The stars hadn’t changed. They glimmered across the forward viewports like cold embers, eternal and indifferent. The USS Ulysses held standard orbit above planetoid RX-119 in the Meledra System. Inside the ship, tension coiled beneath the surface—poised between calm and crisis, waiting for the signal that would call it to action.

Fleet Captain James C. MacLeod, Commander of the Ulysses Exploratory Cruiser Division and Task Group Nine Seven, stood at the heart of the Tactical Flag Command Center, a space buried in the secure guts of Deck Five. Designed for coordination, not comfort, it pulsed with status lights, subspace indicators, and star maps rendered in partial fidelity. It was silent except for the ambient hum of systems and the occasional ping from a filtered alert feed. Across the room stood Commander Colin Tanner, his Chief Staff Officer, posture straight, hands behind his back, observing without comment.

Subspace telemetry from a local communications relay had arrived during a precise window: a microburst fired through a passing pulsar to the Ulysses’s lateral sensor palates. It had carried only one point three megabytes of compressed data—enough for a timestamp, a set of operational parameters, and one unmistakable order from Frontier Operations Fourth Fleet:

“Blackout confirmed. One Underspace aperture active. One confirmed hostile beachhead. Arvenal system compromised. Initiate Operation IRON VEIL. Signed, Mamof.”

MacLeod had read it once. That was enough.

He stepped forward, hands clasped behind his back, watching as the holotable refreshed its corrupted map of the Torven Reach. Most of the sector was grayed out. Subspace degradation had swallowed most of the telemetry. World after world showed “no data.”

“Still no update from the listening posts near Arvenal IV?” MacLeod asked.

Tanner shook his head. “Nothing but carrier noise, sir.  Whatever they’re using to anchor the interference—our systems can’t cut through it.”

MacLeod’s jaw tightened. “Then we proceed blind.”

The map of the Torven Reach twisted across the holotable in stuttering pulses—its worlds dimmed by subspace distortion. Once a quiet expanse on the Federation’s frontier with the Breen Confederacy, it was now a labyrinth of silence. Trade lanes had gone dark. Monitoring stations had stopped transmitting routine traffic. Even border patrols had gone missing without distress calls.

To the galactic northeast lay the Izar corridor, a tenuous lifeline that connected them to Starbase 21 and the broader arm of Task Force 21. South of the sector sprawled unaligned systems—former Breen outposts, rogue colonies, and Breen privateers that moved when no one was looking. To the west, a dormant Underspace aperture above Arvenal IV had come alive again. And with it came the Vaadwaur.

The region was never meant to withstand sustained assault. No bastions. No major shipyards. Just a string of colonies, prospecting routes, and long-range Starfleet listening posts now likely under siege—or worse, silenced forever.

Ulysses Division was the only rapid response force with ships on station and eyes on the aperture.

And that was the hell of it. They were alone.

This would be their second major operation since the Raeyan Incident—another crisis that had pulled the Division into the fog of civil unrest, political manipulation, and a brushfire that nearly engulfed a sector hundreds of lightyears away.

MacLeod turned slightly toward Tanner, who stood by the communications panel.

“Secure channel. Captains Maddox, Holt, and Kane. Thirty minutes.”

“Yes, sir,” Tanner said, already in motion. “On it.”

MacLeod looked back to the holotable. The aperture over Arvenal IV pulsed like a wound—raw and alive.

“The longer they sit in our space, the harder this gets.” he said quietly.

Behind him, Tanner began issuing orders. Across the ship, the Division’s machinery turned with practiced precision.

MacLeod remained still.

The storm was here again.