“I appreciate you stopping in,” Captain Cassidy Cayde offered as he plucked a pair of crystal tumblers from the shelf. “Name your poison.”

“Dealer’s choice,” Captain McKenna Avery smiled, sensing the cowboy had a better sense of his cabinet than her. “As long as it packs a punch.”

“That I can respect that,” Captain Cayde chuckled as he pulled a rare bottle of Skagaran whisky and poured a pair of generous doubles. “I spoke with CHENG Tsideki a bit ago, and he said Blake and the others have been quite the lifesavers.” The Vesta had brought with her supplies and personnel that’d dramatically scaled up the speed of their repairs on Starbase 88.

“It’s our pleasure to help,” Captain Avery nodded as she accepted the glass. The first sip went down hard, and her face said it all. “Woah, that does pack quite a wallop.”

“That’s what generations of pain ferments,” Captain Cayde noted as he savored the complex, forward notes. The Skagaran story was a sad one, and their whisky spoke to it. “I must say though that ‘help’ understates the impact y’all have had.” It had been slow going, the Gagarin class heavy escort hardly meant for this sort of duty. The Vesta‘s arrival had marked a turning point, the long-range explorer meant to operate in a far more self-sufficient manner.

“Well, the Vesta is a temperamental creature, so she keeps our engineers on their toes every day,” Captain Avery laughed. It was poetic justice for Commander Jeff Blake too since he’d been on the initial project team at Beta Antares fleetyard prior to following his baby into space. “Especially out in the unknown, we’ve gotten good at making do with what we’ve got. You shoulda seen the time we broke down out past Ultima Thule as a horde of angry refrigerators bore down on us.” The Breen had been less than happy to see them out there.

“This crisis, then, must seem quite familiar to you,” Captain Cayde mused.

“How do you figure?” Captain Avery asked. Nothing about this war was familiar to them. The Mars Massacre, the Lost Fleet Crisis, and Frontier Day had all been at arms length, just reports they read while cruising the deep. It was only when they received the all-fleet distress call over the Pathfinder array that they realised they needed to turn for home, and it’d taken reactivating the failed quantum slipstream testbed to traverse the vast distances and blackout boundaries that lay between their remote survey area and Federation space.

“Not so far from home, but yet so alone,” Captain Cayde reflected. “The Blackout and your daily experience aren’t really all that different.” Life in the borderlands was like that too. The core of the Federation was far closer to them than it’d been to the Vesta, but when things popped off, there was never enough time to wait for support to arrive, so you had to make do. Just like now.

“I suppose you’re right,” Captain Avery sighed. “Except this crisis comes with suffering on a scale unlike anything I’ve ever seen.” Multi-year deep space missions came with their own challenges, but nothing like the death and destruction that surrounded them now. “It’s been nearly two years since me and my crew have seen Federation space, and to find it like this… let’s just say, it’s been quite a shock.” She took another sip, the bold, complex notes now a bit more comforting. They fit the moment.

Suddenly, Captain Cayde’s combadge chirped. 

The captain said as he tapped his combadge. “Go for Cassidy.”

“You might want to get out here, boss.”

“Be right there,” Captain Cayde replied as he tapped the combadge back off. “Duty calls, I suppose,” he shrugged to his colleague as he knocked back the last of his drink and set the glass down, heading for the door.

Captain Avery hadn’t finished hers, but she set it down and followed behind him.

When they stepped out onto the bridge, they found Lieutenant Commander Cathryn Winters leaning over the operations display with Lieutenant Ora Jesi, the two consumed in a fervent discussion about what they were seeing on the operation station’s displays.

“What’ve we got, Winters?” Captain Cayde asked.

“You’re not gonna believe this, but the galaxy just woke up,” Lieutenant Commander Winters shared excitedly. “Or at least everything on an arc rimward from Beta Lankal to Gorath.” It was like the clouds had parted and suddenly they could see again.

“We’re picking up subspace signals from our bases as far spinward as Gamma Hromi and Beta Geminorum,” Lieutenant Ora elaborated. “I’ve identified several emissions sources within Klinton territory too, including No’Mat, Chang and K’t’inga.” None of that had been visible just a few minutes prior, the Blackout cutting them off rimward and spinward at the Elgatis Belt.

“I wonder what’s changed,” Captain Cayde said warily. It wasn’t necessarily good news.

“You don’t sound particularly excited,” Captain Avery noted. To her, it seemed nothing but good.

“Change doesn’t happen without reason,” Captain Cayde mused. “It could mean that the Fourth Fleet has found a way to belay the Blackout’s effects, but it could also mean that the Vaadwaur are moving to the next stage of their operation.” They had watched, ever since Archanis Station fell, how the Vaadwaur rampaged across the Meronia Cluster, and if they had been the ones to drop the Blackout boundary, maybe they were content in their position? “Arjun, let’s build an updated situational brief on all we can now see.”

“On it, sir,” Lieutenant Commander Arjun Rao confirmed. “Give me a few minutes to draw it up. We’ve got a lot of new telemetry coming in.” Some of it was easy to put together, like the comms relays, but others were sensor ghosts on the edge of subspace sensor range that would take a bit more time to clean up.

“It’s not just telemetry,” Lieutenant Ora announced. “I’ve got an inbound priority-one dispatch coming across the command channel.” That channel had been dormant since Archanis had fallen, no one left to use it. No one left to coordinate with.

“Source?” Captain Cayde asked.

“Ident, USS Polaris,” Lieutenant Ora reported.

“Reyes’ ship…” Lieutenant Commander Winters recalled, turning to the captain. “Wasn’t she out in Klingon space?”

“Yep, she and Ambassador Drake were at K’t’inga when the Blackout came,” Captain Cayde confirmed. “They went out there to put one of Toral’s henchmen on notice for his role supporting the crime wave we experienced last winter.” That wave had put them head-to-head with Klingon warlords, had seen terrorism come to multiple colonies across the sector, and had led to a Dominion bioweapon being unleashed on Archanis Station. “Let’s hear the message.”

They all turned towards the front as Fleet Admiral Reyes appeared on the screen, her posture forward and her face focused like a general ready for battle.

“This is Fleet Admiral Allison Reyes, Commander, Polaris Squadron, to all ships in range. Times may feel dire, and the situation insurmountable, but this enemy that has come upon us, they can be beat. We have travelled beyond the galactic plane and struck them at their heart, and now we have returned to take back that which is ours.”

Beyond the galactic plane? Stuck them at their heart? Take back what was theirs? The fleet admiral certainly had a flourish to her words, Captain Cayde thought to himself. There was a bite in her tone, and she sounded ready to fight.

“A short while ago, we journeyed into the labyrinth and destroyed the shroud they put over this sector block, and now the time has come to free our people from the yoke of the Supremacy. In thirty five hours, we’re throwing a party in the Gorion system, and you’re all cordially invited.”

The way she spoke, she didn’t come off at all like a bureaucrat locked safely away in a starbase somewhere issuing orders. To Cayde, she sounded like a warrior inviting others to a brawl, one where she would make the enemy pay for everything they’d taken. This was personal to her. 

“The enemy is using Archanis Station as their base of operations to terrorize and oppress our people across the sector, and at 0400 the day after tomorrow, we will put an end to that by retaking Archanis Station. We have a team already embedded there that will neutralize the station’s defenses, but the Vaadwaur have a fleet in orbit too, and I call on you, if you have so much as a torpedo or a phaser to your name, to answer this call. The details are enclosed in a secondary channel alongside this message.”

It was clear the fleet admiral knew how the others, those scattered all across the sector, must have felt. She had chosen her words carefully, leading with assurances, layered with purpose, and closing with a call to action.

“The day after tomorrow, at 0400. Be there. Together, we shall prevail, and together, we will begin the offensive to retake the galaxy!”

The message cut off, leaving them all in silence.

Captain Cayde knew what they were to do. He looked over at his colleague from the Vesta. “You in, McKenna?”

“We came here for a reason, Cassidy,” Captain Avery replied firmly, her mind made up. “And it wasn’t just to play engineer.” As was her custom, she’d assembled her senior staff when the message had first arrived from the Pathfinder array, and they’d taken a vote. Many of them had never seen war, but they could not in good faith sit on the sidelines this time. Even the soft and sweet Lieutenant Kim Eun-Kyung had voted to fight. And now they would.

Captain Cayde turned to his team. He didn’t need a poll. He knew where they stood. They were frontiersmen and fighters. This is what they did. “Call back the troops. Leave what we can spare here to continue the work, but if we need them to fight, get them back. We depart in two hours.”

Lieutenant Ora nodded and began dispatching the recall orders.

Captain Cayde looked back towards the front viewer. He could see the wounded starbase, the damage done by the Vaadwaur, and beyond it, he could see the stars, stars crying out for help. The enemy was out there, and it was well past time they got to doing something about it.