Yuulik tried her best not to raise her eyes from the Science I station. Positioned beside flight control, she was positioned the nearest to the transparent viewscreen, and any attempt to make sense of what she was seeing outside felt like a descent into madness. It was chaos. It was abstract art.

It was all out battle over the Vaadwaur colony world they had discovered.  Yuulik hardly knew the difference between the shapes of friendly Delta Quadrant vessels and the Vaadwaur starships they were fighting. Remembering the colour of each ship’s particle weapons was hopeless. At best, Yuulik took some momentary solace when she saw a flash of Minerva or the Almagest’s stardrive section taking an attack run on a Vaadwaur pancake-of-war escort.

On her console, the battle was a puzzle, but at least she could comprehend the components. The starship classes of the Kazon, Talaxians, and Pralor offered a wealth of information about hull geometry and exhaust signatures. Particle beams offered clues to shield harmonics and emitter frequencies. The dance of torpedoes could be reverse-engineered to study trajectories and battle strategies.

She would have preferred to study what this information meant about the people that designed them. She had never imagined much of a career for herself beyond a laboratory. But that was years ago, and now Yuulik had been assigned to identifying areas of weakness that could be exploited by coordinated attacks between the Delta Coalition.

At the last moment, Yuulik looked up. The stars spun through the viewscreen, as Constellation sped into a dizzying arc towards one of the Vaadwaur’s brutalist, wedge-shaped battlecruisers. Security chief Ache had designed a multi-limbed approach of fending off attack cruisers with the phaser turrets, while the more powerful type-XIV phaser array lanced to its target on the battlecruiser.

Yet, the bombardment of Pralor torpedoes missed that target entirely. The expected attack wing of Kazon raiders flew directly into the path of the battlecruiser’s polaron barrage emitters, sending two raiders careering into each other.

“The deflector!” Yuulik shouted, disgusted by the avoidable loss of life. Even after being held hostage by the Kazon, she couldn’t wish meaningless deaths on them.

Glaring at the tactical station, Yuulik stressed, “We can’t overload their forward shields unless we hit the deflector at the same time!”

Commanders Calum and Ache stood on opposite sides of the transparent tactical panel, working in tandem to execute on Constellation’s attack pattern, while communicating with weapons officers across the Delta Coalition.

“We agree, Yuulik,” Ache said defensively. She didn’t look at Yuulik, though, wouldn’t look anywhere but the tactical station. “We coordinated the attack, but the Kazon are resistant to taking orders.”

Calumn added his assessment, saying, “The Trabe are hesitant in their tactical approach, the Haakonian numbers were low to begin with, and the Pralor are spreading themselves between too many targets.”

“Okay, okay,” Yuulik said dismissively, too distracted by the long list of excuses. “I think I found another weak spot, but it’s probably not worth sharing at this point.”

“Commander Yuulik,” Taes said from the captain’s chair. She didn’t say more than that. She didn’t have to. The tone said everything. Fight the baddies, not each other.

Of course, that’s when Flavia spoke up. Of course. “Sending three more targets to tactical. Meridian may need to fall back in protection of Almagest’s saucer section. The Talaxian defence group is drifting off course.”

“Captain, I don’t think the Delta Coalition is the problem,” Nova said from the aft communication station.

Yuulik bit her lower lip. Her vision blurred momentarily. If Taes hadn’t just chided her, Yuulik would have accused Nova of disagreeing with her just for the sake of disagreeing with her.

On Rakosa Five, Nova had said it. Nova had clearly told Yuulik that she didn’t want to be with her. Even after all this time. Nova had started to say something more, but the Vaadwaur manipulation of the Pralor had interrupted them.

“I’ve been studying the transmission of our hailing signal packets,” Nova explained, “and I’m deciphering micro-delays in the transmission patterns.”

“Bless, you should have anticipated that from the Pralor at the start of the day,” Flavia said haughtily.

And suddenly it didn’t matter to Yuulik if Nova wanted to date her or not. In that moment, all she wanted to do was punch Flavia in the face. That’s all that mattered. As her vision settled on her console again, Yuulik supposed she would have to settle for blowing up Vaadwaur battlecruisers instead.

Flavia said, “Communication security is one of the systems hardening methods the Pralor are using to protect themselves from the Vaadwaur control frequency.”

“Yes,” Nova said, sounding unfazed by Flavia’s judgement, “That’s one example of the larger challenge. We’re communicating coordinates and tactical data between incompatible systems with unpredictable protocols for more than half a dozen species.”

Impatiently, Taes asked, “Lieutenant, can you solve for it?”

“I can, but I’ll need help,” Nova admitted.

Yuulik swivelled her chair around to face Nova. “I can help,” she promised. “If I interfaced that alien mainframe on Molvaut moon to a Starfleet PADD, I can teach a Kazon computer how to read basic coordinates.”

Taes looked at her, looked right at her. “Get it done.”

The galaxy was exploding around them, and they were all going to die if Yuulik and Nova couldn’t get their transmissions synchronised.

This was what Yuulik was for.