Lieutenant Belvedere had tipped Counselor Carver off about their impending intercept with the gormaganders. He found it a little improbable that they were stopping off for conservation duties while also housing thousands of refugees, but it seemed like the thing that Captain Lancaster hated even more than misaligned combadges was being entirely predictable. Once Galan relieved him on the bridge, Belvedere met Carver in the ship’s forward observation gallery. On the other side of the main airlock from The Plowman’s Tap, this large lounge was usually a quiet, serene place to take in the stars from the leading edge of the primary hull. At that moment, it was pretty chaotic, though, and not at all the oasis that Belvedere was used to.

Carver had taken it upon himself to organize a special viewing party for the children aboard the ship, mostly Romulan and Reman children but a handful of the crew’s own children who lived aboard Arcturus. Given that he had less than two hours to make the arrangements, Belvedere was extremely impressed by what he saw: old-style telescopes by the windows at child heights and holographic displays of gormagander anatomy and behavior. He was being assisted by the schoolteachers and a few counseling aides, but it was still quite a feat.

“Look at you being all paternal,” Belvedere drawled as he sidled up to where Carver was standing by the front of the room. He left a respectable distance between the two of them, given that his grasp of Romulan sexual mores was limited, even though it was difficult to resist engaging in physical affection whenever he saw the other man. “My subconscious appraisal of you as a partner whose genetic and social characteristics are likely to lead to successful offspring has surely just improved,” he teased.

“If only you had ova,” Carver quipped, though he did look genuinely pleased by the compliment. Belvedere wasn’t exactly sure if he could call the counselor his ‘boyfriend’ at that point, but they’d at least become comfortable seeing each other in public. “I couldn’t have done this without you feeding me intelligence from the bridge, you know,” he added.

“Duh,” Belvedere said, picking up one of the telescopes. “You know these viewports have zoom functions, right?”

“Kids like toys,” the counselor replied. A few moments later, the ship fell out of warp, momentarily creating an aurora of rainbow colors as the ship’s subspace field was purposefully disengaged. “All right, everyone! We’re going to be able to see them soon!”

The children clamored for a good view as several screens around the room activated to show what the bridge was seeing through the visual scanners. The nearby micronebula cast a purple glow into the room, which Sheppard had kept dim enough to be comfortable for both Remans and Romulans without any special eye protection. Belvedere used the telescope he had in his hand to look out into space. Sure enough, there was a very evident pod of gormaganders in front of them. There was a chorus of ‘oohs and ahs’ from the children in the room.

The feeling that Belvedere got from the entire room was of genuine enthusiasm and hope. These children had been holed up aboard barely-operational ships—many of them in actual ore holds—for who knew how long, but now they got to see something that few others ever got to, a group of one of the most heavily endangered species in the galaxy. Despite the distinct possibility that someone would see, Belvedere threw his arms around Carver’s neck and planted a kiss on his cheek, feeling as though words were not enough to express how proud he was of him for showing that level of initiative.

The bosun’s whistle sounded, and then Captain Lancaster began speaking.

“All hands, this is the captain speaking. We are passing close by a pod of gormaganders for the next forty-five minutes. As this is an extremely rare occurrence, I’d encourage you to find a viewport or watch the external camera feed if you can,” Lancaster said. “This is—,” he started but was cut off mid-sentence.

Belvedere wheeled around to look at Carver; both of them knew that something must be wrong for a blip like that to occur. The next few seconds dragged by until the lighting in the room changed to red, and the klaxons began to sound. A chill went down Belvedere’s spine as it always did when the ship went to red alert.

“I wonder what’s going on,” Belvedere asked.

“I’m sure we’ll hear about it later,” Carver noted; the blue shirts aboard any starship tended to be the last to know about anything, especially counselors. “Alright, everyone! It looks like we’re going to have to cut this short. Let’s calmly and quietly make our way back to our habitation levels. If you’re not sure where to go, that’s okay,” he said, addressing a surprisingly-calm crowd of children.

Belvedere’s eyes were focused on the windows—whatever was happening had to be happening out there. He jumped when there was a burst of phaser fire from above them, lancing out towards… the Gormaganders?

“Jesus fucking tap-dancing zombie Christ! Are we firing phasers at whales?” Belvedere exclaimed, earning him an admonishing glance from a nearby teacher. The lieutenant grabbed the telescope again, expecting to see the results of a space whale being vaporized by a starship-grade phaser bank, but what he saw instead was metallic wreckage. Past the debris, space began to shimmer as something green and angular emerged: a Valdore-class warbird flanked by two of her sisters. “Shit, shit, shit,” he muttered.

Belvedere’s combadge chirped three times, signaling him to report to the bridge. He grabbed Carver’s hand before the other man could disappear into the crowd. “Stay safe, Austin,” he ordered before setting off on a brisk walk for the turbolift. Once he was out of sight of any children, he increased that to a run. He was whisked away to the bridge in just a few seconds, thanks to his priority clearance.

Captain Lancaster was standing in the center of the bridge in a heated conversation with a Romulan on the viewscreen as Belvedere slid into the secondary communications station next to Galan.

“I say again, this convoy is under my protection, and I have no intention of backing down in the face of three antique class-three warbirds, Commander!” Lancaster spat. “This is an Odyssey-class starship, and you challenge me at your peril.”

“We will not allow you to steal Romulan property or abduct Romulan people, Captain! The Ditaria is a proud vessel of the Romulan Star Navy and belongs to us, as do the slaves you are holding captive, as does the data your spy has stolen from us!” the Romulan commander retorted. “If you wish to settle this on the field of battle, so be it!”

The transmission cut out, and the captain took his seat.

“Launch the Hokule’a. She and Aciman are to cover the convoy at all costs,” Lancaster ordered. “Galan, tell the refugee ships to stick together and back off.”

“Aye,” Galan replied as Belvedere fed those orders to their support ship and the frigate accompanying them.

A few moments later, Arcturus was rocked by disruptor fire from the Romulans. Thankfully, they seemed to be focusing their fire on the Starfleet ship and not yet on the refugees. Arcturus was built to take a pounding and to be able to handle engagements with smaller, more maneuverable craft, but three Valdore-class ships would be a challenge to handle with her support vessel ordered to escort the convoy.

“Shields holding at 95%, Captain. I recommend we focus all of our attention on the lead warbird. That may give the other two pause,” Commander Isethos said from the tactical station behind the first officer.

“Do it. Target their weapons and engines. Attack Pattern Lambda-3,” the captain ordered.

The four ships quickly ended up in a dogfight at extremely close range. The Romulan pilots were extremely talented, and they managed to avoid giving the Arcturus a clean opportunity to fire torpedoes or line up strikes with her main phaser banks. At the same time, the three warbirds were mostly limited to using their secondary disruptor beams, their large forward canons unable to target from up close like that.

“They have us boxed in,” Alesser complained.

“Shields down to 82%,” Navarro reported from ops. “Captain, the Aciman has broken formation and is headed our way at full impulse!”

“Tell them to get back into position, Communications,” Lancaster ordered.

Belvedere sent another message to the Aciman and received a terse response. “Sir, they report that they are following your original orders to protect the convoy,” he read out. “And some things in Telarese that I wouldn’t like to translate with an audience.”

“Aciman has scored a direct hit on one of the warbirds. It’s drifting,” Isethos said. “If we swing around to port, we can take out the leader,” he said.

“Helm, get me a torpedo lock on that ship,” the captain said.

“Absolutely, sir,” Lieutenant Commander Marshall replied, grinning from the helm as he applied far more thrust than was allowed to get the ship out of its dogfight with the other two warbirds, pulling around in a long arc to come about to face them.

“We have a lock, but the other warbird is breaking off towards the convoy,” Isethos reported.

“Fire,” Lancaster ordered. “And get Aciman back into position!”

Belvedere glanced at the viewscreen just in time to see a full salvo of quantum torpedoes slam into one of the warbirds. The shields took some of the energy, but the ordnance blew a hole through the wing of the avian ship, causing her to list just like her sister and begin leaking drive plasma.

“Captain, the third warbird is making directly for Cardinal 1,” Navarro reported.

“On screen,” Lancaster ordered.

Once the viewer shifted, the whole bridge crew saw a beam of plasma lance out from the smaller warbird to its older cousin, impacting the aft section directly. Without power from the singularity core, Cardinal 1 was helpless, and her weapons had long been stripped. The Hokule’a flung herself between the two Romulan ships, soaking up some of the fire as the Arcturus raced closer. Before Arcturus could get a targeting lock, the last Valdore jumped to warp, leaving behind a raging inferno on Cardinal 1.

“Damage report on Cardinal 1,” Lancaster ordered.

“They took a direct hit to the engine room, sir,” Navarro replied.

“How many of our people are still over there?”

“A dozen, sir. Most of them were in or near the engine room.”

Belvedere saw Galan turn all the way around in his chair, looking as though he’d seen a ghost, his features even paler than normal. He seemed to be in a daze as he responded to the captain’s orders for a hailing frequency and then when he wanted them to raise the away team. There was no response, and the bridge fell silent.

Aboard Cardinal 1, Lieutenant Sarcaryn had been chatting with Commander Slater when they received word of an impending battle. The Starfleet team had just shut down the ship’s warp drive so that it could recycle, but that had the effect of also taking down what little shielding they had left. While Slater scrambled to pull whatever power he could find for their protection, Sarcaryn went around making sure that the engine room itself was as safe as it could possibly be, with secured hatches and forcefields where they could be erected.

Sarcaryn and his team had been well-trained in away team duties, but none of the people in the room had much experience with ship-to-ship combat, so they didn’t know what to expect. The impact from a disruptor beam piercing the ship’s hull and leaving the engine room a mess of twisted metal and plasma fires came as a complete shock to everyone. The young Risian pushed Slater out of the way of a falling beam before he felt everything go black, quiet, and cold.