“Was this really the best you could come up with, ma’am?” Lieutenant Commander Keaton Ryder asked skeptically as his eyes scanned the bridge of the IKS Korevoth. This was certainly less than ideal. Their Klingon hosts were angry over how Reyes had cornered them on K’t’inga, and now they were on edge about their newfound predicament.

“I mean, by carpooling, aren’t we saving on deuterium?” Commodore Olivia Larsen laughed, trying to lighten the mood. She had spent her career in the field, and uncomfortable alliances just came with the territory… a few grumpy Klingons didn’t come close to those first few days at the Romulan Reclamation Site.

“That’s one way to look at it,” the security chief frowned. Another way was that they were on their own, growing further and further from Polaris with each passing moment. They’d left the squadron over K’t’inga, and now it was just their small team, a lone security officer and two physicists, aboard the Vor’cha class battlecruiser as it raced towards Qo’noS at best speed. If he’d have had his choice, he’d have brought a full security detail, but there was no way the Klingons would have allowed a full detail. Plus, on paper at least, they were allies. In reality though, Lieutenant Commander Ryder wasn’t so sure any more. Not since the ascension of Toral.

“Liv, check this out,” Dr. Tom Brooks interrupted, uninterested in the nervous back and forth about the Klingons. He had the benefit of foresight. He already knew how things ended with the Empire. “You really should see this.”

The aged astrophysicist was standing at a console the Klingon’s had begrudgingly loaned them to study the readings coming from their subspace sensors. Those sensors were nothing like what he had at his disposal on the Polaris, and it was almost like using an abacus to do calculus, but even that was more than enough to know they were racing towards a problem.

Commodore Larsen walked over, but what she was met with was near unintelligible. The rendering on the screen was clearly of a metric tensor field representing the curvature of subspace, but the symbology was all in Klingon. “Forgive me, Tom, but my Klingon is a bit rusty.” Her Romulan was passable, but linguistics wasn’t really her forte. “What’re we looking at?”

“Oh, sorry,” Dr. Brooks laughed. “My bad.” He’d built fluency in far too many languages throughout his travels, some historical, some present, and some not even invented yet. It took him a moment, navigating through a convoluted mess of menus clearly designed by someone who cared not for user experience, but eventually he got the character set flipped to Federation standard. “Here you go.”

Commodore Larsen saw it immediately. “Oh shit…”

“Yep,” nodded Dr. Brooks. “We’re about to…”

The Commodore didn’t wait for him to finish his statement. What was on the console, now that it was in Federation standard, was clear as day. She spun on her heels. “Brigadier!” she shouted as she searched the bridge for the cruiser’s captain. “Brigadier K’mtor!”

The burly Klingon brigadier looked up, clearly annoyed that the Starfleet woman had interrupted the conversation with one of his lieutenants. “Can’t you see I’m a bit busy right now, taHqeq?”

“I know, but we have a problem,” Commodore Larsen insisted, ignoring the insult. Right now, there wasn’t a moment to waste, not when they were racing at twelve hundred times the speed of light towards the highly perturbed edge of a subspace anomaly they didn’t understand. “You need to order an all-stop, now!”

“I need to order an all-stop?!” Brigadier K’mtor asked, aghast that she would dare tell him how to run his ship. That’s not how it worked. Starfleet was riding along merely by General Kloss’ grace, an olive branch the brigadier wasn’t even sure they deserved. “What gall you have, Larsen,” he snarled as he peeled away from his men, approaching the commodore like a butcher priming to slaughter his targ. “Just like your boss.” He could split the little woman in half if he wanted.

Lieutenant Commander Ryder straightened up, ready to step in if need be. The escalation had come quicker and more heatedly than even he had expected.

Commodore Larsen, though, showed no outward reaction. This was all just posturing, she assumed. “I meant you no insult, sir,” she offered calmly. “But it appears we’re just about to hit the perturbation in the subspace field that’s been affecting our comms.”

“So why stop then?” Brigadier K’mtor asked. Wasn’t the whole purpose of this mission to see if they could get through? How would they do that if they stopped now?

“Because we have no idea what it’ll do to your ship,” Commodore Larsen insisted.

“Well then, I guess we’re about to find out,” Brigadier K’mtor insisted as he folded his arms across his chest confidently. He hadn’t earned his place at General Kloss’ side through his mastery of subspace mechanics, nor by a cautious command style. No, his rise within the ranks of the Klingon Defense Force had come throufh boldness and valor. General Kloss had chosen him to reach Qo’noS and to re-establish communications with Toral, and that was what they were going to do.

Was this guy for real? This wasn’t how good science – or even simply keeping your crew alive – was accomplished, Commodore Larsen knew. It was not unreasonable to infer the boundary in subspace might swallow them whole, just as it had their carrier signal. “Brigadier, if you would just reconsider…”

“I most certainly will not,” Brigadier K’mtor snarled. “You are here as observers – nothing more – so observe!” His mind was made up. He would be taking no further advice. He turned back to the center of the bridge and began issuing orders. “Khi-GOSH! Mahk-cha! Mahk-cha!”

Commodore Larsen looked over at Dr. Brooks, who had a bemused expression on his face. “What’s so funny?”

“Maybe today is a good day to die?” Dr. Brooks laughed.

“You know, Tom, some say you’re mad,” Commodore Larsen shook her head. “And it’s moments like this where I think maybe they’re ri…”

She never got a chance to finish her statement.