An alert began to sound at tactical. Lieutenant Ward looked down and saw it at once. The game was up. “We have company!”

Captain Knight tensed up. “How many?”

“See for yourself,” Lieutenant Ward replied as she cast the feed from the probe onto the viewer.

The nebula that’d sheltered them for the last week with its sensor-dampening properties was gone, replaced by a scene cut straight from a horror film, a half dozen D’deridex and Valdore warbirds lumbering forward with twice as many smaller birds of prey darting in between.

“They’ll be inside the nebula within the next three minutes,” Lieutenant Ward extrapolated. “And then it’s only a matter of time before we collide.” They wouldn’t be able to hide for long.

Captain Knight frowned. “That’s a lot of ships for a wandering patrol.”

Commander Sirona looked down at her console, at the pair of pings that represented their ship and the RRW Decius. “It appears the colonel has made his choice.”

“We don’t know that for certain,” Captain Knight scrutinized.

“In the middle of a war, you don’t dedicate a full battle group to scout a nondescript nebula in an uninteresting region of space unless you expect to find something,” Commander Sirona suggested. It was possible that they had been tracked in their initial retreat from Acamar, but with the recent turn of events, it was far more likely Colonel Nethak had just shown his hand.

Captain Knight sighed. He had hoped their alliance might’ve meant a damn, or that the Decius at least would have heeded the warning of the extragalactic stakes at play, but now, that was neither here nor there. Not now. “Red alert! All hands to battle stations!”

The lights dimmed, klaxons began to sound, and a deep red hue bathed the bridge as suddenly the entire ship sprung to action, all other priorities superseded as the crew rushed to their posts with a vigor beyond even their usual. Each of them knew the stakes. They were far from home, not just by distance, but across the layers of the multiverse. And they were alone, not an ideal situation in a reality born of their greatest fears.

The instructions came in a fast staccato. “Ops, all systems and posts,” Captain Knight ordered. “Tactical, shields and weapons. Helm, bring us about.”

Lieutenant Aaronson had begun to put the balls in motion before the captain even said it. “All systems at ready. Some crew still finding their shoes, but we’re in fighting shape.”

“Shields up and weapons at full,” Lieutenant Ward followed. “But against that…” She looked at the armada advancing towards them. “I don’t often say it, but I would advise making a run for it.” They had a generation of peaceful technical development to their advantage, but technology could only cover so much of a numbers gap. That many ships would eat them alive. Better to hit the gas.

All eyes went to Lieutenant McIntyre. He looked back with a grin. “How fast you wanna go, boss?” There were few things, in this reality or their own, that could keep up with the Glenn when she punched it.

That was the question, wasn’t it? Unless there was something different about this galaxy, the Romulans wouldn’t be able to catch them if they ran. But they couldn’t run. Not at those speeds, at least. “No faster than the Decius can follow, and not without her.”

That wasn’t very fast. The Malem didn’t have much of a stardrive. And that was even if the colonel would follow. If their hunch was right, Nethak might be more inclined to plant his feet here.

“Anthony,” came the voice of Commander Castillo. “I hate to say it, but I think it may be time we leave them behind.” He couldn’t believe he was suggesting it, and he knew how hard it would be for his captain to do, but what choice did they have? “If we don’t, I am not seeing how we get out with our skin.”

But it wasn’t some deep form of altruism that had led Captain Knight to this course. He turned to his most trusted advisor. “The Loom, John. The Loom. You said it yourself. If we leave Nethak here, we may be dooming two universes to their fate. Who knows what ripples it will have.”

“If we fight and lose, the outcome will be no different,” Commander Castillo countered.

“Then we just can’t lose,” Captain Knight replied flatly, sending a shiver around the bridge. Each of them recognized the size of the force bearing down on them. The words sounded good, but they lacked any basis in reality. They were talking about a half dozen Romulan warships, and they were but one ship. An impressive one, sure, but still, one ship.

“Anthony…” Commander Castillo began to say.

But Commander Sirona cut him off. “No, the captain’s right, but how?” 

An uneasy silence settled over the bridge.

At last, it was Lieutenant Ward who had an idea. “This nebula, we chose it because it turns sensors to mush.” It was why they had deployed those monitoring beacons on the perimeter of the nebula, because even their powerful sensor net couldn’t cut through it sufficiently. “We could use that to our advantage.”

Lieutenant McIntyre looked over his shoulder at ops. “Asher, you think you could generate a graph network of the densest nebular pockets, giving me options of where to put our feet as I dart us in and out as Jenna dumps fire on their head?”

“Yes, I suppose so,” Lieutenant Aaronson responded as his fingers danced across the keys.

“You mean using the nebula almost like a makeshift cloak?” Captain Knight caught on to where the kids were going with this. “Pop in, reposition, and then pop out just long enough to fire before darting back in again?”

“I was going to describe it as Dance Dance Revolution meets Frogger, but yeah, pretty much,” Lieutenant McIntyre smirked, no one else following the reference for no one else shared his eccentric fascination with retro video games from four hundred years ago.

“As good a plan as any, I suppose,” Captain Knight nodded. “Now, let’s raise the Decius.” Once and for all, it was time to see where the colonel fell on all of this.

“Captain?” Commander Sirona raised an eyebrow.

“We could still be wrong, Maya,” Captain Knight replied. “If this is betrayal, I want to hear it firsthand.” And he still had hope, even if the colonel had been drawn in by this reality, that he might be able to pull him back. Two crews, and two universes really, depended on it.