The warp danger alarms were silenced with a push of a button. The unknowing crew outside of the bridge thought they the warp path had been moved, but the smart ones could feel that something was wrong when the lasers came back online. Upon coming back online, the lasers immediately fired upon the spooling Bruiser. Their shields absorbed the energy beams without a problem, the glittering red lasers vanishing once they hit the blue, hexagonal shield. However, they kept up their fire, slowly weakening the shields.

From the “Charmer,” a single turbolaser battery joined in. Though more batteries could possibly cripple the ship before it even began its warp, the “Charmer” was already near zero power. If it added any more batteries to the cause, its power supply could be completely depleted before reinforcements arrived, leaving it vulnerable. Thankfully, as a destroyer, the “Charmer’s” individual turbolasers were more powerful than the “Duty’s” turbolasers, and their help sped up the weakening of the enemy’s shields.

“One minute until estimated jump.” The navigations officer reported.

“Keep firing, bring that thing down if you can!” Taliseen shouted to his officers.

On the bridge of the “Duty,” the officers felt the pressure of death bearing down on them. Though they could believe in their captain’s plan, not all of them could distract themselves from impending doom. Fear gnawed at them like a hungry animal. There was no escaping, and they knew it.

“...” Taliseen narrowed his eyes as he thought of something. “Gregor, what’s the composition of our reinforcements?”

The communications officer looked stunned for a moment, then replied. “It should be 2 Einstein carriers and 4 Raven cruisers. Those should arrive first, followed by 10 Enigma destroyers and 32 Scimitar corvettes. Sir.”

“That much?!” Taliseen was shocked.

“Yes sir, it seems we really aren’t allowed to lose this system.”

“Whew… we’re saved...”

Taliseen slumped in his chair, the tension that had been building up in him vanished. He had been worried that the loss of his ship might negatively affect the battle, but with that amount of reinforcements, that conclusion was unlikely. He was on the verge of wanting to crack open a bottle of liquor until the navigations officer interrupted him.

“Sir! They’re warping 20 seconds!”

“Mass drivers—are they ready?!”

“Yes sir!” Mathis responded.

Taliseen looked out the window of the bridge, focusing his gaze on the ship in the distance. By now, the warp drive had spooled up enough that blue particles were gathering around the ship. It was the most crucial part of warp, the warp bubble. A warp bubble was similar to a protective field meant only for FTL travel; it would protect the ship from being torn to pieces when traveling faster than light. However, if it were to impact anything solid, it would smash apart, and the g-forces would crush whatever was still intact. In this case, it would be the “Duty” that would be smashed to bits.

Twenty seconds seemed to pass by with grinding slowness. Every second felt like an hour full of contemplation and doubt. The feeling continued as the navigations officer counted down.

“5… 4… 3… 2…”

“Fire!” Taliseen practically screamed.

Mathis slammed his hand down on the button, and, with a second-long time lag, the mass drivers fired. The tellairan Bruiser blinked out of existence with a blue flash. In all of the bridge officers, dread arose in their hearts. This was their only chance to survive. If they made even the smallest mistake in calculations, they would die. And even if they did succeed in hitting the warping ship, there was no way to tell if they could escape being ravaged by lightspeed debris.

They didn’t have to wait. In a matter of seconds, the Bruiser blinked back into existence, its fore completely missing. All of the mass driver rounds had successfully impacted the ship, obliterating the bow and pulverizing the starship into scrap heaps. With the main projectile stopped, the “Duty” was no longer in danger of destruction. However, multiple pieces of the ship broke off and hurtled towards the “Duty.” Though they could escape with their lives, it would sustain severe damage. But just as the debris were approaching, mass driver bullets from the “Charmer” intercepted them and prevented most of the damage.

With this, the bridge broke into cheers. Some of the officers were hugging each other and crying. Some simply lost all strength in their body and collapsed in their chairs. However, they all shared the same feeling of relief. Smiling, Taliseen opened a channel to the “Charmer.”

“This is Ensign Avet of the “Duty” to “Charmer,” thank you for the backup!” Taliseen cheered, but still kept with communications protocol.

“Great shot – that was one-in-a-million.” Captain Reacher didn’t bother with protocol and praised Taliseen.

“Wouldn’t be here to celebrate it if it wasn’t for you!”

“Haha! C’mon, reinforcements are almost here, let’s destroy these other bastards!”

“It’ll take some time to bring everyone back around, but we’ll be back in the fight in just a few seconds. Don’t go dying on us before we’re back in action.”

“Why would I dare?”

Taliseen took a deep breath, his smile falling from his face instantly. “Listen up!” He shouted.

The celebrations instantly stopped as all eyes turned at his voice. Taliseen stood up from his chair and clasped his hands behind his back as he stared at the rest of his officers, his eyes no longer as soft as before. There was now a hard look that reminded them of a ruthless dictator.

“Don’t forget, that wasn’t the only ship out there. There are still others to kill. I expect each of you not to shirk your duties now that you’re safe. That is all, resume operations.”

The officers wiped away any traces of celebration from their mind and returned to their duties. Voices that had previously been shouting with joy returned to stoic reports of damages and weapons fire. After that maneuver, the power supply had dropped to half of what it was, and the mass drivers were running out of rounds. The deflectors were now extremely weak, and was nearly out of the power allocated to it. The power meant for the lasers were rerouted to the deflectors, strengthening them long enough for reinforcements to arrive.

And with the arrival of humanity’s reinforcements, the tellairans were repeatedly pushed back, until, finally, their forces were broken to less than half, and forced to retreat to the nearest allied system. On that day, humanity cheered and celebrated their first victory against one of the most powerful foes in the galaxy. Tau Ceti, a symbol of humanity’s nation, had not been lost to foreign invaders.

**5 Days Later. Earth, Europe. Honors Ceremony.**

“Ensign Taliseen Avet, step forward!”

“Sir!”

Taliseen stood up from his seat and saluted. He walked up to a large stage, when commander-in-chief presented him with a medal. The medal was a bronze star held by a red, white, and green striped cloth. The commander-in-chief clipped it to his uniform, where it rested by itself.

“For your bravery in Tau Ceti, protecting the destroyer “Charmer” and buying time for reinforcements to arrive, you are hereby awarded the Bronze Star for Heroism. Congratulations young man, you did your nation, and species, proud.”

“It was my honor, sir.”

The commander-in-chief patted him on the shoulder, then gave him a light push to the opposite side of the stage, where he was to get off and allow the next person to receive their medals. He gave the commander-in-chief a smile and stepped down, and the next name was called.

Taliseen returned to his seat, allowing himself to indulge in his thoughts about his medal. As his last name began with “A” - and was thus called up at the beginning – he would have to wait for many others to receive their medals before he would be dismissed. Even after everyone received medals, he would probably have to be relegated to listening to promotions as well.

Taliseen sighed. Though it would take a long time, he was still happy.

**Unknown time. Cha’karri territory.**

“The tellairan failed.”

“Unfortunate, but acceptable.”

“We had been whispering to it for generations, infiltrating it with massive amounts of psionic power. We lost many valuable resources just to gain control over a small part of that stupid hive mind! What do you mean ‘acceptable?!’”

“Hrõfgëir, calm yourself. We still have some control. We can mount another offensive later, when it sees the humans as a greater threat.”

“Foolish. That is a foolish idea. We have lost our initiative – no, we never had it to begin with! If you had just gathered more, then we could’ve had a chance. Now they have experience. Not much, but it is still something! The first battle always decides the last! You all know this!”

“True, but it is not always that we interpret it correctly. Despite our power, we still make mistakes.”

“What Nãävgæ says makes sense, do not make such a big deal of it.”

“Then, what do you propose?”

“We don’t need to gather any forces. We must merely whisper to the tellairan and warn him of what the humans will do. Even if it is false, it will trust us. We have been there for thousands of years, why would we lead him astray now?”

“Hmm.”

“I see, this would work.”

“None of you have considered the possibility of it breaking free from us?”

“Hak hak hak! How could it? We have already rooted ourselves so deep that there is no way to cut us out. Not even thousands of years could reverse what we’ve done.”

“Drõstë is right, we’ve been there far too long, it’s impossible for it to escape.”

“… Hmph, you are all fools!”

“Hrõfgëir, wait.”

“Don’t bother, he wasn’t going to contribute anything.”

“Still, he is a part of this council, we can’t continue without him.”

“Fine then, this session comes to a conclusion. The 121st session of the Varthõrÿņ Council ends here. Everyone may return to their previous activities.”

At the same time, the figures in the dark space winked out, and the darkness collapsed on itself.