“So?”

Commander Sidda Sadovu, mistress of the Vondem Rose, majority shareholder of a company with a totally legitimate name and now a Starfleet Commander, holding the position of executive officer of the starship Republic, was perched on the edge of the ship’s command chair. Her attention was fixated on the large swirling brown-orange vortex that occupied the ship’s viewscreen, obscured only marginally by the silhouette of the recently arrived USS Sagan. She sat forward, elbows on her knees and her hands cupping her lower face, having only parted them to speak briefly.

“So what, boss?” Jenu Trid asked from operations, the only voice willing to ask the obvious counter-question in the silence of the bridge.

“So just what have we found here?” Sidda asked. “It’s not a wormhole, but it is an aperture to some sort of confined subspace domain layer with compressed spatial dimensional relations. It’s brown, not blue or purple. And it’s right here in the Thomar Expanse and has so far spat out a half-wrecked Cardassian survey ship, a Tholian webspinner and whatever that is.” She waved one hand at the windowed view on the far right of the viewscreen, a red box surrounding the image of a mass of spikes, curves and swirling parts that had emerged two hours ago and hadn’t made a single intelligible transmission.

“It, the ship that is, has identified itself, or themselves, as the Grok’ti.” Matt Lake spun on his chair, offering a shrug. “Or at least that’s what my people and the xeno-linguists on Sagan agree on. And we only managed that with the assistance of the Dudermek and the Scout of Potential Calamities.”

“And I thought Orion ship names were bad,” Sidda scoffed. “Tholians have us all beat.”

“Vondem Rose being an exception to bad names?” Trid asked.

“She’ll never be the Thorn,” Sidda confessed. “Loved that rust bucket.” She smiled, then sat up straight. “Matt, please, what is that?” She waved again at the swirling vortex on the viewscreen. “Besides trouble.”

“Honestly Commander, I’m touched you were listening in my briefing a few hours ago.” Sidda shrugged at Matt’s praise of a briefing he’d given that he knew would have fascinated scientists and bored everyone else. “Captain Stenz thinks it’s an Underspace aperture.” He saw the look of confusion on everyone’s face and sighed. “Underspace is, was, a subspace phenomenon limited to the Delta Quadrant. A series of tunnels running through subspace that stretched vast distances across the Delta Quadrant and could shorten travel times considerably.”

“So a network of wormholes, then?” Sidda asked.

“Yes and no.” Matt shook his head, trying to piece together a good analogy. “Wormhole is such an…open term.”

“Does it allow for travel across vast distances in a short period of time?” Sidda asked.

“Yes.”

“Does it have a compressed spatial relationship with normal space?”

“Also, yes.”

“Does it do all of this through subspace?”

“Again, yes,” Matt agreed.

“So, a network of wormholes,” Sidda concluded. “Argue specifics later,” she continued, cutting off the counter-argument with a wave of her hand. At least Matt chuckled at that. “And now it’s no longer restrained to the Delta Quadrant, but all the way out here in the middle of the Alpha Quadrant. And wherever that thing calls home,” she waved again at the truly alien ship, its hull twisting and writhing in undulations that made it nauseous to look at for long.

“Can’t argue with the reality of it.” Matt tapped at his console, bringing an overlay up on the viewscreen. A bright purple haze smeared itself across the visage, intersecting with the Sagan’s dorsal starboard nacelle and continuing straight into the aperture. “But Lieutenant Esperanza, Sagan’s CSO, and I both agree that whatever it is, Atlantis stumbled right into it.”

“Stumbled?”

“That impulse trail looks pretty torn up,” Willow Beckman said from the helm. She was truly bored, elbows propped on her console, chin in her hands. “But the anomaly would account for that. No signs of an attempt to reverse, looks mostly straight. Yeah, they walked right into it.”

“You can tell all of that from an ionised gas overlay?” Sidda asked, glaring at the back of the helmswoman’s head.

“You can’t?” Willow challenged. She waved at the screen with one hand. “There’s no massing of gas to indicate a sudden attempt at reverse thrust. Or plumes in either direction to indicate attempts at changing course. Just straight until we get this mess caused by the portal whenever it fully opens and spits out another ship or swallows another probe.” Which Willow was obliged by a surge in size and light as Sagan fired another probe into the open wound of Underspace. “Eighteen.”

“I thought it was sixteen,” Sidda challenged.

“It’s eighteen,” Trid confirmed. “Oh, warp signature incoming.”

“To early for the Cardassians to be sending a tug for the Dudermek.” Willow counted out some maths on her fingers, then nodded in agreement with herself. “Assuming, of course, they even sent a tug like they said they would.”

“Not the Cardies. It’s the –”

Trid’s follow-on was halted by the flash of light of a ship decelerating with perfect precision smack in the middle of the gathering of ships. The lighter white-grey hull gleamed in the nearby star’s light and the Underspace aperture’s off-cast light. The ship easily loomed over Republic and Sagan, the generational difference and common ancestry evident for all as the Galaxy-class USS Perseus, by size and poise alike, assumed a commanding position.

And in that slice of view that was focusing on the Grok’ti, the alien ship had shrunk itself in the presence of the larger ship. Not retreated, but made itself physically smaller, smoother and less energetic. A portion of it even flattened itself out in a liquid-black imitation of Perseus’ saucer section.

“Hail from the Perseus for you, Commander,” Trid announced, then put it through after an accepting wave.

Three captains, a fleet captain and a bridge full of officers all putting on their best faces greeted the bridge crew of the Republic. A last-decade revision on a quarter-century design sense met modern aesthetics. Light versus not-so-light. “Commander Sadovu, report?” Captain MacIntyre asked.

“Commander Malcolm and some engineers are assisting the Dudermek in making sure they’re not going to fall apart anytime soon, but otherwise we’re all accounted for and good to go.”

“Excellent,” Mac said. “Tell Cat to get the Witches ready to fly. We just got a report of Breen ships crossing the border and heading our way. They’ll be here in approximately sixteen hours. I’ll be over shortly. We’re going to hold this point.”

“Hold here? Not fall back to Free Haven?” Sidda asked. If the Breen were coming, it only made sense to fall back to the Bajoran colony world and mount a defence there versus unclaimed space. At least in orbit of Free Haven they’d be less likely to do something stupid and provocative in light of some extremely strained relations with the Federation as of late.

The colony’s orbital defences wouldn’t hurt either.

“Here.” That one word came from Fleet Captain Theodoras. “Sagan and Republic are going to defend that aperture.”

“Not to be impolite, ma’am,” Sidda said, rising to her feet and descending the steps in front of the command dais. “But where’s Perseus going to be? If we’re going to be staring down Breen ships, can’t say I wouldn’t welcome Perseus at our back. Can’t think of a dozen bluffs I could run with a Galaxy-class ship.”

That brought a smile to the Fleet Captain’s face, which looked like she desperately needed to do. “I’m taking Perseus to go find my ship.”

“Ma’am?” Sidda asked, seeking clarification.

“Name a ship better able to take care of itself should things get bad?” Theodoras challenged.

“Sirius, Odyssey, Arcturus.” Listing off three floating starbases probably wasn’t the answer the Fleet Captain was looking for, but it was the one she got. “But point taken, ma’am. Great Bird go with you.”

All they got was a brief nod from both Theodoras as Perseus’ own captain before the channel closed.

“So…we’re having guests soon people,” Sidda announced after a brief pause. “Let’s tidy up the place, get the fine china out. And someone please, please find me my sword.”

“I think I last saw Revin with it, mounting it above the bar in the Pnyx,” Trid said.

“Wait, you have a sword?” Willow asked, turning around, boredom blown away. “Like seriously?”

“Oh, Willow,” Trid said with glee. “She doesn’t just have any sword. She has Endeavour. So, this sword, it’s made of…”