“Not going to lie, but it’s bad.” Lieutenant Commander Ra-tesh’mi Velan, the ship’s resident Efrosian, looked almost as bad as the starship Atlantis did. He hadn’t slept, his hair was an absolute mess, and he was nursing a couple of bandages that peeked out of the collar and rolled-up sleeves of his uniform.

He had barely stepped inside the ready room before giving his warning, waited till he was seated with a bone-weary sigh before continuing on. “The warp drive is out, and I’m not going to be getting it back online anytime soon.”

Drawing in a breath, Tikva just nodded a few times, letting the realisation sink in.

“That’s another convoy of Vaadwaur ships coming from that origination point,” Gabrielle Camargo announced to the whole bridge. “Two battlecruisers, fifteen cruisers.”

The morning briefing had covered the first convoy, but with the Krek’s modifications online, Atlantis could see the Vaadwaur ships with no need to utilise the sensors aboard Harpy 2. And while ignorance was bliss, it was what you didn’t know that could kill you.

And today, what you did know could just as easily kill you.

The large ships the Vaadwaur had been shielding in system had been identified as troop transports. Not enough to conquer Betazed outright, but more than enough to hold strategic locations, or to man a suborned orbital defence system.

Nearly twenty thousand troops were aboard those two ships, ready to bring an oppressive boot to Betazed.

The large ship in the first lot of reinforcements arriving in just under a day now had been identified as something larger than Atlantis, but smaller than an Odyssey-class. And if the examples in system were anything to go by, likely was nothing more than a giant weapons platform.

But then another convoy had been detected, all of the cruiser type. Then another. And another. And now this new convoy, bringing even more Vaadwaur reinforcements. A vast Vaadwaur fleet was slowly pouring into the system, piece by piece. The ships currently within the bubble of normality were holding back, far enough away to see Atlantis coming if they wanted to sally forth again.

But something had to be done. Waiting was a losing proposition.

So was attacking.

“Alright, I’m taking all suggestions for how we deal with the ships in system right now. Those ships still in the Slow Zone are the next problem.” Tikva’s slow spin in the middle of the bridge caught everyone’s eye. She could see the gears grinding away in more than a few faces.

“A feint,” Adelinde said, after only a few seconds of silence. “We’ll need the Tizona.”

“Give your enemies dilemmas, not problems,” Tikva said quietly.

“Ma’am?” Velan asked, struggling to even question the statement. The man was exhausted and looked like he could, if given a chance, fall asleep. And it had only been a few hours since Atlantis had gone toe-to-toe with the Vaadwaur battlecruiser present in the inner system.

“When we went after the battlecruiser and couldn’t retreat, we were pretty screwed.” Velan nodded along. “And then they started to fall back, leaving us to limp back to orbit.”

“Because someone had ravaged their troop transports.” Velan sat up, finding some small reserve of energy. “Wasn’t Captain Santisteban only supposed to just disable their warp and impulse drives?”

“And take out their two escorts. You’ve been busy in the mines, Ra, so not surprised you haven’t heard. When she saw us being harassed, instead of jumping to our aid in a losing fight, she opted to give the Vaadwaur a dilemma.” Tikva’s smile was one of appreciation. “She lined up surgical strikes and destroyed the primary life support system on one of those transports.”

Velan blinked, momentarily horrified at the thought, before realisation set in. “They abandoned the chase to stop her from doing it to the other transport as well. And then they’d have to start operations to evacuate the ship. And without transporters as well.”

“She gave them a dilemma. Kill us, or stop her from dooming twenty thousand of their countrymen to suffocation. And she’s tied them down because they’ll have to be focusing on recovery operations. They can cram them in tight on the other transport; they couldn’t do it on the ships left in system. Especially not with how we bloodied their noses.”

Velan let out a single bark of laughter. “And they gave us a problem.”

“No warp drive,” both officers said in unison.

Velan winked at her with a finger-gun salute in agreement. “Though, to add to the list, photon torpedo tube five is a goner as well. A few of the capacitor banks for the launch system arced and wiped out the entire launch mechanism. And internal damage is stopping us from getting to the magazine right now as well.”

“Shields?” Tikva couldn’t help the hint of desperation in her voice with the single-word question.

“Back online, but with a caveat.” Velan sucked in a breath, avoiding the bad news for a moment longer. “EPS relays on deck twelve, port side, took a heavy hit. Port shields are only at eighty percent of normal. I’ve got a team looking at solutions right now, but we’re a bit light on resources.”

“Port shields down to ten percent,” Rrr announced as Atlantis bore the brunt of another volley of fire from the Vaadwaur battlecruiser. Lights flickered across the bridge; a circuit somewhere blew, showering an ensign in sparks. “Hull breach, deck twelve, deck eleven.”

Another volley of fire slammed into the ship, more flickering of lights. “Port shields down,” Rrr shouted, their voice an urgent avalanche announcing oncoming doom. “Port nacelle has taken heavy damage, warp drive offline.”

“T’Val, roll ship, give them our good side,” Tikva ordered.

“We are rapidly running out of good side,” T’Val quipped as her fingers flew across the helm controls, putting the large ship into an axial roll and bringing the barely functional starboard shields to face the enemy.

Or more precisely, the most threatening enemy, as a handful of cruisers and fighters still danced around the two large fighters locked into their slugging match.

“Guns, anything?”

“One moment,” Adelinde said, focusing. She’d been a surgeon, slicing at the Vaadwaur with precision compared to their brute approach. Phasers alternating from slapping shields away to then precisely removing a weapon mount from the battlecruiser. She’d been light on the torpedoes this time, knowing they’d need them in the future. But then the ship faintly shuddered, the light thump of torpedoes being fired in sequence from the main launcher.

And she watched her displays, waiting, then a smile crept onto her face. A hunter who had hit their mark. “Heavy damage to the enemy battlecruiser. Shields down, all weapons on their port side offline.”

“Their rolling ship as well,” Nathan announced from his seat next to Tikva, watching a tactical display on his side console. “Some people just can’t have original ideas, can they?”

“Bloody copycats,” Tikva grumbled, gripping her armrests as the ship rocked once more under the lighter fire of the cruisers. “T’Val, attack pattern delta. Let’s give these people-”

“They’re retreating,” Rrr interrupted, bringing a tactical display up on screen. “The cruisers are screening the battlecruiser, but they’re falling back to the transports.”

“Hail Tizona, order them to retreat. T’Val, best speed to Betazed.”

Tikva nodded in understanding; mouth pressed into a straight line as she considered that piece of news. “Do what you can. I want to strike again before those other ships arrive. We need to wipe them out if we want to try a bluff.”

“‘Beware of dog’ only works when the dog still has some bite in her.” Ra’s exhaustion returned full force. “Atlantis has some bite in her for now, ma’am, but another round without some decent repairs might not be a good idea.”

“I know. But maybe a little magic after round three makes us look like we’re fighting fit. They see us just fine, a dead vanguard littering the system, and then we give them their only warning.”

Ra’s exhaustion flowed out of him as he pushed himself to his feet. “Well, it is a better plan than just sitting and waiting until they have enough ships to punch through the vast collection of under-manned orbital platforms. Better to go out trying than just waiting.”

As the doors closed behind Velan, Tikva stared at them, contemplating the engineer’s last words. They were only sallying forth, keeping the Vaadwaur at bay, to buy time for Betazed to bring up reserves, to man platforms so the image of a defended world wouldn’t be a façade but a reality.

But there was a ready-made solution just waiting, begging to be used. One that would let Atlantis just sit in orbit, safe, waiting for the Vaadwaur to test their mettle.

One that people, including herself, couldn’t, shouldn’t, trust.

She mulled the thought for a few minutes, brought up the list of damages from their last fight. Then the list of injured in sickbay right now. Then the list of their dead. So mercifully small this time. But it would grow. Terax guaranteed it when she spoke with the doctor earlier.

As Tikva stepped out onto the bridge, a few eyes shifted to her, but most kept to their work. One of those sets of Nathan, already fetching the ship’s keys to hand over to her. The man hadn’t questioned the tradition when presented with it months ago. Just accepted it as one of the quirks every ship has.

“No, no,” Tikva said. “I’m going planetside.”

“Going to go see the Matriarchs willingly?” Nathan asked, an eye cocked.

“The last vote about turning on the old defence AI failed by a single vote. I’m going to go get that vote.”

“Certainly not Matriarch Rentul,” Nathan chuckled. He’d offered to go and strangle the woman when we denouncement of Starfleet, and the starship Atlantis in particular, had hit Betazed media. “Who then?”

Tivka was just stepping into the turbolift when she answered. “Nule Asimi.”

“Oh, good,” Nathan muttered as the doors closed. “‘Well admirals, it all went wrong when we stopped the fleet captain from visiting her estranged grandmother.’”

“Want me to see if I can contact Commander Gantzmann and see if she can meet the captain?” Lieutenant Michaels asked.

“Please,” Nathan said with a smile to the junior ops officer. “She’d be more effective than the entire hazard team.”