Fleet Admiral Allison Reyes stood on the bridge of the USS Polaris, watching as the armada assembled before her eyes. At least, that’s what she wanted to call it. In reality, it was little more than a ragtag band of cruisers and gunships scrounged together from the broken fleet yard and by Captain Vox’s summons. Had the Vaadwaur really done so much damage to the Empire that this was all they could muster? Or was this simply all they were willing, reluctant to pull more away from the worlds they were defending? It was quite disappointing whichever way you sliced it.

At least she had her Odyssey class flagship, along with the Alita class USS Diligent and the new arrival from the borderlands, the Glenn class USS Juno. There was also the Norway class USS Kennedy, but she was a relic of the past, much like the one K’t’inga and three B’rels they’d salvaged from the yard. Besides those, they had the few surviving ships from General Kloss’ command, the cruiser group General Golroth had brought from Mempa V, and a half dozen other Klingon cruisers that had arrived in response to their call to arms.

“You look troubled, Allison,” came the voice of Ambassador Michael Drake as he stepped onto the bridge. He knew exactly what was going through her mind. He’d been there before, right where she was now, surveying the troops and realizing they weren’t all you’d hoped. “It’ll be enough.”

“Will it though?” Admiral Reyes asked. “You’ve seen the force disposition data that Lewis sent along. We’re in for a tough fight.” Beyond the galactic offset and the phase shift that protected the Vaadwaur hub, their enemy had allocated a substantial force to its defense, and even if everything went right, they’d still have to fight their way through that.

“It’ll be a tough fight, but a winnable one,” Ambassador Drake assured her. He’d done the math, same as her, and he was fairly confident they had enough to deal with what awaited them once the Serenity and the Ingenuity brought down the arrays. Assuming that Captain Lewis’ intel was good, and that he could bring those arrays down first. Those were still some big assumptions.

“It’s only winnable if we convince them all to join us,” Admiral Reyes warned as she looked at the warships off their bow. “Their worlds are ablaze, and the Vaadwaur still loom overhead, threatening to drop another hammer. Yet here we are, asking them to dedicate every last ship they have, not to defend what remains, but instead for a quest beyond the galactic plane on nothing more than the word of a Starfleet captain and a Romulan agent. I know what our own people would say if the roles were reversed.” They’d clutch their pearls, insisting they needed to stay put and defend that which had not yet fallen.

“But they’re not us, Allison,” Ambassador Drake counseled. “They’re Klingons. The opportunity to take the fight to the enemy, that will ring true for them. We need to push that angle, and the angle that glory awaits, that they can be the heroes that turn the tide of this war. That’ll get them over the line.”

It was good advice, she knew.

“You might leave out the bit about the Romulan,” Ambassador Drake winked.

That got a smile out of Admiral Reyes. “I may be old, but I’m no fool.”

It wasn’t really just about the Romulan though, Ambassador Drake knew. “How confident are you in Lewis’ intelligence?” They were betting the farm – over a week’s journey out and back, leaving a wide swath of the Empire exposed should the Vaadwaur come again – on the scant details Captain Lewis had gathered from a Vaadwaur he’d captured in Free State territory. “What’s to say the Vaadwaur pilot isn’t playing him for a fool?”

“I think if you asked your son, he’d tell you just how effective Lewis is at what he does,” Admiral Reyes chuckled. Robert Drake, the avaricious JAG prosecutor and the son of the ambassador, had almost managed to lock Captain Lewis once before for such a thing. “I’d suggest we not ask him for the details – not that he’d tell us anyways – but I guarantee that Lewis wouldn’t have such high convictions if he hadn’t ensured the truthfulness of his prisoner.”

There were methods, they both knew, to ensure that, the type frowned upon in civil society, the sort that, rightly or wrongly, would typically land you a long prison sentence. But Allison Reyes and Michael Drake had been forged through the Dominion War, and they both knew that in times of war, sometimes you had to look the other way. And with the embers still flickering across K’t’inga, this felt like one of those times.

“Ma’am,” came the voice of Lieutenant Commander Elena Mattson, timid in its tone for the fact she was interrupting a pair of flag officers who held nine pips between them. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but the others are ready for you in the briefing room.”

“Thank you, Elena,” Admiral Reyes nodded. “I suppose it’s time then.”