The Bardur went to readiness without any ceremony.

No announcement was needed, the crew felt the change before L’rena gave the order. A battlecruiser preparing to hunt had its own rhythm. Boots clanging on the deck plates, the sound of sealed lockers opening and the shouts of engineers preparing the vessel for battle.

On the Bridge, Trang bent over the science console. He had isolated the variance pattern of the attacking vessel as far as he could, treading the impossible fragments together into something they could use. The result pulsed across his display as a jagged line of phase distortion and quantum misalignment.

“It is not enough for a precise intercept,” he said.

Tal’kor, standing in front of her command chair beside L’rena, did not look at him. “Then make it enough.”

“It is either precise or it is not,” Replied Trang.

Tal’kor’s eyes narrowed. “That was not the answer I asked for.”

L’rena spared the need for the science officer to reply. “How close?”

The science officer inhaled once. “Close enough to identify likely course headings, possible destinations.”

A sound of metal clanging together came from the rear of the bridge. The crew turned to see Bow carrying a tray of cups that had mostly now fallen over.

Ka’rek looked over his shoulder ginning, “Do you simply appear where unease is strongest?”

Bow considered this for a moment, “Yes.”

L’rena ignored the exchange, “Helm, lay in a course to Trang’s most likely route.”

The comm sounded.

“Bardur, this is Klingon Command,” came Kurnath’s voice. “Station operations is grumbling. I have informed then that if they wish your battlecruiser to remain docked they are welcome to explain that to you in person.”

They drew the slightest flicker of a smile from L’rena. “Generous of you.”

“I am not generous,” Kurnath replied. “I am practical, get me answers.”

The channel closed.

L’rena sat in her command chair and leant back. “Helm, take us out,”

The battlecruiser drifted free from her moorings and engaged her trusters spinning the vessel away from the station.

Through the forward viewscreen the station moved from view, slowly the explorations cruisers, scouts and freighters did the same. The Bardur passed amongst them, scarred, dark and quiet.

Ka’rella watched them all disappear from the display without blinking.

“They stare,” she said.

“Let them,” Tal’kor replied. “They should see what the expanse gives back.”

Hoban guided the vessel clear until only an empty starfield was in from of them.

“Outer perimeter cleared,” he reported.

L’rena nodded to Hoban who engaged the warp drive. The Bardur surged forwards. The Station and the vessels surrounding disappeared behind them. Becoming another bright dot in the darkness.

Trang took another look at the science console display, showing the probable locations of the enemy vessel. Their current course highlighted now as the old predator hunted her prey.

—–

Vra’rok stood on the bridge of the Qeyha’, he felt like the ship was bleeding after the wounds sustained by the joint vessels who engaged her.

He had not permitted the worst of it sealed off from the rest of the vessel. He wanted to sound of his damaged ship in his ears, it fuelled him. The deck hummed unevenly beneath his boots and every few moments an unseen system somewhere deep in the hull answered the strain with a metallic groan.

The phase scarred sections of the battlecruiser suffered the most. Bulkheads sweated frost where reality slipped. Consoles glitched.

“Phase variance increasing,” his sensor chief warned. “We should withdraw.”

Vra’tok kept his eyes on the stars. “No.”

“We are too near the border. If we cross fully again within the Empire’s sensor net…”

“Good.”

His first officer, Khezhar, stepped to his side. He had once commanded his own vessel in another fleet, under another chancellor, before Vra’tok had broken that fleet and incorporated the survivors. He was useful now because he feared collapse more than he feared his captain.

“They will come,” Khezhar said.

“Yes,” Vra’tok replied.

“and if she does not?” Khezhar asked.

Vra’tok’s stare hardened. “Then she is not the ship I think she is, and we will find her.”

He touched the scarred metal fragment fixed within his gauntlet. House Khelar had ruled three worlds before the Empire had fractured. They had fallen holding the route to Ty’Ghor while lesser houses spent blood on pride rather than victory. Vra’tok had carried the remnant of their crest through fire and vacuum and the death of one universe. He would now carried it through this one if he had to carve the way with his own hands.

The Bardur represented everything rotten in this universe. A storied warship alive in peacetime serving alongside Federation fools, obeying frontier duties instead of pressing their advantage. If he broke her publicly, if he tore the symbol open under the gaze of this universe it would prove what he already knew.

This reality had forgotten how to deserve survival.

“Ready forward disruptors,” he said.

Khezhar hesitated. “We are not yet stabilized.”

“Then the gunners will have to earn their blood,” Vra’tok replied with a snarl.

—–

“Contact!” Trang’s voice came fast as he saw the vessel appear on his sensors.

Every head on the bridge turned to the main viewscreen as a cluster of readings bloomed ahead of them, overlayed on the starfield. First it looked like a distortion, then as the half born outline of a Vor’Cha class Battlecruiser forcing itself into existence.

There was no graceful decloak.

The Qey’Ha erupted into view like a thing being torn free.

Hall scars appearing into being. The patchwork plating of a warship. A venting seam along its hull. Then the whole ship sharpened and held for a heartbeat longer than it had before.

Ka’rella was already engaging the weapons on board the Bardur. She was waiting for this moment.

The Bardur’s disruptors stabbed out into the darkness in paired emerald lances. The first shot raked across the Qey’Ha’s port shields. The second struck home just below the impulse manifold and blew the enemy vessels armour into fragments.

The Qey’Ha answered immediately.

The bridge rocked as a brutal disruptor volley smashed across the Bardur’s starboard shield. Consoles spat sparks. Ka’rek planted one hand against the bulkhead to steady himself.

“Shield’s at 40 percent!”

“Hold our course!” Tal’kor barked.

“I am holding course,” Hoban snapped back. “It keeps moving wrong.”

He was right.

The Qey’ha did not evade so much as drag its own coordinated through space. Its stern smeared for half a second into another position, then slammed back into place. A third vessel flickered behind it, same damage, same venting plasma, same silhouette, then vanished before Ka’rella could target it.

“Two vessels?” she growled.

“Three,” said Trang, “But also just one!”

L’rena never raised her voice, she simply looked at the tactical station and calmly… “target the one that bleeds.”

Ka’realla bared her teeth, “gladly.”

The Bardur surged forwards. The Qey’ha’ was larger, newer, but the Bardur was experienced, older and knew how to take a beating, and in that moment, she fought like it. No wasted fancy turns or ornamental pursuit, just raw battle. Hoban cantered the battlecruiser down and across the enemy’s course, bring their forward weapons to bear in a punishing arc.

“Fire,” L’rena ordered calmly.

The bridge flashed green and white.

This time the Bardur’s volley struck with glorious certainty. Shields on the Qey’ha collapsed in a cascade of dying gold. One disruptor bean cut across the neck and tore out a section of plating in a spray of molten shards. A second hit the starboard wing root, venting atmosphere plumed out glittering against the starfield.

Ka’rella clenched her first in victory, “We have him!”

On the screen the enemy ship reeled.

For a perfect instant, it was almost as if it was alive and mortal.

Then reality twitched.

The Qey’ha shuddered. The stars behind it bent. A second hull appeared off its port bow, not flying alongside but occupying the same moment from a different angle. Then a third. Damaged and burning in the same places. All seemingly coming together to become one vessel.

Silence hit the bridge for less than a second.

The enemy fired from two positions at once.

The Bardur lurched as one volley struck the shield and another hit them half a second later.

“Hull breach on deck eleven… sealed!”

“Shield grid fluctuation!”

“I can’t get a lock!”

Drenak swore. “It’s not in sync with out universe, he is bleeding onto us!”

L’rena’s eyes did not leave the viewscreen. “Can he hold his vessel together any longer?”

Trang answered reluctantly. “Barely. Every time he stabilizes the tears in subspace widen.”

“Good” she responded.

Tal’kor heard the intent in her voice and turned, “You have a thought?”

“Yes.” She looked to Hoban, “keep us nose on, do not allow him to get round to our flanks.”

A grin touched Hoban’s mouth and he nodded.

The Bardur increased its speed. Not a clean charge. She was too old and cumbersome for elegance and too damaged for comfort. If the enemy wanted to exist in front of them then Hoban would make sure all the vessels weapons had a clean shot.

On the bridge of the attacking vessel, Vra’tok could see it clearly.

The Qey’ha twisted, trying to slide between states of flux and reappear of the port side of the Bardur.

L’rena struck first. “Full forward spread.” She ordered.

Ka’rella obeyed with a growl.

The Bardur unloaded everything the old vessel had in her forward arc. Distruptors, torpedoes, every ounce of violence the warship could bear without tearing herself open.

The torpedoes crossed the narrowing gap between the vessels and detonated directly through the instability around the Qey’ha instead of against it. The result was not an explosion in the ordinary sense.

It was a scream between the stars.

The enemy ship snapped into reality, every hull scar blazing. For one glorious brutal second it was hammered by the full fury of the Bardur and had no where left to hide. Hull plating pealed back. Plasma erupted from the nacelle roots. A Torpedo burst under the aft of the neck and sent the entire vessel sideways, impulse wake vomiting fire.

Ka’rella shouted, “It’s breaking apart!”

Tal’kor slammed his fist into the console in front of him, “hit her again!”

The Bardur replied.

The final volley should have killed the Qey’Ha.

Everyone on the bridge knew it.

The beams crossed the distance. They struck a wounded exposed hull already half shattered by the previous barrage.

And passed straight through.

For the briefest instant the enemy vessel became translucent, a ghost of itself, all burning wounds and empty decks. Through its broken hull could see the stars that were not the stars behind, hard crimson points set in the void.

Then the ship folded in on the wrongness beyond and vanished.

No debris.

No expanding gas cloud.

No reactor blood.

Just nothing.

The Bardur’s bridge sat in stunned silence, broken only by the shriek of unresolved alarms.

Ka’rella’s hands were white knuckled on her station, “No!”

Trang’s eyes raced over dead air and impossible numbers. “It… it didn’t cloak”

Drenak looked physically offended. “Ships do not do that.”

Tal’kor stepped forward until he stood almost over the tactical display, as of proximity might compel reality to explain itself. “Where is it?”

“No contact,” Trang reported.

“No debris,” Karella said.

L’rena’s expression did not change.

That made the silence worse.

She stood slowly from the command chair and looked at the empty stars on the viewscreen where the enemy had dies and not dies at the same time.

“Damage report,” L’rena ordered.

The bridge moved again, everyone snapping back to the moment and obeying ordinary rules.

“shields holding at thirst-five percent.” Tal’kor reported, voice still rough from the fury.

“Minor hull breaches sealed on decks eleven and fourteen,” Ka’rek reported. “Reports from Med bay coming in, Bow is triaging casualties.”

“Engine response is degraded but stable, impulse and warp available,” Drenak said. “The starboard plasma regulator has developed…. Opinions, but Kaylee and the team are working on it,.”

Trang swallowed before he spoke. “The ship’s variance spoked at the moment of impact. Not in response to our fire but because of it. We forced it into coherence, then somehow overloaded whatever instability was holding it here. The… vessel ceased to occupy local space.”

Tal’kor grunted toward him, “Speak plainly.”

Trang hesitated only once. “Our weapons fire combined with the instability around it may have knocked it out of our reality.”

No one liked that.

Least of all L’rena.

A ship destroyed in battle was finished. A ship driven somewhere else remained a question, and questions had a habit of returning armed.

“Can you track here it went?” she asked.

“No” he replied simply.

L’rena made eye contact now, “Can you tell if it survived?”

Trang glanced down at his console again, at the impossible readings, hopping that the answer had changed in the last few seconds.

He shook his head, “No.”

That earned him a vicious frustrated exhale from Tal’kor.

Drenak, however, was now stood next to Tal’kor at science and watched the sensor readings. “Not entirely, no.”

L’rena looked to him. “Explain.”

The old engineer jabbed a finger at the display. “Whatever held that ship together is failing faster now. You can see the strain within the readings of the final transition. If it survived, it did so crippled.” He paused. “And angry.”

Tal’kor straightened, “then we hunt.”

L’rena nodded, “we do.”

Tal’kor looked at his captain sharply, hearing the difference in the tone of her voice. This was no longer simply an insult. No longer a battle denied it proper end. No longer a Captain robbed of an honourable death or kill.

They had seen too much now. A Klingon Captain from somewhere beyond their own stars, fighting like a cornered targ, refusing to die cleanly. A warship that fractured into versions of itself. Weapons fire that turned local space into a wound. Glimpsed stars through a dying hull that belonged to no sky that they knew.

The impossible was lo longer a rumour. It had fired on them.

“helm,” L’rena said, eyes now focussed on the viewscreen again. “Take us back toward Framheim.”

Tal’kor interjected, “Captain….”

“This hunt has changed,” she replied. “And now we know enough not to charge blind at a wound in the universe because our pride is offended.

Tal’kor looked like he wanted to argue, he wanted to catch their prey now.

Then he looked back at the space where the enemy vessel had ceased to be, and he said no more.

Good, L’rena, thought. She’d known Tal’kor for decades, serving together for a long time. But his tendances to follow his instincts required temperance. But he was learning.

The Bardur turned, moved away from the now empty battlefield and back toward the station.

Behind them, the stars showed no sign that anything had taken place there. No debris, no lingering fire, no proof but for the memory in their sensors.

L’rena sat once more in the command chair and clasped her hands on the armrests.

“Open a priority channel to Kurnath and Starfleet Intelligence on the station, send them both our sensor logs from the battle, I want everything transferred.”

Tal’kor nodded and looked toward Ka’rella and Trang who began to pull the data together.

L’rena looked down at her personal display. It showed the final frame of the tactical display, before the enemy disappeared. Half within this universe and half outside of it.

“And Tal’kor,” L’rena said, “prepare a formal challenge for Vra’tok, Son of Khelar.”

“Captain?” he asked.

“I know who attacked us,” she said quietly. “Or I know enough now,”

Tal’kor smiled. “Good.”

L’rena leaned back and looked once more at the viewscreen and the stars beyond.

Somehow beyond their reach, Vra’tok lived, died or suffered somewhere between realities. But he had a name now. That mattered. An enemy with a name could be answered, measured, hunted.

And if the universes was tearing holes within itself where warriors could slip through without challenge, them the Bardur had now looked through one of those cracks and seen something looking back at it.

Good. Let it.

The Bardur had survived older ghosts than these.