The way the bridge crew were clinging to their duty stations, Captain Taes ruefully wondered if the inertial dampeners had failed them.

Having left the Ciater Nebula far behind them, Constellation was hurtling through the thick of Dominion territory at the emergency speed of warp 9.5.  Taes was perched at the very edge of her captain’s chair, readying herself to pounce at any second.  The rate at which warp-streaked stars were streaming past the ship struck Taes at an instinctive place within her.  It made her feel like she was about to plummet through the viewscreen and drown in the luminous spiral at any moment.

Nune was hunched over the forward science station and Cellar Door was flying figure-eights over the flight controls like a fickle insect.  Flanking the CONN, Security Chief Ache stood stiffly behind the holographic tactical console.  Her facial tentacles twitched erratically whenever Cellar Door swooped too near her.  On either side of Taes, Nova was glued to the operations station set into the starboard bulkhead and Laken held tight to the Science II station on the port side.

The executive officer’s chair by Taes’ side was palpably empty.  As much as Kellin could bring Taes strength –and a smile– he was needed on the away mission.  It wasn’t until this very moment that Taes had so keenly felt the absence of her previous first officer, Elbon Jakkelb.  Through their weeks together in the Delta Quadrant the previous year, Taes had relied on Elbon’s tactical instincts, perhaps too much.

It took Nune to shift the mood weighing heavily across the bridge.

“Captain, you can approve the away team’s shore leave,” Nune said.  He tossed the comment back over his shoulder with ease.  “Sensors are picking up the Kholara Observatory, exactly where it should be.  I’m detecting energy readings consistent with Federation electroplasma systems.  Still, the observatory’s computer won’t respond to any of our hails.”

Although Taes nodded at Nune to acknowledge his finding, the observatory’s presence wasn’t why Taes had been holding her breath.  Taes tilted her head in Ache’s direction.

In a timbre of tentative hope, Ache advised, “No other contacts detected in the Kholara system.  I’m not picking up any Dominion vessels, captain.”

Taes raised an eyebrow at Ache.  She could still remember the kinds of things she was supposed to say as a captain, even if it felt like a performance.

“It’s time for the crew to see why I poached you as my security chief,” Taes said in a spectacle of professional pride.  Taes nodded at Ache and then turned to ops.  “Nova, alert shuttlebay one to prepare for launch maneuvers.”

Double-nodding back, Nova replied, “Aye, captain.”

Cellar Door’s anti-grav fluttering came to an abrupt halt as the exocomp came to rest on the flight control panel.  He manipulated the stylus protruding from his replicator nose to make use of the holographic interface.

“Count it down with me,” Cellar Door said, evidently making his own play to improve bridge crew morale.  “We are coming out of warp in… three… two… one.”

Although no one counted down in concert with him, all eyes followed the smears of starlight as they settled into the empty dark of the Kholara system.  As Constellation slowed to half-impulse, the Kholara Observatory came into view through the transparent viewscreen.  The space station looked much the same as it had done in their holographic briefings, except one of its subspace antennae masts had been burned and twisted to slag.

Sneering at the state of the observatory, Taes offered her orders firmly.  “Mister Door, take us to heading oh-two-four mark three-five at one-quarter impulse,” Taes said.  “Nova, begin shut down of all non-essential systems.  And I want a tactical analysis from you, Commander Ache.”

Ache’s six eyes were scanning every inch of her tactical panel, when she reported, “The damage to the observatory is consistent with phased polaron weapons fire.  There’s no sign of ion trails.  If this was the handiwork of the Dominion, rather than a rogue asteroid, it occurred days ago at a minimum.”

“Non-essentials shut down, captain,” Nova advised, when the overhead lighting went dark.  Illumination on the bridge was reduced to the passive glow from LCARS panels and yellow-alert indicators.

“Give the shuttlebay clearance to launch, Nova,” Taes said.

The viewscreen switched to a reverse angle, just in time to watch the Orion-class runabout glide between the Constellation’s nacelles.  With a flash of its impulse engines, the runabout arced through space in the direction of the observatory.

Ache started to say, “Ah, captain–“, in the same moment Nova reported, “USS Rubenstein is away.”

“On long-range sensors,” Ache went on, her voice turning strident, “I’m picking up…  ah, I’ve confirmed it’s a Jem’Hadar battle cruiser.  It appears to be on a course to Leonis.”

Trying not to blink, Taes gingerly leaned back in her chair.  Instinctively, her eyes searched the stars through the viewscreen for any sign of the Jem’Hadar, even if she intellectually knew it wasn’t anywhere near visual range.

Hardly speaking above a whisper, Taes asked, “Have they spotted us, commander?”

“They’re… they’re…” Ache said and the way her voice cracked gave it away.  “They’re changing course: battle cruiser has assumed an intercept vector.”

Even in her leather field jacket, Yuulik was hugging herself tightly and rubbing her upper arms for warmth.  Barely half of the emergency lights aboard the Kholara Observatory appeared to be operational, but she wasn’t about to let her terrible night vision stop her from achieving her objective.  Yuulik bounded recklessly across the docking bay, every footfall clanging gloriously against the grated deck plates.  When she reached for the tricorder on her hip, the lightbeam from her wrist-beacon flickered aimlessly around the darkened compartment.

“It’s colder in here than Kellin’s marital bed,” Yuulik shouted back.  She verified with her tricorder what her body already told her: “Life support is operating at less than fifty-percent function, but it’s still wheezing along.  Although the main reactor is offline, the auxiliary fusion genera–“

From behind her, Kellin Rayco snarled, “Hold on!”  He and Navok came racing past Yuulik with their phaser pistols drawn.  Yuulik froze on the spot and she hugged herself again until Kellin offered further instruction.

“You heard Captain Taes,” Kellin said.  Clealry, Yuulik could see was making a macho show of chiding her.  Clearly.  He and Navok positioned themselves on opposite sides of the doors leading out of the bay.  “A Jem’Hadar battle cruiser is already en route.  If the Dominion found us this quickly, we may not be as alone aboard the observatory as we hoped.  Let us scan the passageway, please!”

While Kellin and Navok played at soldier in the passageway, Flavia caught up with Yuulik and she flipped open her tricorder.  This once, Flavia had equipped herself with a Starfleet tricorder to ensure it spoke the same language, figuratively, as the observatory’s computer systems.  Some thirty seconds later, Kellin returned to Yuulik at a quickstep.  He pointed to the Jeffries tube hatch he’d opened in the passageway.

“The two of you can access the computer core one deck up,” Kellin said.

Flavia huffed at Kellin as she jogged for the Jeffries tube hatch.  “Commander, I told you where to find the computer core,” Flavia said.

Kellin ignored her.  He put a hand on Yuulik’s shoulder to hurry her along into the Jefferies tube behind Flavia.

“Navok and I will be in operations,” Kellin advised, “getting the defensive systems back online.”

By the time Yuulik crawled into the Jeffries tube and up the rungs, she discovered herself out of breath.  In the time it took her to study the small control room, Yuulik briefly wondered if she should have, just once, taken up Kellin’s offer of fitness training.  She found Flavia was already tabbing through menu options on a widescreen LCARS panel.  Flavia alternated rapidly between commands tapped into her tricorder and responding to menu pop-ups on the observatory’s system panel.

“You gather the sensor logs from the main computer core,” Flavia ordered Yuulik.  “With all of the system failures, I’m going to scrub the sub-processors to dig out any sensor logs that never made it into the library computer’s filing system.”

Yuulik acknowledged Flavia’s plan with a nod.  After crossing the compartment, she pulled open an access panel and begin the sync between her tricorder and the computer core.  While the tricorder initiated the command, Yuulik turned to yanking isolinear chips out of the computer core.  She recognized each chip as as containing the security protocols that would slow her from her purpose.

Puffing out her chest, Ache rose her voice to be heard clearly over the red alert klaxons whooping across the bridge. She dragged two fingers across her holographic interface, revealing another layer to her tactical scanner readings.

“Correction!” Ache reported.  “There are six Dominion battleships on an intercept course with Constellation.  Captain, at maximum warp, they’ll reach the Kholara system in less than four minutes.”

Upon receiving Ache’s report, Taes sat more deeply in her chair.  The tension between her shoulder blades melted.  The throbbing in her temples passed.  The knot in her stomach was forgotten.  Whatever anxieties had plagued her in anticipation of everything going wrong had disagreed with her far more than the reality of everything going wrong.  There wasn’t much room left in her body for self-doubt when the universe was closing in on her.  Taes’ vision was reduced to little more than a pinhole.  Her priorities were clear: defend the crew; retrieve the sensor data; rescue the away team.

“Arm all phaser arrays and turrets, commander.  Load quantum torpedoes in the tubes,” Taes ordered.

On opposite sides of the viewscreen, two translucent simulations appeared within red LCARS frames.  In each simulation, a Constitution III-class starship was attacked by Dominion battleships in differing formations.

“If the battleships attack on this vector,” Ache said, pointing to one, “I recommend defence pattern upsilon, but if the battleships attack on that vector, I recommend defence pattern tau.”

Taes shrugged at Ache.  “Let’s find out!”

A distinctive LCARS chirrup bleated out from the operations console.

Nova chimed in with, “Captain, the Kholara Observatory’s subspace transceiver array has come online.”

Taes clapped her hands together.

“Are we receiving the sensor logs from the away team?” Taes asked.

Squinting at her controls, Nova stammered, “They’re transmitting… No, they’re broadcasting on all frequencies…” –She put a hand over her Fienberg earpiece– “Numbers?  I’m sorry, captain, I don’t know what they mean.”

Taes snapped, “My station!”

In the time it took Taes to swing the LCARS arm out from under her armrest, Ache shouted, “Captain, they’re broadcasting to the Dominion fleet!”

The numbers that appeared on Taes’ display caused the tension headache in her temples to bloom once again.

“Those,” Taes said, “are the Constellation’s prefix codes!”