“Well that’s inconvenient,” muttered Gaeda as he stepped onto the bridge, still cradling his coffee, to find the viewscreen dominated by the bulk of a California-class starship. Trid had flown the cloaked Vondem Rose close enough, and carefully enough, that he could read the ship’s name off the back of the engineering section.

USS Alturas.

“Stop playing with them Trid,” he continued as he walked around the bridge, glancing over shoulders as he went, getting a quick overview of the status of the ship as he went.

“These Cali junkers are half-blind already,” Trid answered. “And besides, I’ve got us settled right up in the driver coil wake. They’ll never see us here.”

“Unless they suddenly accelerate or turn, causing us to fall out of the wake. Then they’ll see the driver fluctuate like a bell and know someone was sitting right on them. Ease us back nice a careful like.” He stopped right next to the helm, settling his cup on the back of Trid’s chair but still in his grip, then leaning forward to look at her displays. “Back us off by three light seconds. There’s no need to show off and be fancy.”

As Trid began the delicate process of undoing all the good work showing off her skill, he turned and looked to Orelia at Ops before making his way over to her, standing opposite her at her station. “What are they doing here anyway?”

“It looks like survey work,” she grumbled. “They’ve got a flock of shuttles dispatched across the system, probes too. Generic follow-up work.”

“We’re outside the Federation. Shouldn’t they be nice and safe over the border hiding under someone’s skirt?”

She simply glared at him as an answer, head tilting to the side mockingly, before inviting him around to see what she pulled up. A regional map, it showed the Federation border clearly and their current whereabouts – a star system that barely counted as over the border. One could be sleeping on Starbase 23, roll out of bed on the wrong side and end up in this system purely by accident. Any rapid responder from there could be here within a few hours if it pushed hard.

“Some sneaky Cali captain getting in some ‘deep space’ exploration while barely leaving the shallow end of the pool,” he said with a scoff.

“What?” Orelia challenged.

“Nothing, nothing,” he answered, punctuated with a sip of coffee. “Those ships barely leave Federation space, yet this captain is here. They’re just trying to get some exploration hours under their belt while being perfectly safe.”

“Or Starfleet is still looking for al-Jabar and this is just a ruse,” Orelia countered. “Some cruiser or something hiding around here in a powered-down state, waiting for something suspicious before pouncing.”

“How suitably paranoid of you,” he replied. “Keep an eye out then, will you? And monitor the Alturas’ comms. Maybe they’ll call this hidden cruiser and we’ll learn its position.”

“This is going to make getting to al-Jabar’s hideout more difficult,” Orelia said.

“Yeah, but what’s life without some challenges, yes?” He smiled, shooting his fellow ship master a grin and nudging her elbow with his own, which slowly brought one to Orelia’s face. “Besides, we’ve stolen a chair out from a Starfleet depot once. Visiting a pirate from under a surveyor has gotta be easier than that.”

“Fucking pirates,” the gruff human freighter captain said as he was pushed into the cargo hold. “You’ll reap what you sow you know.”

“That’s the plan,” Brett Gavalore shot back as he scanned over the crates in the cargo hold with his tricorder. It was an older model, reminiscent of the Dominion War, but it still served its purpose. “There are folks that need these supplies more than a bunch of well-off colonists that’ll get Starfleet’s help if things go south.”

“Like who? A bunch of stupid Romulans? Fuck ‘em! They deserve everything –“ the man was cut off by a slap to the face from Sidda, his face blanking then masked with fury at what she had done, but he held his tongue.

“Suffering refugees,” she said to him, pointing straight into his face with the hand she’d just slapped him with. “Now shut up and be quiet. The sooner we tag what we need, the sooner we’ll be out of your hair.”

“Fucking Orions,” the freighter captain cursed. “Whole race are pirates. Never gonna amount to anything.”

“Geez, really selling me on the Federation moral high ground,” Sidda shot back. “G, how much longer?”

“Just about done S,” Gavalore answered as he slapped a transporter beacon on another couple of crates. “Did you hear that?” he asked, turning to the door Sidda and the freighter captain has just come in through.

“No,” she answered before letting out a cry as the freighter captain tackled her, her phaser scattering across the floor.

Outside in the hall more weapons fire could be heard, booted feet and shouted cries coming closer before Eric Ortega, formerly the captain of the USS Surabaya, and Fred Duncan, the same’s former chief engineer, stumbled into the hold.

But Sidda’s attention wasn’t focused on that, but on the large man scrambling over her, going for her weapon. His weight pinning her down, an elbow into her shoulder, a knee into her side. But she was wrestling with him in return, slipping sideways, out from under him, then onto his back, scrambling over him and across the floor to her weapon. A hand on her leg, pulling her back. A kick backwards, a cry of pain, a loosening of grip.

Then a hand clamped on her ankle, pulling her back. She rolled onto her back, looked the freighter captain square in the eyes, saw the broken nose she’d already given him, the anger mixed with glee on his face. He thought he was winning. Then she smiled and saw his face twist before two rapid kicks to his face sent him backwards, hands going to his own face as he cried out again.

A few heartbeats later she had her phaser in her hands, turned on him and without hesitation fired, the shot going wide. But before she could fire again another blast took the freighter captain between the shoulder blades, sending him sprawling to the floor.

“Get up!” Gavalore barked at her, turning to face the door where a squad of the freighter’s crew were pouring in, diving for cover where they could over the fallen forms of a few unlucky fellows who’d already been stunned.

“Oh fuck!” she screamed, then scrambled behind a container, then onto her feet. She tapped at her commbadge, a paltry round little civilian pin. “S to Subi, get us out of here!”

“Cargo first!” Ortega shouted as he fired at an advancing Andorian. “We get the cargo first!”

“Understood,” came a calm voice on the other end as Doctor Shreln, safe aboard the Subi started transporting containers out of the hold.

It was an interminable delay, the wait while containers in the hold disappeared, whisked away in whirling blue lights. Cover started to disappear for both sides, but the freighter crew had numbers on their side, using the opportunity to advance under fire as they could.

“Kill them!” a shout came out across the bay from the safety of the door frame. “Kill the pirates!”

Fire stopped from the ship’s defenders momentarily before it resumed. Obviously, weapons had been adjusted. “Subi, now!” Sidda shouted into her comm once more. “Fuck the cargo.”

“Ten seconds,” Shreln answered as more crates were whisked away. “Right, let’s go,” she finally said.

As the transporter gripped Sidda, lights forming around all of her crewmembers, she saw two of the freighter guards close on Ortega and Duncan’s position, rising and firing into them as the transporter lights filled her vision.

She never heard their screams, but what her imagination gifted her would stick with her forever.

Her captain killed. A good friend executed beside him.

All just to steal some supplies that refugees across the border needed far, far more than a bunch of fat, comfortable, self-indulgent colonists who wouldn’t even let the Romulans settle on their world when the border was open, let alone now.

“New contact,” shouted Trid from the helm. “It’s a big one too.”

Gaeda turned to look at the tactical plot on the mainscreen, still nursing his coffee as a new contact blossomed to life. It wasn’t hiding behind an asteroid as Orelia had suspected, but in the magnetic pole of a gas giant’s moon on the far side of the system from where the Vondem Rose was.

The ship’s computer was still trying to identify the target, but it had a good idea of the power curve as it ramped up, climbing to absurd levels. Then the computer tagged it – an Inquiry-class cruiser. “Santa Maria,” he muttered. “Battle stations,” he said and the computer dutifully responded by warbling out the alarm throughout the ship, loud enough to rouse the dead.

“Wait,” Trid said. “Look.”

On the display the Inquiry hadn’t looked like it had moved, the scale not being enough to show such details, but suddenly showed it moving at full impulse away from the gas giant it had been hiding nearby. Directly away from it and most importantly not in their direction. And then just as suddenly it jumped to warp. High warp.

Emergency warp speeds.

And the plot was rapidly updating as all the Alturas’ shuttles were making their way to their mother ship, some of them at impulse, others now at low warp speeds to cross the vastness of a star system in a respectable time.

“What in the actual fuck?” Gaeda asked, spinning to look at Orelia at Ops, who shrugged, then around all the other bridge stations, getting a similar response.

“Well, stand down Battlestations,” he said. “And let’s wait till these fine folks leave as well before we go and visit The New Last Pirate King.”

“The Last Last Pirate King,” Orelia said.

“The Last-est Pirate King,” Trid supplied.

“Target practice,” came Sidda’s response from the bridge door, wrapped in a duvet as she padded across the deck barefoot. “Now, why the hell am I awake at this ungodly hour?”