They were being hunted. Through the Underspace they raced, but now the labyrinth was crawling with bloodhounds on the hunt. In destroying the Blackout outpost, they’d awoken the beast, and the Vaadwaur were intent on making sure they didn’t get out alive.

The had only one advantage. The Alita class was one of the most tactically-oriented configurations to ever roll off the assembly line, and with that came a top of the line sensor suite. In light of the Underspace’s return, it had been tuned further by the Advanced Science, Technology and Research Activity, and now it could penetrate the medium at distances that exceeded even the Vaadwaur.

“Junction ahead at three two seconds,” Lieutenant Commander Essinger reported from the operations station as she reviewed the latest data coming in. “Sensor ghosts, presume Vaadwaur, down branch at three one zero. Branch at zero four four looks clear though.”

“Mister Coleman, you heard the lady,” Captain Vox nodded. “Zero four four is the course.” 

They’d been at this a good half hour now, crisscrossing the labyrinth to stay one step ahead of the enemy. So far, it was working, but it had also led them astray from the route the navigation officer had plotted through the Underspace network to return them to K’t’inga.

“Zero four four, aye,” Lieutenant Commander Coleman nodded from the conn as he set the ship to take the starboard-angled corridor at the upcoming junction.

From the Combat Information Center in the back of the room, Commander Jordyn Kerrigan relayed the information onward. “Diligent to all units. Starboard at the split.” 

“How long are we going to keep playing the prey, Diligent?” General Kloss grumbled over the link. “I say we turn on them and scatter their bones across the Underspace.” Even though his Bortasqu’ had taken damage when it had attacked the outpost responsible for the local area Blackout, it had not deterred his hunger for blood. If anything, it’d just made him want it more.

“Our mission parameters were clear,” Commander Kerrigan countered flatly. “Destroy the outpost and return to K’t’inga.” Admiral Reyes wanted to study the impact of taking out one of the outposts before she committed their limited assets to a larger mission. Plus, the longer they were away from K’t’inga, the longer it remained exposed with little more than an Odyssey, a Norway and a scraggly group of half-repaired Klingon ships to defend it if the Vaadwaur returned to finish the job.

“Your mission parameters, Diligent, from your admiral,” General Kloss retorted. He wanted to take the fight to the enemy, for glory and for revenge. “Klingons do not run from a fight. Golroth, what say you?” While Kloss had brought only his flagship, Golroth had brought his entire cruiser group. If the old man would join him, Golroth thought, maybe they didn’t need Starfleet anymore.

General Golroth, though, saw the big picture. “Only a fool wastes his energy on inconsequential skirmishes when there’s a great war to be won.” This was not about killing the Vaadwaur. Not now, at least. This was about knocking down the walls of the Blackout so they could organize a larger assault and retake the entire galaxy. “That’s where true glory will be found.”

Time was up as they reached the junction, and much to Commander Kerrigan’s relief, not only did General Golroth’s cruiser wing follow them as they veered to starboard, but so did General Kloss’ ship. 

What choice did General Kloss really have though? His Bortasqu’ was a toothy beast, but it was still only a single ship. The Underspace was crawling with the enemy, and even the brash general would not be such a fool as to set out on his own.

A few moments after the turn, Lieutenant Commander Essinger noticed something on her display, an interference pattern refracting off the walls of the Underspace. As she stared at it closer, it looked familiar. Too patterned to be natural, definitely not part of the background radiation. It almost looked anthropogenic in origin.

After taking a few minutes to clean it up, she had her answer. “Hey cap, I think we have a call coming in. Narrow beam carrier signal with harmonics causing it to refract off the walls of the Underspace, almost as though it’s laced into the medium itself.”

“We what?” Captain Vox asked, his face a mix of surprise and excitement. Was there someone else operating in here? Since the Blackout had fallen over the galaxy, they’d had no contact with anyone, left completely alone to chart a course. “Put it through.”

The main viewer transformed, the murky brown-orange soup of the Underspace replaced by the last face any of them expected to see. 

“Captain Lewis,” Captain Vox greeted warmly. “What a welcome surprise!”

Around the bridge, jaws fell. While Captain Vox knew the Serenity and the Ingenuity had not been destroyed, he had not shared it with the rest of the staff given the off-book nature of the covert operation on Montana that had yielded the intelligence. And so, for the rest of them, it was like seeing a dead man walking.

“Is it really? Probably been a good bit quieter while I was away.”

“Not quite,” Captain Vox frowned. While Lewis had been away, they’d been through the terrorist attack on Duraxis, the contagion on Archanis, and the hunt for illicit technology proliferated by those who sought to undermine the Federation’s hold on the borderlands. But right now, that was neither here nor there. “What’s your status? What happened to you these last six months?”

“Plenty of time to catch up later. Right now, we have a mission for you. We’re aware of your current situation with the Vaadwaur, and we have a way to strike back.”

Oh Lewis, Captain Vox chuckled to himself. Straight to the punch. Some things never changed.

“We have identified a Vaadwaur command and control hub they are using to coordinate their operations. It lies deep within the Underspace, a four days’ journey, outside the galactic plane. There’s a couple little things we need to take care of first, but Dorian, if we take this thing out, trust me, it will undercut their operation across the entire galaxy.”

“How’d you find out about this?” Captain Vox asked. They’d just begun to work through a way to bring down the walls of the Blackout, and yet here was Captain Lewis, missing for the past six months, now suddenly reappearing with tactical plans to strike a deadly blow upon the enemy.

“A kind Vaadwaur pilot volunteered it. He was quite detailed and specific, in fact.”

“Excuse me?” Captain Vox didn’t know what he’d expected to hear, but that was not it.

“Long story and not for pleasant company, but trust me, Dorian. This intelligence is good. He did not have the faculties to lie to us, even if he’d wanted to.”

There was something sinister in the way Captain Lewis said it that told Captain Vox all he needed to know. He knew what their old squadron intelligence officer was capable of, and if the old spook said the intelligence was good, he wouldn’t question it. “What do you need from us?”

“On a side channel, we are transmitting detailed route finding instructions that will guide you through the Underspace to the target. You will also find force dispositions and everything else you will need for a strike. I need you to muster whatever you can – not going to lie, this won’t be a cakewalk – and then I need you there at a precise point in time.”

“Why a precise point in time?” Captain Vox inquired.

“This hub is phased out of normal spacetime by a pair of alien arrays the Vaadwaur have come into possession of. We’re going to take them out, but the moment we do, the Vaadwaur will know the game is up, and they’ll rush additional assets to its defense. You need to hit it before those assets arrive.”

It was just like what they’d already been through, Captain Vox recognized. The first Blackout outpost had been unarmed and undefended, but after General Golroth had torched it, the Vaadwaur reacted by loading the next one up with polaron cannons and attaching a cruiser group to its defense. And then, once they hit the second one, the Vaadwaur had come out of the woodwork to hunt for them. War was a game of point-counterpoint.

“Not to interject,” Commander Kerrigan said while doing exactly that from the CIC. “But cap, we’re not going to be able to stay in here any longer. It’s gotten too hot.” All over her scopes, she was seeing branches of the network getting cut off as more and more Vaadwaur strike groups joined the hunt. “We need to drop back into normal space before we run out of options.”

Captain Vox knew better than to question his executive officer’s assessment. If Jordyn Kerrigan said that was what they needed to do, then that was what they needed to do. “Find us an exit and get it to Mister Coleman.”

Commander Kerrigan had anticipated the order, and she relayed the instructions immediately.

“ETA two zero seconds on the aperture,” Lieutenant Commander Coleman reported.

The problem, Captain Vox knew as he turned back to the screen, was that the moment they dropped out of the Underspace, they’d lose the link with Captain Lewis. There were still so many questions that he had, but if they got cornered by the Vaadwaur and didn’t make it out, none of that would matter. “Lewis, I presume you heard that?”

“I did, which means this conversation is at an end. How long do you need to rally the troops?”

“Give us three days to scrounge together what we can, and four to reach the target,” Captain Vox nodded. “Don’t expect a fleet-wide response though – it’s pretty rough out here – but we’ll be there with what we can.” He had no idea what they could muster. They had Golroth’s squadron, Kloss’ surviving ships, and the Polaris, the Diligent, and the Kennedy. He had no idea who else might answer a call – or even hear it – if they put it out.

“I’m aware, but do what you can. You’ve got seven days. See you on the other side.”

The link dropped as the Diligent tore out of the aperture back into normal space.

“Any sign of pursuit?” Captain Vox asked warily as his eyes adjusted to normal space.

“I think we got out clean,” Commander Hunt replied. “The Vaadwaur never managed to paint us, so my guess is that they have no idea where we exited.”

“And where exactly is it that we exited?” Captain Vox inquired.

“Navigational sensors indicate we’re in a star desert approximately six light years spinward of No’Mat,” Lieutenant Commander Coleman chimed in. 

Not far from where they had started their journey, but not quite where they needed to be, Captain Vox recognized. “How’s subspace looking? Please tell me the labrats were right and we’re not going to have to go back into the Underspace to get back to K’t’inga.” It wasn’t just about getting back to K’t’inga. More importantly, it was about what lay ahead. If the destruction of the outpost had brought down a Blackout boundary as hypothesized by the ASTRA and Mempa V astrophysicists, they’d have made a major step forward towards resolving the anomaly that’d crippled their ability to fight back.

Lieutenant Commander Essinger double checked what she was seeing and then she shared the news: “I am pleased to report we have subspace emissions as far out as K’t’inga and Beta Penthe.”

Captain Vox exhaled a sigh of relief, one he didn’t even know he was holding in. 

“There’s more,” Lieutenant Commander Essinger offered. “Not only am I picking up K’t’inga, but I’m picking up the repeater at Gamma Hromi too. It’s weak, probably still some interference, but it’s definitely there and talking.” 

Their first connection back to Federation space since the Blackout had set in, although not exactly a major operational hub. “How about Qo’noS, SB 86 or Archanis?”

“Don’t get too optimistic,” Lieutenant Commander Essinger frowned. “All three of those still appear to be on the other side of additional Blackout boundaries.”

“It’s still good fucking news,” Captain Vox smiled as he felt a familiar presence stepped onto the command island beside him. He looked over at his executive officer, who’d spent most of the morning tucked away in the Combat Information Center as their eyes over the battle space. “Suddenly, the galaxy feels a whole lot smaller, doesn’t it, Jordyn?”

“That it does,” Commander Kerrigan nodded. “So what’s the play?”

“Head back to K’t’inga, rally the troops and take out Lewis’ target,” Captain Vox replied. “But first, we need to make a call.”