Unit Commander’s log, Stardate 240204.14.

Proxima’s secured. The ships which aren’t protecting her or fixing what the Vaadwaur broke – or who the Vaadwaur broke – are looking to take the next bite out of them. Which means we move into No Man’s Land, the dust belts and old relay stations and massive nothingness between us and Toliman.

Objective’s simple: intercept Vaadwaur patrols. Cut up their supply lines. Communication lines. Don’t just take them out. Don’t just destroy their ships, kill their soldiers. We gotta make them see that we’re beating them.

You don’t fight a bully with higher words and ideals. You punch him in the face. And you do it in front of the whole school.

The Manasa-class escort spiralled in slow death, ventral hull breached and bleeding plasma into the dark. Its rotation was uneven, thrusters trying only intermittently to fire, like a beast twitching as life slipped away. Debris from the Scylla’s strikes drifted nearby, the fallout of a sudden, brutal engagement.

Inside the wounded Vaadwaur ship, the corridors were smoke and shadows, and no shadow was deadlier than the Rooks.

Cassidy led the way, rifle shouldered, steps swift, firm, and silent in the hush of creaking bulkheads and groaning hull plates. Behind him, Aryn and Rosewood followed, rifles covering where he did not, passing through corridors, past junctions.

They stopped at a door, Cassidy watching the corridor as the other two slipped inside. He could hear the soft calls of, ‘Clear,’ the sound of Aryn cracking into a panel and the beeps of systems as they manipulated them.

‘Confirmed this is the XO’s office,’ Rosewood crackled through comms. ‘Unsecured. Looks like he bailed with the rest of them. Got a live console, though.’

‘Toliman relay logs,’ Aryn confirmed a moment later. ‘It’s a goldmine.’

‘Grab it,’ said Cassidy. ‘You got ninety seconds.’

He looked back at the footsteps, Nallera and Q’ira jogging through the smoke to join them. ‘Engineering’s rigged,’ Nallera confirmed. ‘Detonation should wipe any sign we were here.’

Q’ira made a face. ‘They’ll know we took out their ship.’

‘But not our forces,’ said Cassidy. ‘And they won’t know what we took.’ He nodded as Aryn and Rosewood stepped out.

‘We’re good here,’ Rosewood said.

The corridor groaned. Bulkheads hissed, emergency seals fluttering between life and failure. The Rooks beamed out as warning lights bled red across the walls.

In the transporter room, Rosewood tossed the data core down towards the deck into Falaris’s surprised but waiting hands. ‘Logs are messy. But we got what we wanted.’

Cassidy smirked and turned to Nallera. ‘Blow ‘em to hell.’

Personal log, Nallera, Stardate 240204.18

God, I love this job. That’s how we do things in the Federation!

Aboard the Swiftsure, the trap had already been sprung.

Cassidy kicked the downed Vaadwaur across the corridor, boot crunching metal against armour. The enemy boarding team had been efficient, precise, brutal. But they thought they’d been boarding a dying ship and had come to finish it off.

Then Swiftsure’s systems had kicked back into life, with Tempest and Endeavour pouncing atop the Vaadwaur ships that had targeted her. Now the jaws clenched shut around Starfleet’s prey.

And the Vaadwaur boarding party was not half so efficient, precise, or brutal as the Rooks. Flashes of phaser fire still echoed down the hull corridor as Q’ira and Nallera wrapped up the last few stragglers, but where Rosewood and Aryn swept ahead, the ship was clear.

‘Shields back to seventy percent,’ Chief Engineer Carrick reported over comms. ‘Hull exposure protocol finished.’

‘Copy that,’ came the voice of Commander Xhakaza, Swiftsure’s CO. ‘Sweep up the boarders to the brig.’

Cassidy heard the order and strode towards the fallen Vaadwaur soldier. He planted his boot on the man’s chest as he writhed, dazed from the battle. ‘You deal with me now, or you deal with our interrogators later,’ he growled. ‘Tell me about your commanders.’

The Vaadwaur’s lip curled. ‘Your people don’t scare me. We spent an age watching you, your softness, your decadence –’

Cassidy’s voice dropped. ‘Talk,’ he said, ‘and negotiate your release when this is over. Refuse, and you spend your life in a penitentiary for war crimes. Here, on the far side of the galaxy, an aeon from your home.’

‘When we win -’ The Vaadwaur gurgled as Cassidy put pressure on the boot.

Rosewood rolled his eyes. ‘He’s just a soldier. We’ll get nothing but dogma.’

Cassidy glanced up, and in that moment, the Vaadwaur made his move. A jerk of the hand down to his belt, and Cassidy’s sidearm snapped up for a single, deadly shot.

In the silence that followed, Rosewood made a soft sound. ‘Could have been going for a knife,’ he agreed.

Personal log, Q’ira Zherul, Stardate 240204.21

I knew joining Starfleet meant I’d have to learn all sorts of things. I thought they’d be really boring. And sometimes they are; do I actually need to know exactly how a warp core works? If a warp core needs fixing and I’m the only person left standing, we’re already screwed, right?

But honestly, I thought there’d be all of these rules of engagement and whatever. Especially when we’re flying most of these missions alongside the rest of the squadron. Real Starfleet officers calling the shots and riding beside us, keeping us as this dinky knife in the back sheath to stab the bad guys.

I don’t know, I guess Cassidy does whatever he wants. These Veebwoo are trying to kill us all, anyway. What’s the point in stuffy policy if these guys are hella bad? And they’re hella bad.

The relay hub in the long black between Proxima and Toliman was old Starfleet. Long-abandoned by the Federation, then reclaimed and repurposed by the Vaadwaur, its automated systems reprogrammed to obey them.

Blackbird had slid past the patrols, and now the Rooks slid through the silent corridors. No guards. No patrols. In the old control centre, the corrupted code shone bright on the display screens, reflecting across dusty bulkheads.

‘They’re using it for communication outside the system,’ said Aryn, bent over the primary console. ‘Ships that have headed off to Wolf 359, Barnard’s Star.’

‘Can you copy the logs?’ asked Rosewood, stood by the sensor display, checking they hadn’t been made, that the nearby patrols were carrying on their business.

‘Already underway. It’ll take time to crack the encryption once we have it.’

Cassidy nodded and turned to Nallera. ‘Then you do your thing, Chief.’

‘I’m beginning to feel like a one-trick pony,’ mused Nallera, hefting her satchel charges. ‘Good thing I love this trick.’

Rosewood’s eyes swept over the control centre. ‘You know what this place used to be? Cultural archive. School trips and stuff for media history of old broadcasts from Earth. After the modern subspace relays took it out of usual operations of course.’

Aryn glanced back at him. ‘Shouldn’t we try to reclaim it?’

Cassidy scoffed. ‘Three sets the charges. Four sets the maintenance request on a timer. We beam out. Vaadwaur come check the problem. Boom. Two birds, one stone.’

‘One and a half birds, kinda,’ said Q’ira. ‘Taking out a Vaadwaur maintenance gang isn’t much.’

Cassidy shrugged. ‘Every dead Vaadwaur helps.’

Personal log Aryn Macalor, Stardate 240204.24

There are a myriad of ways to fight a war. We have to adapt to every situation, pivot in our tactics as battlefields change. We still understand so little of the Vaadwaur that I know the need to be flexible, adaptive.

I should maybe struggle less to predict my own unit.

Or I should, perhaps, acknowledge when a strategic priority remains consistent, but unspoken, and entirely… personal.

On the small Vaadwaur scout ship, the airlock hissed shut. The crew were dead. All save one.

He was wounded, blood seeping into his uniform from a gash in his shoulder. The Rooks hadn’t tended to it, binding his wrists and tossing him against a control panel for him to glower impotently up at them.

Rosewood lounged back in one of the pilot’s seat like he owned the ship. ‘We heard it, friend. That voice. You take your orders from Drehm directly.’

The Vaadwaur ground his teeth. ‘I serve the Supremacy and its officers. There are many fine leaders in my unit.’

‘But Drehm’s stepping up to local operations,’ growled Cassidy. ‘We’ve seen his name in files, heard it on the comms. He fell back from Proxima, so he’s taking the fight to the border, thinking he can beat us this time. And you’re his courier.’

The pilot turned to him, squirming. ‘If I’m his courier, what am I shipping? There’s nothing aboard.’

‘You’re not here on a joy-ride,’ Rosewood pointed out. ‘And we picked you up on your way back. So what did you bring out here?’

‘You’ve seen the logs. Materiel. What makes you think there’s something else?’

Aryn made a low, almost exasperated noise from the door. ‘He won’t talk. The cargo manifest codes could be for thoroughly mundane equipment. But he won’t talk.’

Cassidy ignored him, stood over the pilot, arms folded across his chest. ‘We’re burning our way to Toliman. You think we’re going to stop?’

The pilot scoffed. ‘You are few. We are many. A beacon in this chaotic, wretched -’

Rosewood swung back on his chair. ‘And again, the dogma. If he tells us anything, it’ll be to toy with him. We hold him, we waste time. I say we let him go. We already killed his escorts and crew.’

Cassidy’s expression twisted. ‘Let…’

Rosewood stood. Approached the pilot. Loosened his restraints. ‘You’re going back,’ he said. ‘And you’re going to report all of this to Drehm. He knows who we are. Tell him we’re coming.’

For a moment, it looked like Cassidy might say something. Then he turned to the shuttle’s controls, and punched in a command: the short range distress call.

‘You’ll be picked up,’ he said. ‘And when you are? Make sure he knows this was us. The people who’ve been bleeding him these past weeks? The ones pushing your Supremacy back, and back, and back, pinning you in? Not just Sirius Squadron. Us. The Rooks.’

Gingerly, the pilot stood. ‘This is a mistake.’

‘No,’ said Rosewood, lips tight. ‘It’s a warning.’

First officer’s log, Commander Ranicus reporting. Stardate 240204.28

Mission tempo remains high. No casualties. Strategic returns significant.

But there is… a fever in this ship now. Commander Cassidy’s leadership grows more aggressive with each success, and the Rooks have fallen behind him, particularly Rosewood. Though sometimes it feels like Rosewood is leading him.

Sometimes I talk of Toliman, and they talk of Drehm. But what can I say? They are winning. And nobody questions winners.