“It’s some form of subspace-temporal radiation,” reported Commander John Castillo from the science station as he studied the telemetry coming off the Juno‘s sensor suite. “But as to what exactly, I have no idea.” He’d never seen anything like it before.

“Does it pose a threat to us?” Captain Anthony Knight asked. He liked a good mystery as much as anyone, but not at the expense of his crew.

“At its current amplitude, I have no reason to believe it would,” Commander Castillo assured him. “It’s just a curiosity, an abnormality against the typical cosmic background.” 

“An abnormality with a source,” came the sharp voice of Commander Maya Sirona as she paged through the data on her armrest-mounted display. “Based on propagation geometry, it exhibits a radially expanding dispersion pattern, point of origin approximately eighty light years distant.”

“Where from?” Captain Knight inquired.

“I cannot say with one hundred percent certainty,” Commander Sirona cautioned. “But near the Federation-Klingon border around Boreth.”

“Boreth, hmmm?” Commander Castillo furled his brow.

“It always comes back to the Klingons, doesn’t it?” chuckled Lieutenant Asher Aaronson from the operations station. Since they’d linked up with Polaris, when something went wrong, it more often than not ended up somehow involving their spinward neighbors.

“Except when it has to do with the Romulans,” Lieutenant Jenna Ward offered from the tactical station as her eyes narrowed on the Malem-class warbird just off their bow. She understood the nature of their arrangement, the RRW Decius on secondment to the Fourth Fleet, but she wasn’t sold. Centuries of messy history didn’t just evaporate because some admirals in San Francisco wanted it to.

“And it’s even more fun when it’s a bit of both,” Lieutenant Dash McIntyre chortled from the conn. Flying in tight formation with the Ch’Tang and the Decius during the firebreak operation on Anglesia had been a test of wills. Somehow, it’d all worked out, but between the coldly judgemental attitude of the Romulan flight controller and the brash chest thumping of the Klingon pilot, he’d been anything but certain it was going to work right up until the end.

Captain Knight typically enjoyed the collegial banter of his bridge staff, and sometimes even partook himself, but at this moment, his mind was on more cosmic matters. “Any indication whether this radiation is anthropogenic in origin or not?”

“Uncertain,” Commander Castillo shrugged. “But that it originates proximate to Boreth is something.” He knew the stories of that place.

“Agreed,” Commander Sirona concurred. She had more than stories to go on.

“Let’s check in with the Decius and see if they…” Captain Knight began to say, but then an alert began to sound from the science station.

“The radiation front is spiking… amplitude… no, not just the amplitude…” Commander Castillo reported in a stream of consciousness as his hands flew across the console, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. “There’s a secondary return crossing back through the primary front. The waveform is distorting… crests and troughs steepening, edges growing more uneven, almost as if the two fronts are tearing across each other.”

“The secondary has the same signature, but with greater amplitude and tighter periodicity,” Commander Sirona added, her eyes swiftly scanning the new data. “Where the two waveforms align, the overlap is generating interference peaks.”

Commander Castillo looked up from his console as realization washed across his face. This was not a case of simple refraction. “Something out there is acting like a focusing lens.”

Commander Sirona’s eyes flicked across her display and then narrowed. There was a more pressing problem. She looked towards the center chair, and the urgency in her voice said it all. “Captain, it appears our local spacetime position is phase-coincident with one of the constructive maxima.”

Captain Knight opened his mouth, about to ask a question as to what exactly she meant, but he never got a word out. Not before space itself shimmered.

For a fraction of a second, it was as if reality lost the will to hold its shape. The stars beyond the viewscreen blurred, not in streaks or spirals, but into something softer and less certain, almost as if a haze had settled over the galaxy itself.

But the deck did not lurch, and the inertial dampeners did not protest. No EPS relays exploded, and no bridge pylons fell. In fact, there was no sense of motion whatsoever, nothing wrong at all except for the haze that settled over everything, a haze almost made as if the universe itself had become uncertain of itself.

And then it was over. The shimmer was gone. The haze lifted. Space was space again. The Decius still hung off their bow, and everyone stood exactly where they had been.

“What was that?” Captain Knight asked, glancing around as if someone might have an explanation.

But then the viewscreen filled with bright green light, a disruptor blast so close over their saucer that it lit the whole bridge green before the image processors could correct for the luminosity spike.

And then a heartbeat later, a beam, this one scarlet, speared past them, striking the Malem-class warbird just off their port side.

Captain Knight hadn’t even oriented to the threat yet, but his orders came on pure instinct. “Shields up! Evasive actions! Signal Decius to do the same!”

What in the hell was going on?

He needed to get his bearings. He looked forward. The stars were gone again, not to a haze this time, but behind weapons fire, shield blooms, and the silhouettes of ships in motion. They were in the midst of a firefight, where just moments earlier, this quiet pocket of space spinward of Acamar had been quiet and empty.

And the ships… as he stared, he couldn’t believe his eyes.

Starfleet cruisers.

Romulan warbirds.

Shooting at each other.