Squadron leader’s log, Stardate 240205.15.

This isn’t a battle we can win. It’s a battle we survive long enough to give someone else the chance to.

The heart of the Alpha Centauri system burned ahead like the heart of a forge, swathed in the smouldering haze of ionised debris and the hard-edged signatures of warships on patrol. Vaadwaur formations wrapped the twin stars in overlapping tiers of steel and fire. Not a defensive wall. A killing field.

Only on faint gleams on sensors, shifting and moving, could they see the Underspace aperture, not quite at the system’s heart but deep enough within the orbit of the fifth planet to bring any approach far, far too close to the main body of Vaadwaur ships.

From the bridge of the Sirius, Rourke stood before the sweeping tactical display with arms crossed, watching the dance of lights promising death. Each starship transponder blinked like a steady heartbeat, arrayed against the malignant glint of each Vaadwaur signature.

The Blackbird was a ghost, her stealth trace smudged beneath the system’s sensor clutter and the interference of warp wake echoes from skirmishes days past. But she was moving. Slowly, carefully, on a silent path that would take her through the gap opened by the squadron’s strike.

‘Final formation checks complete,’ reported Commander Rhade at Tactical. ‘Redemption Division holding to the upper arc. Liberty Division shadowing the debris fields as cover. Endeavour has the centre. All ships report ready.’

Across the system, Sirius Squadron’s ships were converging into a spearpoint. This was not a siege; there was no hope of one. This was a feint, a distraction played out in torpedoes and blood.

‘Signal the fleet,’ said Rourke. ‘Engage Vaadwaur outer defence screen. Maintain staggered formation. Keep our path narrow; don’t give them a heart to hammer.’ He looked once more at the faint echo on the sensors of the Blackbird.

‘And whatever happens, keep their approach clear.’

Endeavour shook under another barrage, shields flaring like a sunburst across the forward viewscreen. Valance gripped the railing behind her command chair, unmoved by the vibrations, eyes fixed on the tactical display.

‘Return fire, port arrays, full spread. Launch torpedo spread delta; target their lead,’ she snapped, voice sharp and steady.

Commander Logan was already on it at Tactical. ‘Two Manasas on intercept vector, twenty degrees off starboard. Reckon they’re probing for a break.’

Valance’s eyes flickered to the incoming ships. ‘They want us to fold. Show them we don’t.’

‘Aye,’ Logan growled, and Endeavour’s phaser banks erupted in a clean, sweeping arc. The deck thrummed under their feet with the surge of power. On-screen, one Manasa reeled from the blast, its shields folding just before a torpedo slammed into the weakened hull and blew of a section of fuselage in a blossom of fire.

‘Confirmed kill,’ said Logan with low satisfaction.

Valance stepped up to the command chair but didn’t sit. ‘Swiftsure’s support craft?’

Airex looked up from Science. ‘Moving in tandem. Fighters are drawing the escorts into the pincer. Clean strikes; it should open up a corridor for Sirius and Scylla to reach the centre.’

On the display, the Swiftsure banked hard, shuttlebay maw wide open at her aft. A dozen smallcraft spilled forth in disciplined fury, darting across the combat screen like flecks of iron fire. A pair of Vaadwaur fighters surged to meet them, and died in a flash.

‘Swiftsure reports flank secured,’ Airex confirmed. ‘Fighters are through.’

‘Maintain forward pressure,’ Valance ordered. ‘Endeavour is the bulwark. Let the Vaadwaur throw themselves on us.’

The ship rumbled again, and Lindgren wrestled the helm with practiced calm. ‘Port stabilisers holding. Minimal drift.’

Valance glanced her way. ‘Blackbird?’

‘They’re moving. Low and fast, right where we want them.’

Valance gave a single nod, then turned her gaze forward again. Around her, Endeavour’s bridge pulsed with light and motion, officers shouting, consoles flaring, alarms flickering. Her voice cut through like a knife.

‘Brace for impact. We hold the line.’

‘Bring us around, Fox!’ Captain Tycho of the Tempest stood behind the helm and braced against the jolt of another near-miss. ‘Same manoeuvre we used at Kel-Trellen.’

‘That one got us shot,’ reminded Ensign Fox, her eyes on the jagged debris fields flashing past the viewscreen.

‘Sure,’ said Tycho cheerfully. ‘But we did look very dashing.’

The Tempest spun like a blade in the hands of a trick-swordsman, pitching hard starboard and dropping low beneath the fragmenting wreck of a now-defunct orbital dockyard. Old Federation hull plating, now scorched and twisted under Vaadwaur occupation, tumbled past them, a field of broken metal hiding threats and opportunity in equal measure.

Polaron fire lanced overhead, and Tycho flinched more out of reflex than fear. ‘Remind me why we let the Vaadwaur strap cannons onto our old peaceful orbital platforms?’

‘Because Command didn’t want us fighting over every ball of rusted screws in the system,’ Fox grunted, eyes still on her work.

‘Well, we’re fighting over them now.’

Sensor pings rippled across the forward console, and Tactical shouted, ‘New intercept course; two Pythus flights on our six, closing fast.’

‘Of course they are.’ Tycho didn’t sound bothered. ‘They’ve never had an original thought in their lives.’

The Tempest darted between slats of metal and structural ribbing, skipping over old platform hulls like a stone across water. The Vaadwaur fighters weren’t far behind, but even they hesitated as the Starfleet ship knifed through debris where a twitch too wide meant annihilation. That was the Tempest’s advantage: where others couldn’t go, she slipped like water.

And Tycho would make them go there.

‘There’s our sensor relay,’ he muttered, nodding to a looming structure half-shielded by wreckage. What had once controlled local traffic coming in to dock at a peaceful moon had been retrofitted, stabilisers bolted on, Vaadwaur sensor gear welded into its superstructure. ‘Sorry, old lady. Time to put you to sleep.’

Tempest’s torpedoes launched in a single, clean spread, and a moment later the sensor relay that had stood in orbit of an Alpha Centauri moon for two centuries exploded rocked with the impact. Then it blossomed out in a white-hot burst, a ring of fire that knocked two pursuing Pythus fighters off course.

‘Defence platform targeting disruption confirmed,’ Fox called. ‘They’re shooting blind.’

Tycho grinned. ‘Blackbird?’

‘Gone. Slipped past the sensor net.’

His eyes scraped the sensors. Found nothing. ‘Go,’ he breathed. ‘We’re just the light show. You’re the main event.’ Then he clapped the back of Fox’s chair and straightened. ‘Bring us about. Back to Redemption. Scrape some fighters off them. Keep it up.’

Behind them, the wreckage drifted, and fire filled the dark.

Liberty limped still at the periphery, her hull streaked from the brutal punishment at Proxima. Scars had been patched, power rerouted, bulkheads sealed, but not all wounds could be so easily healed. Captain Galcyon sat upright in the centre seat, hands folded tightly in her lap, her eyes on the viewscreen where the Memphis floated like a lighthouse amidst a storm.

Nobody sat either side of her.

‘Sensor feed from Memphis is still stabilised,’ confirmed Lieutenant Ortak from Science. They were a relief officer. Dragged up to replace their executed predecessor. ‘They’ve got eyes on nearly a third of the theatre. Nobody’s flying blind today.’

Galcyon nodded. ‘Then we keep them safe.’

Vaadwaur escorts swooped in like vultures drawn to a carcass. The Liberty bucked as they passed, phaser banks answering with fierce, measured bursts. It was a moment where Dashell would have been giving orders and reminders, and the silence where she couldn’t hear his voice ached like a missing limb before she stepped up and filled the gap. They weren’t whole. But they were ready.

‘Shields at thirty-eight percent,’ her new tactical officer called. ‘Multiple ships on approach: two Manasa-class and a flight of Pythus. Intercept in ninety seconds.’

‘Helm, keep us between them and Memphis.’ Galcyon drew a deep breath. This was what had nearly gotten them killed before. ‘Position us with maximum firing arc.’

A chorus of acknowledgements echoed. Liberty turned to face the storm.

Then the stars rippled, and the Ranger swept into view, twin lances of torpedo fire cutting a Vaadwaur flanker from the sky.

‘This is Ranger,’ came Captain Yves’s voice over comms. ‘Wrapped up that flight of fighters early. Permission to watch your flank, Captain?’

Galcyon allowed herself a smile. ‘Permission enthusiastically granted. Welcome to the dance.’

The Vaadwaur formation faltered. Two broke off to tangle with Ranger. The rest hesitated just long enough for Liberty to deliver a surgical blow across the lead Manasa’s deflectors. The screen flared, the enemy vessel bucked – then burst into flames.

‘Reading a spatial fluctuation near the aperture,’ Ortak reported. ‘Small, fast. Definitely not a warp signature.’

Galcyon’s head snapped around. ‘The Blackbird?’

He nodded. ‘They’re through. But the Vaadwaur will have noticed. They’ll be watching now.’

Galcyon stood, pacing to the edge of the viewscreen as the battle roared on. The Liberty wasn’t fast, or pristine. But they could still hold.

‘They only have to watch us,’ she said quietly. ‘That’s the point.

Then the viewscreen shifted, flaring to life with the image of Captain El Sayed of the Memphis. ‘Stand by, Liberty. New contacts.’

Memphis had been feeding them new contacts all along, so for El Sayed to open a channel to say this made Galcyon frown in confusion for a moment.

Then, on the tactical map on the left side of the screen, she saw them. The sweep of Vaadwaur signatures emerging from the shadow of the sixth planet, on the far side of the suns. More than they’d detected on approach. Enough to dwarf their numbers.

Enough to fill the sky.

When Galcyon’s chest tightened, it didn’t feel like a new fear. It felt like an old wound flaring up, that same helplessness and terror that had run through her at Proxima, enough to wring every scrap of energy and hope out of her.

‘Shit,’ said her young new tactical officer from behind her, eloquent in their simplicity.

That was enough of a distraction for Galcyon to take a step back. See the vanishing glint of the Underspace aperture. And draw a deep breath.

‘The plan doesn’t change,’ she said. ‘We’re not here to light a beacon to vanish the dark. We just have to hold back the dark long enough someone else can. We hold. Whatever it takes.’

And once again, Cassidy and his Rooks would have to be their salvation.