The USS Victory erupted from warp in a long, shimmering tear of blue-white light, the fabric of space folding back around her as she steadied herself on the very edge of the Orantei system. For a moment she seemed to hang there, poised and alert, her four slim nacelles casting a pale, spectral glow across the ruins ahead. The debris field stretched out before her like the bleached bones of some long-dead leviathan: broken freighters, scattered cargo pods, and drifting husks of ships.

A heartbeat later the USS Anthemius surged into being with quiet authority. The Obena-class starship carried her weight with deceptive elegance, her hull reflecting the distant starlight in muted silver, her broad impulse fins glowing. She completed her deceleration in a broad, sweeping arc that brought her alongside the Victory, both ships now facing the ghostly wreckage where Orantei Station hung silent and stricken.

The station, once immaculate, now rotated slowly on a wounded axis, its segmented rings cracked and darkened, its docking arms twisted from the pressure of impacts. Shattered vessels lay scattered around it, giving the impression of an abandoned battlefield. And threading through that graveyard moved the shapes that had made it so: perhaps thirty small Pilgrim craft, their hulls cobbled together from scavenged ships, lit here and there by faint lights that ran across their surfaces.

At first they did not react to the arrival of the two Starfleet vessels. They continued their work with disquieting calm, cutting panels from derelicts with surgical beams, hauling whole sections of ships toward open space where others of their number were beginning to arrange them ready for grafting onto yet more of their number. Several clung like carrion to the hull of the battered USS Farragut, which drifted, powerless, in the midst of it all. Her nacelles dark, her saucer gouged open in several places, her deflector cracked.

But when the Victory and Anthemius reoriented themselves into an expansive combat posture and began accelerating toward the Faragut, the scavengers stirred.

Without a word or signal exchanged between them, at least none that could be detected by the Starfleet ships, the entire flock of Pilgrim ships scattered with sudden, feverish energy. They broke apart like a disturbed hive, some skimming dangerously close to freighter wreckage, others retreating deeper into the ring of debris, and a handful drawing closer to the crippled Farragut in a protective, almost possessive cluster.

The Victory answered. Phasers unfurled from her hull in long, searing lashes of amber light that cast brief shadows across the wreckage. Her forward arrays carved clean, merciless lines across the first group of scavengers. One disintegrated immediately, a flash of pale blue fire blooming outward before fading to a shower of molten splinters. Another broke apart across its midsection, trailing coils of glowing vapour that drifted lazily from the breach. The third attempted to escape, but the second volley found it, slicing the engines away and leaving only a carcass that tumbled into an abandoned cargo frame.

The tractor beams tethering the Farragut flickered under the shock; a moment later they failed entirely, leaving the Nebula-class cruiser drifting once more in the gentle tide.

Angled above, the Anthemius shifted her orientation with imposing grace. She rotated in a broad, deliberate motion that brought her primary phaser strips to bear across the densest section of the debris. The wide arc of her hull caught what little starlight reached the battlefield, turning her into a glimmering crescent of metal and fire.

Her opening barrage was not a strike so much as a sweeping incandescence. Beams erupted from the phaser strips along her saucer, reaching down into the wreck field in a shimmering curtain of controlled violence. Several Pilgrim craft vanished entirely beneath the onslaught; others disintegrated into spirals of burning fragments whose trajectories skittered across the hulls of derelicts.

Yet the survivors did not flee, not immediately. Instead, they reorganised. It began with the faintest hint of structure in their movements, a quiet cohesion forming beneath the surface chaos. The small ships threaded between shattered hulls, slipping through fractures and around torn plating with disconcerting precision. And then they spiralled, forming a curling, tightening helix that passed through the densest pockets of wreckage with strange elegance.

A sudden surge of energy built within the spiral.

The discharge erupted in a torrent of green-white fire: a jagged, chaotic volley blasted straight toward the Victory. The impact flared across her shields in a tidal wash of cerulean light that lit the whole starfield. The shield matrix rippled under the assault, and for a moment the glow along her nacelle pylons dimmed. Still she held her line.

The Anthemius answered the manoeuvre with a more forceful display. She descended from her orbit like a warhammer swung by a steady hand. Her torpedo bays opened, and a full spread of quantum torpedoes streamed through the battlefield, weaving between wreckage with artificial precision before detonating in a chain of devastating blossoms. The shockwaves rolled outward, casting fragments of metal and shards of broken hulls in long arcs across the void.

Several Pilgrim ships were caught in the blast, torn apart mid-turn. Others were flung into spinning collisions with derelict frames. The violence of their end seemed only to heighten the frenzy of the remaining craft.

They broke apart into skirmishing lines. Some darted toward Orantei’s broken ring structure; others dove in pairs toward the Victory, engines burning hot and irregular as they hurled themselves toward the larger ship in improvised rams. One struck the Victory’s shields, exploding in a blossom of violet fire that sent shock ripples crawling across the entire underside of her hull. The ship listed briefly, righted itself, and answered with a phaser sweep that reduced its companion to glowing debris.

On the far flank, the Anthemius came under heavy fire. Three Pilgrim craft slammed into her shields in quick succession, their suicide runs leaving deep, roiling scars of light across the shields. Her hull rang with the impact, her shield bubble flaring so wide it illuminated the entire debris ring in a ghostly halo.

And still the battle roared on.

The Victory dipped low, nearly skimming the remains of a broken transport as she performed a hard roll to port. Her phaser arrays fired in a wide, arcing sweep that caught several fleeing Pilgrim craft, cutting them open in a fan-shaped blaze. Torpedoes tore through a second cluster, blasting them apart in fine, glittering dust.

Above and behind her, the Anthemius continued her merciless work. She fired again, a long, roaring phaser burst that swept the upper reaches of the wreck field clean, destroying the Pilgrim ships clinging to the Farragut’s hull without so much as scorching the Starfleet vessel beneath.

The last of the scavengers broke.

They scattered in all directions, fleeing toward the rim of the system, their engines flickering and unstable. The Victory made a brief pursuit, forcing them further from the battlefield, but soon peeled away to return to the other Starfleet ships.

Her tractor beam stretched out, shimmering over the drifting Farragut, steadying the crippled ship at last. The Anthemius maintained her watchful circle overhead, every weapon system trained on the debris field, scanning for any sign of returning hostiles.

The violence ebbed. The wreckage drifted slowly, each fragment lit by the cooling glow of the battle’s aftermath.