In the Beta Quadrant

Like a flock of raptors diving at killing speed towards their prey, the three warships flew at extreme high warp towards the rimward edge of the Beta Quadrant. With a two-pronged triangular head at the end of a long straight neck protruding from a squat body winged each side by short, flat and thick pylons and nacelles, each vessel truly looked like a gigantic bird of prey as they went at nearly a thousand times the speed of light. Pushed beyond the safety limits of their engines and superstructure, they shook like birds in a storm and, within them, the hundreds of fearless warriors poised since the last eight hours for the upcoming battle.

On the small, spartan bridge of the one at the head of their triangular flight formation, the grisled commander pushed a heavy corruscated brow over his deeply shaded black stare, crunching his squat, flat nose between it and his bearded, snarling mouth full of small pointed theeth.

"What is it?" he growled to one of his officer, a tall, muscular woman,as dark-skinned and almost as heavily browed as he was, her small plush lips parting to show theeth just as sharp as his.

"Hod! We will reach the target zone in the next minute, but..."

"You have locked sensors on the Federation ship?"

"No, my Lord... we have another kind of reading... a sudden burst of massive power in subspace!"

"We're under attack!" shouted the commander, pounding his leather-gaunteled fist on the wide arm of his thick metallic chair. "Gunner! Prepare to..."

Before he could finish, an alarm blared and, on the wide octogonal viewer, a blinding, greenish  light flared like a tear right in the middle of the screen.

And then, everyone and everything shook as if the universe was about to fall apart.

"Tactical, report!" shouted the man in the central metal chair.

"Shields up, minor damage to armor plating!" shouted back the bearded dark giant behind the console at his right. "But weapons systems offline! No target lock!"

"Sensor overload!" added the woman gripping the detection station's console at his left.

"Structural integrity field buckling! Stress to superstructure reaching design limits!" Then came a low, rough voice over the intercom. "Magnetic containment field at emergency level!"

"Warp bubble collapsing!" finished the mustached somber youngster frantically running his gloved hands over helm controls before the raised dais where sat his commanding officer.

As the greenish wave of light went past them like a tsunami flowing over rocks on a coastline, the three Vor'Cha class attack cruisers emerged into normal space like so much dead branches thrown out of a windstorm, almost colliding with one another as they stumbled slowly until their pilots managed to activate thrusters and regain control of their dying flight.

Now motionless in space, the trio of warships hung in a dark patch of the galaxy where the stars were old and far between, the last ones at the edge of the galaxy. Their nacelles' bright red glow showed now but as a dull remnant of pale afterglow now. It took a moment for their eyes also to open again.

On the main viewer, only darkness, stillness and silence greeted them as it came back online. A few sparkling stars flared here and there, like the intermittent spark coming out from a few, fuming controls.

"Tactical! find the source of that blast and return fire! Engineering! Damage report!" blared the commander as he was righting himself in his command chair.

"Hod! Our warp core is burned out! Impulse power and thrusters nominal but...  It will take a day to restore to minimal core activity and even then, only minimal warp will be available."

"This failure will cost you your head, incompetent Targ!"

"Hod, I warned you! Pushing our engines beyond safety limits could only make this a one way trip!"

"We had to reach this sector before the Fedrats could scamper away! Sensors! Where is that target?"

There was a moment of tensed silence before the woman at sensor station finally spoke.

"Hod... sensors are coming back on line now... most of them. There is... no energy signature beyond that of a residual trail from the shockwave..."

"What weapon did they use?"

The sensor officer shook her head, looking at the viewer with widening eyes, her voice hesitant.

"My Lord... we were hit by a gravitational field of large magnitude... centered three billion kelikams on the axis of our last projected course from our present position."

"How far are we from our target zone?" asked the commander.

"Jah'Qwi... we... we are at the intended coordinates."

Her puzzlement spread all around the red-lighted, hazy bridge.

"Am I to be cursed to miss entrance to Sto Vo Kor because I only have fools for a crew?" fumed the captain of the lead Vor'Cha vessel. "where is the Scar of Kahless?"

The woman hesitated, running her fingers over her console and looking at readouts before she dare raise a confused stare back at him.

" My Lord... the rift between here and the other realm... it is... gone."

"Gone? What do you mean, gone?"

"Closed, my Lord... It was sealed off by what appears to be a massive gravitational effect that started out in subspace."

" A gravity-based weapon? Starfleet has no such thing in it's arsenal!" protested the giant officer at tactical. "Not even the Romulans who do use microsingularities to make their warp field."

The woman nodded at his remark but she was turned her confused stare towards their master.

"It could not have been a weapon, my Lord; the scale of it was just too vast. More like... the emanation of a small singularity."

"In subspace?" wondered the commander, his eyes darting at every square centimeter of the image before him like a predator seeking a prey.

"Yes my Lord... therefore not a natural phenomenon but... much too large and unfocused to be any kind of weapon."

"A warp core breach?"

"That was my first hypothesis... but there is no antimatter residue in the sector... Only residual gravitons... except..."

She looked again at her readouts then raised her head sharply to look again at the screen.

"Hod! I read a debris field near the position where the Scar was located!"

"Helm! Full impulse towards those coordinates, attack pattern Kang Amber! Tactial! target the most massive object in that field and prepare to blast it out of the stars with whatever could hide behind it! Transmit attack solution to the rest of the squadron! Let's get those Fedrats!"

The three massive warships swung in unison to resume their tringular pattern that allowed them full field of fire and covering fire between one another. In a few seconds, they closed the gap between their point of reentry and the swirling field of discarded debris that was expanding slowly for all eternity before their double-pointed bows.

"Hod... all those debris... they're of Those Without Honor... Undine."

"And Starfleet?"

"Nothing, my Lord; I read only the biometal and organic traces of Undine bioships and their propulsion trails crisscrossing all over this zone... I read the energy signature of heavy weapons fire as well... but all Undine. No duranium alloy, no antimatter or ino-impulse warp trail, no standard biosigns or biomatter, no photon or phaser discharge... Hod, there never was any Starfleet vessel here."

"Incompetent fool! Didn't you report a large contact in this very spot an hour ago?"

"Yes, Jha'Qwi... and now, I read the impulse trail and the weapons discharges of a very massive vessel among those signals which moved towards the point in space where the rift used to be... but the signature is Undine, my Lord."

For a moment, everyone blinked at the screen in silence. With a growling voice as full of frustration as of puzzlement, the warship captain pointed a hand at the  field of small debris on the viewer.

"Then... where is it?"

"I read a very large, powerful and peculiar trace of some large energy field that was active here recently... and that of a score of core detonations and the heaviest concentration of weapon signatures converging at it's center..."

She tought for a moment then made a report.

"Jha'Qwi; from the evidence I can gather, it appears that there was a battle here, between roughly two dozen warships and another much more massive and powerful than the others... probably dreadnought class... all Undine. A detonation of larger magnitude happened where it's last trace can be followed back to... which correspond to the very point where opened the Scar of Kahless. It appears, my Lord, that the Undine fought among themselves and destroyed each other... and the way back to their realm... when their most massive vessel was destroyed and all of them with it."

The commander tought for a long moment, his eyes never leaving the large screen before him, as if he could picture what had happened. There was still a frown on his heavy brow and a frustrated growl in his toughtful voice.

"No Federation vessel?"

"It appears, my Lord, that they never came..." acknowledged the science woman. "Wether the Undine lost control of themselves, frustrated beeing thus stood up, or because they disagreed with this contact attempt to begin with, or for some other reason only known to their alien minds... all evidence shows a devastating conflict between them only... with no one and nothing surviving when the power core of their dreadnought detonated within the rift itself."

Another long moment of silence followed. Finally, the commander rose from his chair, crossing his arms on his wide, powerful chest  holding  a large metal sash studded with war medals. his eyes were still on the screen. Then he spat and turned around.

"Bah! Sweep this area. Confirm this data... but if there is but one molecule or a single rad of Fedrat presence, I want you to find it! Transmit to the rest of the squadron... and start again once the rest of the attack fleet arrives. We remain on Amber Alert for the next day! Anyone caught napping will be made part of that debris field out there!"

He spun when the turbolift door hissed and grated as if to echo his harsh, frustrated tone of voice. With a last glare  that would have bore a hole through a starship's deflector shields, he stepped back and let the noisy door close on the fuming expression on his hard-etched face.