up. I hear most Ferengi just have their help sleep below deck.” The man said nothing, just looking down as if disappointed over how his life had turned out. “Your sorry lot, all looking as miserable as you, are upstairs, the suite at the end of the hall.”

The man nodded silently and made his way up the stairs and down the hall. His pace never changed, his eyes never gave any hint to his malintent. He was just another forgotten laborer lost among a sea of forgotten laborers.

When he came upon the suite at the end of the hall, he knocked twice and waited. Inside, he knew phasers would be drawn as they checked the surveillance feed. One could never be too careful. 

After a few moments, Lieutenant Commander Brock Jordan opened the door, and the new arrival stepped through the threshold. As soon as the door was safely shut, the demeanor of the new arrival changed, Commander Lewis back to his usual alert and engaged self.

“Sitrep?” Lewis asked. “Everyone get in alright?”

“No one drew even a hint of attention from our Jem’Hadar overlords,” reported Lieutenant Commander Jordan. “They were far too busy roughing up a few teenagers who’d gotten a bit rowdy.” This occupation must have been so strange for the kids to process. Their parents still had to go to work in the great factories of Nasera City, but the schools were closed, and the little ones certainly weren’t allowed the freedom of mischief that was central to growing up. The Jem’Hadar sense of order didn’t allow for that.

Commander Lewis looked around the room. Ensign Rel was by the door on guard duty, phaser rifle resting on her lap. In the middle of the room, Crewman Nam Jae-Sun and Petty Officer 2nd Class Jason Atwood were unpacking equipment, and Lieutenant Kora Tal had her medkit laid out across a table, working with a hypospray.

Commander Lewis stepped by them and opened the double doors to the master bedroom. Lieutenant J.G. Jace Morgan was situated in the far corner at a makeshift surveillance suite, watching camera angles of the hall, the bar, and the area directly outside, while Ryssehl and T’Aer messed with some sort of device on the floor. Lewis had no idea what it was, but it was probably one of the toys Ryssehl had brought along – which meant it would make a big boom when the time came. And Dr. Hall sat on the bed, calmly reading a PADD.

“Where the hell are Grok and Shafir?” He’d been the last one to leave the spaceport. They should have been here by now.

“Where do you think?” T’Aer answered as she looked up. “They went out for a night on the town, something about wanting to check out the nightlife.”

“Of course they did.”

A confident Ferengi strode down the tenebrous thoroughfare, adorned in his finest of accouterments, the merchant of death unconcerned by the signs of the occupation that loomed all around him. A lithe young female clung to his arm, her head down, her demeanor subservient, a defeated creature submitted under the heavy yoke of her sorry reality.

“You two there,” shouted a Jem’Hadar soldier, pointing at them from where he stood guard keeping watch over the puny populace of this subjugated world. “State your purpose.”

“Why don’t you,” the Ferengi responded, waving his finger insolently at the soldier. 

The Jem’Hadar sentry stormed towards them. He towered over the pint-sized pair with his massive, genetically-engineered frame. His rifle stayed slung over his back, but only because he could break them with his bare hands should they provide an unsatisfactory answer. The Ferengi appeared unphased though, placing his finger on the barrel chest of the colossus.

“Do you know who I am, Mr. Jem’Hadar. I am Grok, enterprising merchant, master of the dabo table and the Ferengi futures exchange,” the little man declared with his chin raised proud as the Jem’Hadar scowled at him. “And consignor of the goods you need for your little war effort.”

At that, the Jem’Hadar soldier loosened up a bit. The Ferengi were like gnats, but the Vorta had been clear. They were not to be touched. “And who is that?” The brute pointed at the girl on the Ferengi’s arm. 

She glanced up at the massive man with a submissive expression and eyes that were dark and absent of any energy whatsoever. 

“She is my entertainment for the night,” Grok pronounced proudly. The girl reached up pitifully, lightly stroking his lobes. The Jem’Hadar soldier scoffed.

“Now if you would be so kind, we’ll be on our way,” Grok insisted, to which the Jem’Hadar sentry begrudgingly stepped aside. “And if you would be a darling, please radio ahead and tell the others that Grok is coming.” With that, the Ferengi puffed his chest and strode on by proudly, dragging the girl along with him.

The Jem’Hadar watched them go with deep disdain.

“Well, we know which of us can walk freely here,” Chief Petty Officer Ayala Shafir remarked quietly once they were out of sight, still not daring to relax her feigned posture. That was the eighth sentry they’d passed in as many blocks.

“The lobes work every time,” Grok agreed under his breath, his lips barely moving. “My ilk are regarded as a necessary evil. No one sees beyond the wares we provide.” He used his Ferengi heritage as a cloak of his true purpose, but he loathed everything his people had become, the perversion of their culture borne of the Rules of Acquisition and bent by the false prophets of the Grand Nagus and Ferengi Commerce Authority.

Together, the two continued to wander the streets, and now, the Jem’Hadar mostly left them alone. Maybe their friend from a few blocks back had called ahead. While keeping up their ruse, the two took mental notes of how the oppressed citizenry carried themselves, how the Jem’Hadar positioned themselves, and what state the city was in. All the while, they inched towards their objective.

Chief Shafir was taken aback by how intact the city appeared. The structures, streets and factories were all in working order, and there were no scars of battle whatsoever, neither craters from orbital bombardment nor burns from disruptor fire. If not for the ever-present Jem’Hadar and the absolute defeat on the face of every weary passerby, it was almost as if nothing had happened at all.

The governor must have surrendered almost immediately when the Dominion warships appeared overhead. The planetary defense system certainly hadn’t been put to any real use. According to intelligence, the speedy surrender came from a desire to avoid bloodshed, but if Ayala Shafir had been in charge, she would have asked every citizen to take up arms and fight to their last breath, to lay down their lives before succumbing to these wretched creatures. Could they not see how they’d now become an engine of the Dominion’s continued campaign? Their cowardice was the very reason more colonies would fall and more colonists would die. If not for the fact that liberating Nasera would strip the Dominion of a vital industrial hub, Shafir would have left these sorry souls to their fate.

After another twenty minutes of wandering, the demeanor of the city shifted. Gone were the dark avenues with their dim lamps. Now, bright flood lights illuminated every inch of the wide boulevards. Grok raised his hand to shield his eyes, while Ayala Shafir pulled closer to her companion’s side, her dark hair falling over her face to block out the intense light.

Up ahead stood a massive fortified compound. Jem’Hadar soldiers ringed its outer wall, their rifles at the ready, their eyes darting back and forth searching for threats. They swiftly narrowed in on the Ferengi and his companion, and three soldiers broke from their posts to advance with rifles raised.

“This area is off limits to your kind,” the lead soldier barked as he came to a stop mere meters away.

“Apologies, apologies,” Grok said with an apologetic gesture, attempting to diffuse the situation. “My companion and I, we were just looking for a place to spend the night.” Then he winked at the Jem’Hadar.

The exanimate figure on his arm did not so much as look up, just some poor piece of trash picked up off the street by the gluttonous merchant. She had to play the part. It was the only way out that didn’t end with them dead in the street.

“Then you have come to the wrong place,” another soldier snarled. “This is a Dominion facility. There are no hotels here.” He used the muzzle of his rifle to pull back the hair of the companion to see the meek and timid face of a pitiful little girl. What the Ferengi planned to do with her, he didn’t care, but it wouldn’t happen down this block. This block was critical to their control over the populace.

“You and your, whatever she is,” the first soldier said as he looked the two over with disgust. “Go back the way you came.”

“If we could just pass this way.”

“You may not.”

“Okay, okay, we’ll just be on our way then,” Grok assured him. “Back the way we came.” The Jem’Hadar nodded, as the Ferengi had furnished the only acceptable answer.

The Ferengi yanked the girl around as he turned to make his exit. Now, his pace was quicker, almost dragging the girl along. That would be what they expected to see of him, a coward Ferengi retreating from the first sign of danger once his smooth talking had failed. But for the girl being dragged behind him, it also gave her a few extra moments to survey the control center.

The three Jem’Hadar watched them go, none the wiser to their real purpose.

When the odd couple was a good three or four blocks away from the compound, Grok finally loosened his grip on Chief Shafir, and she shrunk back onto his arm.

“We should have shot them dead,” he said under his breath.

“And then a dozen other rifles would have gunned us down where we stood,” she reminded him.

“You’re no fun Ayala.”

“One hundred meter long block, Jem’Hadar positioned equidistant at a spread of ten meters a piece,” the Chief rattled off. “With a three meter high wall ringing a twenty meter high compound at a five meter buffer.”

“And a half dozen visible cameras, with at least two rifles on the roof,” Grok added.

The Chief nodded lightly.

“Yeah, we’re not going to shoot our way in.”

“Nope.”

Almost an hour later, the two made it back to the safe house. The night was late, and most of the team were catching some shuteye. But Commander Lewis was still up, keeping watch for the night shift. He would not sleep as long as members of his team were unaccounted for.

“How’d it go?” Lewis asked once the pair was safely back inside.

“A direct assault is out of the question,” reported Chief Shafir, straightening up and coming back to life. “At least four dozen guards outside, solid duranium outer wall, multiple sniper teams, cameras, flood lights. They got that place buttoned up tight.”

“Admiral, we need to talk!” 

The JAG prosecutor barreled onto the bridge, his veins pulsing, his eyes blood red, his entire being seething over what he had just learned. The bridge was otherwise silent. The outburst drew the attention of all present.

“Now!”

Fleet Admiral Reyes turned slowly. “Excuse me Commander?” she asked in a calm and measured tone. Only the way in which she accented his rank gave any indication that he’d elicited a rise out of her.

“Your Ready Room. Now!” he demanded with an aggression completely unbecoming of a Starfleet officer addressing a superior, let alone one holding the rank of Fleet Admiral.

Captain Devreux, who’d been deep in conversation with ops and tactical about a variance in the secondary hull’s regenerative shield matrix, pulled himself away and took a step towards the new arrival. Devreux was no fighter, nor a subscriber to rigid discipline, he looked ready for a fight. He wasn’t going to let that offense slide. Who the hell did Commander Drake think he was to address Allison Reyes that way?

Reyes, for her part, didn’t fret. She’d picked Robert Drake for the USS Polaris. After what had happened a few years ago, she needed a sharp-witted JAG who would not be afraid to take on officers of any rank. In this case, that meant even her. The Commander’s occasional outbursts were a small price to pay for his incorruptible zeal. And so, she simply gestured for him to follow her into her Ready Room.

As soon as the Ready Room door was shut, Commander Drake laid straight into Reyes: “Admiral, are you aware that, in taking us to Nasera, you are executing an illegal order?”

Reyes sat down at her desk calmly, clasped her hands, and waited for him to elaborate.

“It is the position of those at Starfleet Command that the Deneb Sector is the AOR of Task Group 514, and that the TG 514 CO is the Combatant Commander for the Breen border skirmish. Unless you are operating under his authority, this mission you’re taking us on is off the reservation Admiral,” Commander Drake explained. “These regulations exist to ensure an ordered battlefield, and they must be adhered to.”

Admiral Reyes could have countered with a battle of the pips or a finessed argument about the purview of the Fourth Fleet or a personal plea for him to trust her, but she chose a different tact: “We are not conducting an operation related to the Breen Confederacy. We are responding to hostile acts committed by the Dominion, a multi-quadrant enemy force that, to the best of my knowledge, Starfleet has not yet acknowledged, let alone appointed a Unified Commander for. And, if one were to be appointed, it would be Fleet Admiral Ramar due to the galaxy-wide mandate of the Fourth Fleet.”

“That’s a load of rubbish, and you and Fourth Fleet Command both know it,” Drake insisted, his tone remarkably accusatory. “The Breen simply refurbished old seventies era Dominion ships for their continued sorties against our border. This whole Dominion-is-back thing is just some fantasy Ramar and Beckett cooked up to justify their ambitions. Maybe you’re just too blind to see it due to some unaddressed PTSD you have from the Dominion War, or maybe it’s because you have your own personal motivation attached to this fantasy.” Listening to him talk, it didn’t sound like the Commander Drake that Allison Reyes knew. Drake was an aggressive prosecutor, but he was always fact-driven. He did not blindly suppose, and in fact, he’d accused many security and intelligence officers of letting such suppositions taint their investigations.

“Are you sure the Dominion is nonsense?” Reyes asked pointedly, chucking a PADD across the table at the JAG Officer. “Why don’t you get your head out of HQ’s ass for a moment and watch this. It’s a video, fresh from our colony Izar, of Jem’Hadar soldiers mass executing twenty teenagers.”

Drake looked down at the PADD on the desk.

“Pick it up Commander. It cost two good officers their lives.”

Hesitantly, Commander Drake picked up the PADD and hit play. He stood there shocked, not because of the brutality against children – he’d seen plenty of that over his prosecutorial career – but rather by the dissonance between what he had been told by senior officials and what he saw in front of him. The video showed the Jem’Hadar, not Breen, on the ground of a Federation colony killing Federation citizens.

“Admiral, has Starfleet Command seen this video?”

“I would certainly think so.”

“Then why have they said nothing?”

“I don’t know Commander,” Admiral Reyes sighed. She’d asked herself this question a hundred times since the intel started flowing in six days ago. “I think that might be more your area of expertise than mine, somewhere between gross negligence and dereliction of duty?”

Commander Drake’s mind was racing. The calls he’d received were very clear on the position of Starfleet Command: Fleet Admiral Ramar was outside his authority; this was a simple Breen issue under the purview of TG514; and he, as a senior JAG official aboard a flagship, had an obligation to act. Maybe those magistrates and admirals were just oblivious to this one video? Or maybe it was a forgery?

“Here, try this one,” Admiral Reyes said, sliding another PADD across the table. “Or this one… or this one… or maybe this one,” she continued as she slide three more PADDs across the table, so aggressively that one slid right off the table and hit the floor. “We can do this all day if you’d like. I’ve got dozens here, each a verified intelligence report from a different operative in a different system. They paint a very clear picture of the situation.”

It was now the JAG’s turn to stand there silently.

“You’ve known me for years Robert,” Reyes said as her tone softened and her appeal became personal. “You think, after all this time, I would suddenly violate the oath I swore to uphold?” She’d certainly skirt the regs when it was necessary, but conspire with other admirals on a power play? That accusation had particularly stung. He should have known her better than that by this point. “The Dominion is back, and we’re going to stop them.”

“Alright Admiral, suppose I accept your thesis. Then explain to me then where Lewis and his goons have gone? I hear they linked up with mercenaries for a dirty op.”

“I think you mean Sebold Logistics, a private logistics company that holds active contracts with Starfleet Intelligence and the Corps of Engineers,” Reyes corrected. “They were just so eager for our scheduled shore leave on Nasera II that they ran ahead, taking a bit of a pleasure cruise on a Ferengi trawler.” Drake glared at her. “Unless you’re wrong about this Dominion thing, in which case, they’re clearing a path for us so your pompous ass doesn’t wind up dead when they carve us stem to stern.”

Commander Drake wondered why these Starfleet officers were so damn fatalistic.

“Now get the hell out of my office,” she ordered, pointing at the door. “I don’t want to hear one more peep about this from you until this crisis is over. At that point, you’re free to file whatever complaint you’d like about me. Is that understood, Commander Drake?”

“Yes ma’am.”

The JAG officer turned and stormed out of the room. 

“What was that all about?” Captain Devreux asked as he stepped into the Admiral’s Ready Room to check on her. “Is he nervous, like the rest of us, about the battle ahead?”

Admiral Reyes laughed. “You think Commander Drake so much as conceptualizes what is coming?  No, he just came up to badger me on the legality of our orders.”

“Seriously? That’s what he was all worked up over?”

“That’s what he’s always worked up over,” Reyes laughed. “We need men like him though. He’s a big part of how we stopped Banda and Morgan back in ‘99.”

Devreux nodded. They’d been out on the rim of known space together when Reyes had abruptly turned the USS Khonsu around to help put a stop to a coup attempt within Starfleet. Commander Drake had been integral in that success, and he’s been a part of their lives ever since. Still, he could never quite figure out man’s schtick. “Is he going to cause us any more problems on this mission?”

“No, although he may have revealed a new one,” Reyes replied somberly. “Don’t you find it odd how insistent Starfleet Command has been that nothing of notice is happening in Deneb? And the sheer amount of propaganda to that effect that is flooding the Federation News Network? It may be more than just ignorance.”

Devreux kinked his eyebrow for elaboration.

“Drake didn’t march up here on his own this morning,” Admiral Reyes explained. “We’ve been on this heading for six days. Why would he just get worked up now? Someone must have given him a push to get him to come up here today and try to stop us. I’d certainly like to know why.”

“I don’t know Allison,” cautioned Devreux. “That all seems like a bit of a stretch. You sure you’re not just seeing ghosts?”

She shrugged. Maybe, or maybe not.

It was the slightest of missteps, a tricorder out at the wrong time, just trying to get a quick scan of a comms relay. But it was all it took. The Jem’Hadar descended like a swarm of locusts on a fresh corpse. Petty Officer Jason Atwood and Chief Petty Officer Ayala Shafir ran. They ran, and ran, and ran, plowing over bystanders milling about in the street. But the Jem’Hadar were swift, and they just kept coming. Somewhere in the mad dash, Jason Atwood and Ayala Shafir got separated. Apart and alone, they each just kept on running.

Ayala rounded a corner, momentarily losing her pursuers. She used the opportunity to dive into a rundown tailor’s shop. Crouching beneath a set of gowns, she watched the boots of the Jem’Hadar soldiers streak by. But then she heard the chime of the door as one of the hunters stepped into the dimly lit shop.

“How can I help you?” asked a dusty old seamstress emerging from the back.

“Is there anyone here with you?” demanded the Jem’Hadar.

From where Ayala was crouched, she was in the direct line of sight of the shopkeeper. The two made fleeting eye contact. Ayala shook her head, her eyes full of desperation, begging the old woman to not reveal her.

“No, not a soul,” the seamstress assured the Jem’Hadar confidently. “Since you and your kind came to town, I hardly see anyone anymore.” While the first bit was false, the second bit was absolutely true. The shop used to be a bustling hub of activity, and the old lady was renowned for her skills at the loom. From factory workers needing a patch job to city bureaucrats seeking a perfect fit, she’d serviced them all. But then the Dominion came and business dried up.

The soldier took a step forward to check for himself. The importance of diligence was imprinted on him the first days of his training. The old lady just stood there though, unwavering in her conviction, even though she knew that if the petite girl was discovered, they’d both pay the price. But her humanity didn’t let her just give over the poor soul hiding behind the gowns.

The soldier’s advance was interrupted as weapon fire rang out somewhere on the street beyond. He stopped in his tracks, raised his rifle, and stormed out of the shop. She was safe, at least for now, courtesy of the courage of this little old lady.

“Thank you,” Ayala whispered.

“Don’t mention it,” the woman replied, gesturing for her to come. “Why don’t you join me in the back until things calm down? Something has definitely got those savages all worked up.”

As the two sat in the back passing time, the aged seamstress shared beautiful memories of life on Nasera before the Dominion came, and the nightmare that had subsumed the city ever since, the searches, the beatings, and the public executions. 

While Ayala tried to listen empathetically, her mind hung on the fate of Petty Officer Atwood. The weapon fire she’d heard, it had the characteristic wisp of a phaser, not a polaron disruptor. That was a plus, but if it had gotten to the point where he had to blow his cover and start shooting, there was nothing good that could come of it. There were simply too many Jem’Hadar for the Texan sport shooter to blast his way out of this mess.

Then she heard the pounding of boots. Many, many boots. Ayala and her new friend peaked out to see dozens of Jem’Hadar marching in formation, a lone man dragged through the street behind them. Jason Atwood. His boots scraped across the concrete. His body was limp.

A Jem’Hadar First walked at the front, shouting loudly enough everyone would hear: “You live to serve the Dominion, and should you not serve, you shall no longer live. Tonight, this puny specimen shall serve one last time, as an example. The penalty for disobedience is death.”

And then the company of Jem’Hadar were gone, continuing to march as the First shouted his proclamation of the impending execution to all who would hear.

Ayala’s thoughts were frantic. You couldn’t execute a dead man. That meant Jason was still alive, albeit incapacitated. There was a chance to save him. She needed to get back to the others and come up with a plan to save him.

“Is he a friend of yours?” the woman asked, as if sensing Ayala’s inner turmoil.

“No,” Ayala replied flatly, her expression giving nothing away. “Never met him before. I have no idea why they were chasing me. It all happened so fast. They started running at me, so I just started running.” She started shaking as if overwhelmed with the ordeal she’d experienced. It was all a feint though. She might have just been saved by that woman, but she’d still take no risks. Especially not now. The Dominion had spies everywhere.

“It’s okay honey,” the old woman said, placing a consoling hand on her back. “They’re savages. I would run too if they were chasing me.”

Ayala looked up with a tear running down her cheek. “What are they going to do to him?”

“Oh, you don’t know?”

“No, I’m from the outer villages. I just came in today to pick up some supplies we don’t have on the farm,” Ayala explained, using a cover that would elicit more intel. “What a day to pick, huh?”

“Well, whenever they catch a supposed traitor, they gather us in the central square after work so we can watch the public execution,” the woman explained with deep sadness in her eyes. “They literally troll the streets to make sure we all come out and watch. The Vorta comes out, says a few words, and then they…” Her voice trailed off. Now it was her time for tears. A couple trickled down her face. “It happens what feels like every other day nowadays. On Monday, it was three kids who couldn’t have been a day over thirteen.”

“What did they do?”

“I don’t know. Probably just typical childhood mischief. Nobody would dare risk actually doing something.”

Ayala could feel the rage building inside herself. She knew the Jem’Hadar were animals, but now she was face-to-face with how rabid they truly could be. When this mission was over, these monsters had better be dead at her feet. But first, they had to find a way to save Jason.

“I need to go.”

“At least take a change of clothes,” the seamstress offered, handing her a drab jumpsuit. Ayala appreciated the woman’s choice. It was distinctly different from the outfit she was currently wearing. She changed quickly, and then her new friend gave her a hair tie to put her hair up. Ayala looked completely different from when she’d entered. How did an elderly dressmaker have such instincts? Was this how living under an occupation changed you?

Ayala’s savior watched her go with a final word of caution: “Just be careful honey, and keep your head low.”

Chief Shafir made her way out of the shop. It was hard to not just run straight back, but she knew better than that. If she looked rushed or like she had greater purpose, she’d be caught, and then Atwood would be dead for certain. And so, against her inner urgings, she took her time, moving slowly and without purpose, even stopping for a pizza and a liter of cola. She was just another forgotten soul under the yoke of the Dominion.

When she stepped back into the safehouse, the first words came from Grok: “Oh goodie, you brought us a pizza!”

Dr. Hall, who’d been on door duty, saw the shadow on her face at once.

“What happened Ayala?” 

“They… they got him.”

The Ferengi’s grin disappeared, and Commander Lewis emerged from the bedroom. 

“Atwood?” Lewis asked with a grave look on his face.

Shafir could only nod.

“What happened?”

“He… I… the Jem’Hadar… they… spotted the tricorder… we… we ran… got split up. I got lucky. He… he didn’t. They’ve got him… he’s alive, but they’re… they’re going to execute him this evening… in… in the central square,” Shafir struggled to explain, then bowed her head in defeat. “Jake, I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry. There was nothing I could do.” Everyone on the team was now looking at her. She slid to the floor, curling up in a ball, breaking down in tears, and, as opposed to earlier in the shop, this time her emotions were real.

She wasn’t even crying just because of Atwood. She was also crying because she’d failed her mentor. Jake Lewis had found her when she was at her worst, and he gave her a fresh lease on life. She’d followed him from their private enterprise back into Starfleet. He was like the father she never had. But today, she’d let him down. She’d broken his number one rule: never leave a man behind. She was here, and Jason Atwood was not. Jake Lewis would have died alongside Jason Atwood before leaving him behind. She hadn’t.

“Ayala, take a breath. If you say there was nothing you could do, the best you could do is get back here alive with the information we need to get him back,” Commander Lewis assured her. “It’s his one chance.”

Ayala Shafir heard his words, but she couldn’t look up. Grok sat down next to her and held her hand.

Commander Lewis turned around to address the team. “Saddle up folks. We’re going down to the square to get our man back.” The determination showed through every inch of his being as he grabbed his sidearm.

Until now, the covert team had not dared go out all at once. The chance of getting caught all together was not worth taking, since it would mean an end to the mission. But now the Dominion had one of their own, and that changed everything. The covert team descended on the town square for Petty Officer Atwood’s scheduled execution. The only person they left behind was Chief Petty Officer Shafir. Commander Lewis had concluded she was too compromised by her emotions to perform at the moment.

While their zeal drove the team to action, the covert operators remained disciplined with due regard for their dangerous reality. Moving solo or in pairs to avoid attention, they all eventually reached the square. Commander Lewis could hear them as they checked in, courtesy of a microscopic earpiece embedded deep in the tympanic cavity, matched with a subcutaneous voice receiver inserted beneath the larynx. They were both completely invisible to bystanders but gave the team a way to communicate with each other.

Dr. Lisa Hall leaned up against a pillar by the main entrance to the square. Nam Jae-Sun, Jace Morgan, Kora Tal and Ryssehl mixed into the crowd gathered by the main stage. Grok was splayed out at a corner cafe, sipping on an ‘85 Ferenginar like he’d come to watch the spectacle, with Brock Jordan and Elyssia Rel sitting nearby. And T’Aer was doing T’Aer things.

The crowd was thick. Mixed among the dense throng, none of the covert operators drew any attention. As Commander Lewis weaved his way towards the front of the crowd, he looked up at the tall buildings around the square. Up there somewhere, completely invisible to even his observant eyes, he knew T’Aer sat sighted in, their guardian on overwatch.

“Dominion convoy, four troop carriers, approaching from the east,” T’Aer reported.

Commander Lewis processed the information without a change in demeanor. After all, a bystander in the square wouldn’t have the voice of a Vulcan sharpshooter in his ear. Glancing to his left, he could see Kora Tal and Jace Morgan near the front of the crowd, and Nam Jae-Sun was a bit further back covering them discreetly. He couldn’t see Ryssehl anymore, but the demo man was probably around the back of the stage in case there was an opportunity to make something go boom. His team looked relaxed, sticking to their training, even under the stress of their situation that one of their team was scheduled to be executed.

“Hall, you have incoming,” T’Aer warned.

Four massive armored vehicles barreled into the square, almost running over a dozen people caught by surprise. Standing off to the side, Dr. Hall was not among them, but she used the chaos of scrambling bodies as an opportunity. With a flick of her wrist, a barrel concealed within the folds of her loose sweater spit out four silent projectiles. Each carried a microscopic transmitter, and all four hit their mark. Anywhere the vehicles went, the team would now know.

The vehicles came to a stop near the stage. Dozens of Jem’Hadar filed out, rifles at the ready, forming a perimeter around the stage. Lewis had hoped it would just be a small firing squad, but this was nearly a full company of lifelong, highly trained killers. Far too many for the team to recklessly blast their way through.

The guards secured the perimeter around the stage, and then a Vorta stepped out and walked up onto the stage. Standing over them, he looked out at the feeble citizens of Nasera, his nose scrunched at the stench of their inferiority. 

Jem’Hadar had been everywhere the last four days, but this was the first time the team had seen a Vorta. It indicated the importance of these executions. They were clearly a key part of the Dominion’s strategy.

“That’s a lot of guards,” Lieutenant Commander Jordan remarked over the earpiece. “What’s the plan?”

“What about if we get Grok a mic and have him do some karaoke?” Ryssehl asked from his concealed location behind the stage.

“I’m game,” replied the Ferengi enthusiastically under his breath between sips of the ‘85 Ferenginar. It was a good year for the wine, even if it had been the same year the FCA liquidated him.

“Get serious folks,” begged Jordan. Their teammate was scheduled to get executed, and yet still they bantered. It was truly unbelievable.

“Oh, I’m being completely serious,” replied Ryssehl deviously, and he mostly meant it. They had once used the lunatic Ferengi’s horrible pitch at a Rigelian bar to distract a Klingon captain’s guards while they abducted him. How was this really all that different? Distract the Jem’Hadar and save their man. No, that wouldn’t work. The numbers and the layout were far different here. But at least it gave the Andorian a chuckle.

“If this were an assassination, it would be trivial,” observed T’Aer from high above, her scope centered on the Vorta. It would be so easy to pull the trigger. “But a rescue, I’m not seeing how this is going to work Jake.”

Commander Lewis disregarded the voices in his ear. There had to be a way. He could feel his concealed sidearm against the small of his back, but he had no idea how to use it. The conditions just weren’t right. All he could hope was an opportunity presented itself. Otherwise, this would be a sorry affair, the team watching powerless as one of their own was executed right in front of them.

The Vorta raised his hands to quiet the massive crowd that had gathered. 

“The Founders are compassionate masters,” he began with a deceptively gentle tone. “All they ask in return for their compassion is your service. Each time I come before you, I remind you that service is life. But the opposite is also true. If you do not serve, then you shall not live.” He said it with the dark reverence and conviction of a true believer.

The words should have been shocking, but what shocked Commander Lewis was the complete lack of shock from the crowd. They stood there reactionless, desensitized to the words, resigned to their reality. They’d become numb to this. They would offer the covert ops team no help.

The doors of the lead troop carrier opened again, and two Jem’Hadar dragged out a battered and brutalized figure, that of Petty Officer Jason Atwood. Carrying him by the shoulders, the Jem’Hadar dragged him onto the stage. By the way his legs dangled, it appeared they’d both been broken, or he’d been otherwise injured to the point he had no ambulatory function. That presented a serious problem for any rescue attempt. They couldn’t just carry him across the city with the Jem’Hadar giving chase, and it would take time for Lieutenant Kora, their medic, to get him straightened out enough to flee under his own power.

Petty Officer Atwood was conscious though, as opposed to last time Shafir had seen him. That just meant he could now feel pain and fear. The Vorta had probably arranged a good deal of both to coax information out of him. For a moment, Commander Lewis wondered if they’d managed to break his proud Texan resolve, and if so, how much might he have told them? Was the safehouse still safe? Was the mission compromised?

The Jem’Hadar dumped Jason Atwood on the stage at the feet of the Vorta. While he couldn’t stand, the man lifted his chest off the ground, stuck his chin up in the air, and directed a defiant glare towards the Vorta. Lewis breathed a sigh of relief. That was not the stare of a man that had given up. He’d fight to escape if they could create the right conditions.

“Any ideas folks?” Lewis asked.

For once, the line was silent. No one had any ideas, not even Grok or Ryssehl. This whole setup stank. It was too exposed, with too many troops present, no good escape routes, and no support. In fact, even if they pulled something off, they’d probably just get turned in by some terrified colonist who’d heard the Vorta’s speech and didn’t want to be next.

“This man is a Starflet officer!” shouted the Vorta, pointing down at the broken man.

A mix of shock and nervousness spread through the crowd as they glanced around at each other. This was a dangerous moment to slip your cover, standing in front of dozens of Jem’Hadar and hundreds of scared colonists who now knew your operation existed, but none of the covert operators gave even the slightest hint of a reaction.

“He wouldn’t admit to it, no matter how forcefully we asked, but we found his tricorder and his phaser,” the Vorta continued as he pulled a tricorder and a phaser out to show the audience.

There was one piece of good news at least, thought Commander Lewis. A man that hadn’t even given his captors the satisfaction of a confession for a fact they could prove would not have given up the safehouse or the operation. It was honestly a major tactical error by the Vorta to disclose that. Never tell your opponent what you know. Their pride and overconfidence had made them careless.

Commander Lewis felt for Jason Atwood in what he’d gone through too. The Commander had once been tortured by the Jem’Hadar. He knew what it felt like when you got to that point where even death seemed more appealing than what you were enduring. He’d held strong through that pain then, and he was glad that it seemed Atwood had managed to as well.

A group of Jem’Hadar suddenly charged into the crowd. One of them almost knocked over the Bajoran doctor, Kora Tal, as he grabbed the young woman standing next to her. In total, the Jem’Hadar dragged six colonists onto the stage.

The Vorta looked down at the bruised figure of Jason Atwood, shouting loudly so all could hear: “If you admit you are Starfleet, I let one of these people go. And for each co-conspirator you give up, I will let another one go.”

Atwood spat at the Vorta’s feet: “Go to hell.”

Instantly, the Jem’Hadar shot one of the colonists dead.

Commander Lewis didn’t flinch. Petty Officer Atwood had done exactly what he should have. Maintain your cover for the greater purpose of the mission. Lewis did find the crumpling body of the colonist curious though. Typically, Jem’Hadar would just vaporize you. The low energy setting was telling. The purpose of this event was psychological warfare.

“In fact,” the Vorta said, turning to address the masses. “If any of you turn over a Starfleet officer, I will let one of these fine folks go. You don’t have to die for them. You are good supplicants of our Founders.”

The crowd looked around, almost as if hoping a red, teal or yellow shirt might magically materialize before them. Commander Lewis could sense the guilt his people felt. None of them wanted to watch innocent people die. That wasn’t why they joined the Hazard Team. He hoped they would stick to their training though, just as Jason Atwood had. This was bigger than any one, or six, people.

A single person stepped forward from the crowd.

“I am a Starfleet officer.”

Lewis felt his stomach sink. He didn’t want to look. Who’d given themselves up? In most circumstances, it would be the noble choice, but not this time. Not at the expense of the mission.

Thankfully, when he turned, he saw a haggard old man with a limp and half his teeth stepping forward. Definitely not a Starfleet officer, but rather just an elderly gentleman at the end of his journey who was willing to trade the last few years of his life for the many of another. Lewis could respect that. If he made it to old age, he’d willingly make the same trade.

“I will exchange my life for the life of one of them,” the venerable volunteer continued.

Instantly, a Jem’Hadar soldier shot him where he stood. The life vanished from his tired eyes, and the old man crumpled to the ground right in front of the crowd.

The Vorta walked over to one of the colonists on the stage. 

“We are a merciful Dominion, and we keep our word. You, young lady, you may go,” he said with a perverse smile as he set the young woman free. She fled from the stage and scurried into the crowd. There were still four more colonists, plus Jason Atwood, up there on the stage.

The Vorta turned towards the crowd to address them again.

“You see it, don’t you? An old man has the courage to step forward and trade his life to save another. But this man,” he said, pointing at Jason Atwood, the purpose of his sadistic stratagem now on full display, “a Starfleet officer, he would rather let you die than give up his friends.” 

The Vorta lowered his face to eye level with Petty Officer Atwood and whispered: “This is on you.” 

And the Jem’Hadar opened fire, killing the four remaining colonists on the stage.

Petty Officer Jason Atwood’s arms gave out. He slumped to the surface of the stage. He knew the mission was greater than him, and greater than the lives of the innocent people just slaughtered because of him, but the guilt was just too much to hold himself up any longer.

As Jason Atwood’s head rested on the cold concrete, he looked out at the crowd. There among them, he spotted his boss and mentor, the guy who’d given him a chance when no one else would. For just a moment, they locked eyes.

“I will not break,” said Jason Atwood, struggling to get the words out.

“Yes, you will,” the Vorta laughed flippantly.

The Jem’Hadar First opened fire.

Jason Atwood was dead.

The air went out of Commander Lewis’ lungs. He had just watched a member of his team die right in front of him, and he had done nothing. There was nothing he could have done. The conditions weren’t right. The mission had to go on, or orders of magnitude more would die. He kept telling himself those things over and over, but it was hard, even for the seasoned veteran, to believe it. All around him, he could feel the collective despair of his team juxtaposed with the numb ambivalence of the crowd. 

It wasn’t the voice of Ryssehl, or T’Aer, or Brock Gordon that pulled him back. They too had no words. Even Grok had nothing to say. Instead, it was the soft voice of a young Trill Ensign, only a year out of the Academy, channeling the lives her symbiont had lived before her own: “This mission is greater than any one of us. Jason knew that. There will be time to grieve later. For now, we remember our training, and we depart as we came, in one’s and two’s, carrying on as though this was just a regular meaningless occurrence under the yoke of the Dominion.”

Elyssia Rel had found the words the team needed in their moment of greatest need. She brought them back to the here and now. Commander Lewis breathed a sigh of relief that the flight controller had the clarity of mind when no one else did. And with that, everyone found a way to hold back their emotions, maintain their cover, and return to the safehouse. Except Dr. Hall.

Death presented an opportunity. It made people weak. It caused them to drop their defenses. With six lifeless bodies in the square, and only one a colleague, that meant five with grieving friends and family to seize upon. While her surviving colleagues retreated to nurse their grief and guilt, Dr. Lisa Hall stayed behind. She wouldn’t let this opportunity slip by on account of a dead man. They’d all be dead eventually anyways.

The Vorta and the Jem’Hadar departed swiftly. She had to give it to them. It was as impressive a psyop as any she could have devised. If there were Starfleet officers on the ground, who would help them after today? But the one thing they didn’t anticipate was a Starfleet officer as sick and twisted as them. She would paint the masterpiece of their demise over the canvas they’d laid before her.

Dr. Hall surveyed the dispersing crowd. All around her, she saw the typical fear and panic that followed an indiscriminate massacre, but that was mundane and uninteresting. What she was looking for was that sort of debilitating grief and despair that could only come from the heartache of losing a loved one.

A mother and a daughter lay across the body of a middle aged man, crying uncontrollably. They weren’t helpful since a surviving parent was typically risk averse on account of being solely responsible for the child now. There was also an elderly lady crouched over the old man who had traded his life to save another. Good guy, for sure, but his widow wouldn’t be particularly useful since she’d probably just spend the remainder of her days waiting to join him beyond the grave.

Finally, the conniving psychologist spotted what she was looking for. By the stage, a well-built man in his early twenties stared down at the body of a dead girl at his feet. She wore a ring, and he did not, but the fountain of tears flowing down his cheeks and the emotion emanating from his being meant there was deep love there. This was either a brother or a fiance, and either suited Dr. Hall’s purposes just fine.

She let down her hair, as it made her look younger. She took off her sweater, as curves could never hurt. She loosened her stance and softened her expression, as her usual stiff posture made men wary. Then she made her way over towards the grieving man and his fallen love.

Dr. Hall slowly approached, looking distracted, her attention appearing elsewhere, as she carelessly bumped into him. The grief-stricken young man lost his balance, almost falling over the corpse of his dearly beloved. Hall extended her hand to steady him.

“Oops, my bad,” she began to say, and then she feigned terror at seeing a dead girl on the pavement before them. “Oh my god… was she your?” The psychological combatant masterfully balanced the shock and compassion in her tone.

“Yes,” the man started to say, tears welling as he struggled for words. Lisa Hall put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “She was my everything, the love of my life. We were going to get married, but then the Dominion came.” He looked at the now-deserted stage where the nightmare had just unfolded. “Before that, I was saving money so we could move to the countryside, buy a farm, start a family…” His voice trailed off.

“I can’t even imagine,” Hall offered gently. It was true, she couldn’t imagine, although the hard part for her to comprehend was how one could fall for such a fairytale. But she didn’t say that. Instead, she channeled all the warmth and compassion she could muster as she gave him a hug and held him. It was all part of the act.

He cried, and cried, and cried. Every now and then, he’d get it together enough to say something about the girl, and Dr. Hall would offer a sweet platitude with carefully constructed undertones meant to send him right back into another bout of tears.

Slowly, the crowd around them vacated the square, until it was just the two of them left, plus the dead girl and the fallen body of Petty Officer Jason Atwood. She didn’t even risk her colleague’s corpse a fleeting stare in case they were covertly watching. Instead, she focused on the fiance.

In a moment when the young man was between bouts of tears, Dr. Hall offered: “We really shouldn’t be out here. They might come back. Can I help you move her somewhere that we can give her the respect she deserves?” It was more that Petty Officer Jason Atwood would get. As much as it sucked to abandon his body, they couldn’t risk bringing it from the square. It would tell the Dominion he mattered to someone, that he wasn’t just flying solo. Their guard would already be up after discovering him.

Another bout of tears started to come on, but then logic cut through the man’s sorrow: “Yes, we should do that. I can’t leave her out here for… for those animals.” There was a mix of despair and anger in his eyes. Hall was pleased. It was how she wanted him to feel.

“Is there somewhere safe we can take her?”

“Her dad’s place is nearby,” he shared. “Just over on Malachite street.” Hall had no idea where that was, but a dad and a boyfriend? Wonderful.

“Here, I’ll help you with her.” She reached down and, with all the grace and gentleness she could muster, she helped the young man lift his dead fiance. Together, they made their way through the streets, stepping through long shadows cast by towering buildings in the waning evening light.

As darkness settled in, they reached what was presumably the father’s home. They knocked, and a man answered.

First he saw his daughter’s fiance and a strange woman he didn’t know. “Evenin…,” he began before his eyes fell upon the lifeless corpse of his daughter. “What the… John, what…” he stammered, and then he saw the polaron burn on her chest. “Those savages! Those fucking savages!” Rage filled his eyes, and his fists clenched. “What did they do to her?”

“Can we come in, sir?” Hall interjected. “Before more arrive.” She gave a meek and timid look, letting a shadow of fear wash across her face.

“Yes, yes of course,” the dad agreed, stepping aside for them to pass.

Together, Dr. Hall and the fiance, now identified as John, carried the girl into the living room. Dr. Hall helped him set her dead body on the couch. She liked the couch because it would keep her prominently featured in front of these two men. That physical presence would hopefully accelerate them through the typical denial stage of the grieving process.

Behind them, the dad barely shut the door before he started weeping. “What happened John?”

“Mike, I’m sorry. It all happened in an instant. The Jem’Hadar stormed in and grabbed her. They were just so big, I couldn’t stop them…”

“Why… why my sweet baby girl?”

John was too busy crying to provide an answer, but Dr. Hall was there to volunteer one: “They said they caught some Starfleet guy. They swarmed the crowd and grabbed people indiscriminately. Your daughter was one of them. It was some sadistic, twisted bullshit.” Her eyes looked ghostly at the terror they had just witnessed. “I’m so sorry sir.” 

Dr. Hall bowed her head in remorse. It wasn’t feigned either. It came from the very real emotion she felt as she stood there idly, watching as they murdered Petty Officer Atwood. At least he’d chosen this path though. This girl had not. She’d literally just been there. That was regrettable. But Dr. Hall pushed those thoughts from her head swiftly, as she had a job to do, an opportunity to seize upon. Jason Atwood’s death didn’t have to be in vain if she made something of the aftermath.

“I can’t…” the father stammered. Then he suddenly seemed to realize he didn’t even know the name of this woman who’d helped bring his baby girl home. “I’m sorry. In all of this, I’m afraid I didn’t introduce myself. I’m Mike. Thank you for helping bring my sweet little angel home.” He extended his burly hand.

“I’m Lisa,” Dr. Hall replied, extending her own. His shake was strong, and she kept hers gentle. This was a man who knew the toils of hard labor.

“How did you know my little girl?”

“I didn’t,” Dr. Hall admitted. “Not until tonight.” She let a tear fall down her cheek, a technique she’d mastered over the years. “I saw what happened, and I saw John standing there alone with her. I couldn’t just leave them like that. Especially not with the Jem’Hadar all around.”

“Well, you have a good soul, miss Lisa,” Mike offered, totally unaware that she had no soul whatsoever and that he was just a pawn to her.

For a long while, the two men sat there struggling to process the reality that lay on the couch in front of them. Dr. Hall listened patiently. You couldn’t rush these things. As they grieved, she learned that the girl’s name was Angelica, that she was Mike’s only child, that Mike had lost his wife many years ago, and that Mike considered Angelica his everything. This was a sentiment he shared with young John, the suitor that had swept little Angelica off her feet. Mike and John had found a common bond in their love for Angelica, and Mike considered John his son-in-law even though the Dominion invasion had prevented them from going through with their wedding. 

Over time, their denial and sorrow began to turn to anger and despair. It was the natural progression of grief, and, as minutes turned to hours, Dr. Hall only had to give the most subtle of nudges to get them there.

“I hate them,” Mike admitted as he walked over to a cabinet and pulled out a bottle of Romulan ale. “With every drop of my being.” He poured each of them an overly generous glass and took a sip. “Actually, I hated them before they took my sweet Angelica. Now I want revenge.”

Dr. Hall could see the rage building in his eyes.

“Mike, I told you. I still see that wretched Vorta every day,” John said.

“You what?” asked Dr. Hall, stopping midway through a sip of her drink, caught completely off guard by the remark. She had injected herself into their grief hoping to collect some mild intelligence or take advantage of a feeling of helplessness to convert them into agitators. But if this kid had a connection to the Vorta, that was a whole different sort of opportunity.

“I used to be a groundskeeper for the governor’s mansion,” explained John. “But since the Dominion descended on us, that mansion has become the home of the Vorta, the creature that spoke to us from the stage, the one that commands all the Jem’Hadar, the one that killed Angelica.” In the way he uttered those last few words, there was no more denial. Only anger. “I see that demon every day.”

“John, I told you before, there’s nothing we can do. There’s nothing any of us can do.”

“But what do we have left to lose?” His youth left him less encumbered by his frontal lobe.

Standing over the body of the girl they both loved, the two men who loved her locked eyes. And from there, Dr. Hall simply gave them the push they needed to take them to the inevitable conclusion, and to line the timing up for her purposes. She could not have been more happy with the outcome.

After hours spent preying on the emotions of father and fiance over their shared love for a senselessly murdered girl, Dr. Lisa Hall returned to the safehouse. The scene there was not all that different from the one she’d just left. All around their suite in the Trachyte Tavern, she saw broken soldiers and sailors, fighting with a mix of grief and guilt.

“We couldn’t even bring his body back,” cried Lieutenant Kora Tal in despair. “We left him there to rot on the pavement.” As a doctor who’d fought in the Bajoran resistance, she’d seen plenty of death, but typically, one still had a chance to pay respects to the departed. This time, they couldn’t even retrieve his body without giving away that the Starfleet officer meant something to them, and giving that away would be impossibly foolish. It would confirm what was at play.

“The tactical situation did not allow for a safe exfil,” pointed out T’Aer logically. She’d been further away from the scene than the others, situated atop one of the towering buildings on overwatch. Her Vulcan upbringing also gave her an emotional control the others lacked, and she did not know Petty Officer Atwood like the others. They’d only met a week ago when he came aboard the Lucre. The Hazard Team members, on the other hand, had spent the last two years training with him aboard the Polaris.

“Doesn’t make it any lessed fucked up,” Lieutenant Commander Brock Jordan said as he took another large gulp Rigelian ale he’d brought back to the room from downstairs. He glanced over at Commander Lewis. “Jake, you’ve said it so many times before. Never leave a man behind.”

“I know Brock, I know.” Commander Lewis looked down at the ground resentfully. He didn’t feel the same grief that some of the others felt. He’d seen too much death for that. But he did feel the guilt. You didn’t just leave a man behind. “And we’re going to live with that disgrace forever.”

“At least give us an opportunity to kill that piece of shit before this is all over,” Lieutenant Kora insisted with a burning fire in her veins. “And stick its body on a pike for all to see.”

“Even I will have a drink when that day comes,” T’Aer offered, drawing a few surprised looks.

Only then did Commander Lewis catch sight of Dr. Hall standing just inside the doorway. “Hall, where the hell have you been?”

The psychologist looked strangely out of place. Everyone else appeared to have aged years in a single night, frazzled and frayed by the trauma they’d endured, yet somehow she looked younger and more lively. Maybe it was the fact she’d let her hair down and changed her outfit. Lewis found that curious. Dr. Hall never wore her hair down unless there was a very specific purpose. Clearly she’d been out working while they sat here soaking in their misery.

“Let’s talk in the other room,” Dr. Hall said flatly, gesturing towards the suite’s bedroom. She had enough sensitivity to know that not everyone needed to hear what she had to say. Not right now at least. Straddled with despair, the children would probably get stuck on the heartlessness of her actions rather than recognize the opportunity she’d just created for them.

Commander Lewis nodded and followed her out of the living room, leaving the others to continue to try and process what had happened.

The bedroom was empty besides Ryssehl, who sat monitoring the cameras from the makeshift surveillance suite. Someone had to do it, even in moments like this. His presence didn’t bother either Hall either. He’d been through far more than the others, and he would pull beyond the emotion and stay constructive.

“The city square presented an interesting opportunity this evening.”

Lewis quirked his eyebrow, and Ryssehl looked over surprised. As much as both seasoned operators were fairly desensitized to death, that is not how either of them would have described the public execution of Petty Officer Atwood and five innocent Naserian colonists.

“Each of those killed in the square had friends and family that loved them. Love and grief are so easy to exploit, and I did exactly that,” Dr. Hall explained proudly, not caring whatsoever how despicable it sounded. “One of the dead was named Angelica, and they killed her today right in front of her fiance John. Blah blah blah, skipping some sappy sad details that don’t matter, eventually we found our way to the father’s place. John, and the dad Mike, they’re both beyond angry, and they now want to strike back at those who took their girl away from them.”

“I’m sure you didn’t help get them there whatsoever, huh?”

“Maybe a little,” Dr. Hall smiled maniacally. “They just needed a push to get to that point where they feel they have nothing left to lose and are ready to go for it.” Commander Lewis had to admit he felt pretty similar to Hall’s description of father and fiance, and he didn’t even have a twisted psychological warrior pushing him there. It was only logic and experience that had kept him from launching the team into a melee in the town square.

“Where are you going with this Hall?”

“A distraction Commander. We have three days before the Polaris arrives, and objectively, we have jack shit besides that friend Ryssehl made at the docks. We’re going to need some help.”

“How are these two going to help us?” asked Ryssehl. He could appreciate her sociopathy, the fact she’d just convinced two grieving men to go get themselves killed, but he still didn’t see how it helped them. “Any civil disobedience, the Jem’Hadar would just gun them both down. They wouldn’t even make a footnote in the story of this occupation.”

“Yes, if it was just the two of them, and it wasn’t in a strategically tactical location,” Hall agreed. “But you see, the kid works as a groundskeeper at the governor’s mansion, which, it turns out, is where the Vorta has taken up residence.”

Lewis rubbed his chin in thought, contemplating the new information.

“With just a little push, they came to the decision they’re going to round up their friends, many of whom are almost as angry as they are, and strike back. They’re going to storm the governor’s mansion with whatever sort of equipment they can get their hands on, and get revenge for Angelica,” Dr. Hall said with a smile. “In three days’ time, right around dusk.”

Putting to the side for a moment how unethical it was to use civilians this way, Lewis was impressed. Hall had lined it up perfect with when the Polaris was due to arrive.

“We look around, and we see a population submitted under the yoke of the Dominion,” Dr. Hall explained. “But it turns out the Dominion has got a powder keg beneath their feet. These are hardworking industrialists. They know hardship, and they have access to heavy equipment, and even a few weapons. I just had to be the spark to get them going.” There was a twinkle in her eye. The ethics never even crossed her mind.

“Where’d you find this one Jake?” interjected Ryssehl. “She makes T’Aer look like a dove.” 

T’Aer, their Vulcan sharpshooter, had more kills under her belt than the rest of them combined, but Lisa Hall had just manipulated a group of grieving men into charging willingly towards their deaths. For Starfleet officers that had chosen the path, it was one thing, but these were civilians. That was a different sort of evil. A few day laborers had not a chance in the world of capturing the Vorta, not against its well-trained and hypervigilant Jem’Hadar bodyguards, but it might draw some attention away from other strategic targets.

“I’ll take that as a complement,” Hall replied. She cared not that the father, the fiance, and their friends would likely all end up dead. Let them fight for their freedom. Freedom was a cause worth dying for. In her mind, they probably should have done it a good bit earlier too, like when the Dominion first arrived, rather than just surrendering as they had at the first sign of danger.

“I assume you didn’t tell them who we are?”

“Hell no,” Dr. Hall assured him. “Not after that brilliant psyop the Dominion just staged.”  The Dominion had done an excellent job with their act of psychological terror. If she had disclosed to the grieving men that there was a Starfleet team on the ground, or that she was part of it, they might have turned on her. Grief and fear were irrational that way. “I just molded their grief, desperation and desire for revenge together, and made it fit our timeline.”

“I like it,” Commander Lewis nodded, deep in thought. It was dirty, certainly not by the book, but he was never a by-the-book guy. He had no problem enlisting willing, albeit manipulated, citizens into helping them free their world. They lived here. They might as well be part of the solution, even if they didn’t fully understand what was going to happen to them. “Well, I like it except for one bit. These civilians are not going in alone. We’re going with them.”

Dr. Hall sighed. “We don’t need to be heroes. We have a mission to complete.”

“And we’re going to accomplish that mission,” Commander Lewis assured her with conviction. “But we’re also going to capture that Vorta.” Dr. Hall didn’t see why. As much as getting a crack at the Vorta would be a unique opportunity, she didn’t see how it fit within their objectives. Lewis elaborated with a question: “Have you stopped to ask yourself what happens after we sabotage the planetary defenses and the Polaris defeats the Jem’Hadar ships above Nasera?”

Dr. Hall had to admit she had not.

“A bloody ground battle,” Commander Lewis pointed out. As difficult as their covert mission and the battle in the skies would be, it would be nothing compared to what would come next. “There are legions of Jem’Hadar down here, more than intel had suggested, and they are highly trained, genetically engineered fighting machines unlike anything most of our security officers have ever faced before. Our guys are going to have to go building by building, block by block, to clear them out, and the Jem’Hadar will fight ’til their last breath.”

“Unless we compel something out of the Vorta?”

“Bingo.”

“You know, surrender isn’t a concept in their consciousness. I can only amplify what is there.”

“I have no doubt you’ll come up with something Lieutenant,” Commander Lewis chuckled. He’d seen the psychoactives she’d brought along. “Just be ready, because in three days’ time, we’re going to stick a Vorta in front of you, and we’re going to need you to work your magic.” Otherwise, thought Commander Lewis, a good many Starfleet officers would die.

For the last two years, the USS Polaris had been a bastion of research and exploration. Now, it would become something completely different, a warship leading the charge against an age old enemy. In just a few hours, they would depart, and in less than three days time, they would engage the Jem’Hadar in the skies over Nasera to liberate the colony from the shackles of Dominion occupation.

Standing together in front of the wide sloping windows of the briefing room, Fleet Admiral Allison Reyes and Captain Gérard Devreux looked out at the ships gathering around them in the Eplulap Nebula. Its thick gaseous composition masked their emissions, and just under a three days’ hop from their target, it made the perfect staging area.

“I can’t help but think we don’t have enough ships,” Captain Devreux remarked regretfully. “And not the right ones either.” He was no battle hardened veteran, but it didn’t take one to recognize the issue. Force strength and force composition were far from ideal.

“No, the Steamrunner, the Norway, and the Nebula, they might as well have been pulled straight out of the seventies,” Fleet Admiral Reyes conceded. If they’d been able to muster the right vessels, they’d have had twenty five years of technical developments over the Lost Fleet, but those three vessels looked straight out of the original Dominion War. “We’re lucky Task Group 514 even relented on giving us those.”

“At least the Fourth Fleet sent us a couple that don’t look like antique museum pieces,” Devreux laughed as he looked portside at the Alita-class USS Diligent and the Pathfinder-class USS Ingenuity. The USS Diligent was a warship through and through, but the USS Ingenuity was really just a modern science vessel. It could have been worse though. It could have been a base model Intrepid.

“We’re going to have to rely on the fact we know how we beat them last time, and they have no memory of it,” Reyes remarked. “But by the numbers and the way they’re dug in, it’s not going to be easy, even if Commander Lewis pulls off the mission on the ground.” 

“Any word from the Commander today?”

“Yes, we got the latest data dump by narrow beam this morning,” Reyes answered. “It was very thorough.” Commander Lewis had included ground observations ranging from patrol vectors to technical telemetry, and Ensign Elyssia Rel had even developed an opinion on the strengths of the various pilots.

“And how’s the progress on their objectives?”

“Less certain.”

“How so?”

“The Dominion ground presence is much heavier than expected, and they’ve got the control center locked down like a fortress. Lewis’ team is still trying to figure out a plan.”

Devreux quirked his brow. With less than three days left, they were cutting it close. If the planetary defense system was still operable and under Dominion control when they arrived, they wouldn’t stand a chance against the combined strength of the fixed defenses and the Dominion forces.

“Don’t worry Gérard,” the admiral assured her colleague calmly. “Commander Lewis will get it done. He always does.” She did wonder at what cost though. As time grew shorter, Lewis would grow more and more desperate and would take greater and greater risks. In fact, he might already be doing that. Just last night, they’d lost a team member. She didn’t have full details yet, but it was a concerning development about the health and mindset of the team. Reyes didn’t share that with Devreux though. He’d find out later, but for now, it simply wouldn’t help his mental state.

“I hope you’re right Allison,” Devreux mused as he stroked his chin in contemplation. “You always put so much faith in him.” It was dangerous to believe so much in one man, especially against the might of an enemy as ruthless and effective as the Dominion.

As much as she didn’t want to admit it, Admiral Reyes knew her friend was right. Commander Lewis’ team might fail. If that happened, they’d be lambs to the slaughter. But she didn’t vocalize her thoughts. She needed Devreux’s head in the game. It wasn’t worth letting him spiral down the worry train, so instead she just gave him a stare that said it was not a discussion she was willing to have. The lives of 8 million Federation citizens and the industrial powerhouse of Nasera City hung in the balance.

Knowing he wouldn’t make any progress with his stubborn boss, Captain Devreux shifted gears as he looked back out at the ships floating around them in the nebula. “What do you know about the other captains?”

“Captain Dorian Vox of the Diligent is a frontier flyboy,” Reyes explained. “He should have his head in the game. And thank god for that since he’s got our only real warship.” Then she glanced at the Pathfinder-class vessel that lingered near the Diligent off their port side. “Commander Cora Lee of the Ingenuity, she’s an engineering prodigy but new to the command chair. It waits to be seen if her technical skills translate to the trials of war.” Reyes had once been where Commander Cora Lee now was. She’d made the transition just fine during the last confrontation with the Dominion, and she wanted to believe the same for this young woman.

“What about the others?”

“Unfortunately, I don’t really have any idea,” Reyes admitted. The other three were complete unknowns with little on their dossiers as they had each risen to command during the nineties while the Federation had turned in on itself. “But we’re going to find out soon enough.”

As if right on queue, the door chimed, and the commanding officers of their ragtag mission group began filing in for the briefing she had called.

Fleet Admiral Reyes greeted each with a calm and confident demeanor, one almost regal in nature. She had a role to play, the flag officer that would lead them into combat unlike any most had ever seen. When at last everyone was seated, Reyes took her position at the head of the table and began the briefing.

“In less than two hours’ time, we will depart the Eplulap Nebula and set course for Nasera II,” she began. While they knew they’d been assigned to a mission group under the admiral, up until now, she’d withheld sharing any information about where they were going or what they were going to do. She didn’t want Task Group 514 or Starfleet Command to have a chance to stop them, and the warning from Vice Admiral Beckett still weighed heavy on her mind. “And we are going to liberate it from the Dominion.”

The assembled commanding officers glanced at each other with surprise and nervousness.

“You mean the Breen, right?” asked the Bolian CO of the Steamrunner, stuttering with his words.

“No, Commander Gelar,” interjected a sharp-looking officer that Admiral Reyes knew to be Captain Dorian Vox, the frontier flyboy in command of the Alita-class USS Diligent. “She means the Dominion. It’s as I’ve told you all. These aren’t just some Breen refurbs. The Dominion is back.” Vox folded his arms with a proud, vindicated look.

“Even if what you’re saying is true,” said the Andorian Captain of the Nebula-class vessel with a doubtful and obstructionist tone. “Nasera is no man’s land. Our TGCO has been very clear about it.” Admiral Reyes looked unimpressed. If Task Group 514 hadn’t sat on their asses for so long, they wouldn’t be having to liberate a Federation industrial center right now. “We can’t go there.”

“You don’t seem to be getting it, Captain Sh’vaari,” Captain Vox snarled. “The Fleet Admiral here said that that’s where we’re going, and your boat is now a part of her mission group, so you are going too.” Vox’s word choice and demeanor were very aggressive, but Reyes liked it. This was clearly a man frustrated with sitting idle while Starfleet’s inaction allowed Federation worlds to fall. “It’s time we stick it to these bastards.”

An awkward silence fell over the room. The Bolian and the Andorian looked like they were considering snapping back, but if they did, they’d run into the brick wall that was Reyes, Devreux and Vox. In between them, the COs of the Norway and Pathfinder were still unknowns.

Commander Cora Lee, the engineering prodigy from the Pathfinder-class USS Ingenuity, jumped in to break the silence: “Admiral, what do we know about the situation in the Nasera system?” Reyes was relieved that her tone was more curious than hesitant. She wanted to believe in the young woman.

The admiral pulled up an astrometric layout of the Nasera system. “As of this morning, there were a dozen attack ships and two battlecruisers stationed in the Nasera system. The bulk of their forces are concentrated over Nasera II,” Reyes explained, pointing at a large cluster of ships. “The remainder is on a rotation with the following vectors.” Now the display shifted to include several tracks that looped Nasera II and the outlying planets. “This group, always including a battlecruiser, has been tracked on a consistent set of loops that cover the occlusions cast by the outer planets.” This meant no warping into a blind spot, but it also meant the Dominion forces would almost certainly be divided when they arrived. It was a critical pattern Lewis’ team had uncovered, and Reyes planned to use it to their advantage. 

“You said as of this morning Admiral,” pointed out Captain Vox. “How do you have all this intelligence? Frankly, we haven’t seen anything about Nasera in weeks.” In fact, the intelligence shared down into the ranks had been beyond spotty sector-wide.

“We have a team on the ground,” smiled Admiral Reyes.

“You have what?” asked the Andorian.

“We weren’t informed you guys were already operating in our AO,” insisted the Bolian.

“There’s a lot that your senior staff has neglected to tell you,” Admiral Reyes replied firmly, frustration clear in her tone. She had no love for Starfleet’s leadership at this moment, except for Fourth Fleet Command. She considered the rest of them complicit in letting the Dominion get this far. “But that’s neither here nor there. What I can tell you is this intelligence is accurate, collected by a team of seasoned operators, and it’s going to give us the edge.”

She dared anyone to speak, but no one did. 

“This is only half of this team’s purpose,” Reyes continued as she made a gesture on her PADD to reveal a new set of nodes forming a web of satellites ringing the entire surface of the planet. “This is Nasera’s planetary defense grid, built by the Corps of Engineers in 2380 as a deterrent against Breen aggression,” she explained. “The Dominion has gained control of this system, and it’s presumably why they have only stationed a small contingent of ships above the planet. The network of fixed orbital systems all but dooms any planetary assault unless we were to commit a task force equivalent number of vessels to the assault.”

The commanders and captains glanced nervously at each other. They were trying to make sense of where this was going, how the admiral thought their small wing of six ships had any shot. The way she described it sounded a lot more like a suicide run.

“Our team on the ground will execute an operation to sabotage this system the instant we arrive,” Reyes explained. If they did it any sooner, it would tip off the Dominion, and they’d have time to recall their patrol group and bring in outside reinforcements.

“Are you sure your team will be successful?” asked Commander Lee. “I worked on systems like these in other sectors. If they fail, we will get chewed up by that defense system.”

“Yes, I have full confidence in them,” Reyes assured her. There was no hint of concern in her voice, even after the conversation she’d just had with Captain Devreux. 

Captain Vox was ready to get on with it, so he changed the subject rather than let his colleagues dwell on this uncertainty. “And what’s that, Admiral?” He asked, pointing at a single large object over Nasera City that they hadn’t yet discussed.

“That is an old weather station converted into a weapons platform by the Dominion. While it is a threat for us, it is a much bigger threat to the colony. It carries enough ordinance to flatten Nasera City,” Reyes explained.

“Just like they did to Cardassia during the Dominion War?” the Andorian asked, his tone suddenly shifting towards anger, almost as if he had a personal history with that genocide.

“Just like it, Captain,” Reyes nodded grimly. “Presently, it is aligned to supplement the planetary defenses, but its onboard thrusters should be able to effectuate a full rotation within two to three minutes once the Dominion realizes the game is up.” The Dominion would have no qualms doing it, especially as it would deprive a valuable industrial center from the Federation.

“So we have to defeat the Dominion ships and rush the platform, all within a couple minutes, before the patrol group gets back or the orbital weapons platform can be turned against the city, all while praying your team on the ground somehow successfully sabotages the planetary defense network so we don’t get blown to bits by a defense grid we built?” asked the Norway CO incredulously. It was the first time he’d spoken, dumbfounded by everything he was hearing, but he couldn’t stay quiet anymore. He’d heard enough. He didn’t get into Starfleet to get turned to stardust.

“Something like that,” smiled Reyes, unperturbed. 

“Excuse my French, but this seems fucking crazy,” the Norway CO retorted.

“Our team on the ground is working on a way to take the orbital platform out too.”

“Of course they are…” He wasn’t buying what Reyes was selling.

“I assume that it can’t be disabled from the ground?” asked the Bolian, piling on with his colleague. This all sounded like a science fiction holoprogram, not a real plan. “How are they going to get up there to pull that off?”

“We’re not sure yet,” the admiral admitted. “And that’s why it’s on the list of objectives we may have to take on.”

The Norway CO and the Bolian from the Steamrunner did not look impressed, but at least the Andorian from the Nebula was no longer overtly hostile since learning of the possible repeat of the Cardassian genocide. 

Captain Devreux sat there observing the whole exchange, and he did not like what he saw. If they echoed their doubts back to their crews, or if they hesitated in their orders when the battle began, the mission would be lost. “Listen folks, there are eight million innocent colonists down there,” Devreux pleaded. “We’ve got firsthand reports of the conditions down there, the beatings, the torture, the public executions. If that doesn’t bother you, hand your pips over to someone willing to do something about it.” His conviction caught even Reyes off guard. Devreux was a deep space explorer who’d dodged combat more than most, but this was war, and if he could get with the program, they needed to as well. 

“Well I don’t know about you folks,” Captain Dorian Vox chimed in with a mix of conviction and excitement. “But I’m in.”

“The USS Ingenuity stands ready as well Admiral,” Commander Cora Lee declared. She wasn’t sure she wouldn’t regret it, but her conscience couldn’t live with sitting idle on the sidelines.

The others took a while longer, but eventually everyone else got there too. The briefing then turned constructive, the remaining time spent devising attack patterns, reviewing timings, and planning for contingencies. By the end, while there were certainly still nerves, the obstructionism was gone, and Reyes felt fairly confident they’d all see it through.

As Admiral Reyes prepared to close the meeting, she gave one last order: “To be clear, from this moment forward, until we are safely in control of Nasera, we are on a complete comms blackout. By the time you each return to your ships, your comms officers will have received this order. No interstellar comms at all. Not to your kids, your spouses, or your command staff. We are going ghost. We cannot take the risk that the Dominion intercepts our plan.” It would also help keep the idle idiots within Starfleet from trying to stop her until they had accomplished their mission.

Fleet Admiral Reyes and Captain Devreux watched them all leave. Once it was just the two of them, Devreux offered his read: “It took a little while, but I think we got them all there. They’ll show up on game day.”

“Now it just comes down to execution,” Reyes replied. But that was still a tall order. This was not a task force of battle hardened veterans on warships. It was just a small smattering of inexperienced captains and commanders with limited firepower. And that was only if the risky covert operation was successful. Otherwise, it would be far worse.

“Hey Ayala, come check this out.”

Chief Petty Officer Ayala Shafir didn’t even look up, her head hunched and her eyes dark as she oscillated between the duality of grief and guilt. Jason Atwood had been her responsibility, and now he was dead. She couldn’t forgive herself for that. He was another death she was responsible for, just like so many over the years. Memories of prior time she spent deep undercover came flooding back, when she’d stood idle, watching others die so she could maintain her identity. But this was different. Then, the dead hadn’t been relying on her. She just happened to be present for their end. This time, Petty Officer Atwood had been relying on her to watch his back, and she had failed him. The team had tried to recover him from her mistake, but they had failed too. And so he had died.

“Ayala? You have got to see this,” Lieutenant J.G. Jace Morgan tried again.

“What is it, Jace?” she asked as she looked up. Her tone was somewhere between uninterested and annoyed, and her voice and eyes were both devoid of life.

“No seriously, you need to come check this out,” he insisted excitedly. “I was reviewing the last readings Atwood had uplinked, and he might have found something.”

That got the Chief’s attention. Please let it be that Petty Officer Jason Atwood hadn’t died for nothing, she thought. It wouldn’t bring him back, but it would be some consolation he hadn’t died completely in vain. “Ok, let’s see what you’ve got,” Shafir said as she slowly rose and crossed the room.

Lieutenant J.G. Morgan handed her the PADD and explained while she started reading: “Looks to me like you guys found a hardline for comms to the planetary defense system.”

What should have been an easy read for a woman who had spent her life learning to break into systems now looked utterly unintelligible now. Her mind just wasn’t there. “And so?” She really wanted to just go sit back down in her corner. She was useless right now.

“From what I can tell, these are command signals bussed over a point-to-multipoint protocol with time-division multiplexing,” Morgan explained. “Looks to me like what you found was a one of a series of hardlines that distribute instructions from the control center to a distributed series of repeaters that deliver the signal up to the orbital platforms.”

“How many repeaters are we talking about?”

“Based on the multiplexed acks you and Jason recorded, there are at least forty terminating nodes.”

“A way of ensuring resilience against an attack?”

“Exactly,” agreed Morgan. “You can’t jam the hardlines like you would wireless carrier waves, and if the repeaters are spread out well, it’s going to be damn hard to stop them all from transmitting.” 

Coming to her senses as she continued to read through the telemetry, Shafir agreed with the Operations Officer’s assessment. Looking over the time delays of the ack payloads, she could also infer that, while the nearest one was only a kilometer away from the control center, the furthest was on the complete other side of the planet. It was an impressive amount of physical infrastructure that had been laid to ensure one could not easily disrupt the planetary defense system.

“This just makes our job sound harder,” Shafir lamented as shook her head. This setup meant that literally the only single point of failure was the control center itself, and that thing was a fortress they could never just swarm.

“No Ayala, dig a little deeper,” Morgan insisted. If her emotional state wasn’t clouding her ability to think, it should have been obvious to the woman who’d spent her whole life hacking into things. “With all the insulation and shielding around these cables, forty hardlines coming together will take up a lot of space, and you don’t just lay this sort of critical infrastructure without a way to access it for maintenance.”

That’s when the lightbulb came on for Chief Shafir. “A utility tunnel,” she exclaimed as she rushed over to her bag and pulled out a PADD with blueprints from the Corps of Engineers. “Look at these,” she said, setting the PADD in front of her colleague. “These are service ducts from the factory that was here before the control center was built. I figured they would have been filled in when the control center was built, but if I needed access tubes for these hardlines, why wouldn’t I just repurpose the infrastructure that was already there?” Those ducts ran not just under the facility, but spiderwebbed out across a dozen city blocks, connecting this site with several other factories that were still in operation today.

As everything started to click, she wondered how she could have missed this. They’d literally been looking for this sort of thing when they’d gone out yesterday morning. It was a foolish question to ask though. She knew the answer. Grief and guilt had completely consumed her, making her weak and ineffective, a liability for the team. She needed to get beyond that. The team needed her to get beyond it.

“This protocol is a pub-sub with integrity checks,” Shafir remarked. “The time-division multiplex is just for delivery assurance, not many-to-many multicast. That means there’s a single source, and if we can follow the lines back to that source, we can broadcast something different.”

“And bring the system down without having to swarm the control center from the ground,” Morgan finished her thought. 

“Bingo,” smiled the Chief for the first time in a day. 

At best, the broadcast switch would be in a sub basement, well beneath the hordes of Jem’Hadar that guarded the ground level entrance to the control center. But even at worst, they’d still be able to gain access from the inside by following the path of the wires rather than having to fight their way in from the outside.

“I think we need to take a field trip,” Chief Shafir declared.

Sitting across the room, Commander Lewis watched the exchange quietly while cleaning his sidearm. He had been very worried about the Chief ever since she returned to the safehouse without Petty Officer Atwood. He knew how she thought, and he knew how she’d feel, because he’d feel exactly the same. It’s why he’d left her behind when they went out for the attempted rescue last night fearing she’d be too emotionally compromised. And thank god he had left her behind, because all she would have seen there was his execution.

Chief Shafir’s pivot from debilitating despair to constructive hope over this news was a good sign, but the Commander wasn’t convinced she was fully back in the game. If it turned out to be a false hope, she could succumb right back to her depressed stupor. He wouldn’t leave Lieutenant J.G. Morgan on the other end of that, nor let her hang herself out to dry by doing something foolish.

Commander Lewis picked up his sidearm and stood up. “I’ll join you for that field trip, Ayala.” He knew it would be best to keep eyes on her for a while still.

The sparks of welding torches and thick smoke of burnt metal filled the maintenance pit as the labor camp worked under the watchful eye of their Dominion masters. The work was hard, and the hours long, but these were men of industry, and they would endure. They had no choice.

Mixed among the dirty, sweaty bodies were two covert operators. Three days ago, Crewman Nam Jae-Sun from the USS Polaris and Ryssehl Th’zathol from Sebold Logistics had embedded with the sorry souls of this pit as, by word of mouth, they had learned this was where the Dominion sourced workers for the orbital station that the Dominion had fitted as an autonomous weapons platform. There were not a lot of ways to get up there, but this would be one. The banter between the weary workers as they passed the time was also a treasure trove of information.

“Did you hear what happened yesterday?” one of the workers said to another over a large piece of sheet metal they’d just finished cutting with an energy lance.

“Yeah, I heard another umbilical broke,” the second man replied as they tried to lift the metal. It was too heavy for just the pair, and so Ryssehl and Nam gave them a hand, listening intently.

“Yep, and four more drifted off into space when their magboots failed.”

“I can’t believe people volunteer for that.”

“I mean, they give you a whole two days off every week.”

“I’d rather work eight days a week than do spacewalks day after day. At least if I die here, it’s because one of you numbnuts carved me up with an energy lance. Up there, it’s old faulty equipment just waiting to demagnetize or untether.”

The first guy looked up at a Jem’Hadar soldier in the watchtower above them. “That crummy equipment, it happens so often, almost makes you think it’s some sort of sick entertainment for those guys.” He looked across at the two covert operators in their coveralls who wordlessly were helping them carry the sheet. “What do you two think?”

“I’d honestly kind of like to see space again,” Nam shrugged.

“And I’m lazy so two days off sounds nice,” laughed the Andorian. 

“Well, you two are crazy,” one of the guys laughed.

“I didn’t even like space travel before the Dominion made it a fool’s errand,” the other man shared as the four of them set the sheet metal down. “But I’m sure they’ll ask for more volunteers today, so you’ll probably get your shot.” And with that, they all turned back to the pit and got back to work.

About an hour of grueling labor later, the Jem’Hadar First summoned the entire labor crew to gather around.

“This pit is behind schedule,” he shouted. “So you will all be working after sundown tonight. You do not go home until the work is complete.” The decree was met with sighs.

“Every day, you bring us more than the day before,” one delirious worker protested under his breath.

He didn’t realize that the Jem’Hadar had impeccable hearing. One of the guards lashed out and grabbed him by the neck, lifting him off his feet. “And every day, you underproduce. I did more as a child. Service is life. Remember it,” he snarled, his eyes narrowing on the suffocating man in his grasp. Just as it looked like the man’s eyes were going to pop out of his head, he let go of the man’s throat. The man fell to the ground, gasping for air. 

“If any of you would like a reprieve from this work, we have an alternative for you,” the First announced with a saddistic grin. “It seems some of your colleagues could not handle a spacewalk. This means we need four more volunteers to help us with a little project. And, in exchange for your service, you will be given two days off for every ten worked.”

Ryssehl quirked an eyebrow. The colonists they’d just been with an hour ago said two days off every week. Now it was ten and two. He didn’t really care though. Ten and two just gave him a better chance of being on the station three days from now when the USS Polaris was scheduled to arrive. The Dominion wouldn’t even be here long enough for him to get his first vacation, as long as he did his job right.

“Do we have any volunteers?” the First asked, looking out at the crowd. “Don’t be shy.” The way he smiled, the First almost seemed to revel in the nerves of the people knowing what happened to their colleagues. “If there are no volunteers, we will choose.”

Ryssehl raised his hand to volunteer.

“Well that’s better than nothing,” the First remarked, and then added under his breath towards Ryssehl: “I hear your kind exhaust more easily, so it was the days off huh?” The First thought him weak, and Ryssehl played the part, just bowing his head submissively as he took his place at the front. “How about some humans to pick up the slack when this blue skin tires?” The First looked around for any takers.

Nam Jae-Sun slowly raised his hand. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to go. He absolutely did. He needed to be up there with his partner. His hesitation simply came from not wanting to look too eager. If he had just jumped at the opportunity, they might have suspected his purpose. No one with half a brain would eagerly go up there with how often there were tragic accidents.

“That’s two. Do I have any more?” No one raised their hands so the Jem’Hadar just swooped into the crowd and grabbed three more.

“I thought you said you needed two more?” one of the men said as he was dragged forward, hoping it was a counting error.

“We only need four, but we have five so if one of you forgets your place, we will have an extra,” replied the Jem’Hadar First. “Now, back to work, the rest of you!” And with that, Ryssehl, Crewman Nam, and the three other laborers were dragged from the pit towards a waiting shuttle.

Time was running out. The covert team needed solutions. In three days time, the USS Polaris and her sister ships would arrive. If either the planetary defense system or the orbital station still remained under Dominion control, it would be a bloodbath.

Deep in the heart of Nasera City, and high in the skies above, two pairs of operators worked carefully but quickly. Commander Jake Lewis and Chief Petty Officer Ayala Shafir, dressed in dregs, slowly made their way across the city towards the control center for the planetary defense system; meanwhile, fresh out of the wielding pits, Ryssehl Th’zathol and Crewman Nam Jae-Sun boarded the orbital station and donned ragtag spacesuits to do hull work for their Dominion overlords. None of the operators had any illusion this work was safe. They’d lost a colleague just yesterday. They had to push through their guilt, their grief and their fears though. The clock was ticking. If they didn’t take these risks, many more would die.

Shafir and Lewis turned the corner and saw a large duranium mill before them. They recognized it from the old maps. This mill had once been connected via a utility shaft to a factory that once stood where the control center now stood. If Lieutenant J.G. Morgan’s hypothesis was correct, these tunnels would provide access to the control center without the team having to shoot their way through a company of Jem’Hadar guards.

The mill was busy. They could hear the grind of gears as duranium slabs were carved into smooth surfaces to be used for the hulls of Dominion warships. Their mission wasn’t to stop that production today though. Instead, their mission was to make sure that the entire industrial capacity of Nasera II would no longer be in the hands of the Dominion in just a few short days.

“Do we risk it?” Chief Shafir asked quietly as they looked at the mill. It was the first time she’d gone out since the Jem’Hadar had caught Petty Officer Atwood, and she could feel the doubt creeping into every decision.

“Yes, time is short,” replied Commander Lewis firmly. “And this will be a cakewalk.” 

The fact that the Chief hesitated worried the Commander. This was so simple. Blending into a crowded room shouldn’t have qualified as anything more than a regular day in the life of Ayala Shafir. This was a woman who spent years breaking into things, as a hacker, a Starfleet officer, a private contractor, and then a Starfleet officer again. If she doubted herself here, how would she fare when something actually hard happened?

Together, the two meandered their way towards the factory. As they stepped inside, a Jem’Hadar guard spotted them immediately.

“You two! What are you doing? Why are you not working?”

“We just had to get some food,” Commander Lewis answered casually.

“The work will not complete itself,” the Jem’Hadar insisted. “Get back to it!” These weak-blooded humans had such pathetic needs. He, on the other hand, needed nothing but the White for sustenance. That was genetic superiority.

“Yes, we’re sorry,” Lewis apologized, bowing his head subserviently. The two hurried into the mill as instructed.

To ensure they drew no attention, Commander Lewis and Chief Shafir made themselves busy. Although no one knew who they were, no one thought anything of the new arrivals either. The workers at the mill were just thankful to have the extra hands as, until they filled their daily production quota, none of them would be allowed to go home. And new faces were not uncommon. Since the Dominion had taken over, new people appeared all the time in factories and mills across the city. Non-productive workers, like doctors, educators, and entertainers, had all been converted into productive ones, like miners, refiners and assemblers.

Each time they’d cut or polish a block of duranium, Lewis and Shafir would move deeper into the mill. From time to time, they’d glance around, looking for any hints of how to access the sub basement. It took nearly half an hour, their progress slow to avoid drawing suspicion, but eventually they reached an old stairwell that matched what the blueprints had indicated would lead to their destination.

“You see it?” Lewis asked under his breath as he blasted through a duranium block with a hyperkinetic driver.

“Yeah, but we’re not going to get down there without a distraction,” Shafir whispered back. This time, it wasn’t hesitance though. It was just a fact. The Jem’Hadar watched over the mill like hawks. If two people suddenly bolted down a stairwell to nowhere, they’d be noticed instantly.

“I’ll handle that, and you go ahead without me,” Lewis replied, slipping back into old habits, trusting Shafir like he had in the past, forgetting his concerns over her current state. And without another word, he disappeared into the crowd.

A couple minutes later, a hoverlift carrying a large duranium block suddenly accelerated to full speed, flying through a crowd of overworked laborers. Bodies dove out of the way as the hoverlift ran straight through several workstations and collided with a structural wall. It was pandemonium, the wall partially collapsing, workstations completely obliterated, and people struggling to get back to their feet. What the hell had just happened?

The eyes of everyone, Jem’Hadar included, were on that crashed hoverlift. The Jem’Hadar swarmed from above, suspecting sabotage. What they found though was just an older man in the midst of a seizure, now also bleeding from the crash.

A factory worker pushed his way through the gathered crowd. “Let me through, let me through,” he begged. “I’m a doctor.” But then he ran straight into the burly chest of a Jem’Hadar soldier, who blocked his path and stared him down. “That man, he’s suffering a tonic-clonic seizure and blunt force trauma. Let me help him.”

“That man just set this factory back hours in its production goals.”

“And so we’ll work harder after,” the doctor pleaded. “But please let me help him now.” The Dominion might have turned the doctor into a metalworker, claiming his former occupation provided no value to the Dominion, but he could not turn his back on someone deep in medical distress. That meant nothing to the Jem’Hadar though.

“No, get back to work!”

The Jem’Hadar soldier shoved the barrel of his polaron rifle into the doctor’s chest, but the doctor just stood there. He feared for his life, but he could not abandon his duty as a healer. 

Before anyone had to find out how the Jem’Hadar would take his insolence, another man emerged from the crowd, stepping between the two. “Let him help the old man,” Commander Lewis said calmly, looking the Jem’Hadar in the eye. “It will be good for morale, and morale helps productivity.” He glanced at the damage the careening hoverlift had just caused. “Plus, we need all the able bodied men we have here if we’re going to get all this done today.”

The Jem’Hadar looked him over. “Who are you?”

“Just someone who wants to see everyone go home tonight,” Lewis replied with a tone that perfectly balanced exhaustion and remorse.

“Very well, but be quick about it,” the Jem’Hadar begrudgingly agreed. He could see the logic in it. Right now, the entire duranium mill was all just standing their idle, and humans had this strange fascination with life. Maybe if the doctor was allowed to work, the rest of them would move on from this distraction. “As long as all the rest of you get back to work!”

The doctor was allowed to pass, the Jem’Hadar returned to their guard posts, and the workers rushed back to their stations to repair the damage and get the machines going again.

Commander Lewis breathed a sigh of relief as he returned to a duranium blasting station. He’d hit the driver with a neurolytic agent, but he hadn’t quite anticipated how close he’d come to killing the man. He didn’t want innocents to die. He’d just wanted a big enough scene to draw the focus of the Dominion.

In all the commotion, no one noticed a lithe young woman slipping away down an old stairwell into a forgotten sub basement.

High above the scene in the factory, a team of five nervous metalworkers prepared for a spacewalk. Aboard the orbital station that the Dominion had turned into a weapons platform, their task this afternoon would be to repair structural damage to two stabilizing pylons. 

Ryssehl Th’zathol made his way around their group of five, checking and adjusting the seals of their suits. Besides his partner Crewman Nam Jae-Sun, it was clear that none had ever so much as put on a spacesuit before.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” one of the metalworkers was saying as he shook uncontrollably. “I’ve never even traveled off the surface of Nasera before.” 

Ryssehl grabbed the newbie by the wrist firmly to help him get his shakes under control. “It will be ok. Just follow my lead and we all come home,” he insisted as he looked the man square in the eyes. He could see terror on his face.

“I… I… I’ve just been a welder my whole life,” the man lamented.

“And you’re just going to be doing some more welding today,” Ryssehl assured him. “Don’t rush it. Slow is safe. We walk out there, we patch the pylons, and then we walk back.” Even as he said it, Ryssehl could sense a dangerous fear in this man. Fear led to mistakes, and fear could kill you. He just hoped he’d be able to help this man return home tonight.

Behind them, their Jem’Hadar guard was amused. These colonists were so weak and feeble. Just like the Andorian, he had a sense of how today’s story would unwind. Although it was interesting to him that two of these dregs seemed to have at least some degree of competence with a spacesuit. “Where’d you learn about space, blue skin?” the Jem’Hadar asked.

“Used to work maintenance on my dad’s freighter as a boy,” Ryssehl answered nonchalantly. It wasn’t exactly true. His dad was an ice fisher. He did have plenty of experience in the weightlessness of space though. He worked as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician for Starfleet until he was dishonorably discharged for recklessness, and then he worked demo for the Maquis and other borderlands freedom fighters after that. This was natural to him, both the simple hull work today and the larger battle for freedom before them.

“Hmmm, then maybe you can actually be useful,” the Jem’Hadar remarked. “Unlike the last group we had up here. They didn’t do their job, and they didn’t last long.”

The soldier looked around, noting everyone finally had their suits on.

“So now hurry up and get out there! The pylons don’t weld themselves.”

As the airlock opened, the welder Ryssehl had just coached took his first step into space. But his boots didn’t lock onto the hull. Instead, the momentum of that first step caused him to immediately begin floating away from the station. He reached out to grab onto anything, but all his fingers caught was empty vacuum.

“He forgot to activate his mag boots!” shouted Crewman Nam Jae-Sun as he unspooled a safety line and tossed it to his partner Ryssehl. The moment the Andorian had a hold of the line, Nam kicked off, launching himself towards the flailing body of the man drifting into space. 

Fifteen meters apart, then ten meters, then five. So close. He was going to save this guy. But then the line went taut. There was no more slack. It was at the limit of its length. He stretched as far as he could, but the man was just beyond his reach. For a moment, the Starfleet crewman made eye contact with the welder. He could see the terror in his eyes as he realized what was going to happen to him. But then the man’s face rotated out of view as he kept drifting away.

“Noooooo!” shouted the Starfleet crewman as Ryssehl began to pull him back with the line.

“You tried,” Ryssehl said as his partner drifted up alongside him on the hull next to the airlock.

“Help us go get him!” Nam shouted as he pounded on the airlock. But the Jem’Hadar on the other side just stood there looking at him. He either wasn’t on their comms channel or he simply didn’t care. Or both. Through the window of the airlock, he could see a slightest hint of amusement on the Jem’Hadar’s face.

“Those sick monsters!” Nam exclaimed. “This is some sadistic, twisted game they’re playing, sending people up here with no training to do this work!” As he looked out, he could see the figure of the helpless man growing smaller and smaller as he drifted further away into the blackness of space. And then he was no longer visible. Nam let out an exasperated cry.

“Just relax,” Ryssehl said calmly. They were here to do a job. They would not save every life, and if they tried, they’d probably just end up dead too. “Let’s just get this done.” He had to admit this whole thing was strange. It was grossly inefficient for the Dominion to send untrained people out like this. If it wasn’t for him and his partner, how many dozens of colonists would they have gone through before they actually got this hull work done?

Crewman Nam Jae-Sun, for his sake, couldn’t shake that last look the man had given him as he drifted away. It was a look of pure desperation, the realization you were going to die. And then he flashed back to the look in Petty Officer Atwood’s eyes as he lay on the concrete right before the Jem’Hadar executed him. It was that same look. Suddenly, he wondered if they were all going to end up that way. What the hell were they doing here? This was insane.

Far beneath them, Chief Ayala Shafir shimmied her way through the utility tunnels under Nasera City. The tunnels were pitch black, no lighting whatsoever besides the dim glow of her tricorder, and the tunnels were a tight fit even for her lithe frame, barely wide enough for her petite shoulders and only high enough for a labored crawl. They were passable though, and if they could get her under the control center, that was all that mattered.

Underground in the dark with no reference points, it was easy to lose your bearings. Even the tricorder struggled, the ferrous composition of Nasera’s subsurface interfering with its magnometers. Ayala tried to keep her head on straight. She needed to remember the path she was taking so she could get back later, and she needed to stay oriented enough to actually keep moving in the right direction towards where the control center was. But the further she went into the spiderweb of dark tunnels, the more difficult it became.

Five minutes into navigating dark, narrow tunnels, she felt fear. Five minutes later, fear became terror. And five minutes after that, as she came to yet another junction in the spiderweb of tunnels, debating which way to turn, she froze. How many junctions had she passed? She’d lost count. What direction was she going? She wasn’t sure. She was lost. How would she find her way out of here? She was going to die down here.

“Knock it off Ayala,” she muttered to herself in the darkness. She wasn’t afraid of death. But now suddenly she was. And she was talking to herself too. This wasn’t normal. She began to shake, began to feel the walls closing in around her, began to panic, her breathing becoming fast and labored. 

Just like Crewman Nam high above, down in the tunnels beneath Nasera City, Chief Shafir was unraveling.

As minutes turned to an hour, and an hour turned to many, he began to worry. Chief Petty Officer Shafir should have returned by now. While blasting and polishing sheets of duranium at the mill to maintain his cover, Commander Lewis would steal an occasional look at the stairs, hoping to see her reemerge. But she never did.

When the last block was blasted and polished, and the work was finally done well after the sun had fallen, the weary workers began to filter out of the mill. Commander Lewis followed them out. He had no choice. If he lingered, the Jem’Hadar would wonder why. He glanced back at the staircase one last time as the Jem’Hadar locked the heavy metal doors of the mill for the night.

If Ayala Shafir returned now, she was on her own.

As Commander Lewis made his circuitous trip back to the safehouse, his mind was on Ayala Shafir. He shouldn’t have let her go down there alone. He should have kept a better eye on her. That had been the whole reason he’d gone on this little field trip with her. But it had all felt so natural, the two of them traipsing around in a hostile environment like old times again. Ayala Shafir was one of the best he’d ever worked with. From Cardassia to Luria to Narendra, they’d gone everywhere together during their years in private enterprise, and she’d never faltered. That bias had led him to create a distraction for her to go down into the tunnels, rather than devise one for the both of them to descend together. That was a mistake in judgment. He should have been there covering her back. He knew she was emotionally compromised.

Had he just committed the same sin that she was burdened by? Had he just failed to protect someone that was depending on him? Now he had a sense for how she felt when she’d split with Petty Officer Atwood, only for him to wind up dead. Please let Ayala not suffer the same fate, he thought to himself.

Commander Lewis stepped into the safehouse.

“Damn boss, you look like you’ve gone native,” laughed Lieutenant Commander Brock Jordan, noting the thick duranium particulate caked across Lewis’ skin, the dust congealed with dry sweat in what looked like a craggy exoskeleton. Lewis hadn’t even noticed it. He was exhausted after a day at the mill, and his mind was elsewhere. “Where’s Ayala?” Jordan asked.

“She went down into the tunnels around 1500 hours.”

“That’s a little over five hours ago, Jake.”

“I know.” Even though the Commander was a master of hiding his emotions, in this moment, his expression betrayed his thoughts.

“You’re worried, aren’t you?”

“Ayala knows how to handle herself,” he assured Jordan. Ayala had managed to escape the Jem’Hadar yesterday, and she’d do it again today. At least that’s what he told himself. She’d gotten out of difficult spots dozens of times before. He was ready to change the subject though. “How’d everyone else’s missions go today?”

“Hall and Kora, they continued to build their relationship with the dad and the fiance,” the Lieutenant Commander explained, referencing the colonists their twisted psychologist had taken advantage of after the public execution of a girl they loved. “They‘ve talked to their friends, and it’s shaping up to be a small army of angry colonists ready to rise up against their occupiers and storm the governor’s mansion. T’Aer also went out. She did some scouting of the mansion, and she’s drafting assault plans now.”

Commander Lewis nodded. That was all good news. While the mansion wasn’t a primary objective of theirs from the outset, if they could capture the Vorta, it might give them an opportunity to avoid a prolonged ground battle to expel the Jem’Hadar. Plus, he’d love to get some revenge for Petty Officer Atwood.

“Ryssehl and Crewman Nam aren’t back yet, but as I understand it, they did manage to get enlisted as part of a maintenance crew for the orbital station.”

The orbital station, if the Dominion realized the battle was lost, had enough firepower on it to level Nasera City. By proportionality, it would make the genocide of Cardassia look mild. The fact his demolitionists had engineered a reason to get up there was more good news.

“And Grok has scheduled debarkation for two nights from now, right after the Polaris is scheduled to arrive,” Lieutenant Commander Jordan continued. “It will give him a plausible reason to be at his ship throughout the evening.”

Grok had an essential role to play. If all went according to plan, they’d be executing three simultaneous direct action operations in tight coordination, right as the Polaris and her sister ships arrived. They needed someone running comms and quarterbacking to make sure  everything happened at exactly the right time. If the Dominion believed that Grok was just prepping his ship for departure, they wouldn’t think anything of him sitting there aboard the Lucre for hours on end. That was natural on departure day, prepping the ship for takeoff.

“So we’re really just waiting on Shafir to confirm if we have a way into the control center,” Lieutenant Commander Jordan concluded.

“And for Ryssehl and Nam to get back,” Lewis added, trying to keep his thoughts off Ayala. Plus, it was fair to be concerned about them too. A spacewalk with faulty equipment and a novice squad was dangerous, even with the deep experience Ryssehl and Nam had in zero-G.

Right then, there was a knock at the door.

Ensign Rel, who sat by the door on guard duty, shouldered her rifle and leveled it as Commander Lewis opened the door. Lewis was conflicted on who he hoped it was more, for all three of the remaining operators out there meant something to him. 

He was greeted by the smiling face of his Andorian friend. Ryssehl stepped through, followed by Crewman Nam, and then Lewis shut the door. As happy as he was to see the pair, he realized  that he was really hoping it was Ayala.

“We have a way in,” Ryssehl said excitedly. “We’re gonna make that big hunk of metal go boom.” As usual, that thought really got his blue blood going. Meanwhile, Crewman Nam just walked wordlessly into the other room.

“What’s up with Nam?” Lewis asked after Nam had closed the door behind him.

“Struggling with the death of a civvie up there,” Ryssehl replied in a detached tone. It was tragic for sure, but it was also expected under the circumstances. He’d tried to help the poor welder, but that was all he could do. “The dude, never having even gone off world before, forgot to magnetize his boots when he stepped out of the airlock.”

“Oooof.”

“Yep, Nam tried to save him but to no avail. It was a rough afternoon. Nam was pretty shaken up after,” Ryssehl explained. “I think his feelings got all mixed up with everything that happened yesterday. Atwood’s execution still weighs heavily on him.”

“As it does on us all,” replied Commander Lewis, a hint of regret showing on his face. But it only lasted a moment, as conviction then overtook it. “But that doesn’t mean we slow down for even a moment. The Polaris, and the folks here, they’re depending on us. So we push forward.”

Ryssehl, Lieutenant Commander Brock Jordan and Ensign Elyssia Rel, the three standing there in the atrium with him, nodded in agreement. They understood the stakes, and they were ready to push forward.

“Everyone else back for the night yet?” Ryssehl asked. He and Nam had left first thing in the morning for the maintenance pit so the activities of the day were unknown to him.

“Everyone except Ayala,” Lewis answered.

“Where is she?”

“She went down into a set of old maintenance tunnels that should get us under the control center,” Lewis explained, not offering any of his concerns even to one of his closest friends.

“She’s out there solo?” The Andorian was a bit surprised. That didn’t align with how Lewis liked to operate, especially given what Ayala Shafir had just been through. Before he left this morning, Ryssehl had noted how the Chief Petty Officer was stewing in the corner. She didn’t look like she was in a good place, and certainly not one to conduct a solo op.

“I had to create a distraction for her to get down there.” Again, the Commander omitted his concerns. He didn’t want to get into them. Not now at least. “She’ll be fine. She knows what she’s doing.” Lewis said it convincingly, but he didn’t really believe it in his heart. He was very worried.

Ryssehl suspected there was more, but he knew better than to press. The three small talked for a bit, and then Ryssehl and Jordan went off to the bedroom to get some rest after the long day. Lewis wasn’t ready for that though. Not until Ayala was home. He took a seat at the door with Ensign Rel and waited.

The minutes passed by and turned into an hour.

“You’re worried about her, aren’t you?” asked the young ensign. She was on door duty this evening. He didn’t have to be here with her, yet here he sat. Commander Lewis always had a very closed off demeanor, more so than almost anyone she’d ever met, but tonight his eyes uncharacteristically gave away his internal struggle.

“I worry about all of you.”

“There’s something special about her though.”

Lewis paused for a moment. He’d never thought of it that way. But now that he did, yes, there was something special about Ayala. He’d found the girl at her lowest low. She wasn’t like T’Aer or Grok or Ryssehl, who’d joined Sebold Logistics for thrills and meaningful work. Ayala had joined their outfit looking for purpose after she’d lost herself. The year she spent deep cover, playing a terrorist so convincingly she began to fool even herself, had scarred her to her core. Lewis had helped her find purpose again, to find herself again, watching her blossom into an incredible operator. Now that he thought about it, he regarded Ayala a bit like a father regarded a daughter. That was a different sort of relationship than he had with the others. “Yes, I suppose there is.”

“She had you as a mentor Commander,” Ensign Rel said warmly. “I’m sure she’s gonna make it home alright.” The young Trill flight controller grabbed hold of the surly old warrior’s calloused hand, and she held it compassionately. It was an odd sensation for a man who viewed his hands as a tool for killing. But, strange as it was to him, her touch helped.

Another hour passed, and then finally a knock at the door. 

Ensign Rel barely had time to stand up and shoulder her rifle before Commander Lewis had the door open. Standing there, looking like she’d just been through hell, was Chief Petty Officer Ayala Shafir.

“Ayala,” Commander Lewis said, relief flooding through him. “You look like crap.” Gone was the weakness of worry. Now he was once again his usual sarcastic shooter self.

“You always look like crap Jake,” she replied with a meek smile.

“What happened?”

“I found it, Jake. I fucking found it.” She collapsed on the sofa out of sheer exhaustion, both mental and physical. “Jace was right. The hardlines run through the tunnels and roll up to a network switch in the basement of the control center. That switch is the key. I could have turned the entire planetary defense system off tonight if I’d wanted. There wasn’t a soul down there.”

“Just like a truffle?”

“Crunchy exterior, gooey interior,” Chief Shafir laughed, her first smile in hours. It was an inside joke the two had about the ridiculously stupid yet overly common approach to security where one would fortify the outside but leave the interior completely unguarded. It made it easy to wreak havoc if you found a way in, as Ayala so often did. As she had again tonight.

“Then we have all the pieces to pull this off. Hall and Kora have cooked the locals into a frenzy. T’Aer’s prepped our approach routes. Ryssehl and Nam have got a way up to the orbital platform. Grok has a cover story to quarterback from the Lucre. And you’ve got our way into the control center,” Lewis summarized. “I’ll join you for it day after tomorrow.”

“No, you won’t.”

Lewis frowned. Did she feel he’d betrayed her, whatever it was that had happened down there?

“You won’t fit, those bulky shoulders of yours,” Ayala explained. She also knew she didn’t need their best shooter for this, at least not as much as the others would during their assault. “Elyssia, I think you are coming with me.” She looked over the slender figure of the young Trill, sizing her up. She was certainly small enough to fit. “And Jake, if you insist on sending one of your boys, Brock might be able to pull it. He doesn’t bulk up in the gym like you do. But tell him not to eat breakfast, because it’s going to be a tight squeeze.”

Commander Lewis didn’t like the idea. He wanted to be with Ayala to make up for the guilt he felt for abandoning her today. But logically, it didn’t make sense to go with her. The Chief’s part of the mission should be straightforward. She had a way in, and an unguarded one at that. She’d probably have the orbital defense system hacked and be long gone before the Dominion even realized. Lieutenant Commander Brock Jordan would be able to support them. The correct tactical choice was for Commander Lewis to be with the assault team storming the governor’s mansion. He’d be most valuable in that bloodbath. And besides, he did want to shoot that Vorta square between the eyes and watch as its life faded away.

“Very well. If you take Brock, you’ve got a deal.”

With that, Lewis turned and headed for the bedroom. Now he could rest. Ayala was safe. Ryssehl and Nam were safe. They were all safe. For tonight at least. The day after tomorrow, anything could happen. They had their plan, and they’d do their duty, but there was no promise any of them would come home.

“You didn’t tell him where you’ve been the last six hours,” Ensign Rel said once the Commander had disappeared into the bedroom.

“I was in the tunnels.”

“Come on Ayala. You could have crawled twelve blocks, checked out the control center, and then crawled back the way you came, in an hour or less.” Ensign Rel’s bright blue eyes gazed straight into the weary soul of the Chief. She could see the pain in her heart. “What happened down there?”

“I cracked,” admitted Shafir. “But down there for hours with nothing but dust, shadows and my inner demons, I remembered I don’t care. I remembered that we’ll all just be stardust someday.” Suddenly, a darkness came over her entire being, one that spooked the young ensign. “And until that day comes, I am Sayidat Alfawdaa, the lady of chaos,” Shafir said in a chilling tone, using the name from her criminal days. “And I will murder these bastards, or die trying.”

The maintenance tunnels were dusty, dark, and claustrophobic, but after the crucible Ayala Shafir had endured within them, now they felt like home. Chest pressed to the ground and shoulders scraping the walls, the Chief Shafir led Ensign Elyssia Rel and Lieutenant Commander Brock Jordan through the spiderweb of disorderly twists and turns that would deliver them straight into the interior of the planetary defense system’s control center. As was so typical of practically every security force in the galaxy, the Dominion had hardened the outside of the control center with a nearly unbreakable force but left the interior vacant and vulnerable.

High above them on the orbital station that the Dominion had converted into a massive weapons platform, Ryssehl Th’zathol and Crewman Nam Jae-Sun stood over a damaged duranium plate. Nam handled the welding torch, while Ryssehl guided him through the repair. Behind them, a Jem’Hadar soldier supervised. Their guard had no idea of their nefarious purpose, no suspicion of the payload that Ryssehl carried in his bag. As far as he knew, they were just two weary workers dragged from the depths of the maintenance pit, but he maintained his vigilance nonetheless. He took his duty to the Founders seriously.

Back planetside, a small team of operators moved towards the governor’s mansion preparing to capture the Vorta commander that had taken up residence within. Commander Jake Lewis, Lieutenant Kora Tal, Dr. Lisa Hall, and Lieutenant J.G. Jace Morgan had abandoned their begrimed attire in favor of adaptive camo bodysuits, ballistic pads, and Type-III phaser rifles. As they crept through the underbrush east of the mansion, they no longer needed to maintain their charade in the image of the local denizens. They would soon be engaging the Jem’Hadar directly.

“Natives incoming from the west,” reported T’Aer in their earpieces. From her perch high on a hill overlooking the mansion, their coldblooded sniper could see a mob of angry colonists through her scope. They moved quickly towards the front gates, armed with energy lances, blunt objects, and a few phasers. This diversion was engineered by Dr. Hall’s psyop, leveraging their grief to whip them into reckless frenzy. The untrained civilians had no chance of defeating the Jem’Hadar. They would probably all die. But they’d pull the Jem’Hadar away from their posts, giving Commander Lewis and his team the opportunity to breach.

Lieutenant Commander Brock Jordan reported in next: “Tunnel rats ready to make entry.” He, Ayala Shafir and Elyssia Rel had just reached the bulkhead that opened into the network switch room in the basement of the planetary defense system’s control center.

Ryssehl and Nam Jae-Sun heard the callouts over tiny earpieces buried deep in the tympanic cavity of their inner ears, but they couldn’t report their status verbally with their Jem’Hadar supervisor hovering over them. They didn’t have good news though. Their Jem’Hadar hadn’t given them a second alone to plant their explosives.  It didn’t matter though. The battle was about to pop off either way. They were just going to have to improvise. Otherwise, the station they were on would be turned against Nasera City and unleash an orbital bombardment that would wipe it clean from the map, along with the eight million Federation citizens that called it home.

Aboard the SS Lucre, parked in the Nasera Municipal Spaceport, a lone Ferengi sat with his feet up, sipping a smoky Denobulan whisky while flipping a latinum slip between his fingers. Grok listened to the others as they checked in. It was time.

He picked up the mic to his subspace communicator. “Lucre to my friends abroad,” he said gleefully, ready for the party to start. “The dabo table is set, and I look forward to seeing you soon.” With the Polaris and her squadron en route, he couldn’t rely on a point-to-point narrow beam to reach them at a fixed location. Instead, he had to use a more generalized subspace channel, and since there was always a chance it could be intercepted, he kept his words cryptic.

At high warp blazing towards the Nasera System, the bridge of the USS Polaris was ghostly silent. There were no more preparations to be done, no more decisions to be made, and no more crosstalk to be had. All that was left to do was execute.

Suddenly, the voice of a comms officer pierced the silence. “Confirmation from ground element. They are a go in T minus 5 minutes.” The gravity of those words could be felt across the bridge. Everyone knew what they meant. In five minutes, they’d be emerging from warp into the greatest firefight many of them had ever witnessed.

“Gator, distance and speed?” asked Captain Devreux from the center command chair.

“Distance 1114 AU. Speed warp 9.21.”

Standing behind the captain, Fleet Admiral Reyes ran the numbers quickly in her head. They were going to be late. “Signal the squadron. Bring us to warp 9.57 and engage,” she ordered. While the operators on the ground could message them, they couldn’t communicate back without giving up their approach. That meant Grok defined their timetables, and they needed to arrive exactly on time.

“Warp 9.57 confirmed.” 

The USS Polaris and her sister ships accelerated in unison, their new velocity aligned to arrive over Nasera II in 4 minutes and 42 seconds. A display on the side of the main viewer tracked their progress, counting down towards zero.

“Red alert,” ordered Captain Devreux. The room darkened as red hues overtook the typical blue. But other than that, it was almost superfluous as tactical systems had already been engaged and all crew had already deployed to their battlestations. “Final status check, all stations.”

“Power at optimal levels. All non-combat systems in bypass mode.”

“Shields at full. All weapons at ready.”

“All sensors tasked to tactical.”

“Starfighter wing ready for quick launch.”

“All non-combatants sheltering in place.”

“All battlestations standing by.”

Captain Devreux could feel himself choking up a little as the callouts proceeded. The magnitude of what was happening was starting to hit him. They were doing it. They were about to engage the Dominion once again. He looked over at the Admiral, who stood there with a look of pure determination on her face.

When the status check concluded, the Captain rose from the center chair. “It’s all yours, Admiral,” he said with a sense of gravity as he yielded command. The veteran flag officer, shaped through the crucible of wars long past and refined through her decades in service to the Federation, took her seat in the center chair.

“Comms, get me the squadron, all hands.”

The comms officer nodded once the uplink was established across all six vessels barreling towards the Nasera system at high warp.

“This is Fleet Admiral Allison Reyes. In just under three minutes’ time, we will engage the enemy. We know the disposition of their forces, and we know this battle will not be easy. Of all the missions you have served on, this may be the toughest you have ever faced. But you are ready. We are ready. Scientist or soldier, doctor or dockhand, freshly commissioned or grizzled veteran, this is what you have trained for.”

She looked around the bridge, noting a mix of resolve, focus and fear.

“We fight on behalf of the citizens of Nasera, who at this very moment suffer and die under the yoke of the Dominion. But we also fight for more than that. We fight for every free citizen of the Federation. Ignorance and appeasement are not solutions to the Dominion menace. They will not stop with the Deneb sector. They will keep going. Until we stand against them. And so we draw a line in the sand, right here, right now, starting with Nasera.”

There was a look of pure determination on her face, a deep conviction in every word she spoke. She meant them with every ounce of her being. War had come again, and they would do their duty, whatever the outcome.

“Man your battlestations, rise to your duty, trust your shipmates, and do what needs to be done.”

She cut the line and looked forward, watching the counter tick towards zero.

As an angry mob of colonists stormed the west gate of the governor’s mansion, Commander Jake Lewis gave the order to his team: “Execute.”

Four covert operators rose in unison from their crouched positions in the underbrush, moving swiftly from the east towards the palatial residence commandeered by the Vorta. Gone were their subtle disguises and subdued demeanors. They no longer needed to blend in with the oppressed denizens of Nasera. Now, in tactical gear with rifles at the ready, all subterfuge was gone. It was time for direct action.

A Jem’Hadar guard, distracted by the chatter on his communicator about the mob storming the west gate, didn’t even notice the easterly threat before Commander Lewis shot him dead. A second shot rang out as Dr. Lisa Hall killed another. Lieutenants Kora Tal and Jace Morgan moved tight on their heels, rifles sweeping for any sign of movement. Two years training together made the four Hazard Team members a well-oiled machine.

On a third floor balcony, a Jem’Hadar sentry turned when he heard the crack of phaser fire over the whispers of a quiet evening breeze. With the eyesight of a hawk, he instantly spotted the four figures approaching. But before he could so much as raise his rifle, a shot rang out. T’Aer’s aim was true. The coldblooded sniper killed him where he stood, a clean shot from 700 meters away, high on a hill where she was providing overwatch for the team.

The dead Jem’Hadar sentry tumbled over the railing, falling three floors, landing right in front of the team as they advanced along the perimeter of the mansion. Commander Lewis stepped over the body without glancing down. A dead body didn’t matter. He was completely focused on identifying the next threat.

A few kilometers away, three other members of the covert team waited for the call from Commander Lewis from the utility tunnels beneath the center of Nasera City. As soon as it came in, they moved swiftly, without hesitation. 

Ensign Elyssia Rel popped the bulkhead, and her two colleagues charged through. Lieutenant Commander Brock Jordan and Chief Petty Officer Ayala Shafir swept the room with rifles at the ready, searching for targets. But just as Shafir had found it prior, the network switch room was completely unguarded. They were now inside the heavily fortified control center of the planetary defense system without firing a single shot.

Ensign Rel and Lieutenant Commander Jordan took up defensive positions on either side of the room to cover possible points of entry, just in case a wayward patrol wandered down to the basement. Chief Shafir, meanwhile, dropped to a knee and pulled equipment out of her pack. She plugged a universal connector into the Console port on the back of the switch, and then got to work on her PADD.

“Time check?”

“T minus seventeen seconds.”

Chief Shafir was through the measly security of the network switch in seconds. The hacker had spent the better part of her life compromising systems far more complex than this, and the network was now hers to control. That was when it struck her. She wasn’t simply going to sabotage the planetary defense system as planned. She could do way better than that.

Across the vastness of space, the USS Polaris and her sister ships barreled towards Nasera. “Sensors report one cruiser, eight fighters, bearing 002 mark 5, directly over Nasera II,” came the call from the officer at the tactical station, piercing the nerves on the bridge. 

It was exactly as Commander Lewis’ team had reported. One Jem’Hadar battlecruiser, plus a fighter squadron, waited for them directly over the planet. Also from his intelligence, Fleet Admiral Allison Reyes knew there would also be a second battlecruiser and a few more fighters somewhere else in the system on patrol.

“54 AU and closing.” 

At warp 9.57, they’d come face-to-face with the enemy in fourteen seconds.

“TAO, eyes on the other cruiser?”

“Negative on eyes.” 

She knew the remaining ships were out there somewhere. Best guess, their signatures were occluded by one of the stellar bodies in the system. For now, they would focus on the nine bogies in their sights, and they would hope they finished that battle before the others appeared. 

It would be a tough fight with their ragtag band of ships, but facing only half of the Dominion’s forces at a time, it was winnable. As long as Commander Lewis came through on his end. If their covert ground elements failed to sabotage the planetary defense system or the orbital station, all bets were off.

“T minus five,” reported the conn.

Admiral Reyes watched as the streaking stars decelerated and grew still as a backdrop to the epic struggle that was about to begin. Nasera II lay directly ahead of them. Between the Starfleet ships and their destination was a Jem’Hadar battlecruiser and a squadron of fighters.

Reyes didn’t waste time hailing the Dominion occupiers. There was no point in pleasantries, nor in demanding the return of Nasera II. She knew the cold heart of the Dominion. They would not surrender, and they would not retreat. There was only one way this battle would end. Victory was life, and she intended victory to be theirs. That meant over the dead bodies of the Jem’Hadar.

“All ships, weapons hot. Break and engage!”

The Dominion fighters screamed towards the Starfleet squadron as polaron disruptors, phaser beams and quantum torpedoes cut through the vacuum of space.

As the only true warship of the group, the USS Diligent was the tip of the spear that pushed first into the swarm of enemy fighters. On its bridge, Captain Dorian Vox shouted orders, his pulse racing, his mind frantically tracking the information coming in from all sides. He was in his element, calling shots like the military commander he had trained to be.

“Track one eight seven, fire.”

“TAO, one eight seven, aye.”

The Alita class ship unloaded bow to stern. Phaser beams. Pulse cannons. Torpedoes. All firing in tandem as a brawl ensued. Around the Diligent, Jem’Hadar Beetles and Starfleet Valkyries bobbed and weaved, exchanging blows with each other and the warship.

“Track two three four, fire.”

“TAO, two three four, aye.”

As the Diligent blew past one of the fighters, a choreographed dance of phaser beams arced out from their emitters, attempting to slice through the enemy craft. The Jem’Hadar pilot dodged nimbly, taking only a glancing blow. It wouldn’t be that easy.

“Bring us ’round 210 mark 15.”

“Conn, bearing 210 mark 15, aye.”

The inertial dampeners struggled to compensate as the flight controller at the helm executed a turn so sharp the Diligent looked more like a single pilot starfighter than a 17 deck, 464 meter long beast. Officers that weren’t strapped into their jump seats had to grab hold of consoles, armrests, and pillars to avoid being thrown across the deck.

“TAO, go to the fourteens.”

“Fourteens, kill track zero two zero.”

The aggressive maneuver from Diligent caught the enemy fighter off guard. The dual Type-XIV heavy pulse cannons, a central feature of the Alita class, coughed out a volley, striking the Jem’Hadar fighter along the centerline. It exploded in a ball of fire.

“Splash one.”

Captain Vox smiled. First kill of the battle. He could smell the scent of Jem’Hadar blood. That wasn’t so bad, he thought. He was ready for more. But then the bridge shook violently as two Jem’Hadar beetles slotted in behind the Diligent, unloading a frenzy of polaron blasts against the Diligent’s rear quarter.

“Fighters, where the hell is my screen?!” the captain shouted. The Alita class ship was very frontloaded with its firepower, and its Valkyrie-class starfighters should have been covering its rear.

Back aboard the Polaris, Captain Devreux gave a sitrep: “Diligent splash one. Steamrunner on rear guard taking heavy damage from a pair of Jem’Hadar fighters that broke away. Remaining fighters from the Diligent are moving to support Steamrunner.”

“Nebula, come about and cover the Steamrunner,” Reyes ordered. The Nebula made a long lumbering turn, doubling back to support her sister ship. The Nebula wasn’t fast, and she wasn’t a warship, but she was a full-sized exploratory cruiser with the weapons and shields to match. Reyes knew she would give the smaller Steamrunner the relief it needed against two Jem’Hadar fighters that had pinned it down.

As soon as Admiral Reyes had changed the disposition of their forces to cover one weakness, another opened up.

“Diligent is being swarmed by six fighters,” Devreux reported. The Alita class was the best warship Starfleet had cranked out in a generation, but even she would struggle against that many simultaneous threats. The admiral didn’t want to lose their premier warship, especially not this early in the battle.

“Ingenuity, Norway, get on top of the Diligent! Cover its aft! Now!” Reyes ordered. The two light cruisers were not half the warship the Diligent was, but she figured their maneuverability would give them an edge to take some heat off the Diligent’s rear.

“And what about us Admiral?”

Admiral Reyes looked out the forward viewer at the imposing Dominion battlecruiser menacing towards them. “Bearing 010 mark 10, attack pattern echo,” she ordered, lining the Polaris up with the enemy flagship. “I want that cruiser out of our skies.” 

The bridge rocked as a volley of polaron bursts from the battlecruiser collided with her shields.

As they traded volleys with the battlecruiser, the tactical officer reported a problem: “Admiral, planetary defense system is coming online.”

Reyes cursed under her breath. They were depending on Commander Lewis’ team to have disabled that system. No ship in their squadron – not the Polaris, not the Diligent, and certainly not any of their seventies era relics – could survive a sustained volley from the dozens of satellites that made up the defense grid above Nasera.

“Is it in range?”

“In range of all vessels except Steamrunner and Nebula,” reported the tactical officer. 

A loud ping from the tactical console denoting active targeting sensors from the system.

“Vampire, vampire, vampire!” he screamed a moment later. “Three… six… twelve… sixty torpedoes, incoming!” Shock was evident in the tactical officer’s voice as he said the final count. He’d never faced even a tenth that many simultaneous incoming threats.

The battlecruiser was no longer their biggest problem.

A dozen satellites from Nasera’s planetary defense system opened fire in parallel, unleashing a hellstorm of warheads in the direction of the USS Polaris and her sister ships.

“Evasive actions! Countermeasures! All weapons, fire, fire, fire!” shouted Fleet Admiral Reyes.

The ship lurched hard as countermeasures and phasers lanced out, every ounce of the Polaris’ offensive and defensive capabilities turned towards deflecting what it could of the incoming fire. 

But Reyes knew it was futile. There was nothing they could muster to deflect sixty high velocity warheads. And this was only the first volley. Each satellite carried hundreds of warheads apiece, and they’d be ready to fire another barrage within seconds.

She braced for hell that was coming their way.

But hell never came.

The defense system, which had just moments before been under Dominion control, was now of a different mind. A half dozen warheads whizzed straight past the Polaris, impacting against a Jem’Hadar fighter in pursuit of the flagship. Another two dozen found their marks among the five Jem’Hadar fighters still engaged with the Diligent and the Ingenuity. And the remainder slammed headlong into the Jem’Hadar battlecruiser.

The sky was filled with fire, but it was the fire of her enemies.

Down in the network switch room beneath the control center of Nasera II’s planetary defense system, Chief Petty Officer Ayala Shafir’s hands flew across the keyboard as she manipulated the packet traffic to her own ends. 

“Rot in hell,” she muttered under her breath. For Petty Officer Jason Atwood. For the five innocents who died alongside him. For the three kids they’d killed the day before. And for everyone else who had suffered or died under the sick subjugation of the Dominion.

Ayala’s eyes were filled with pure hate. She hadn’t just sabotaged the planetary defense system as had been the plan. Instead, she’d turned it against its master, and unloaded its full force upon those who’d brought so much pain to her, to her team, and to the people of Nasera. Her only regret was that their deaths were instant, and that they hadn’t suffered the excruciating pain and fear Petty Officer Jason Atwood had felt before they ruthlessly executed him.

While Ayala Shafir had removed the threat from the battlespace above, her choice had also alerted the Dominion to their presence. If she had just interrupted communications, the Dominion might have assumed a malfunction, but the planetary defense system accurately dispatched every warship in the night’s sky. That meant they knew it was sabotage, and they quickly isolated the source to the basement under the control center. The three operators heard the pounding of boots first, and then the Jem’Hadar descended upon them. A firefight broke out, and Shafir abandoned her PADD in favor of her phaser.

High above Nasera City on the orbital station, the explosion of the Jem’Hadar battlecruiser was so bright that Ryssehl Th’zathol and Crewman Nam Jae-Sun had to shield their eyes. Even their Jem’Hadar guard stood transfixed, trying to process the scene unfolding before them.

Suddenly, there was an uncharacteristic shift in the momentum of the station. Somewhere down below, the Vorta commander had realized the tides of battle had turned, and he’d given the order. The two covert operators knew what that meant. The Dominion was turning the massive weapons platform against Nasera City to ensure its industrial might would never return to the hands of the Federation. If the station completed its rotation, the city would be destroyed and millions would die. If they were going to act, they had to do it now.

Ryssehl looked over at Nam. The young crewman nodded. It was all the encouragement the Andorian needed. Without hesitation, Ryssehl leapt at their distracted Jem’Hadar guard, knocking him off his feet. 

The two went into a scramble. Arms flew. Legs flew. Ryssehl tried to lock in a choke, but the Jem’Hadar plied the operator off his neck with brute force. Ryssehl went for a joint lock, but the Jem’Hadar rolled through it with precise agility. As seasoned as Ryssehl was after thirty years fighting along the borderlands, the Jem’Hadar warrior had him bested in strength, speed, and stamina. Move after move, counter after counter, the Jem’Hadar bested him in every way.

Eventually, the Jem’Hadar got the Andorian’s back. Ryssehl fumbled desperately to escape the blood choke, but the genetically-engineered supersoldier’s grip could not be broken. He was just too strong and too trained. The Jem’Hadar’s squeezed tightly with his burly arms, and Ryssehl could feel the blood leaving his brain. Any second now, the lights would go out.

As his vision began to dim, Ryssehl suddenly felt heat rising and smelled the odor of flesh burning. Standing over them, Crewman Nam Jae-Sun drove an active welding torch into the scaly back of their Jem’Hadar adversary. The warrior let out a howl as a 3100°C flame cut through his armor and his exoskeleton. His internal organs began to melt. The grip loosened as the Jem’Hadar died, and the Andorian rolled away before the torch finished burning through his lifeless carcass.

Nam Jae-Sun dropped the torch and stood there motionless with a stunned expression. Ryssehl knew that look. It was the look of a kid who had just taken his first life. Nam had trained with the Hazard Team for the last two years, but there was a big difference between shooting a hologram and burning a hole through a living creature, watching them scream as the life left their eyes.

“You’ll have time to process later,” Ryssehl said with urgency. “Right now, we have a station to disable.” Without another word, he snatched a communicator out of his bag. “Grok, I need a sitrep. How long until the orbital platform finishes its rotation and has a firing solution on Nasera City?” Crewman Nam Jae-Sun, standing next to him, was still trying to process.

“One one six seconds,” Grok replied instantly. Gone was the whisky he’d been sipping and the latinum strip he’d been threading between his fingers. Now, the Ferengi was fully wired in, tracking the movements of every element of the operation and calling the shots for the team as they executed on the surface and above.

Ryssehl recognized the issue immediately. Over the last two days, he and Nam had mapped out exactly where they needed to place the charges to disable the station, but 116 seconds was not enough time to get those charges in place and flee the station.

“Give me a countdown at 30 seconds,” Ryssehl requested of Grok as he grabbed his utility bag and rushed for the interior of the orbital station. As he ran, he pulled a sidearm out of the bag and tossed it at Nam. “Watch my six buddy,” he said as he drew another sidearm from the bag for himself.

As Ryssehl and Nam rounded the corner, the pair saw two Jem’Hadar standing there. Ryssehl fired a shot without slowing his stride. It hit true, right above the neck. Before he could aim at the second soldier, a crack rang out behind him as Nam shot the second Jem’Hadar dead. Ryssehl smiled. The kid was getting the hang of this killing thing.

Back on the Polaris, the bridge was abuzz as officers coordinated damage control and prepared for what would come next. They’d taken a few hard hits, but they were in relatively good shape. They needed to press forward to stop the orbital station before its armaments could be turned against Nasera City.

The tactical officer’s voice pierced the din of crosstalk: “We have incoming! Jem’Hadar patrol group bearing 230 mark 70, coming out of warp now. One battlecruiser, six fighters, vectoring for the Nebula and the Steamrunner.”

Reyes had hoped they’d have time to dispatch the orbital station, repair some damage and regroup as a squadron before the reinforcements returned from their patrol. But things did not always go to plan. The second wave of Jem’Hadar ships had returned early, and they were headed straight for the squadron’s weakest elements.

“Status of Steamrunner and Nebula?”

“Steamrunner is on life support, minimal shields, no weapons. Nebula is venting plasma, shields at 40%, weapons at 30%.” The two Starfleet ships had won their duel against the pair of Jem’Hadar fighters, but it had come at a steep price. Reyes didn’t even bother asking about casualties. There’d be many more before the day was done.

“Can the planetary defense grid cover them?” Reyes asked. If they were, the defense grid could do as it did with the other Dominion ships and delete the new attackers from the battlespace.

“Negative. They’re out of range,” replied the tactical officer. That’s why the Dominion patrol group was headed for them rather than the rest of the squadron. They were trying to draw the squadron away from the safety of the now-retaken planetary defense systems, and to distract them from the orbital platform until it could unleash armageddon upon the surface of Nasera II.

“Can they reposition?” If they could draw the Dominion’s forces into range of the planetary defense system, maybe Chief Shafir could kill them as she’d killed the others. Admiral Reyes had no idea that the team down there in the control center was now otherwise distracted with a Jem’Hadar firefight of their own.

“Negative. Steamrunner is completely dead in the water.”

Reyes looked out at the orbital station menacing in the distance as she debated her options. It sat there like a silent executioner waiting to drop the ax. She knew the threat it posed. Once it finished its rotation in less than ninety seconds, there would be nothing left of Nasera City. Millions would die. But she also couldn’t leave those two ships to their fate.

“Captain Vox, Commander Lee,” she said, addressing the captains of the Alita-class USS Diligent and the Pathfinder-class USS Ingenuity. “Go for the Steamrunner and Nebula. Norway with us. We’re going for the platform.” She was sending her best warship and the other most modern vessel among the group to defend the others, while the Polaris went for the orbital station. Even though the station was busy redirecting its primary weapons towards the planet, it still had dozens of torpedo launchers mounted aft to defend against the Polaris.

“Conn, set course for the orbital station. Best speed.”

The Diligent and the Ingenuity turned for their sister ships, while the Polaris and its Norway-class escort headed for the platform. Ahead of them, the orbital station let loose dozens of torpedoes. The Jem’Hadar had converted the station into a giant floating weapons platform.

“Vampire, vampire, vampire,” came the now too familiar call. The tactical officer didn’t even bother giving a count. It didn’t matter. Dozens of warheads hurled towards the Polaris for the second time, followed by dozens more as soon as the launchers reloaded.

“TAO, all power forward shields,” Reyes ordered. “All countermeasures. All weapons. Stop anything you can. Fire, fire, fire!” The Polaris dumped everything it had to try and stop the incoming warheads. The electronic countermeasures fizzled a couple, and the phaser sweeps detonated a few others early. But far too many were getting through. 

“Brace, brace, brace!”

There was no amount of shielding that could avert the damage they were about to take, but all they needed to do was survive long enough to get in weapons range. As the first volley collided with the Polaris, Admiral Reyes began to wonder if they’d make it that far though. The Polaris shook violently as an endless barrage of torpedoes collided with her shields. And then it shook again, and again, and again. Reyes’ knuckles grew white as she held the armrests of the command chair, just trying to stay upright. No amount of inertial dampening could mitigate the violence of all the explosions.

“Hull breach, deck 7.”

Another round of torpedoes collided with the Polaris.

“Make that decks 7, 9, 11, 12, and 25.” 

Another set of impacts. 

“Shields at 29%. Launchers 3, 4 and 7 inoperable.”

The hits just kept coming. EPS relays exploded, crewmen were thrown across the deck, lights flickered, and a fire started at the Communications console. Reyes ignored it all. 

“Just a little further,” she begged under her breath.

Suddenly, an immense explosion rocked the Polaris. That momentum shift launched a half dozen officers straight off their feet. Reyes didn’t care. It didn’t matter, not as long as the tactical officer was still strapped into his jump seat. She just needed him to pull the trigger to destroy the station. Their objective was nearing, and the timer was ticking down.

“Keep us on course for that station!” she screamed as the conn corrected their bearing.

If the admiral had asked what that massive explosion was, she would have been told that their Norway-class escort had blown apart. Its shields had given way a few seconds earlier, and it couldn’t sustain the charge any longer. It was gone, all hands lost. One hundred and ninety souls. But she didn’t ask. Her focus was completely on the target ahead of them.

Just as the USS Polaris came into weapons range, a shield emitter on the upper starboard saucer failed, and a volley of three torpedoes broke through. The warheads hit a critical series of junctions on decks 4 and 5. Over two dozen officers died in that moment. But the tactical officer reported even worse news: “We just lost all power to weapons!” Reyes could see the orbital station growing larger right in front of them. They were so close. But now they had no weapons to destroy it.

Fleet Admiral Reyes glanced over her shoulder at Captain Devreux, her dear friend and closest confidant. They made eye contact. He knew what she was thinking. She regretted she was thinking it. If it was just her, whatever. You pay your money, you take your chances. But there were sixteen hundred other Starfleet officers aboard the Polaris.

Captain Devreux nodded solemnly, giving his silent blessing. He was no warrior. He’d spent his years wandering the stars, exploring the mysteries of the universe. But in that moment, he understood. He felt the weight of duty. They were out of options. They had no other choice. They could not let eight million innocent civilians die.

“Conn, give me ramming speed,” Allison Reyes ordered, knowing it would be her final order. 

Her voice did not falter. Her conviction did not waiver. All around the bridge, the crosstalk stopped. Everyone understood what that order meant. Allison Reyes looked forward with the determined look of a warrior ready to do her duty one last time.

“Ramming speed, aye.”

As the USS Polaris barreled towards the orbital platform at ramming speed, the chaos of battle was drowned out by the gravity of reality.

The explosions of consoles and EPS relays no longer mattered. The first aid administered to wounded colleagues no longer mattered. Even the shields no longer really mattered. At this point, even if they broke apart under the relentless barrage of incoming warheads, their momentum would deliver the scraps of their massive vessel to its target.

All they could do was wait for the inevitable.

“Ryssehl to Polaris,” came a decisive voice over ship-to-ship comms, piercing the veil of their demise. “Abort! Pull off! We have a solution. We’re going to blow this bitch.”

For a moment, Fleet Admiral Reyes hesitated.

If they aborted now, they would not get another shot. The ship would be chewed to pieces long before they ever made another successful approach, and the rest of the squadron did not have time to come around before the station unleashed armageddon upon the civilians of Nasera City. But Ryssehl Th’zathol was Commander Lewis’ most trusted friend. Admiral Reyes trusted Commander Lewis more than anyone, and if he trusted Ryssehl, that had to count for something. She just hoped with all her being she wasn’t making the wrong choice.

“Conn, bearing three three zero mark six zero, all engines full.”

The Polaris banked hard, up and to the left, pushing the inertial dampeners to their max as the Odyssey class ship narrowly missed the spaceframe of the orbital station.

“Ryssehl, you’re still on board the station?”

“I am.”

“You better be right about this. You only have thirty seconds before the station has a firing solution on Nasera City,” the Admiral warned. “Is that enough time for you to plant your explosives and get off?” She was pretty sure she knew the answer.

“No, we won’t be getting off the station,” Ryssehl replied in a calm and collected tone. He had already come to terms with his reality. He’d known from the moment Grok gave him the timer. “We were dead either way. This way, you all don’t go with us. You still have a planet to save.”

There was silence for a moment. She knew the sacrifice he was making, and he knew his sacrifice would save fifteen hundred souls. There was nothing further for either to say.

Crewman Nam Jae-Sun, standing beside Ryssehl on the station, had one last request. “Admiral, please tell my parents I love them,” the young man asked, his voice quivering with fear. He was afraid to die. “And that I did my duty.”

Before the admiral could respond, the line cut off as the orbital station exploded.

The admiral placed a hand on her heart and closed her eyes. Crewman Nam wasn’t even thirty years of age, and Ryssehl was a disgraced former officer. Today, they were heroes.

A tear ran down her cheek.

Below them on the planet, Commander Jake Lewis heard the last words of his dear friend as the team moved through an inner courtyard of the governor’s mansion. But reality sank in when the explosion of a thousand warheads lit up the evening sky, bathing them in a deep orange glow.

Lieutenant Kora Tal could sense the pain the Commander must have felt. She had seen how fondly he regarded his Andorian colleague, how close their bond was. She’d really never seen the aloof spook that way with anyone else. In that quiet moment between duels with the Jem’Hadar, she turned to check on him. 

“You need a moment?” Kora asked Lewis, her voice filled with compassion and sorrow. She’d only met Ryssehl at the start of this adventure, and she and Nam Jae-Sun were only passing acquaintances, but even her heart pained for their sacrifice.

That moment of compassion was the last mistake Kora Tal would ever make. 

From the quad she was supposed to be sweeping, the one she’d only momentarily drawn her eyes from, a polaron burst lept forth as a Jem’Hadar soldier unshrouded. It hit her in the back.

Lieutenant J.G. Jace Morgan swung around, unloading a spray of fire in the direction of the new assailant. The Jem’Hadar soldier took cover behind a pillar, giving Commander Lewis a chance to rush to Kora’s side. But there was nothing he could do. The energetic polaron particles from the Jem’Hadar rifle had fried her internal organs immediately on impact. Lewis came beside her just in time to watch the light leave her eyes.

While Lewis looked down at Kora, Lieutenant J.G. Morgan and Dr. Lisa Hall dueled with the assailant in a frenetic firefight. Commander Lewis looked up at the exchange. He was over it. He was just done. It was time to end this. He grabbed a flashbang and chucked it at the pillar behind which the Jem’Hadar had taken cover.

The flashbang went off, and Commander Lewis moved swiftly. But he didn’t draw his phaser. Instead, he went for his boot knife. This was personal on so many levels.

The Jem’Hadar, his senses overwhelmed by the flashbang, didn’t see Commander Lewis coming until the rage-filled killer was right on top of him. Lewis lunged and thrust the blade of his knife into a soft spot just below the Jem’Hadar’s feeder tube. He drove it deeper and deeper into his neck, all the way up to the hilt, staring his opponent directly in the eyes as he watched him die. That moment of revenge gave him at least a moment of satisfaction.

As the Jem’Hadar crumpled onto the cold stone floor, Commander Lewis re-shouldered his rifle and prepared to move again. He briefly glanced over his shoulder to check on his teammates. Dr. Hall drew up alongside him, but Lieutenant J.G. Jace Morgan was just standing there staring at the body of Lieutenant Kora. Hadn’t Jace learned anything from what had just happened? Lewis wondered. If you drop your focus for just a second, you die.

“Leave her,” Lewis ordered firmly. “We will mourn later.”

They still had a Vorta to find.

A few kilometers away, Lieutenant Commander Brock Jordan, Ensign Elyssia Rel and Chief Petty Officer Ayala Shafir were consumed in a firefight of their own. They traded their phaser blasts with Jem’Hadar polaron blasts in the basement of the control center, dodging and weaving between the racks of computer equipment.

“We can’t stay here any longer!” shouted Jordan as he took cover behind a network rack. “We have to go.” There’d already been too many deaths today. He was the Deputy Commander of the Hazard Team, and he was going to do his damndest to make sure Ayala Shafir and Elyssia Rel got home safely.

Chief Shafir tossed him a shaped charge before laying on the trigger again, spraying another volley of cover fire down the aisle to slow the Jem’Hadar advance. “If we blow the switch room, the defense system goes inoperable,” she explained as she tossed a similar charge to Ensign Rel. 

The team fanned out as they moved, placing charges against pillars and racks as they continued to spray the Jem’Hadar with suppression fire. Methodically, they made their way through the room towards the bulkhead that would take them to freedom.

Lieutenant Commander Jordan popped the bulkhead to open. “Go, go!” he shouted, laying down a barrage of fire to hold the Jem’Hadar back.

Chief Shafir went first, followed by Ensign Rel. They crawled as fast as they could through the narrow utility tunnels, trying to get around the first bend to safety as the tunnels were far too narrow for the bulk Jem’Hadar to follow. 

Ensign Rel, a dozen meters behind Chief Shafir, could hear the exchange of weapons as she crawled. But then it went silent. She looked back just in time to see Lieutenant Commander Jordan fall over in front of the bulkhead. He had taken a glancing shot to his lower leg, but he was still alive. They made eye contact, and he shouted: “Go Elyssia, go!”

The last thing Elyssia Rel saw before she turned around the bend of a junction was the Jem’Hadar swarming over Lieutenant Commander Brock Jordan. They lifted him up and dragged him away. Ensign Rel crawled faster, trying to catch up to Chief Shafir.

“Ayala! Wait!”

Chief Shafir looked back, a questioning look on her face.

“They got him. They got Brock. But he’s alive,” Ensign Rel explained hopefully. “It was a glancing blow. Right before we went around that first bend, I saw them dragging him off the floor.” They needed to go back for him. They could save him.

“We can’t go back for him,” Chief Shafir replied. “There’s too many of them, and they’d cut us down before we got off our hands and knees.” One simply didn’t have enough hands to shoot while dragging themselves along the ground of the narrow tunnels, and there was absolutely no cover in the tunnels. They’d be fish in a barrel for the Jem’Hadar to chew up.

Ayala Shafir pulled the detonator out of her pocket. A good couple hundred meters down the tunnels, they were far enough to safely blow the charges.

“Ayala, we can’t.”

“We won’t,” Ayala Shafir replied grimly, her eyes dark with guilt over what she was about to do. “I will. And I will live with that guilt forever.” She would not ask Elyssia to do that. The young flight controller still had a bright future ahead of her. Ayala Shafir, on the other hand, had already booked her ticket to hell. This would just be one more sin to bear on her broken soul as she crossed the river Styx.

“He’s still in there Ayala.”

“If I don’t press this detonator, the Dominion will retake control of the defense system. And then they will unload the might of Nasera on our ships, and all of this will have been for nothing.”

The two locked eyes, grappling with an impossible choice. Brock Jordan was the Deputy Lead of the Hazard Team, a man they’d relied on and learned from over the last two years. He was like an older brother, a man full of respect and good intention that you knew would always have your back. He could have gone into the tunnel first, but instead he ushered them ahead. And now, Ayala Shafir was going to kill him.

“Ayala…” Ensign Rel began to object again, but her voice trailed off as the memories of her symbiont began flooding into her consciousness. Those past lives, they gave her strength to say what needed to be said: “Do it.”

Ayala closed her eyes. Her hand quivered. But then she pressed the detonator.

The tunnels shook as the charges detonated, blowing apart the basement, the network switches, the Jem’Hadar and Lieutenant Commander Brock Gordon. Elyssia Rel cried out in despair. Ayala Shafir didn’t even have the air in her lungs to scream.

A dust cloud blew down the tunnel from the force of the explosion. Stardust, Ayala thought to herself. Someday they would all just be stardust. In that moment though, even her old adage didn’t help. Jason Atwood had died because she hadn’t covered his back. That one hurt badly. But Brock Jordan died because she pressed the button. She had killed him, knowingly, after he had ensured they were safe. That was a dagger to the heart.

The covert operators moved swiftly through the mansion, hunting the Vorta commander. With each Jem’Hadar they confronted, they savored the kill. Was it right for Starfleet officers to feel this way? Probably not. Was it understandable? Absolutely. 

These were not normal circumstances, and these were not normal officers. Commander Lewis had endured the torture of the Jem’Hadar during the Dominion War. He’d never been the same again after that. Dr. Lisa Hall had grown up on Turkana IV. She lost her youthful innocence before she lost her baby teeth. And Lieutenant J.G. Jace Morgan, the most normal of the group, had watched his teammates die by Jem’Hadar hands all week. 

The three man squad was out for ruthless retribution. For Petty Officer Jason Atwood, executed as part of the Vorta’s twisted game. For Kora Tal, murdered in a moment of compassion. For Ryssehl Th’zathol and Crewman Nam Jae-Sun, who died to stop the Dominion from unleashing armageddon upon Nasera City. And for all the others who had died in the past, or would die in the future, as a result of the Dominion’s cruel brutality. Sometimes, brutality could only be met with brutality, and this was one of those times.

As they kicked in another door, the three operators came face to face with the conductor of Nasera’s cruel symphony, the Vorta who presided over this occupation, tortured innocent civilians, and murdered their friends. Dr. Lisa Hall and Lieutenant J.G. Jace Morgan gunned down his Jem’Hadar bodyguards without a second thought, while Commander Lewis rushed the Vorta.

Before the Vorta could react, the Commander was on top of him. But the Vorta didn’t fight back. He just reached for his neck. Lewis anticipated the move. He expected cowardice from the pathetic creature, and he caught his hand before it could reach his terminal implant. The Vorta no longer had provenance over how or when he would die. That power now belonged to Commander Lewis, and he would ensure that the Vorta’s death was neither fast nor painless.

With the room secured, Lieutenant J.G. Morgan bound his hands and strapped him to a chair, and Dr. Hall began pulling the equipment out of her pack. The twisted psychologist had been waiting for this moment, the opportunity to take a crack at defeating the Vorta’s genetic coding and behavioral conditioning. It made a far more interesting challenge than melting the weak minds of Klingons, Cardassians, Romulans and humans.

Commander Lewis kept watch, his rifle at the ready. It would take a bit of time for Dr. Hall to work her magic. Might as well get a sitrep, he figured. Consumed in firefight after firefight up to this point, he had only caught bits and pieces of what had transpired.

“Lewis to all units. Report.”

“Jake, it’s good to hear your voice,” Admiral Reyes answered from the bridge of the USS Polaris. As much as Commander Lewis spent his days stalking the corridors and chasing for ghosts, she’d missed his presence on the Polaris the last couple weeks. She could have used the counsel of the aged spook as she prepared the young crew for battle. At a more fundamental level, she was just relieved they were both still alive. “The Dominion ships are all destroyed. The orbital station is no more. And we just detected an explosion at the control center so we presume the planetary defense system is out of commission. We are now preparing to head down to Nasera City to clear the streets of the Dominion scourge.”

Commander Lewis nodded contentedly. Everything was going according to plan so far, except for Ryssehl, Kora and Nam. Neither he nor Reyes yet knew the fate of their Assistant Chief Intelligence Officer, Lieutenant Commander Brock Jordan. Chief Petty Officer Shafir had not yet mustered the strength to make the call.

“Do you need any assistance at your location Commander?” Reyes asked.

Commander Lewis debated his response. On one hand, the mansion was far from secure. While most of the Jem’Hadar were tied up with colonists rioting at the west gate, there were still plenty of Jem’Hadar stalking the grounds. Eventually, the team would be found, and a few extra security officers would be nice. But on the other hand, he didn’t really want a bunch of Starfleet personnel to see what Dr. Hall was about to do to the Vorta. That would cause questions he didn’t want to answer.

“Negative. We’re good here,” Commander Lewis replied confidently. “It’s pretty peaceful here, all things considered. We just need to have a chat with an old friend.” He looked over at the Vorta as Dr. Hall shoved a needle in his arm.

“Understood.” Reyes could infer why, and she was pretty sure it wasn’t because the mansion was actually secure. Lewis’ last update had mentioned he and Dr. Hall were going for the Vorta. The update hadn’t articulated what they would do when they found the Dominion commander, but she could read between the lines. If she was right about their intentions, she had no intention of stopping them. A little dirty work could save a good many lives. “And Commander, thank you. Your team did us a good one today.”

“At a steep price,” Lewis replied coldly, again glancing at the Vorta as Hall began to pump him full of psychoactives. At least what was about to follow would make him feel a bit better.

“Not to break up this little love fest,” a jovial voice interrupted over the line as their Ferengi friend joined the conversation. “But the Jem’Hadar are doing their best Cardassian Genocide impression outside my window right now.” Sitting in the cockpit of the SS Lucre, Grok had a firsthand view of soldiers making their way through the Nasera Municipal Spaceport shooting anything that moved. “Miss Reyes, you better get your tight little ass down here soon or there won’t be anyone left to save.”

On the bridge, Captain Devreux’s jaw dropped. Did the Ferengi legitimately just say ‘tight little ass’ in reference to the Fleet Admiral? Allison Reyes wasn’t bothered by it though. Anyone who bled in the face of her enemy was a friend of hers. “We’re on our way,” she replied dutifully. A difficult task still lay ahead of them to expunge the Jem’Hadar from every shadowy corner of Nasera City.

Right then, a stray polaron burst collided with the hull of the SS Lucre. Grok knew it was time to get moving. He hung up the line and grabbed his sidearm as he headed for the exit. It was getting messy outside, and the Ferengi wasn’t going to wait for the fleeters to arrive to start the party. It was time to nab a few Jem’Hadar heads for himself.

Chief Petty Officer Shafir followed the conversation as best she could as she and Ensign Elyssia Rel crawled through the maintenance tunnels under Nasera City. When the others finished, she made a simple request: “Commander, can you switch to our secondary?” She had no intention of breaking the news on an open channel for the whole squadron to hear. She barely had the courage to tell her mentor privately.

A couple seconds later, the two operators were alone on a separate channel.

“Alright Ayala, go ahead.”

“Brock is dead. He was still inside when I detonated it.” She could barely get the words out. As much as her thoughts were killing her, it hurt so much more to say it aloud. “I didn’t have any choice Jake. There was no more time.” Her voice tapered off.

“Understood.” The Commander’s tone was flat. He didn’t ask any questions. If Ayala had done it, she did it because she had to. And if she didn’t share more details, it was because she wasn’t ready to. He’d been in her shoes before, too many times. “You and Elyssia, just get back safe.” He meant it. If he lost any more friends today, he’d have none left.

As Commander Lewis hung up the link, he turned towards the Vorta, his eyes growing darker than the night’s sky. The drugs flowed into Vorta’s system, yet he still sat there smugly smiling.

Commander Lewis drew his boot knife and approached, drawing his face so close he could feel the breath of his enemy. He placed the tip of his blade against the Vorta’s larynx, pressing just hard enough to bend the soft tissue on his neck. He could do it. He could end the Vorta’s life right now. But that would be too merciful. That monster deserved so much worse.

The Vorta was unperturbed by the threat. He would have already been dead if the Starfleet officer hadn’t prevented him from activating his terminal implant. “What’s wrong Starfleet?” he asked, trying to provoke his captor. “You appear to be in a fragile mental state. Was it something we did?” He smiled sadistically.

Commander Lewis just stood there, staring at him with hate-filled eyes, the knife still pressed against his neck.

“Something got your tongue?” the Vorta taunted. He was ready to die for his gods. But with his hands tied, he needed this human to do it. He could feel his skin about to give way. It would be fast, and then it would be over. It was his last duty.

“You killed four of mine today,” Commander Lewis said coldly as he withdrew his blade from the Vorta’s neck. “This is personal.” He looked over at Dr. Hall. “Do your worst doc. And don’t make it quick.” 

Commander Lewis turned to walk away, but then suddenly he spun back around and, in one swift motion, he drove his blade into the Vorta’s thigh. It wasn’t to kill the Vorta though. It was just to make himself feel a bit better. The Vorta howled uncontrollably at the pain. Commander Lewis smiled. Yep, that did make him feel a bit better, he thought as he walked away, leaving the psychologist with her patient.

Dr. Hall slid up next to the Vorta. 

“Now, now, mister Vorta,” she said in a belittling voice. “That really wasn’t all that bad, was it?” She smiled a smile as sadistic as his had been earlier as she pulled the knife out of his leg. His nerves lit on fire again, and he screamed. Hall ignored it and just kept casually talking to him. “Before we get started, do you have a name?” He couldn’t respond on account of all the pain. “What would you like me to call you?”

The doctor seemed not to care one bit about the Vorta’s pain, nor the fact that her boss had just stabbed a restrained captive. And that’s because she didn’t. She just sat there, letting him drown in the pain for a bit. It would help soften him up. Before the Vorta lost too much blood though, Dr. Hall pulled out a dermal generator and sealed the wound. No point in letting him bleed out before they finished their conversation.

“Contact the squadron. Tell them to assemble their teams. We’re going down to the surface,” Fleet Admiral Reyes ordered urgently. She’d heard the Ferengi clear as day when he described it as the Jem’Hadar’s best reenactment of the Cardassian Genocide. A repeat of that massacre would not happen on Nasera. Not on her watch.

“Admiral, all ships reporting massive damage control efforts ongoing,” warned the strategic operations officer. “It’s going to be several hours before they’ve got it under control.”

All around them, consoles flickered and conduits sparked. The bridge was a wreck, as was the entire ship. The USS Polaris had hull breaches on a half dozen decks, and crewmembers were tending to their own wounds because the medical staff was completely overwhelmed. The tale was similar across the entire squadron. The Norway had been destroyed, the Steamrunner was dead in the water, and the others had all taken heavy damage.

“Do they still have officers that can walk and shoot?” Reyes asked frustratedly. “Unless they’re actively sealing the hull or stopping a core breach, tell them to grab a phaser and get their asses down there.” She was having none of it. The battlespace was clear. The battle that still needed to be had was down on the planet. “There are still eight million Federation citizens that depend on us to clear the streets.” 

Fleet Admiral Reyes had no illusions about what lay ahead. The Jem’Hadar were dug in. It would be hard work to eradicate the scourge. They were going to have to go building by building, block by block, to clear them out, and that took manpower. Lots of manpower. Fixing the ships could wait for later. 

Reyes turned to head for the turbolift, but a hand reached out to stop her.

“Where do you think you’re going Admiral?” asked Captain Devreux with a disapproving look. He had worried she would try something like this. She always wanted to go on away missions, and while he didn’t usually bother to try and stop her, they weren’t usually near as dangerous as this one would be either.

“I’m an officer that can walk and shoot, and do you see me actively repairing the hull or stopping a warp core breach?” Admiral Reyes countered. “I’m going down there, just as I ordered everyone else to do.”

“You’re needed up here to command your squadron.”

“There are no more speeches to give Gérard,” Reyes replied emphatically. “It’s time to get our hands dirty now.”

Captain Devreux wondered what ‘get our hands dirty now’ meant since they’d just gone through hell up here. They’d seen their life flash before their eyes at least twice in the last half hour. They’d engaged ramming speed for crying out loud! How could Reyes so quickly go for a third round? That was tempting fate.

“These officers we’re sending down,” Admiral Reyes continued. “Most of them have never seen anything like the nightmare they’re about to walk into. It is important that I am there.” Her face was a mix of conviction for her own choice and concern for the officers under her.

“Important to them? Or to you?” Captain Devreux knew his friend well.

“Does it matter? I‘m going.” Admiral Reyes’ mind was made up.

“If the Jem’Hadar realize you’re down there, they’ll do everything they can to shove your head on a pike for all to see,” the captain persisted. His fear came from friendship, but there was also logic behind his opposition. “You’re a high value target, Admiral.”

Reyes had to admit he had a point. The Dominion was as versed in psychological warfare as direct combat. Sticking an admiral’s head on a pike would send a strong message, and they’d go out of their way to accomplish it if they knew she was there. But there was a solution to that problem. 

Without hesitation, Fleet Admiral Reyes ripped the bar of pips off her collar and dropped them on the deck. Then she plucked one pip off Captain Devreux’s collar and placed it on her own. It was a trick as old as war itself, admirals and generals concealing their rank to avoid being marked by the enemy.

“Problem solved,” she said with a smile.

To the enemy, the admiral was now just another nameless redshirt, except that she knew the enemy. She knew how they fought, she’d killed them before, and she was ready to do it again. For all those they killed in the Dominion War, and for all those who’d lost their lives today. She didn’t even want to think about what the final number was from today, but she knew it would be in the hundreds, if not higher. There’d been one hundred and ninety souls aboard the Norway alone. “Any other concerns?”

“If there were, would it stop you from going?”

“Not over my dead body.”

And with that, Allison Reyes turned and headed for the turbolift.

Captain Devreux stood there a ball of nerves, worried for the woman he’d explored the galaxy with for the past seven years. In many ways, they were two peas in a pod. They had the same adventurous spirit, the same insatiable curiosity, the same love of the unknown. But in others, they could not have been more different. Today, he was reminded of that. Her word choice had not helped either. Captain Devreux certainly hoped that the next time they saw each other, it would not be over her dead body. 

He picked the admiral’s bar of pips up off the floor. She’d better come back for them.

As the sun fell over Nasera City, its once bustling streets became a bloodsoaked warzone. Starfleet officers crouched behind destroyed vehicles and abandoned merchant carts, anything that offered a modicum of cover, as they traded shots with the Jem’Hadar. But the hardened warriors of the Dominion had the upper hand. They knew the city. They had the gift of eyesight tuned through genetic modification to work in low light. They could shroud to execute an unseen flank. And they’d trained their entire life for combat.

Moving with her officers through the streets, Allison Reyes could see the shellshock in their eyes. These were young men and women who had enlisted to explore the stars, and they’d come up in an era of Starfleet non-intervention. Most of them had never seen anything close to this outside the holodeck.

As Allison Reyes took cover behind a vegetable stand, she spotted a young Lieutenant in science teal cowering  behind a pillar. He was covering his head with the hand that held his phaser rather than using it to defend himself against the three Jem’Hadar advancing on him. He was completely overwhelmed with the situation as polaron blast after polaron blast exploded all around him. 

Reyes took careful aim and fired at the advancing soldiers. She hit one in the chest, and the other two ducked for cover as they returned fire in her direction.

The reprieve gave the Lieutenant a moment to recenter. He looked over. Was he going crazy? He was from the USS Ingenuity, so he didn’t know her well, but that shooter that had just come to his aid looked an awful lot like Fleet Admiral Reyes. She had a single pip on her collar, but even through the smoke that filled the air, he was almost certain it was her. The Lieutenant mustered what courage he could find in himself. If an admiral could fight these monsters, so could he.

The Jem’Hadar were so engaged in their duel with Admiral Reyes that they didn’t notice when the young stellar cartographer from the Ingenuity raised his phaser again. Hand trembling, he squeezed the trigger. The first shot went wide, but his second shot hit true. One of the Jem’Hadar fell. The other turned and sprayed a salvo in his direction, forcing to duck back behind the pillar, but as soon as the Jem’Hadar took his eyes off the admiral, she shot him dead. 

The pair of officers were safe, for the moment at least.

The Lieutenant rushed over to the woman. “Admiral Reyes?” he asked in shock. “Thank you.”

“Not Admiral, just Reyes for now please,” she cautioned with a stern look. Camouflaging yourself as a junior officer didn’t work if everyone called you by your real rank. “And don’t mention it. Let’s get moving.” Her eyes filled with the fire, she shouldered her rifle again and set off down the street towards the sounds of weapons fire. The battle was far from over.

The Lieutenant stood there looking dumbfounded. Just a moment ago, he’d been sure he was going to die. But then Fleet Admiral in charge of their squadron, the last person he’d ever expected to see down here, had saved him from his demise. And then she just trotted off to get back in the fight. It felt almost like a dream or, as he looked upon the remains of the three Jem’Hadar they’d just killed, a nightmare. He had never killed a living, breathing, thinking creature before.

After a moment, the stellar cartographer came to his senses. This was war, and this would not be the last life he took tonight if he wanted to stay alive. With that thought, he set off to find the squad he’d gotten separated from during the melee. 

Once the Lieutenant was safely back with his team, word spread quickly. Fleet Admiral Allison Reyes, their squadron commanding officer, was down here with them running around with a phaser rifle in the disguise of an ensign. If she could do it, so could they.

A few kilometers away, Dr. Lisa Hall sat in the governor’s mansion working over the Vorta. She’d turned their captive’s bloodstream into a wicked maelstrom of psychosis-inducing toxins. She’d started with a cocktail of anticholinergics to distort reality and weaken his inhibitions. Then she’d introduced agents to excite or sedate specific neurological functions, such as his γ-hydroxybutyrate and gamma-aminobutyric acid receptors. To avoid unfortunate side effects, she rounded her concoction off with counteragents to prevent cardiotoxicity, incapacitation and other adverse effects that would get in the way of their discussion.

“This is futile,” the Vorta insisted. The Founders had gifted him with resistance to poisoning. All that junk she’d pumped into his veins, it wouldn’t break him. His gods didn’t make such mistakes. At least that was what he thought. 

In reality, the Founders had made a mistake constructing their wicked servants from a species with the genetic root of the humanoid progenitors that had seeded most of the galaxy. Even with all the modifications they made, Vorta anatomy still had some of the same weaknesses as the many species Lisa Hall had honed her craft against. They might not break him in the same way as they broke a Klingon or a Betazoid, but they’d still soften him up. And then she’d break him down with her words.

“Just as the Dominion’s attempt to take the Alpha Quadrant was futile. You and your colleagues have been gone a long time. Almost thirty years, in fact. If the Dominion had been victorious, would we really be sitting here right now?” Dr. Hall asked.

The Vorta had no response.

“There is only one explanation,” she pressed. “The Founders failed.”

The Vorta looked shocked at the irreverence. How dare she speak of gods like that? “It is but a test of our faith,” he insisted. “They will return and reward us for our loyalty.” It was the only truth he could believe. The Founders did not make mistakes. If they did not prevail in their war with the Federation, it was because they chose not to. That was the only explanation that made sense to him.

“They might reward you if you actually succeeded. But you didn’t. You failed. Just like your siblings are failing all across the sector,” his interrogator replied with a cruel smile. “Just this evening, we destroyed your Ketracel-White facility on Saxue, and we’ll finish mopping up Izar by morning.” It was a bluff. Neither had happened yet. However, Dr. Hall had picked real targets to make it more believable. It did mean though that this Vorta could never be allowed to escape their captivity. “I hear that when Saxue fell, the Jem’Hadar chose to die by their own hands.”

The Vorta sat there stunned. If Saxue had fallen, he could believe that the Jem’Hadar might have done that. They were never all that loyal beyond the White. The fact Starfleet even knew of Saxue was a shock too. That rogue planet was a complete secret, a linchpin of their plans to take the Alpha Quadrant. That this Starfleet officer knew about Saxue helped him believe the rest. The drugs probably helped too.

Out on the streets of Nasera, the battle waged on. 

“Mind if I roll with you guys for a bit?” Allison Reyes asked as she jogged up alongside a squad that was going door to door clearing buildings.

The squad leader, an ensign in security yellow, turned to see a petite older woman standing there, adorned in command red with a single pip. Beneath her matted hair and her dirty face, he recognized her instantly. It was his Commanding Officer, Fleet Admiral Allison Reyes. “Absolutely,” he replied enthusiastically as his posture stiffened up.

Allison Reyes was not one to let others do her dirty work, and she moved straight to the front of the squad, shouting instructions as she went. “Eyes up. Windows, balconies, rooftops. Scan for threats. Rifles at the ready.” It was urban combat basics, but these officers knew little of it. The admiral made a note to work that into their exercises after this mission was complete, and she regretted she hadn’t spent more time previously preparing these kids for war. The peace of the nineties had made her complacent with their training, and that complacency, as their commanding officer, made her culpable in all the deaths they would suffer tonight.

With Admiral Reyes now at the lead, the team drew up alongside a building. She tapped her head, signaling the breacher. He came alongside her and blew the door. 

Reyes was first into the room. There was one Jem’Hadar waiting for her. Thankfully, the veteran of the Dominion War, a woman who’d killed dozens of his compatriots, was faster on the trigger than he was. She dropped him before her number two man had even stepped into the room. Reyes knew she’d gotten lucky though. If there’d been two Jem’Hadar lying in wait rather than one, she would have been dead. The number two man had moved too slow to cover her flank. These kids were novices, and that was when it sunk in just how badly tonight was going to go.

“Clear!”

Slowly, other officers filed into the building, splitting off to check the rest of the rooms. Reyes heard a polaron rifle go off nearby. It was followed by the spam of undisciplined phaser fire. And then silence.

“’Medic! Someone get a medic!” someone screamed.

Reyes rushed over. When she arrived, she first saw a Jem’Hadar soldier lying dead in the corner. Then she saw what she feared, a Chief Petty Officer lying on the ground breathing his last breaths. There was nothing a medic could do to save him. Polaron particles were savage like that. They irreversibly irradiated your organs on a clean hit. Admiral Reyes knelt down and held the young officer’s hand as he died. 

When the young man had passed beyond the veil, Admiral Reyes folded his arms on his chest and gently closed his eyelids. He couldn’t have been a day over twenty five.

Across town, Dr. Hall continued to work on their Vorta captive, while Commander Lewis and Lieutenant J.G. Jace Morgan stood watch.

“Is there such a thing as too far?” Lieutenant Morgan asked Commander Lewis they watched the counselor work. “We’re way off the reservation here.” Jace Morgan only been in Starfleet a few years, but he’d certainly never seen anything like what Dr. Hall was doing to the Vorta. At least not anywhere except in the books that covered war crimes.

The Commander was having none of that idealistic bullshit. He and the counselor were of the same mind. Against the Dominion, the ends justified any means. Starfleet Intelligence had been right to unleash a morphogenic virus upon the Founders during the war, even if it had led to a complete genocide of the Founders, and what Dr. Hall was doing now was the right choice too. The Lieutenant needed to understand that.

“Did it hurt when we lost Kora?”

Morgan’s eyes fell.

“Or when they executed Jason?”

He kept staring at the ground.

“Or how about this. They killed Brock too.”

Morgan looked up with shock and dismay. Lieutenant Commander Brock Gordon was a good man, and a good friend. He hadn’t heard Brock had died, since Lewis had taken the call on a separate line. This mission had been an absolute tragedy.

“Does it hurt Lieutenant?” Commander Lewis pressed. “Because it should. And no one else should have to go through what you’re feeling.” They looked over at the ongoing interrogation. “What Dr. Hall is doing is ensuring we don’t lose a thousand more officers tonight. Is that not a cause worth crossing some lines?” 

Lieutenant Morgan nodded. They were way over the line, but he was okay with it.

The battle raged on across the streets of Nasera City. After holding an officer as the light left his eyes, Admiral Reyes was back on the street, blood on her hands, fire in her eyes, her rifle coughing out shot after shot. The scene was pure chaos, and a new problem had just presented itself. A Jem’Hadar mortar team had taken position on a nearby rooftop and was reigning down hell upon the Starfleet squad.

“Vox, I need aerial support,” Reyes shouted over comms at the captain of the USS Diligent. As a former pilot himself, Captain Dorian Vox had taken on the role of coordinating their close air support. An explosion went off, hitting a burned out vehicle and sending two of her officers flying. Their bodies landed among the rubble, and neither got back up. “And I need it now!” 

“Tasking Diligent Three. ETA three zero seconds.”

Reyes rummaged through her pack, hunting for a laser illuminator. Polaron blasts and mortar fire continued to ring out. Explosions and debris flew everywhere. She needed to find that illuminator. After what seemed like an eternity, she finally had it in her hands.

“Admiral Reyes, this is Diligent Three, coming out of the west. Call it as you see it.”

She focused. Where the hell was that mortar fire coming from? Another shot went off. She saw the flash from the rooftop of a building down the block. She didn’t flinch as the round exploded nearby. She needed to keep eyes on that building. She lit up the laser.

“Target marked, one eighth klick south by southeast.”

“Diligent Three proceeding, kill box four alpha. Attack direction west.”

“Confirmed Diligent Three. Bring the rain.”

From the cockpit of the Aspara-class bomber, the pilot locked in the target. But there was a problem. The building was awfully close to friendlies, including the admiral. “Be advised, danger close,” he warned as his ship screamed towards the target.

“Roger danger close,” Reyes acknowledged, and frankly she didn’t care. If the Aspara didn’t clear that mortar team, they’d be dead anyway. The relentless barrage of shells had already felled a third of their squad. 

She heard the screech of the bomber tearing overhead.

“Incoming!” she shouted to the squad as she covered her head with her arm. Three projectiles lanced out across the night sky, hitting the building dead on. The explosion lit up the streets, and the ground shook as the building turned to rubble. The mortar threat was no more. 

As dust blanketed them, Reyes made out the bright light of another projectile. But this one’s origin was the surface. She knew instantly what it was.

“Diligent Three, vampire, vampire!” she shouted over the communicator, but it was too late. 

The surface-to-air rocket hit its mark, and the Aspara exploded in a blaze of orange light. Reyes’ heart fell. If she hadn’t called that pilot down, he’d still be alive, but she had only a moment to mourn that loss of life before being pulled back into the fray.

“Reyes, we got another problem!” shouted a Lieutenant, pointing down the street.

A Dominion armored vehicle was rolling down the thoroughfare towards them. Reyes glanced back the way they’d just come, looking for an escape. But there, another armored vehicle sat, soldiers already piling out. They were completely surrounded.

Back at the mansion, the duel of words continued.

“Do you have any gods, Starfleet?”

“No,” Dr. Hall replied flatly. She had not a shred of doubt there was no one watching out for her. The lawlessness, abuse and slavery she had endured through her life made her sure of that. “If ever they existed, we’ve long since killed them.”

“That is a shame,” replied the Vorta. He pitied her that she’d never seen true greatness.

“Just like we killed yours.” She didn’t need his pity, but she was ready to make him hurt. “You should have seen what we did to your gods. It was a beautiful sight to behold, watching them turn brittle and frail as they succumbed to a morphogenic virus of our creation.”

The Vorta’s pity turned to rage.

“Oh, don’t turn your fury at me. It was your fault really,” she explained, zeroing in for the kill. “If you and your Lost Fleet hadn’t dawdled in the wormhole for thirty years, your gods would not have started dying, and they would not have had to bow down before us. That was your failure. And now, you have failed them again.”

Dr. Hall dropped the Vorta’s communicator on his lap.

“I believe it is your saying: Victory is life. But the opposite is true,” she continued, reveling in the opportunity to parrot the words back at him that he’d spoken before he executed Petty Officer Atwood.  “If you do not achieve victory, then you shall not live.” She looked straight into his eyes. “The Jem’Hadar on Torga IV during the War, and the ones on Saxue today, they understood. The price of failure is death. So make the call. Remind your Jem’Hadar of their vow, their final duty.”

The Vorta sat there, fighting a war within his tortured mind. The drugs and the words, mangled with concepts of duty and faith, all bounced around in his mutilated mind. Was she right? Had he failed his gods? With the help of the psychoactives coursing through his veins, the Vorta came to his final conclusion. Yes, he had failed the Founders then, and he had failed them again now. There was only one answer for that failure.

Dr. Hall picked up the communicator and raised it towards his face for he could not do it himself.  “It is the order of things,” she said sadistically. She could see in his eyes that she had won. She brought the communicator to his mouth and pressed the talk button.

She savored the words as he spoke them, knowing what they would unleash.

In an intersection in the middle of Nasera City, Admiral Reyes unloaded round after round at the Jem’Hadar vehicles that rolled towards them. But it was all in vain. The armor was too thick. The inevitable had caught up to them. Her old enemy had won. Surrounded on all sides, it was only a matter of time before she and her compatriots would be splayed across the pavement.

Suddenly, the armored vehicles stopped moving, all at once. Jem’Hadar soldiers filed out. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. A full platoon. But they didn’t start shooting. Instead, they just hurled themselves headlong towards the battered Starfleet officers, howling in rage without raising their weapons. Reyes didn’t look the gift horse in the eye. She opened fire, dropping one after another after another.

All across Nasera, a similar story unfolded. The Jem’Hadar abandoned all sense of coordination, cunning and strategic reasoning, presenting themselves to be cut down by the hand of their enemy. The Starfleet officers, having lost far too many friends and colleagues to the long night, obliged willingly.

When the shooting stopped and the street was silent, Admiral Reyes stood up, brushed the dirt off her uniform, and breathed a sigh of relief. They had won.They had freed Nasera. 

“Reyes to Lewis,” she said as she tapped her combadge.

“Lewis here. Go ahead.” His voice was calm. He already knew.

“I suppose I have you to thank for what happened out here?” she asked. There simply was no other answer. One moment, the Jem’Hadar had them completely cornered, about to deliver the killing blow. The next moment, they simply gave up.

“Victory is life. So too must the opposite be true,” he replied cryptically.

“Well, thank you.”

“Anytime.”

Admiral Reyes tapped the link closed. There was nothing further to be said. She had a sense for what Commander Lewis and Dr. Hall had done, but she would never say it on an open link. Lines were almost certainly crossed tonight, but she was okay with that. The pair had saved hundreds of officers tonight through their choices, and they’d guaranteed the freedom of millions on Nasera. To Admiral Reyes, that made any lines crossed worth it.

Standing there in the governor’s mansion, Commander Lewis looked down at their captive, a broken creature that had brought so much pain to Nasera. The Vorta were servants to the Founders, but that didn’t make them any less guilty of the crimes they committed. This Vorta was responsible for the deaths of Ryssehl Th’zathol, Lieutenant Commander Brock Jordan, Lieutenant Kora Tal, Petty Officer Jason Atwood, Crewman Nam Jae-Sun, and so many others. There was only one way he would answer for that.

Commander Lewis raised his sidearm to the Vorta’s head and pulled the trigger.

A single shot rang out.

It was over.

Stepping over the rubble, Lieutenant Emilia Balan could hardly fathom the scene. Nasera City, a vibrant industrial center, reduced to a scarred hellscape of burned out buildings, shattered glass, and bodies. So many bodies. So many beautiful souls plucked before their time. So many innocent colonists and so many brave officers that breathed their last breath in the cold night.

“Now the hard work of rebuilding begins,” Admiral Allison Reyes was saying, but the Lieutenant could barely hear her. Emilia Balan went to the stars to see the beauty of the people that inhabited them, and the sheer loss of life was just too much for her to process. “After what the Federation’s inaction forced them to endure before we arrived,” Admiral Reyes continued, her disappointment in Starfleet evident. “We owe it to these people to help get them back on their feet again.”

“The USS Ingenuity is in pretty good shape, all things considered,” Commander Cora Lee assured her. “We’re good to hang around as long as needed to assist with the rebuild.” Cora Lee was not a battle hardened CO, and she’d been out of her depth in the firefight that had occurred just hours earlier. But she was a skilled engineer, and she knew she could make a difference in what came next. This is where she wanted to be, rather than heading off to the Fleet’s next duel with the Jem’Hadar.

“I appreciate that Commander,” Reyes smiled. “The Polaris is days from being spaceworthy, but once she is, we’re straight back into the fight.” That thought, after what they’d just been through, seemed insane to Cora Lee and Emilia Balan, but Allison Reyes would not rest until the Lost Fleet was eradicated from the Deneb Sector and the only Jem’Hadar that still existed were those on the other side of the wormhole. “So this rebuild will be your show to run.” 

Commander Lee nodded. It was a responsibility to which she knew she could rise.

As the three officers walked through the rubble, colonists peaked out from their apartments and shopfronts, wondering if their nightmare was really over. Just a month ago, they had been free people of the Federation, but that felt like a lifetime ago.

“Lieutenant, you’re probably wondering why I asked you to join us,” Admiral Reyes said, turning to address the young woman who walked beside her and the Ingenuity’s CO. During the battle, the Lieutenant fell into the non-combatant category, barely functional with a phaser, so she’d just been assigned as a triage assistant for Commander Henderson’s overwhelmed medical department. Now though, her role would be critical. 

“Get to know these people. Figure out how we help them heal. For them, and for us,” Admiral Reyes continued. She felt for the people of Nasera II, but tactically, she also knew the planet was a powerful industrial engine. The longer this war with the Lost Fleet dragged on, the more the Fleet would need its industrial output to be fully functional.

“I’ll be honest Admiral,” Lieutenant Balan cautioned. “I don’t even know how to help myself right now. How can I help them?” She was so overwhelmed with everything that had happened, she could hardly imagine how she could help fix someone else.

Admiral Reyes stopped and turned to her. “Emilia, as long as you’ve been aboard the Polaris, you have wowed me with your ability to find beauty in any place,” she said gently. “That is what they need more than anything right now.” While a job like this would typically fall to the Chief Counseling Officer, these people needed a gentle shoulder to cry on, and they both knew Dr. Hall had no such shoulder. “You will find it in yourself, and healing them will also help heal you.”

Such a sensitive comment seemed strange coming from a woman who, only a couple hours ago, had ordered ramming speed and almost killed them all, and who even now stood there with a torn uniform and hair matted with congealed blood. But Allison Reyes had lived the aftermath of conflict as many times as she’d been in the thick of it. She knew what you did after mattered almost as much as what you did in the moment.

“I will do my best for all of them,” Lieutenant Balan offered as she gestured at the wounded city all around them. And she meant it. She just didn’t know how she’d do it.

“How’d the Polaris fair Admiral?” asked Commander Lee as they kept walking.

“I haven’t bothered to ask Devreux yet,” Admiral Reyes answered with a chuckle. “I was a bit busy down here. I’m sure he’s got it all under control though.”

Up on the bridge of the Polaris, it looked anything but under control.

“You’re telling me we’re not going to have power back for the upper starboard saucer until tomorrow morning?” Captain Gérard Devreux asked incredulously. “How bad were those hits we took?” That question was rhetorical more than anything else. He’d been on the bridge throughout the battle. He’d heard the callouts as the ship took hit after hit, and he’d almost watched his life pass before his eyes. Twice.

“Sir, we can barely keep the forcefields up to avoid those decks turning into vacuum,” replied the engineering officer standing next to him. “Right now, the maintenance crews are just trying to get the worst of the hull breaches patched. The three torpedoes that hit us when the upper starboard emitters failed, they ripped a forty meter hole across decks four and five, and since we’re barely making emergency power, the industrial replicators are noncomm. We’re relying on the USS Ingenuity to replicate what we need – and so is most of the squadron.” Commander Lee’s ship was the only one of the squadron that had come through relatively unscathed, courtesy of it being as modern as the Diligent and the Polaris, but without a CO like Allison Reyes or Dorian Vox, who both seemed hellbent on trying to turn themselves into martyrs.

“And what about the other hull breaches?”

“We sealed off the impacted parts of decks seven, nine and twenty five. Mostly just crew quarters and cargo bays impacted so we’re focused on other areas. Like decks four and five, we’re working on decks eleven and twelve since there’s critical infrastructure there.”

“I assume we’re relocating crew from impacted areas?” asked Captain Devreux. This was madness. The ship was torn straight to hell. The stress showed in his eyes.

“Already done,” confirmed an operations officer as he joined the conversation. “At least for the crew that actually needs quarters.” The operations officer looked down regretfully. Part of his job in relocating crew had been to determine those who actually needed relocation. With the casualties they had suffered, there were far fewer to move than there should have been. Too many were in the morgue or under the care of the medical staff. “We have also failed over to redundancies on all essential systems in the uninhabitable sections of the ship.”

Almost on queue, Commander Luke Lockwood, the head of exotic sciences for the Advanced Science, Technology and Research Activity stepped onto the bridge. “‘Hey Cap,” he said in an arrogant tone as he approached Devreux. “Can you tell me when my lab is going to be back online again?”

Dr. Lockwood’s research lab was in one of the powerless sections of the saucer. But why was the eccentric scientist worried about that right now? They were just barely holding the ship together. “If you haven’t noticed Dr. Lockwood,” Devreux replied annoyedly. “We barely gritted through that fight by the skin of our teeth, and the ship is half way to falling apart. We have a few bigger problems right now than your whiteboards.”

The scientist put his hands on his hips. He appreciated neither the tone nor the substance of the Captain’s words. Reyes and Devreux had just put his life at risk, and for what? Some factory workers? This whole soirée into the Deneb Sector was not what he’d signed up for.

“If you want to make yourself useful, go pick up a hyperspanner and put your big brain to work fixing some relays,” recommended Captain Devreux. “Otherwise, your PADD will have to do for now if you just want to twiddle with your equations.”

As Dr. Lockwood stormed off the bridge angrily, Captain Devreux looked out the main viewscreen, taking in the sight of Nasera II beneath them. How far they’d gone, how much they’d lost, but in the end, they had prevailed. They had freed eight million people from the yoke of the Dominion tonight, but that freedom had come at a high price.

“Admiral Reyes asked if you’d meet her downtown.”

“Only if there’s another Vorta that needs to be shot,” Commander Lewis replied coldly. They’d just been through hell, and he was not ready to be a Starfleet officer again just yet.

“Figured as much. Told her you’d call her when you were ready,” Grok knew how his old boss would feel right now because he felt the same way. They’d lost too many friends today, and so much blood had been spilled. You couldn’t just go straight back to being normal after that.

“Tell the team to meet at the Lucre,” Lewis instructed.

“Understood. See you soon.”

By the time Commander Lewis, Dr. Hall and Lieutenant J.G. Morgan stepped into the hold, the rest of the team had already found their way back to the musky Ferengi merchant ship where their crucible had begun nine days earlier.

T’Aer, Grok, Chief Shafir and Ensign Rel sat there, silent in their own thoughts, reliving what had unfolded, trying to process it all. The mission had started simple enough. They had slipped past the eyes of the Dominion with ease. But then the Jem’Hadar caught Petty Officer Atwood. From there, it was all downhill. In the end, they had accomplished their mission, and the citizens of Nasera II were once again free, but victory had come at a heavy price.

“How is everyone holding up?” the Commander asked, breaking the silence. The aged veteran knew the importance of this part. You locked your feelings and emotions up during the heat of battle, but in the quiet afterwards, they came roaring back with a vengeance. Just like the Jem’Hadar, you could only face your inner demons head on.

“Like shit boss,” replied Chief Shafir. “Hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. We always say we won’t leave a man behind, but I didn’t bring Brock home. I buried him beneath the control center.”

“There was no choice,” Ensign Rel interjected. She had been there in the tunnels when Shafir had to make the impossible choice. “The Jem’Hadar had him. Any way you slice it, he was a dead man walking. And if you hadn’t done it, thousands more would have died.” There really had been no choice. If she hadn’t blown the control center, the Dominion would have regained control of the planetary defense grid, and they would have turned it against Polaris Squadron.

“Why couldn’t it have been me in there instead of him?” sobbed the Chief Shafir.

“It is far harder to be the one that survives,” Lewis observed grimly. He knew it too well. Again and again, he’d buried his friends, and tonight he was no different. The Commander thought back to his times traipsing across the borderlands with Ryssehl as private contractors, and to the two years he spent building the Polaris’ intelligence department with Lieutenant Commander Brock Jordan. Together, he had shared the majority of his last ten years with those two men, but now their stories were over, and his story would have to go on without them.

“Does it even get easier Commander?” asked Lieutenant Morgan.

“Does what get easier?”

“Any of it. The killing, the loss, the lines we cross. Does any of it ever get easier?” The things they’d been through on Nasera, the things he’d been a part of, Lieutenant Morgan didn’t know if he’d ever sleep again. Not only had they lost friends, but they had tortured and then murdered a restrained captive. Sure, it was a Vorta, but that was still a war crime.

“Easier? No. It always sucks,” Lewis admitted. “But you learn how to live with the suck.”

Dr. Lisa Hall didn’t agree, although she kept her thoughts to herself. She’d hardly been a teenager before it stopped hurting, but that was because she gave up on humanity altogether. Commander Lewis was a stone cold killer and a pragmatist willing to cross any line for the good of the mission, but at his core, he was still someone who deeply cared. In fact, Dr. Hall was fairly certain that care lay at the core of everything their Commander did. She was the odd one out because she really didn’t care. Some would call her sociopathic, but she preferred to think of herself as realistic.

“Ryssehl did at least go out doing the thing he loved the most,” Grok offered with a meek smile, shifting the conversation to their friend who had given his life to blow the orbital platform before it could unleash a genocide-level orbital bombardment upon Nasera City.

“Yes, he did love his explosions over all else,” agreed T’Aer. Even her Vulcan stoicism couldn’t fully mask the sadness in her soul.

Commander Lewis smiled. They were right. Ryssehl had gone out exactly as he would have wanted, in a blaze of glory lighting up the night’s sky as he triggered the chain reaction of a thousand warheads. He was probably in his element all the way to his last breath. Crewman Nam Jae-Sun on the other hand, Commander Lewis really wondered how he had felt. The kid wasn’t a day past thirty, full of youthful energy, positivity and kindness. Ryssehl, like Lewis, knew what he was getting into, but Nam Jae-Sun, and Brock Jordan, Kora Tal and Jason Atwood for that matter, it was unlikely they truly understood. He deeply regretted it had been necessary to put them on the firing line.

“At least Brock also knew he had made a difference,” Ensign Rel volunteered.

“Yes, that he did,” agreed Grok, his eyes coming to life as he recalled the scene. “You should have seen it from here, the planetary defense system all coming online at once, a dozen platforms firing in synchronicity. It was like the entire sky was filled with fire as everything lanced towards the Fleet. I’ll bet it gave Reyes quite a scare.”

“She didn’t know the mad lady over here was behind the controls,” Rel laughed, looking at the Chief. “Ayala, you were really in your element at that moment.”

“I thought of it as a final salute for Jason,” Ayala Shafir shared, acknowledging their fallen colleague who had died by Jem’Hadar hands a couple days earlier. “It gave some closure to use what he had discovered to burn them all to the ground.” Right before Petty Officer Jason Atwood had been captured, he had collected readings on his tricorder that had made it all possible. Without those readings, the mission most likely wouldn’t have succeeded.

As the minutes ticked by, the team continued to talk through their feelings and process their grief. Slowly, grief turned towards stories of the good times with those no longer with them, but the undertones of their pain remained.

Eventually, Grok rose and went over to a storage crate. He returned with a bottle of Chech’tluth. The Klingon beverage seemed apt for the moment, a potent liquor frequently enjoyed by the warrior race after the battle was won. He poured a glass for each of the men and women who had survived the crucible with him.

“A toast to our dearly departed,” the Ferengi said as he raised his goblet.

“To Jason Atwood,” offered Ayala Shafir, “who didn’t give up, no matter what they put him through, and who kept his Texan resolve through the very end.” The Petty Officer’s last words had been ‘I will not break’, and he had never broken, even at the very end as the Vorta stood over him and the Jem’Hadar delivered the killing blow.

“To Kora Tal,” offered Jace Morgan, who’d been there when she died. “A healer and a warrior whose convictions never waivered, and who held onto her compassion until her very last breath.” Lieutenant Kora’s very last act had been to make sure Commander Lewis was okay.

“To Nam Jae-Sun,” offered Lisa Hall, recognizing the young man who died alongside Ryssehl aboard the orbital station. “Who, while the youngest of us all, was full of respect and goodness, and who did what had to be done.” He had lived true to the Korean translation of his name.

“To Ryssehl,” offered T’Aer. “Who gave his life to save sixteen hundred Starfleet officers, even after Starfleet had long turned its back on him.” Three decades prior, Starfleet had dishonorably discharged a young explosive ordnance disposal technician who tonight had sacrificed himself to save them all.

“To Brock,” offered Elyssia Rel, knowing Ayala Shafir wouldn’t have the words. “Who died so we could live. He made sure we got out first, and he defended our retreat to the very end.” Elyssia flashed back to that moment when they’d made eye contact as the Jem’Hadar swarmed Jordan. His last words had been him urging her to flee.

“And to all those who answered the call tonight, sworn officers and civilians alike, who answered the call and made the ultimate sacrifice tonight,” Commander Lewis concluded as he raised his glass. “Tonight, we mourn, and tomorrow, in their honor, we rise to answer the call once more.”

The smoke wafting from the brim was like the souls of the fallen drifting away, and the burn of the liquor matched the pain they felt inside. Seven glasses clinked, and together they drank.

The conversation continued as the night waned, but eventually the bottle was empty, and exhaustion began to take root. The team had been on high alert for nine days straight, and with adrenaline no longer carrying them, they had nothing left but fumes.

Commander Lewis turned to Grok and T’Aer: “You guys are heading out tomorrow?”

“These hands,” laughed Grok. “Do they look like the hands of someone who rebuilds things?” The Ferengi could crack a joke even in the darkest of moments.

“We have a lot to sort out with the firm,” T’Aer clarified. “Without Ryssehl, I anticipate a great deal more paperwork for me to do.” Not only had the Andorian been their friend, but he was also the CEO of Sebold Logistics. Without him, that fantasy Grok had of T’Aer as his bookkeeper might actually come true.

“Besides, do you think all those fleeters, or the colonists for that matter, really want the two of us hanging around?” asked Grok. The Ferengi were persona non grata in the Lost Fleet crisis, as his people had no issue selling to both sides, and from the Fleet perspective, Sebold Logistics was viewed as a vigilante paramilitary. “These are your people, not ours.”

Commander Lewis nodded.

“But do give us a ring next time there’s something to shoot,” T’Aer added with the slightest of a smile. She’d done good today, as she always did, and she’d answer when her dear friend once again called on her.

Commander Lewis turned to his officers. There was one more matter that he needed to address with them before they returned to the ship. 

“Listen up folks,” the Commander said as he gathered what remained of his Hazard Team. “When you get back to the Polaris, it will feel foreign. The clean corridors, the sterile surfaces, and most of all, those bright, chipper officers who cannot comprehend the nightmare you lived. That is normal. You’re going to feel very alone, like no one gets you. That is normal. But if you need someone to talk to, you have me, and you have each other.”

“And my door is always open,” Dr. Hall offered. “I may not come off as a sweet shoulder to cry on, but we went through this together, and I am here for you.” There was a committed compassion in her voice that was very uncharacteristic for her, but she meant it. Everyone in the hold of the Ferengi trawler had earned her respect tonight.

“This was a shitshow, no way around it,” Commander Lewis continued. “But we achieved victory. We accomplished the mission. Eight million colonists sleep free tonight because of what we did. That is what counts. There are things we did down here that the others will not understand, and I encourage you – no, I ask you – to keep it between us.”

They all understood what he was saying.

“And if anyone badgers you about what happened here, whether it’s your friends, your colleagues, the JAG, or hell, even the Admiral herself, you send them to me.” The conviction in his voice was palpable. They all knew Commander Lewis meant it. He’d once been a young shooter, on the wrong side of those that didn’t understand, and he would not let them go through that. It wasn’t fair. “I, and I alone, will answer for what we did. You all have better things to do.”

He had no doubt there would be questions. Admiral Reyes would probably leave them alone. She had once been in their shoes. But there’d be others who wouldn’t be so understanding.

“You all made me proud today.”

Commander Lewis raised his hand in a salute, a sign of respect he had for the team that had put everything on the line. They stared into his eyes, taking it in, and in unison, they returned that salute.

“Lewis to Polaris. Four to beam up.”

“You’re not coming with us?” asked Ensign Rel curiously.

“No, I need to take a walk first,” he replied. “Get some fresh air.”

“Polaris, make that three to beam up,” Rel said over the link. Lewis looked at her inquisitively. “I could use some fresh air myself.” But more than that, after he had put his trust in her, she wanted to be there for him. She could see the burden he carried.

As Dr. Hall, Lieutenant Morgan, and Chief Shafir disappeared in a shimmer of light, and as Grok and T’Aer rose to start preparing the SS Lucre for departure, Commander Lewis and Ensign Rel set off into the night.

As Captain Devreux made his way towards Main Sickbay, the stretchers struck him first, running as far as the eye could see along the corridor outside the sickbay. On each lay a sailor in pain and agony, suffering the consequences of a battle that had nearly claimed them all. Burns, bruises, breaks, contusions, hematomas, fractures, these were the injuries of war.

“Catecholamines, vasopressin, angiotensin spiking. PAOP is five and falling,” a nurse reported as Captain Devreux stepped into the sickbay

“His interstitial pulmonary edema is worsening.” Doctor Henderson stood over a Crewman who had been on deck five when the Polaris’ shields had failed. The young man had third degree plasma burns from his head to his toes, and the worst of it was across his torso. “Get him back on oxygen and another 20 CCs of nitrofurosemide,” Henderson ordered as he folded his medical tricorder back up. “Lieutenant Michaels, I need you at bed six.”

A young doctor came rushing over, almost colliding with Captain Devreux as he rushed to the bedside. “What’s up doc?”

“Organ perfusion is too aggressive here,” Henderson explained. “I know he’s 55 TBSA, but crank resuscitation back by 20%.”

“Yes sir.”

As Doctor Henderson left the Lieutenant to his work, he noticed the Captain standing there with a look of grave concern washed his face. The doctor ushered for the Executive Officer to follow him as the pair made their way over to the Chief Medical Officer’s private office.

“Even with all the magic in our medical bays, physicians still overestimate burn depth every time,” Henderson explained as they crossed the crowded sickbay. “But don’t worry,” he assured his colleague as they stepped into the office. “Crewman Miller will make a full recovery.”

“And the others?”

“Not going to lie to you Gérard. Tonight has been bad,” he cautioned as he handed Devreux a PADD with the latest numbers. “Eighty nine dead on arrival. Another thirty three, we couldn’t save. It has been code blue after code blue all night.” The exobiologist turned battle surgeon looked absolutely exhausted. “I assume you saw the stretchers on the way in?”

“I did.”

“Those are the least severe. Every sickbay on the ship is full, except Sickbay Three since it’s in one of the uninhabitable sections. We also repurposed Cargo Bays 5, but we are still forty five patients over capacity.”

“Anywhere else we could put them?” asked Devreux. “It hardly seems merciful to leave them out there in the hallway.”

“Unfortunately not.” Cargo Bay 5 had been a godsend because, as a biostorage bay, it had the environmental controls they needed to set up a makeshift medical facility. “Typically, we would use the holodecks during mass casualty situations. It’s one of the nice features of the Odyssey class. But that’s when we’re responding to an emergency, not when we are the emergency. At current power levels, Operations tells me the holodecks are non-operable, and will remain that way for days. They’re doing what they can just to make us enough power for the medical replicators.”

Devreux made a note to see if he could find another place to move the injured. Maybe some of the fancy guest quarters they typically reserved for diplomats? “How many more are likely to succumb to their injuries?” Devreux asked. He knew that there was no way to estimate that accurately, but he wanted a sense for how much worse it was going to get.

“Maybe another twenty or thirty,” answered Doctor Henderson regretfully. He saw the Captain’s heart drop. “We’re doing everything we can Gèrard,” he assured his colleague. “But sometimes, the damage is just too severe.” It was the Dominion War all over again, the scale of the injured and the ailments they suffered.

“How is the team down in the city doing?” For as bad as they had it up here, Captain Devreux understood from Admiral Reyes and Captain Vox that the ground battle had also been incredibly bloody. Devreux and Henderson had worked to get as many medical staff down there as they could, without completely decimating the Polaris’ staff, to tend to the casualties they had suffered in the firefight with the Jem’Hadar.

“Our field unit has secured a hospital in the city,” Henderson explained. “The Dominion wrecked it pretty badly, but they’re working with an engineering team from the USS Ingenuity to get it operational. For now, they’ve got just enough working beds to manage the critical cases.”

“And how many is that?”

“Eighty four in critical.”

That number stung. And there was an even worse number Captain Devreux was afraid to ask about, but he knew he needed to. “And dead?”

“Across all the teams from all ships, two hundred and ninety have been declared dead on the surface,” Henderson answered. “But be warned, that number is preliminary, and there are still some officers unaccounted for down there.”

Captain Devreux had been holding his breath for a depressingly large number, but he had not imagined it would be that large. What sort of hell had Reyes and their colleagues faced down there? Thank god the fighting had stopped when it did, although he still didn’t understand exactly why it had stopped.

“Should I even ask how the other ships are doing?” Devreux had been on the bridge during the battle. He knew that, while the Polaris had taken a beating, the other ships hadn’t fared much better. And one, the Norway class escort from Task Group 514, had been lost with all hands.

“The others are all in about the same spot as us,” Commander Henderson explained grimly.”Steamrunner got it the worst, but thankfully, Ingenuity had a few extra beds to take on her most critical patients.” Commander Cora Lee’s vessel had, by far, come through the least scathed. “In normal times, I’d offer to help the other CMOs, but I’ve got nowhere to put their patients and no staff to tend to their wounds.” Henderson looked guilty as he said it.

“Doctor, you are doing incredible work. Don’t think otherwise for even a second,” Captain Devreux assured him. “Is there anything I can do to help you and the staff?”

“Short of cloning us all, I’m afraid not. We’ll be on coffee and stims for days, but we’re going to get everyone through this that we can.”

Devreux frowned. That was a bleak way to look at it.

“Don’t have such a long face, Captain. We got into this profession knowing what could be asked of us.” His voice grew serious, full of conviction, as he continued. “We took that solemn pledge to consecrate our lives to the service of humanity, to practice with conscience and dignity, to heal, to help, and to save. This is our calling, and we will rise to it today, tomorrow, and every day, so long as we shall live.”

There was silence as the two stood there, considering those words. While Dr. Henderson spent most of his time as the head of Biological Sciences for the Advanced Science, Technology and Research Activity, he still took that oath with utmost sincerity.

“Code Blue, Sickbay Two, Bed Four.”

The frantic voice on the intercom pierced the veil, and without another word, Doctor Henderson was gone. It was an all too familiar call in this dark and dreadful night, that of another life on the precipice between life and death.

As Commander Jake Lewis and Ensign Elyssia Rel walked through the burned out shell of the Nasera Municipal Spaceport, reminders of the great toll that had been paid lingered all around them. The scars of polaron blasts were etched into the walls, and bodies lay motionless on the cold duranium floor.

“You see the evil heart of our enemy all around,” Commander Lewis said coldly. “This is why we fight, why we suffer, why we die…” His voice trailed off as his thoughts drifted to their fallen colleagues.

“Because if there’s a chance that we can put an end to this, then it makes it worth doing,” Ensign Rel replied, finishing the Commander’s thought as memories of her symbiont’s past life flowed through her. She saw the battle of Chin’toka flash before her eyes, the moment Jaxon Rel died on the floor of the lifepod feeling the massacre. It had been worth it then, and it was worth it now. But it didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.

“You speak with a voice beyond your years, Elyssia,” Commander Lewis smiled. Through the hardest of moments, this young flight controller had somehow always found the words. She’d found them after Atwood’s execution, while they waited for Ayala’s return, and in the tunnels under Nasera City, and now here, yet again.

The two stepped out of the spaceport into the streets of Nasera City. Now, among the bodies of colonists, they saw the lifeless corpses of Starfleet officers and Jem’Hadar soldiers as well, evidence of the duel to the death had transpired here as the resolve of the Federation collided with the brutality of the Dominion.

“You never did explain why they just stopped fighting, why they just gave themselves up,” Ensign Rel observed. “After we came out of the tunnels, Ayala and I linked up with a squad clearing block by block. It was so strange when the Jem’Hadar flipped. All their strategies and tactics just vanished, and they threw themselves at us with reckless abandon.”

“We reminded the Vorta commander that victory is life, and that the opposite must be true as well.” There was a deep sense of loathing in Commander Lewis’ voice, but also something else. “So he made the call to the Jem’Hadar to remind them of their final duty.”

“I assume he did not come to this of his own accord?”

“Certainly not. Some lines were crossed to get him there,” Lewis replied, recalling what he and Dr. Hall had done to their captive. His hands were certainly not clean. “But was it not worth it?”

Ensign Rel nodded. On the streets, she’d seen how badly the battle was going. Starfleet officers were not soldiers, but they’d been called upon to serve as soldiers tonight, and the Jem’Hadar were making them pay steeply for every inch of ground. Whatever Commander Lewis and Dr. Hall had done, it had saved hundreds of lives. Still, Rel worried about the Commander. He seemed uncharacteristically unnerved.

“I will not lie to you,” Lewis continued as he came to a stop in the middle of the street, his eyes dark and pained. “What we did was not humane.” Indeed, he thought to himself, by any normal definition, it was torture, murder, and a war crime. “But we set aside our humanity for the good of the mission.”

“Jake,” she said, using his first name for the first time ever as she gazed into his eyes. “I know you act all tough, that you say it is all for the mission, but deep down somewhere in there, there’s a human heart.” She pressed the palm of her hand lightly against his chest. She could feel the slow rhythm of that pained heart through his shirt. “A heart that hurts the same as ours when we do unspeakable things.” She wanted to take that pain away.

“Elyssia, my ticket to hell is already booked,” he said in an almost regretful voice. “There are too many sins on my soul already.” It wasn’t just what they did to the Vorta tonight either. It was the choices he’d made for the last quarter century, compromising the ideals he held so dear in order to protect them. “But I am okay with that. It is a burden I carry so that others do not have to.”

“You do not have to carry it alone,” Elyssia offered gently, her hand lingering on his chest.

It was such a simple statement, but it caught Commander Lewis off guard. He had never had anyone say that to him before. Especially not a flight controller in her late twenties. Elyssia Rel was an enigma. “I appreciate that,” he offered with a light smile. “But it would not be fair to you.” He stepped back, breaking away from her touch. He would take these burdens to the grave when that time finally came.

They began walking again with labored steps.

“Do you ever ask yourself why you do it?” Elyssia asked. “With all you have done, you’ve more than earned a quiet retirement on a peaceful farm somewhere.” Commander Lewis was fifty three years old, and he’d been in this line of work for almost half of his life.

“Because someone has to.” He had never thought of it any other way.

“But I see it in your eyes, Commander. You’re tired.”

“I will have eternity to sleep when at last the long night comes,” Commander Lewis answered as they stepped past the body of a young man with a polaron blast to the chest. This man had met his end as the Jem’Hadar turned their weapons upon the colonists when they knew the battle was lost. And there were so many like him littered across the streets of Nasera City.

“It’s all going to catch up with you eventually.”

“You may be right,” Lewis acknowledged. He could not disagree. In body and in mind, he could feel his age creeping in. His response times had slowed, his injuries took longer to heal, and it all got under his skin more than it used to. “But I’m not ready to hang my hat up just yet.” 

Commander Lewis looked at her bright eyes and fair skin. If it weren’t for what Elyssia Rel had just been through with them, he would have asked why the young woman was out at this late hour on these dangerous streets. She did not look like the sort of person suited for this type of work, but then again, did any of them when they started? He wondered if it would someday wear on her too, just as it had for him. Would her skin become weathered, her hands callused, and her body scarred, just as his had?

“What about you Elyssia?” he asked, flipping the script on her. “I know you said your symbiont had unfinished business with the Dominion, but there’s a big difference between saying it and actually doing what we just did. How are you now that the mission is done?”

“Honestly, I’m okay,” Rel smiled lightly. “It was… oh, what’s the right word… therapeutic to get some retribution after all these years.” It had been twenty six years since Jaxon Rel had died at the hands of the Jem’Hadar.

She paused then to consider the rest. There was more to his question than simply what had transpired with the Dominion. There was also what had happened with the team.

“As for those we lost along the way, I’ll be honest,” she admitted sadly. “I don’t think it’s fully sunk in yet. It probably won’t until the next time we get the Hazard Team together… when… when they just don’t show up. I can’t imagine running drills without Brock shouting at us, without Atwood going for a crazy stunt, without Nam on my six, without Kora’s liting words ever time I fall.” Each of the fallen were integral members of the team, consistent presences over the last two years. And now they were gone.

Commander Lewis was silent. He wasn’t good at this sort of stuff. He didn’t know what to say to help her. And he regretted that, because she was trying to be there for him, and he had no idea how to be there for her.

“I mean,” Ensign Rel continued, trying to dissect her own thoughts. “Besides Jason, I didn’t actually see any of them… you know… I didn’t see any of them actually die. It’s just kind of hard to accept that they’re gone.” While she struggled with the words, Commander Lewis understood exactly what she was saying. Death was strange like that. Your mind played tricks on you. It would create this sort of subconscious denial even if consciously you knew the cold truth. “If you don’t mind me asking, what happened with Lieutenant Kora?”

“It was a fluke,” Commander Lewis explained, omitting the tactical error she had made to avoid dishonoring her memory. “A Jem’Hadar unshrouded on an uncovered angle, and he got the drop on her. That’s the hard thing about this job. No matter how hard you train, no matter how capable you are, sometimes death will just find you.” Death would find them all someday. But for now, they would just keep walking.

The weight of the Admiral’s pips felt heavy in his hand. Allison Reyes had thrown them on the floor before she charged into that brawl on the streets of Nasera, and Captain Devreux hadn’t let go of them ever since. They were a symbol of what every officer was putting on the line down there.

Logically, Captain Devreux knew his dearest colleague was safe. The battle had ended hours ago when the Jem’Hadar gave up the fight. But his apprehension still remained, and he didn’t really know why. Gérard Devreux was not a soldier. Everything about their current situation was foreign to him. Sure, he had trained for combat and had some scuffles in the borderlands, but holograms and raiders didn’t typically leave your sailors in gurneys and coffins by the dozens, or hundreds.

When at last Reyes rematerialized in Transporter Room 3 at 0240 hours, Captain Devreux was standing there waiting for her. He exhaled, the first real exhale he’d had in the last nine hours. He wasn’t sure if it was because his friend was back or because he’d no longer be the one in charge. It was probably both.

“Got the old girl all fixed up so we can get right back out there?” Reyes asked as she stepped off the transporter pad. Devreux could hardly believe it. She had to be joking. Covered in dirt and blood with bruises on her skin and a couple rips in her combat fatigues, the first thing out of her mouth was when they’d be ready to get back in the fight? They had barely survived this one. “Relax Gérard, I know she’s a dumpster fire after what we put her through tonight.”

“That’s a bit of an understatement,” the Captain warned. “It’ll be another day before we have the breaches even all sealed. Parts of seven decks are currently uninhabitable, and we’re barely making emergency power. It is a logistical nightmare just prioritizing getting the right supplies to the most needed places.”

The Admiral nodded. In their pursuit for victory, they had gotten beaten up badly. She had run the Polaris headlong into a hellstorm, pushing one of the largest and most advanced starships in the fleet to the edge, and almost over it. The situation Devreux described was to be expected. “And the crew?”

“Doctor Henderson’s got cots lining the corridors outside of Main Sickbay. Even with a cargobay repurposed, we’re still 45 patients over capacity,” he answered. “And that doesn’t even account for those who didn’t make it.” He took a deep breath before he shared that number. “126 of ours up here, and another 152 down there with you. Plus another 50 or so on the edge. Henderson just lost 4 more in the last three hours.”

Admiral Reyes took it all in. She knew it would be bad. She’d been on the bridge when the Polaris had taken those hits. She’d given the order, willing to give up the entire ship to prevent a genocide. She’d also been down on the ground when they engaged the Jem’Hadar down there, fighting for every inch. Nonetheless, even having been there for all of it, those were still staggering numbers. 282 dead and more still likely to succumb. That was over one sixth of the Polaris’ entire crew complement. Every single sailor would have a colleague or friend that died tonight. They’d all have quite a task ahead of them to heal.

“What about the rest of the squadron?”

“Not any better,” Devreux admitted. “Norway is gone, Steamrunner is probably going to end up in mothballs, and the others, save for the Ingenuity, are all weeks from being spaceworthy again. Commander Lee’s ship is really the only one that’s still all in one piece.” The Ingenuity being in one piece had been a lifesaver too because she was basically producing everything the other ships needed to get their holes patched and most critical needs met. One little light cruiser could only do so much though, and it was going to take time to get the surviving ships fixed up.

“And casualties?”

“Over 850 across the squadron.”

If the Polaris’ number had not already done her in, that number absolutely did. But her response was not grief. It was anger. She looked down at the sidearm on her hip. Every death tonight, she knew who was responsible. There was only one appropriate response. “Gérard, I don’t care what it takes, but we need to get this ship ready to fight, and fast. Until the only Jem’Hadar are those in the Gamma Quadrant, we do not rest.”

Captain Devreux shook his head. “Not going to happen Allison.”

Admiral Reyes shot him a glare, but it wasn’t the playful or frustrated sort that she often aimed in the direction of her Executive Officer when he brought logic or reason to a discussion. No, this look was the look of a zealot, filled with fire and rage, and it scared the living daylights out of Captain Devreux.

“It doesn’t matter how much you will it,” he replied carefully, trying to stay as calm and collected as he could. “This ship is being held together by shoestring and good intentions right now. Even if you were parked at Avalon Fleet Yards right now with the full might of Starfleet Engineering at your disposal, it’s not going anywhere for weeks. For fucks sake, we’re eating MREs and boiling soup right now because we don’t have the power to spare for the replicators!”

Yes, that did sound a bit problematic, Reyes thought to herself. Maybe she did need to give it some time. She started to come back to reality, but it was hard. She could feel the adrenaline coursing through her veins and the hatred she had for the enemy that was currently running rampant through their space. It was hard to think logically after what they’d just been through.

“Plus, we have a planet to heal,” Devreux added forcefully. “That’s what you were doing down there these last few hours, wasn’t it?” He quirked his eyebrow at her. He wasn’t backing down from this. They still had responsibilities here.

Reyes nodded, remembering that their mission in the Nasera System was far from over. They had freed eight million Federation citizens tonight, but a long road lay ahead to rebuild Nasera City. That work did have to happen, both for the people that lived there, and for the industrial capabilities it would provide to the war effort. Strategically, the Polaris was needed here over Nasera II to help with that hard work, but it didn’t mean she didn’t want to get back out there.

“I’m tired, Gérard,” Reyes said, relenting to his point. “If you want to continue this conversation, let’s do it on the way to my quarters.” She had been in the fight the last nine hours, and she’d been awake at least twice that. With her adrenaline now dwindling, she was done.

Captain Devreux nodded and followed her out of the transporter room. “Command has sent several messages asking for an update,” he explained as they walked towards the turbolift. “Are you going to call them tonight?”

“No,” she replied flatly. “Just give them something short over text narrowband. Tell them… tell them: Mission accomplished. Nasera in Federation hands. More to follow.”

Captain Devreux looked at her skeptically. That was hardly an update.

“I’ll call Commodore Jori in the morning,” Reyes assured him as they stepped into the turbolift. “I just don’t have enough gas left in the tank tonight.” She could wait until tomorrow to talk to those who sat pretty on their starbases and flagships far from the fight. As the door shut behind them, she looked over at the Captain. “It’ll be fine. I know these folks, and they know me. As long as they know Nasera is ours, the rest can wait until morning.”

Captain Devreux wasn’t going to argue with her on that procedural point. It would be her hide, not his, that got grilled for that. But he also suspected she didn’t care. She’d just come through hell, and even before that, Admiral Reyes wasn’t exactly one to care much for bureaucracy. It was, and always had been, about the results for her.

There was one other thing Devreux was curious about though. “Not to look a gift horse in the eye Admiral, but whatever did happen down there?” he asked as the turbolift began to move. “One minute, you guys were calling in airstrikes and reporting engagement after engagement with the Jem’Hadar, and the next minute, it was just kind of over.”

“Commander Lewis.”

That wasn’t an answer. “What did he do?”

“I didn’t ask.”

Still not an answer. “You’re serious?”

“Gérard, come on,” Reyes said as looked at him with a serious expression. “Do you really think you, or even I, need to know how it was that he compelled that monster to give up the fight? And for that matter, do you really even want to know?” The Vorta would not simply have agreed to call off the Jem’Hadar. Commander Lewis and Dr. Hall almost certainly would have crossed ethical and legal lines to get him to that point.

The turbolift door slid open and Admiral Reyes stepped out.

“Plus, he’s not going to tell us anyway,” she said as she started to walk towards her room. She knew Commander Lewis well enough to know she would never hear what really happened, or at least not until the two were on a distant, nonaligned world somewhere, sharing a drink in a shady establishment where there’d be no risk of prying eyes.

Devreux just shook his head. Everything about tonight had been so heavy, so strange, so alien to him. He hustled to catch up to the Admiral, just as she neared the door to her quarters.

She turned back to him as the door opened. “Gérard, I know this isn’t your world, but you did damn good today. Thank you.” She meant it with all the sincerity in the world. The lifelong explorer had risen to the call today. He’d done his duty.

As she stepped through, he stopped her. “Wait.” Captain Devreux extended his hand, and in his palm were her pips. “You forgot something.”

She smiled for the first time in hours.