Captain Lewis watched the Ingenuity as she turned for the aperture. The enemy didn’t give chase. They were here to protect the array. They didn’t care about one piddly research cruiser. And that meant she was going to make it out. Now, he and the Serenity just had to finish the job. 

“Helm, bring us about,” Captain Lewis ordered. “For the array, all ahead full!”

As Lieutenant Selik whipped the Duderstadt around, the lumbering Astika class battlecruiser and the surviving Manasa class escort gave chase, intent on stopping the Serenity before she reached her target. Because the Serenity had doubled back to cover the Ingenuity, the Astika had the angle on her now, tight on her tail.

“Vampire! Vampire! Vampire!” Lieutenant Tarasova shouted as the Astika opened fire.

“Evasive actions! Countermeasures!” Captain Lewis ordered.

Lieutenant Selik rolled the ship on its axis, trying to make the Duderstadt’s space frame as elusive as possible to avoid the incoming polaron burst, while Lieutenant Tarasova let off chaff and thermals, trying to confuse the guidance systems on the torpedoes. It worked, mostly, as the majority of the polarons whizzed by and only a single torpedo found its mark.

The ship shook, but not too bad.

This might work, Captain Lewis thought to himself even as he white knuckled his chair just to stay seated, the G forces from the spin the Vulcan had put them in being well beyond anything the inertial dampeners could belay in full. “Return fire! All tracks!”

With Lieutenant Selik flying as erratically as he was to avoid enemy fire, Lieutenant Tarasova couldn’t find purchase with the phasers, but she lobbed torpedoes off their backside, relying on their guidance systems to find their targets. Several hit, but the battlecruiser shirked them off with relative ease. 

Lieutenant Tarasova’s sensors lit up again as they detected another buildup of energy from the forward cannons of the battlecruiser. “They’re firing again!” 

“Rinse and repeat!” Captain Lewis ordered, not even bothering to call the specifics. His people already knew what to do.

Lieutenant Selik rolled the ship, and Lieutenant Tarasova deployed countermeasures, but this time, the Vaadwaur tactical officer had learned the prior volley. Instead of a tight spread meant to bring the Serenity to her knees in a single burst, this time he’d selected a wider angle of attack, making it near impossible for Selik to evade all the fire racing towards them.

Polarons slammed into the Serenity‘s aft quarter, and the ship shook, harder this time.

“Aft shields at forty seven percent!” Lieutenant Greg Gadsen announced, shock in his voice at how much damage that one barrage had done. “We can’t take too many of those!”

“Time on target?” Captain Lewis asked as he looked forward. Squinting at the viewscreen, he could just barely make out the array in the distance, its gunmetal gray exoskeleton barely discernible against the darkness. It was still so small. So far away.

“Forty five seconds,” Lieutenant Selik reported.

That wasn’t all that long in a normal course of business, but in the heat of battle, forty five seconds could be an eternity. They needed to get on target, and they needed to do so now. Captain Lewis tapped his combadge. “Bridge to engineering. I need more juice!”

“Giving you everything I got, boss,” Lieutenant Commander Will Sharpe replied, sounding a bit more frazzled than normal. He was more than used to the captain pushing the ship to its limits, but this took it to a whole other level. “Would be easier if you…”

“Just find me more juice!” Captain Lewis ordered as he tapped the combadge back off.

“Vampire! Vampire!” came the call from Lieutenant Tarasova as an energy spike from the battlecruiser signified it was firing yet again.

And again, she and Lieutenant Selik did their thing, rolling the ship and deploying countermeasures. But again, it wasn’t enough. 

The spread hit, and the ship shook. Harder this time. Much harder. 

The ship suddenly started to drag off its axis, flaring upward and to starboard. 

“Report?” Captain Lewis asked as Lieutenant Selik worked to correct the off angle using the ship’s maneuvering thrusters, unwilling to take any thrust off the impulse drive with the enemy in hot pursuit.

“We lost the starboard aft emitter,” Lieutenant Gadsen reported. “Direct hit to the nacelle. We’re venting plasma!” He was starting to get nervous. They were taking on a lot of damage, and the captain’s plan just seemed to be pushing forward as the Vaadwaur continued to pick them apart. This wasn’t going to end well unless they changed something quickly.

“Cut plasma to the nacelle!” Captain Lewis ordered, looking to stem the bleeding. “We’re not going to need them any time soon.” If they got out of this, it would be via the Underspace. “All power to rear shields, impulse drives, and forward weapons!” They just needed to survive the hits long enough to reach the array. Well, and to get out after too.

“I’m not going to be able to shoot at them then,” Lieutenant Tarasova warned as she lobbed another spread of quantum torpedoes off their backside, and the battlecruiser returned fire.

“Is shooting at them doing any good?” Captain Lewis asked pragmatically as the ship shook again, this time the enemy fire at least hitting a shielded portion of their rear.

“Not really,” Lieutenant Tarasova conceded as she checked the damage dealt by her last salvo – or really, the lack thereof. The Serenity was fast, but it wasn’t built for this, whereas the Astika most certainly was, and the Astika’s shields were taking the hits with minimal wear. She’d finish the Serenity off long before they even whittled down her shields.

“Systems rerouted,” Lieutenant Gadsen reported.

“Twenty on target,” Lieutenant Selik announced.

The station had grown on the viewscreen before them. They could see the contours of its superstructure now, as well as dim hues of blue and green glowing from deep within its interior. 

They were so close. They’d finish this in just a few seconds.

But then Lieutenant Tarasova saw the last thing she’d ever wanted to see on her console, an energy surge she recognized instantly, a highly localized subspace disruption accompanied by intense gravimetric distortions. “Underspace aperture forming directly on top of the array!”

As they cast their eyes forward, they watched a monster emerge from the newly appeared aperture, a ship that dwarfed everything save for the array itself. It was one of the Vaadwaur’s mighty Gaul class juggernauts, a kilometer and a half long warship built for only one purpose.

“Holy hell!” Lieutenant Gadsen gasped as he took in what he was seeing. 

“They’re not willing to let this thing fall,” Lieutenant Tarasova observed. Not if they were willing to devote one of their dreadnoughts, a ship built to capture star systems, to the defense of this one piddly little array.

“That just makes me want it that much more,” Captain Lewis grinned. If they’d sent this beast here, it meant the hub was as important as they’d been led to believe. And that meant they needed to bring it down so the Polaris could finish the mission. “Stay the course!”

“It’s firing!” Lieutenant Tarasova shared the bad news. “They’re both firing!”

“Forward shields to full!” Captain Lewis shouted, the battlecruiser behind them no longer even his chief concern. Not that it would really matter. Not against this.

At the operations station, Lieutenant Gadsen did what he could, but it wasn’t enough.

The first barrage of high energy polarons driven by the Gaul’s immense power plant slammed into the forward shields of the Serenity, overwhelming them in a single volley, while from behind, the torpedoes and polarons of the battlecruiser crushed what was left of the rear.

Everything exploded. That really was the only way to describe it. A dozen points along the hull breached, and the entire power distribution system collapsed as more than twenty critical junctions along the EPS grid were severed. 

On the bridge, electrical lines sprayed sparks, pylons came crashing down, and officers were thrown like ragdolls across the room. 

The operation station took it the worst, where backpressure on the EPS grid caused a conduit to burst, ejecting superheated ionized gas all over its occupant. Lieutenant Gadsen let out a gut wrenching scream, and then he went silent as it burned straight through his skin and clothes, melting his internal organs in the blink of an eye. Greg Gadsen was dead before he hit the floor.

Captain Lewis didn’t even turn. Why bother? The next volley would be the end, he knew.

Except it never came.

From where the Vaadwaur sat, they could tell the Serenity was already good as dead. 

In the eerie silence, Captain Lewis asked a sorry question: “What’s our status?”

“Shields and weapons offline, and structural integrity is failing,” Lieutenant Tarasova reported, and then, realizing that Greg Gadsen was no longer with them, she gave his part of the update too. “EPS grid completely compromised. Backup power only. And impulse drives are down.”

Well and truly fucked, Captain Lewis thought to himself as he glanced out the viewscreen, watching as the array grew larger and larger, their momentum still pushing them forward. They were so close. So fucking close. There had to be a way. He tapped his combadge. “Engineering, do we still have warp?”

“Warp, sir?” Lieutenant Commander Sharpe asked, completely confused by the question, his mind nowhere near where Captain Lewis’ was, instead still focused on trying to keep the ship from blowing itself up. “We cut plasma to the starboard nacelle a minute ago. Can’t do…”

“No, the core, Will,” Captain Lewis interrupted. “Do we still have a warp core reaction?”

“Affirmative.”

“Stand by,” Captain Lewis instructed as he thought back to his Kobayashi Maru, and to the Tal Shiar graveyard deep in Free State territory. There was still a way. The Polaris was counting on them, and if the prisoner in their brig was right, the whole galaxy needed them too. He looked over at Lieutenant Selik, the Vulcan bleeding from his forehead but still sitting dutifully at the conn. “Can you get us any closer on maneuvering thrusters?”

“Affirmative,” the Vulcan flight controller confirmed. Logic already dictated the course. He just did the math in his head and provided a number to the captain. “Fifteen seconds should be plenty.” They still had forward momentum from before they’d lost impulse, and they just needed a little nudge with the thrusters to make it count.

“Do it,” Captain Lewis ordered as he tapped his combadge again, calling back up the Serenity’s Chief Engineer. “Will, disable all safeties, and flood the antimatter injectors at full.”

“I see,” Lieutenant Commander Sharpe said as he realized what the captain was asking. This really was the point they’d reached. “We’ll shine so bright that the whole galaxy will see.” And then, before he cut the line, he offered a few more personal words. “It’s been a pleasure, sir.”

Beyond their bow, the Vaadwaur simply sat there none the wiser. They believed the Federation weak because it prized life over all else, and it never went through their minds that the captain of this ship had a higher purpose, that he was willing to sacrifice the three hundred aboard his ship for such a purpose. And so, as the Serenity edged closer and closer, they just watched on like coyotes enjoying their prey’s final moments.

Captain Lewis glanced over at his tactical officer. “It finally caught up with us, didn’t it, Irina?”

“That it did,” Lieutenant Tarasova nodded grimly. They had been through so much. But this was it. This was the end of the road. “Wouldn’t have changed a thing.”

It was only then, as energy levels surged, the matter-antimatter reaction reaching critical levels, that the Vaadwaur realized what was happening. And by then, it was too late.

The Serenity exploded in a blinding flash of light.

And the array went with it.