Nehru Colony, Arandis IV

“It’s not fair, mom, she’s twice as strong as anyone on our team!”

Ciadra McCullough nodded as she scooped salad onto her plate from the serving bowl. “Yes, honey, she’s Vulcan.”

“Mom, I know that!” Presley practically wailed. “But she’s so fast!”

“You have strong players on your team as well, dear. You’re one of them.” Ciadra was being irritatingly rational, she knew, but it was her only effective defense against her daughter’s righteous indignation.

“But with them playing T’Priel as an attackman, they’re damn near unstoppable.”

“Language,” Ciadra chided. “And despite T’Priel’s abilities, Springbrook Prep has defeated Rennley Academy by a substantial margin their last two games.”

“Prep has the Dantalli sisters,” Presley observed, as though Ciadra didn’t already know that. “And it takes both of them to keep T’Priel away from the goal.”

Ciadra looked across the table to her wife, but Ja’Vari merely grinned and shook her head as she speared a fork-full of Thettlefish. “Oh, no. Don’t try and drag me into this. I wanted her to play football. You were the collegiate lacrosse champion.”

“Mère, I’m good at lacrosse!” Presley said in her most deeply offended tone, giving Ja’Vari a baleful glare full of adolescent outrage. “Football is for fragile glass-girls who can’t handle a stick.”

Ciadra gave Ja’Vari an impish smile. And now you’re involved, my dear. She took a bite of salad and was trying to decide whether or not the dressing needed more ama-spice when her handheld comm-link warbled a three-tone alert, accompanied by a distracting red flash.

“Damn it,” Ja’Vari sighed in exasperation. “Not another drill! I thought you’d told them to knock that off during dinner-time?”

“Language, Mère,” Presley admonished with a smirk.

“I’m sorry,” Ciadra mouthed to Ja’Vari as she collected the comm-link and rose to her feet. She walked through the kitchen and stepped outside into the cool night air. “McCullough here.”

“Boss,” came the apologetic sounding voice of her shift supervisor at Colony Operations. “I’m sorry to bother you during supper, but we just received a regional alert from Starfleet Command that there’s a Cardassian task force inbound. They’re not sure where the Cardies are going to strike, but they’re pretty certain it’ll be someplace in the cluster.”

Ciadra felt an electric shock race up her spine at this revelation, and her dinner settled into the pit of her stomach like a stone. “Shit.” She turned and opened the door just long enough to call to Ja’Vari and Presley that there was an emergency at Ops and she had to go. Ciadra’s mind raced as she took the steps two at a time down to where the family’s flitter was parked. “Please tell me Starfleet has ships in route?”

“The border cutter Janah is nine hours away. No word on the nearest starship yet.”

She climbed into the flitter, powered it up, and continued as the comm-link synced with the vehicle’s systems and went to hands-free comms. “I want a full level-two diagnostic on all orbital assets and the torp-launchers on the ridge. Call Fergus and tell him I want him to get his ass up there and check the equipment personally. We can’t afford to have anything fail because someone forgot to update the targeting software again.”

“On it,” he replied.

“Have Borenson head over and open up the civil defense shelter. I want him to make sure the shield generator is functional and the replicators are working and have sufficient protein stores and battery backups.”

“Copy that, boss.”

Please let this be a sensor error or some damned ill-timed Starfleet drill, she thought fervently as she piloted the flitter over the houses and civic building below towards the Operations complex. Living so close to the Cardassian border was a risk each and every colonist lived with daily, but the thought of actually having to fend off an attack by the militant species was almost too harrowing to contemplate.

Nehru Colony had an orbital defense grid of some two-dozen phaser-armed satellites and a battery of photon-torpedo launchers up on Guffin’s Ridge, but those were their last line of defense. Starfleet had always been intended to forestall such aggression merely by their presence, but they’d cut their scheduled patrols through the cluster by more than a half after the armistice had been signed.

The idiots who signed that document live on Earth, the safest world in the heart of the Federation, Ciadra thought uncharitably. Nobody out here on the border would have been so foolish, but then the Federation Council had never seemed too terribly inclined to heed the warnings of colonists in the hinterlands.

There were so many overlays displayed on the viewscreen’s map of the border region that the image threatened to evoke the work of Jackson Pollock. Sagan’s senior officers sat at the conference table while the midshipmen department heads and commissioned instructors stood shoulder to shoulder, ringing the far side of the table.

Captain Tinubu’s voice carried throughout the compartment and over the intraship to the entire crew. “The Second Order is on the move, and Intel estimates they’re carrying somewhere in the vicinity of seventy-five hundred troops which they intend to land on some or all of our colonies in the Pleiades Cluster. Starfleet and the Border Service are spread perilously thin out here, and so Sagan’s presence is doubly important.

“I’ve conferred with the captains of Oberon, Stargazer, Thevid, and McAuliffe, and barring any overriding orders from Command we’ve divided the Pleiades into areas of responsibility. Sagan is assigned to safeguard the colonies in the Arandis and Sterope systems. If neither of those systems are attacked, we’ll assist McAuliffe in watching over the Tageta and Maia systems. The border cutters Janah, Bluefin, and Thrasher are also being deployed, along with a number of smaller patrol corvettes.

“Starfleet is sending everything they can from the nearest starbases and sector patrol routes, but the closest help is over four days away.”

This drew a few audible intakes of breath, mostly from the assembled cadets.

“These are far from ideal circumstances, but we are all that stands between hundreds of thousands of Federation citizens and either slavery or death. We’re all aware of the fate that befell the Bajora and a half dozen other species whose worlds the Cardassians have conquered and occupied.

“I know I can count on each of you to perform your duties to the utmost. Your lives, the lives of your shipmates, and those of our colonists all depend on it. I will relay additional information as it arrives. Please resume your posts.”

Tinubu toggled off the intraship and ordered the senior staff to remain behind as the cadets and junior officers staffing non-critical posts exited the briefing room.

“Teper' my v der'me,” Morozov whispered softly, rubbing his temple with one hand.

Dr. Cavanaugh looked to Tinubu. “Okay, how bad is this really?”

Tinubu fixed her gaze on the physician. “To put it bluntly, Doctor, I expect that we’ll be buying time for these colonies with our lives. Given the size of the force that Intel believes we’re confronting, despite our technological advantages, there’s no realistic way we can do anything but slow them down. The tougher we make the going for them, the more time Starfleet has to bring greater resources to bear to blunt this attack.”

“Okay… so, pretty bad then,” Cavanaugh calculated.

There was a collective bout of mordant laughter.

Tinubu collected herself and then looked at each of them in turn. “None of us were expecting this, especially not the young people in our care. For what little it’s worth, I’m sorry. If this does end up being our last stand together, I can’t imagine a better group of officers with whom I’d want to make it.”

There were nods of affirmation all around and Morozov spoke for the others. "We'll follow you anywhere, Captain."