Watching the shuttles swarm like a flock of geese, she should have been able to rest easy. But she couldn’t. She knew it wasn’t enough. They had too few replicators to fabricate it all, too few shuttles to deliver it all, and too few engineers to assemble it all. In what sick twist of fate had the universe thought to stick a supermassive singularity in a system with the technical sophistication of sixteenth century Earth? She was trying to move mountains, but she had little more than a hand shovel to do it with.

At least the councilors of Vespara had begrudgingly allowed them to do their work. It was crazy to think, wasn’t it? How could a people be so insistent on their way of life that they would ignore the science right in front of them? It didn’t make sense to her, but then again, her entire life had been built atop matter-antimatter reactors, bioneural circuitry, and Starfleet drydocks. When they’d first leapt away from Kyban, she’d felt some relief that, for the first time since linking up with Polaris Squadron, she’d be on a mission of engineering, rather than a crisis of command. But that was before the gravity set in. No matter how she looked at it, she couldn’t see a path by which she could engineer the survival of the six million who depended on her.

At least the climate control satellites seemed to be working. They would buy a few more days. Even with that extension though, it wouldn’t be enough. She’d seen the latest projections from Fleet Captain Devreux and Dr. Sh’vot. Her plan, even augmented by the Corps of Engineers from the USS Pacific Palisades, would provide, at best, shelter for a million and a half. They might evacuate a couple hundred thousand more via their ships and the FMS vessels that had responded to the Admiral’s mayday, but that would still leave over four million to burn beneath the unrelenting advance of the Vesparan sun.

When that time came, what would Admiral Reyes do? How would she decide who would live… and who they’d leave to die? Was that what command was all about? It was certainly starting to feel a bit like that between Nasera and the Borg, and it made her wonder whether she was really cut out for command at all.

“Even the hardest working among us need to sleep,” came a voice from the rear of the bridge as the turbolift doors whisked open. “At least from time to time.”

“Amit,” Commander Lee smiled as she turned to see Commodore Agarwal, commander of the Archanis Sector Corps of Engineering detachment, as he approached the command island. “It’s so good to see you.” Suddenly, the empty bridge felt a little less lonely.

“And you as well, Cora,” Commodore smiled. “Although I’d prefer it in the morning, after you’d had a good night of sleep.” He didn’t need to pull her logs to know how long it had been since last she’d slept. He could see it in her eyes.

“There’s just so much to do,” Commander Lee sighed as she looked out the viewscreen, past the brilliant blues and greens of Vespara Prime towards the orange dwarf that loomed in the distance. “And so little time.” It drew closer, she knew, minute by minute.

“You know, the shuttles will get down there whether or not you’re watching them go,” Commodore Agarwal observed, his tone sympathetic and without judgment. He understood exactly what had brought the Commander up to her bridge at the late night hour.

“Are you here to take over the operation?”

“And waste a day getting up to speed? Not a chance,” Commodore Agarwal shook his head. “I just come with men and machines, ready to swing our hammers where you tell us.” That wasn’t the whole story, of course, but the intonation was clear. He was here to collaborate, not to command. “How’s the shelter fabrication going?”

“Not well,” Commander Lee admitted. “There’s no industrial capacity on the surface whatsoever, so we’re having to make do with what we have across the squadron. We’re doing most of the fabrication starside and then shuttling flatpacks down to the surface for final assembly.”

“Did you consider relocating replicators to the planet to reduce round trips?”

“Yes, but just as they lack replicators,” Commander Lee replied. “They also lack power supplies to power them. Short of crash landing the Polaris on the surface, there’s really not a way to get all that we need down there in the time we have.”

“And what about using cargo transporters rather than shuttles?”

“Captain Vox is running a very efficient operation,” Commander Lee acknowledged of her colleague, the former flyboy in command of the USS Diligent who’d become airspace controller for the operation. “We’re getting everything down there that we can produce, whereas if we switched to transporters, we’d be drawing power away from the replicators.” It was crazy to think that with all the advanced technologies aboard their squadron, power was still a barrier, but that was the scale of this operation. They’d even curtailed holodeck use, not that anyone, given the present predicament, was looking to stroll through a field of holo-daisies.

“Do you have projections on how much of the populace we’ll be able to shield with the shelters at present buildout velocity?”

“1.5 million, give or take a hundred thousand,” Commander Lee answered, her eyes falling as she thought about that number again. “And that’s including assumptions about your people.”

“Well, my people are ready to roll,” Commodore Agarwal assured her. “We’ve had days to rest up on the long trip over from the Meronia Cluster.” Indeed, except for briefings to come up to speed on the squadron’s plan, Commodore Agarwal had sent all his people to bed the moment they turned for Vespara. He knew the grind that was waiting for them on the other side. “So, as they often say in sports, put us in coach.”

Commander Lee smiled. Admiral Reyes was busy trying to solve the science with the Activity’s researchers, Fleet Captain Devreux was managing initial relocation of colonists to the civilian ships that had responded, Captain Vox was managing the airspace, and Captain Lewis was liaising with the colonial leadership, but Commodore Agarwal’s arrival meant she finally had a friend and ally for the daunting task ahead of them.

The door to the bridge whisked open again, and this time, the Ingenuity‘s Chief Science Officer, a Research Fellow in Geophysics from the Advanced Science, Technology and Research Activity, stepped through. The Andorian looked reasonably rested, although that might have been on account of his physiology more so than because he’d gotten what, by human standards, would have been considered a full night’s sleep.

“Thank you for joining us at this early hour, Dr. Sh’vot” Commodore Agarwal offered before turning back to Commander Lee. “During the trip over, I was giving some thought to the issue with replicator capacity. If we cannot replicate all that we need, what other options do we have?”

Neither Dr. Sh’vot nor Commander Lee had an answer.

“Dr. Sh’vot, tell me,” Commodore Agarwal continued. “Your homeworld is, even by your own anatomical standards, a fairly inhospitable place, is it not?”

The Andorian nodded.

“And what did your people do in order to survive the elements?”

“We built beneath the surface…”

Suddenly, a lightbulb went off.

“So what if we take that approach here?” Commodore Agarwal suggested with a twinkle in his eye. He’d had plenty of time to contemplate this during the long flight over. “I have boring equipment aboard the USS Pacific Palisades, and if we leverage natural depositions of heat-resistant subsurface strata, could we not bypass a good chunk of our fabrication requirements?”

Commander Lee began to get excited. This could bypass the bottleneck that had formed with replicator capacity. It was the first bit of good news in days, but she also knew not to leap at golden bullets. She looked over at Dr. Sh’vot. “Would that actually offer appropriate shielding?”

“I’d have to do some detailed subsurface scans and model out the heat tolerances,” the geophysicist replied. “But at first glance, yes, I think that could work.” Mines were well known to maintain their own microclimates, and Andoria’s underground cities were proof that it could work at scale too. “At least for a while.” Eventually, the planet would still fall into the sun, but it would buy them weeks of additional time to get the colonists evacuated.

Swiftly, Dr. Sh’vot moved towards the science station. The scans and the model would not be complicated. He could do it all right from the bridge of the Ingenuity.

“How the hell did I not think of this?” Commander Lee sighed. The prodigious engineer turned commander was used to being the one that came up with the solutions. Here, she’d totally overlooked what should have been a completely obvious one.

“Sometimes, you just need a fresh perspective,” Commodore Agarwal smiled without even the slightest hint of judgment in his voice. He knew how stressful the position Commander Lee had been put in could be, and he was simply pleased to have an idea to relieve that.

“I’ll get right on it,” Commander Lee nodded dutifully. “There’ll be a lot to manage.”

“I’m sure that Commander Westmoreland and I can coordinate with Diligent flight ops to get our equipment down to the surface,” Commodore Agarwal insisted, his tone now becoming a bit more command-like. This bit was not up for debate. They needed her fresh. “And by the time you’ve gotten a good night’s sleep, we’ll have Dr. Sh’vot’s model and a game plan to go forward.”

“I… I… thank you, Amit.”

And then, for the first time in three days, Commander Lee actually slept.