“Sorry, can I just get this straight. The Captain is going to cut through the enemy ship?”

“Like a hot knife, I think, were the exact words.” Rommigan’s pace quickened slightly as a nearby bulkhead groaned and they rounded another corner.. “A really hot knife.”

Teym’s breaths were heavy as she raced to keep up with the tall, golden-skinned engineer who had become her surrogate supervisor.

“And we’re just going to float away?” She asked, her brow furrowing in confusion. “I thought the stardrive section didn’t have impulse engines?”

“It doesn’t! They’ll be going full force forward.” He called over his shoulder as he side-stepped a collection of debris from a damaged wall panel.

“So we’re going to push the ship away from us?” Teym came to a stop as the plan became clear, her eyes becoming wide as the scale of the captain’s gambit came into focus.

“And we’ll use the deflector to push off, along with the RCS thrusters.” Rommigan also came to a stop, paces away from the nearby Jeffereys tube access. “We’ll use the aft tractor beam as a makeshift catapult.”

“That’s…”

“Crazy, right?” Rommigan offered a worried smile. “Welcome to Britannia cadet.”

Teym offered him a sharp nod, the panic beginning to rise in her chest. A panic that tasted strangely like excitement.

“So, where are we going? Deflector Control?” Teym raced towards the end of the corridor to join the engineer.

“Not quite. Tell me, have you ever herded swans?”

“Swans?” Teym tugged at her headscarf, checking the clasp was secure before they had to crawl through the arteries of the ship.

“Someone has to make sure Phil and Liz are safe.” Rommigan tilted his head mischievously as he opened the Jeffries tube door and began to climb inside.

“Wait, we have swans?”

Bahir’s feet barely touched the deck plates as he raced along the hallways with giant leaps, his eyes darting left and right as he quickly checked rooms and labs for any remaining crewmen. As he glided back to the central corridor of the deck, he found Captain Tanek waiting for him.

“All clear.” He confirmed as his feet slowed and he floated back to the ground.

“Same here, and the other decks have all reported in. We’re the last.” Tanek nodded to the open doorway, where the metallic rungs of the vertical crawl shaft glinted in the dull blue glow of the blue alert lighting.

“The captain?”

“Is in Strat-ops, all command functions have been transferred.” Tanek motioned towards the access shaft.

“Captain, a moment?” Bahir asked sheepishly.

“Can we climb and talk?”

“Do you think this is the best course of action?” Bahir wrung his hands nervously, an increasingly frequent habit that Tanek found increasingly unsettling.

“Best?” The older Denobulan sighed. “Probably not.”

“But?”

“It’s what we’re doing Bahir. There’s no turning back now.” Tanek motioned again to the ladder with a grim look.

As Bahir took the instruction, Tanek reached up to his chest and, with a deep breath, tapped his combadge.

“Tanek to Radio Room, Deck 10 is clear. We are ready.”

“Captain Tanek and Commander Bahir have cleared deck 10, standing by to disengage from the saucer,” Zenn announced from his temporary station surrounding the glowing holographic Britannia in the centre of the strategic operations centre.

“Everyone has pulled back?” Harrison asked as she circled the room slowly.

“Internal sensors have confirmed no one is present. Secondary survey has been confirmed.” Zenn glanced up from his console to meet the Captain’s eye. “We are ready.”

“All right everyone, we have to get this done in the right order.” Harrison stopped at an empty console and joined the circle of officers around the central table.

The captain placed her hands atop the silent console and took a deep breath.

It felt like years since they had been mindlessly waiting at the edge of the system for some sort of small gust to shake up their day. Now her crew was prepared to throw away half the ship and paddle desperately.

“Be careful what you wish for,” Harrison whispered.

“Captain?” Zenn leant in close. “Your orders?”

Harrison tightened her grip and allowed the career officer to take control.

“Let’s do it.”

“Engage reverse RCS.”

“Engaged.”

“Engage full ahead impulse.”

“Full speed aye.”

“Critical warning at the separation plane couplings.”

“Start the deflector sequence.”

“Engaging repelling field.”

“Red lines across the coupling joints.”

“Begin cycling saucer phaser arrays.”

“Main arrays are charging, temperature rising.”

“Prime tractor beams to the trailing edge.”

“Tractor beams locked on.”

“Failure of couplings five through nine.”

“EPS relays are reaching critical on decks four and seven.”

Every breath paused as they waited for the command.

“Set us free.”

To the distant observer, it would have seemed that Britannia snapped in two, her long oval saucer section becoming suddenly separated from the tube of her stardrive hull, which went shooting backwards like a bottle rocket towards the debris-filled edge of the battlefield.

With a terrifying roar, unheard in the empty space, the impulse engines found their load unexpectedly halved. But on the empty bridge, automated algorithms dismissed the unexpected relief and continued with their single, simple task.

Go forward.

Dutifully, the knife edge of Britannia continued on its journey, digging deeper into the heart of the enemy vessel. Along its jagged edge, phaser banks glowed with white hot energy, easing the makeshift blade deeper into the enemy ship as it worked its way towards the vessel’s heart.

In the forward lounge, tables and chairs found themselves unexpectedly flung against the wall, splitting their backs with the sudden violence.

In the main sickbay, abandoned hyposprays clattered in their trays as Starfleet skill faced off against Vaadwaur might with a great, desperate groan that resonated through the ship.

In a darkened bedroom, a stuffed Sehlat falls from a shelf, the lonely witness to Britannia’s final gambit.

Then the knife edge appeared on the far side of the enemy ship, a silver blade emerging from between dark brown bulkheads and into the light of Risa’s suns.

A last glimpse of the dawn as the saucer section exploded and new light banished the night of the Vaadwuar.