Sleep never came easy during wartime. Not for those who carried the burden of command. In the quiet moments in between, the souls of the lost came back to haunt you, and death dropped by as a reminder you’d be sending more his way soon. One hundred and eight had given their lives already, and this was only the beginning. There’d be more. That was the sorry reality of war, and like it or not, war had come for them again.

As Admiral Reyes’ climbed into bed, the first chance she’d gotten since the battle, she thought back across the day – or, really, two – that they’d just lived through, the words the Vaadwaur had uttered as they stormed the gates, the pitched battle for the fleet yards, the desperate attempts to repair what was left, and now the information they’d received from Neidlinger and Beckett.

From the opening moments in the battle for K’t’inga, she’d had a sense that their enemy’s plan was bigger than just the Klingon fleet yard, but even she couldn’t have envisioned just how much bigger it truly was. Not until she saw the data file that’d been sent along via the Pathfinder signal. The scale of the Vaadwaur invasion was massive, reaching straight into the heart of the Federation, while simultaneously striking every other power in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants.

For a civilization that’d supposedly been bombed into the stone age, how had they managed to rally a force large enough to strike everywhere all at once? Not that it was just about pure ship counts though. In each exchange, the Vaadwaur had sent just enough warships to accomplish their objective. It was as if they had eyes everywhere, but how?

It certainly didn’t help that the Vaadwaur had turned out the lights, that the Blackout was acting as a sort of force multiplier for them. Without subspace, the navies of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants weren’t playing on an even playing field, and the resistance the Vaadwaur faced was far more akin to a bunch of little local defense forces scrounged together from whatever assets happened to be in the area. It was an ingenious strategy from their enemy, and if the Fourth Fleet had any hope of taking back the galaxy, they had to find a way to overcome the asymmetry.

In response, Admiral Neidlinger had rightly loosened the restrictions on typically-restricted mechanisms for achieving superluminal velocities. Maybe that would give them an edge. But each of those came with complications. Deep in the heart of the Klingon Empire, the Polaris had no access to any of Starfleet’s reserves of benamite crystals so quantum slipstream was off the table. They could build a graviton catapult if the need presented, but a catapult was far too static for the dynamic war she intended to fight. A soliton wave might work, but it might also blow up a Klingon colony, and that would be less than ideal when she was trying to rally the empire to their cause. The answer, then, was self-evident. They’d use the same mechanism as the Vaadwaur themselves.

The Underspace was not unknown to Allison Reyes and her crew. They had spent time studying it during the Labyrinth crisis. But this time would be different. Last time, they were in a race with powers as unfamiliar with the Underspace as they were. This time, they’d be fighting masters of the Underspace domain, a civilization that, many generations ago, had used it to exert their dominance over large swathes of the Delta Quadrant.

But first, she needed some sleep. Like she really needed some. She hadn’t slept for forty-nine hours, not since the Vaadwaur had come to K’t’inga, and her fifty-six year old body couldn’t just keep moving forever like it used to.

“Red alert. All hands to battlestation. Admiral to the bridge.”

And that was it. No sleep would be had. In a split second, the adrenaline surged back into her veins, and she was back on her feet, grabbing her jacket as she raced for the door.

What the hell was happening now? 

Had the Vaadwaur returned to finish the job? 

As Admiral Reyes stepped into the corridor, she almost got run over by an ensign racing towards his post. It was a madhouse, officers scrambling from their rooms, climbing into uniforms as they went. Just like her, each had probably just settled in for their first rest since the crisis had begun, and now, just like her, they were right back at it. While most did not yet fully understand the magnitude of what lay before them, all knew the precariousness of their present situation given what had just happened in the K’t’inga system. And that was enough to sleep with one eye open, ready to leap at a moment’s notice.

Not even two minutes later, Admiral Reyes stepped onto the bridge. “Report.”

“Vessels inbound via the Underspace,” reported Commodore Olivia Larsen from the position she’d taken up at the auxiliary science station. “Exit point ascertained to be a novel aperture bearing two seven five at twenty thousand kilometers.”

“I thought we couldn’t detect ships while they were still within the Underspace?” Admiral Reyes asked. That’d always been a challenge with the Underspace, that you could not detect the enemy until they exited the Underspace, but if the team found a way around that, it could be a huge breakthrough.

“Until last night, we couldn’t,” Commodore Larsen confirmed. “But I’ve had the team working on a little something. The foliations in the spacetime curvature are so tightly compressed within the Underspace that, when we map with high fidelity the topology of the local area, we can detect a feint ripple, a sort of foreshock, if you will…”

“An early warning system?” Admiral Reyes clarified, cutting straight to the point. She had many additional questions, but they’d have to wait until later. Right now, if the commodore was right, they had a problem racing towards them.

“Exactly.”

“Brilliant,” Admiral Reyes smiled, impressed by the forethought of the new managing director of the Advanced Science, Technology and Research Activity. Now she knew why she’d ceded direct control of the Advanced Science, Technology and Research Activity over to the commodore. As much as she hadn’t wanted to, she’d had to be realistic that, tied into every aspect of the squadron’s operations, she’d never have time to personally think through things like this herself. “How long do we have?”

“Six minutes, give or take, from the initial point of detection,” Commodore Larsen answered. But that time had been several minutes ago. “At this point, three minutes remaining.”

That was not a lot of time. Especially not when their operational assets were scattered across the system on a variety of recovery and reconstruction assignments. Admiral Reyes spun on her heels. “Gérard, alert the others. Tell them we’ve got company coming fast.”

“On it,” Fleet Captain Devreux confirmed as he hustled over to a terminal to begin putting in the calls. “Polaris to all ships in the K’t’inga system…”

As her executive officer worked on rallying a response within the short window they had, it was time to prepare the ship. The admiral’s orders came in a rapid staccato. “Helm, bring us about, bearing two seven five, all ahead full.”

“Two seven five, ahead full, aye.”

“Tactical, full power to weapons and shields.”

“Weapons, shields, aye.”

“Scramble fighters.”

“Fighters away.”

On the forward viewscreen, the admiral watched as the Valkyries formed up around them. The Diligent was there too, but what help would the wounded Alita be? She was shot to shit, her EPS grid still on the fritz. Where the hell was the rest of their support? “Gérard, where are my ships?”

“General Kloss has ordered that, if it’s flyable, it’s responding,” Fleet Captain Devreux replied. “But it’s gonna take a minute.” Those ships and crews would have to make ready and cover the distance first, and they were scattered from the edge of the system to its very core.

“Tell them to hurry the fuck up or they’re gonna miss all the fun,” Admiral Reyes insisted. She could feel the clock ticking down. There wasn’t much time. “We need to stop the enemy at the aperture before they hit open ground.” She recalled the shitshow two days prior once Vaadwaur had gotten spread out and dug in across the system.

As they waited with anticipation, their support began to arrive. 

General Kloss rode in on his Bortasqu’, strapped and ready for a fight, along with four Mat’Has, two Vor’chas, and the still-wounded Negh’Var she’d just been working on. There were also older-era Birds of Prey, a smattering Klingon small craft, and even a couple K’t’ingas that looked more like museum pieces than warships. The Kennedy arrived too, but all in all, the admiral knew this wasn’t enough. Not even close. Not if the Vaadwaur had come to finish the job.

“We have an energy spike,” Captain Bishop announced from tactical.

“Prepare to break on attack,” Admiral Reyes ordered as she cast her eyes forward. Any second now, 

With a flash of light, an armada tore into the K’t’inga system.

But it wasn’t the Vaadwaur here to finish the job. 

No, it was something none of them expected, an armada for sure, but not of Vaadwaur origin. And the lead vessel, she recognized it instantly. The last time she’d seen it, she’d been staring down its gunports over Vespara. The IKS Qul’val.

“What in the fuck…” Admiral Reyes remarked aloud. “Umm, hail them?”

A pair of Klingons appeared on the screen, the last she ever thought she’d see again. Captain Vox had abandoned General Golroth and Voragh, the researcher from Mempa V, to their fate in the final hours of the labyrinth crisis. She’d figured they’d died out there in the Rolor Nebula, locked in a battle he wouldn’t abandon, but here they were, delivered through the Underspace.

The general flashed a toothy smile on his face. “You look surprised to see me, admiral, but the past is the past. Water under the bridge. Prepare for our arrival. We’re coming aboard. We have much to discuss.”