Fire!"

Fire against the infinite darkness, blossoming where the missiles hit and escaping oxygen allowed the explosives to ignite.

Hulls or nacelles disintegrating in almost balletic slow motion as the first strikes went home, the orderly advance breaking instantly into a vast and deadly dance of ship against ship; too many couples to count or remember, diving and feinting and darting, spitting death.

"Fire!"

Intrepid herself was taking hits. The hull shook, but he was able to report to the captain that the shields were holding. Em's fingers darted across the board, and from the change in the vibration he knew that the phase cannons were blazing at the weak point another ship's torpedo had opened up in the Warbird suddenly presenting its dorsal as it came around them in a tight parabola, briefly separating them from the ship they had been pursuing. The naked struts of the superstructure visible where the hull plating had been torn away melted under the torrent of energy unleashed at quarters too close for the emergency shielding to absorb it fully, and a series of explosions ran through the vessel until its smooth arc disintegrated into a crazy corkscrew and seconds later it became a rapidly expanding cloud of individual pieces of metal, through some of which Intrepid sailed, bodies looking like tiny disjointed dolls flung here and there among the bits that shattered against the plating.

He felt nothing. The laser of his intent swung, refocussed.

"Fire!"

On their port side, the Wellington exploded. Something that was probably part of its starboard nacelle smashed against the underside of the rear port quarter of Intrepid's saucer section as she tried to heel clear of the blast.

"Breach on C Deck, emergency bulkheads holding." As the ship's SiC it was his duty to report this information to the captain even as he ordered repair teams to hurry to the site and assess casualties, but he knew that Ramirez was so focussed on the battle that the information would be no more than a piece of low-level background for the time being. The junior officers in the area would post casualty reports as soon as they were available, but he suspected that in that area they would have taken at least some losses.

He felt nothing.

Helm compensated for the impact as much as possible, but the ship still lurched off course. Other ships and stars reeled sickeningly across the viewscreen. Something that had been attached to a body struck the forward dorsal camera and floated away again, fingers perpetually extended in a frozen, lifeless wave. It might be 'ours'; it might be 'theirs'.

He felt nothing.

"Fire!"

The phase cannons spoke again. His body transmitted the vibration of torpedoes blasting out of the tubes too, probably the rearward, but Em cursed – not a hit; too much debris, not her fault. He knew some of the words she was using, if not all of them. If they survived this she'd probably get a reprimand. Ramirez was very strait-laced about bad language, and spoke several languages fluently, including Spanish.

He felt nothing.

The Warbird they'd been pursuing had lost itself in the mêlée after destroying Wellington. Intrepid heeled onto a new course, selected a new enemy – a thing of which there was a terrifying superabundance. The front tubes opened up. Fire blossomed against the Romulan shields, creating a shimmer of radiance as all the energy was absorbed. In return, the Warbird veered and delivered a cannonade of missiles that shattered against Intrepid's hull as the two ships passed within less than a hundred metres of each other; at these speeds, that was practically scraping each other's keel.

"Ventral hull plating down to seventy per cent."

Denise Le Saut at Helm responded to his words by rolling the ship, keeping that briefly vulnerable area away from further damage, but another enemy ship strafed it in passing.

"Fifty per cent." His voice was still calm. "Casualty reports, seven dead so far, fifteen injured. Medical teams attending."

He felt nothing.

Ramirez nodded. He was a compact man, very dignified, very precise, who had recently grown a small moustache and pointed beard that gave him a quirky resemblance to Charles II. He sat in the captain's chair now with the presence of a Portuguese fidalgo, and it would have taken a very close observer to perceive the gleam of aristocratic wrath that some Romulan patife had the descaramento to shoot at his ship.

"Continue to engage the enemy," he ordered evenly.

Helm and Tactical complied. The ship curvetted through space which boiled with individual conflicts that engaged and broke apart and re-engaged. The duranium fabric of her hummed and shook to the hell flaming out of all weapons ports as Em engaged multiple targets, Christ I wouldn't have taken on three at once, but the shots roared home and explosions flared against buckling metal, shields disintegrated and then Intrepid's entire superstructure groaned as a last cannon blast from one of the smaller enemy ships took out the starboard impulse engine, flinging the vessel dizzily around in her own length.

Design improvements made since the days when any shock threw Enterprise's crew around like rag dolls had included seat belts. The g-force of the spin pressed his body uncomfortably hard against these and the left tendon in his neck snapped painfully as his head was thrown violently to the side, but he was still in his chair. If there had been time he might have remembered days when he'd have taken such discomforts without even noticing, but the flicker of you'll pay for that tomorrow was so absurd he very nearly laughed aloud; no-one in this battle was guaranteed another five minutes of life, let alone a tomorrow in which to notice one was older than one used to be and showing the wear and tear.

Too many bodies around the ship had not had the benefit of seat belts. The figures spooled onto his screen and he reported them dispassionately – words lost in the furore of a war zone, words, words and numbers, casualties, statistics, acceptable losses.

He felt nothing.

"FIRE AT WILL!"

Helm regained control. The phase cannons roared again, adding a final blast to the disintegration of a huge enemy ship being targeted by two Vulcan Suurok-class cruisers; too close to turn, Intrepid ploughed through another expanding ball of blazing debris, much closer and more dangerous than the first. A large chunk of this tore off a twenty-metre strip of the hull and the casualty list doubled. Endeavour surged past, firing a full spread at a phalanx of Warbirds which had just arrived, probably reinforcements, bloody hell, keep him safe!, and Intrepid came about almost under Exeter's nose as the larger ship raced up in support.

The instinct to protect the flagship was in blood and bone. Outgunned and outmatched in every respect by her two far larger sisters, Intrepid barrelled forward in their wake, her one remaining engine howling a war-cry and every weapons port on her hull red-hot with the intensity of fire.

Somewhat to his surprise, they survived for several minutes as the phalanx dissolved and engaged them. Then another huge enemy battle-cruiser stormed in from the rear, heading directly for Endeavour even as more of their own fleet rushed up in support.

Intrepid came up underneath the monster.

"Fire!"

Explosion after explosion from the forward torpedo launchers roared uselessly against the shielding as the vast featureless expanse of metal passed across the viewscreen, Bastards, why won't you fucking bastards die, and then Captain Ramirez's voice cut through the uproar as though he were seated at a picnic on a summer lawn and politely requesting that someone pass him the salmon and cucumber sandwiches. "Helm, target the enemy's impulse drive."

Silence was an impossibility in that world of noise, but a silence nevertheless there was: a silence that seemed to go on for a very long time. Time enough to remember the two images in his breast pocket, and to remember – of all strange things – the glass bowl on the dining room table at home. It was a perfect, shining bubble, and on the morning of his leaving it had been full of Christmas roses Hoshi had picked in the garden. How white the flowers had been, with their hearts of shining gold; how beautiful and pure and cold above the clear, faintly iridescent glass...

Then Intrepid lunged forward as though kicked in the arse by a gigantic boot, and the glass disintegrated into a million tumbling shards. One of the Christmas roses flew past him in the enveloping darkness and he threw out a hand to catch it, because Hoshi had touched it and therefore it was of incalculable value to him; but the edge of the white petal was as sharp as a blade and cut his palm, so that he cried out in shock and pain and loss as it slipped through his clutching fingers.

His voice made no sound at all.

And then the world went out.