The Sword-class opened fire first.

What constituted a Sword-class frigate (or any other Imperium ship for that matter) varied greatly depending on the Forge-world that built them, the tech-priests assigned to the task, as well as materials and time available. The Imperium was simply so large, and communication between each world so slow and sporadic, that any attempt at standardisation across it generally required divine intervention.

Thus, each ship's armour was of a slightly different alloy and make, weapon make-up and quality varied greatly, their engines, reactors and fuel were all held to requirements that changed per ship, etc. Any given ship's durability, speed, range, load-out… they could all vary enormously, even within ships supposedly built using the same plans.

Sword-class ships weren't generally armed with lancers (unless they were the Firestorm variant), armed instead with multiple lascannon batteries for broadside attacks. However, this particular Sword-class had had its front two batteries replaced with auto-loaded torpedo tubes instead, and it was with these that she fired the first shots of this battle.

"Incoming torpedoes!" Enterprise yelled, swiftly drawing her phaser from its holster p̶̵̶o̶̵̶w̶̵̶e̶̵̶r̶̵̶i̶̵̶n̶̵̶g̶̵̶ ̶̵̶u̶̵̶p̶̵̶ ̶̵̶h̶̵̶e̶̵̶r̶̵̶ ̶̵̶p̶̵̶h̶̵̶a̶̵̶s̶̵̶e̶̵̶r̶̵̶ ̶̵̶b̶̵̶a̶̵̶n̶̵̶k̶̵̶s̶̵̶ and opening up with interceptor fire on the rapidly-closing torpedoes.

Chimaera on the other hand merely increased power to her particle shields, leaving her TIE Fighters and TIE Defenders with the job of intercepting the roughly 60 meter long torpedoes. Plasma spewed out from the jump pack at the back of the Sword-class's armour, as she started a full burn behind her torpedoes. She was heading forward and to the side. She intends to use her torpedoes as a distraction. Chimaera deduced. She was not her ex-captain-now-admiral, but she did her best to think like he would have, had he not been asleep in his quarters. Not confident in their ability to finish us off? Armoured prow lacks spinal-mounted weaponry. Moving to open up with a broadside.

Chimaera looked to Enterprise next, watching as the ship frantically (though accurately) shot and destroyed the torpedoes zooming towards them. Beam weapon of unknown type. Using her primary weapon on anti-torpedo duty? Lacks fighters and point-defence. Not a dedicated warship.

Several shots of plasma also sailed past Chimaera from behind, and she glanced backwards to see Babylon 5 adding her own firepower against the torpedoes. Energy readings… Well, they weren't low, but they certainly weren't what Chimaera considered threatening. Mind, Chimaera's own turbolasers shots decayed to the point of uselessness after 1,200kms, so she supposed being able to muster even that kind of energy at that range was mildly impressive.

Galactica hadn't opened fire at all yet, which further solidified Chimaera's opinion of her as the weakest link here.

There was a bright flash as one of the torpedoes escaped the interceptor fire, stopped only when one of her TIE Fighters rammed it in a panic. Its melta warhead exploded in an enormous burst of high-energy sub-atomic particles that completely vaporised not only the fighter it hit, but most of the rest of the squadron as well. Even from kilometres away, the detonation took a much larger chunk out of her shields than Chimaera was comfortable with. Her analysis done for the moment, Chimaera decided that now was the time to close to range with her own turbolasers.

"Stay here." She ordered Enterprise. "I will have use for you shortly."

The Sword-class stopped firing torpedoes at this point (Had she run out, or had she just hit effective range on her other weapons? Chimaera mused), and now opened fire with an energy pistol of some sort h̶̵̶e̶̵̶r̶̵̶ ̶̵̶b̶̵̶r̶̵̶o̶̵̶a̶̵̶d̶̵̶s̶̵̶i̶̵̶d̶̵̶e̶̵̶ ̶̵̶w̶̵̶e̶̵̶a̶̵̶p̶̵̶o̶̵̶n̶̵̶ ̶̵̶b̶̵̶a̶̵̶t̶̵̶t̶̵̶e̶̵̶r̶̵̶i̶̵̶e̶̵̶s̶̵̶. Invisible beams of energy shot out, the ones that hit outright vaporising any impacted TIE Fighter (two in one go, when they had the misfortune to line up).

True laser weaponry? Interesting. Chimaera thought. Her own turbolasers were called that because they used lasers to create the plasma bolts that were actually fired from the weapons. True laser weaponry, on the other hand, travelled at the speed of light; and would always hit the target as long as the barrel was pointed in the correct direction. (And the target was within a light-second or so, but they were and truly under those kinds of distances here.)

Deciding that the Sword-class was unlikely to resume firing torpedoes, Chimaera shifted most of the power in her particle shields back to her ray shields. She was confident in her ray shield's ability to withstand laser fire, now was the time to test out how her turbolasers did against this strange ship's shielding. She fired up her ion engines, accelerating towards the Sword-class.

Unlike Enterprise's long straight nacelle-wings, or Galactica's thruster-boots, Chimaera's propulsion was provided by a series of vents at the bottom of her uniform. Said uniform largely resembled that of a Moff's, but a lighter grey to match her hull. As well as that, the uniform also widened from top to bottom, preserving her signature triangular shape. The soft glow and smooth acceleration from her thrusters made it look like she was moving slower than she actually was.

While doing this, she also recalled her remaining TIE Fighters – they weren't getting close enough to the enemy ship to do damage to it, and the Sword-class hadn't launched any fighters of her own.

A good strategy might require that lives be spent, but never would it require that they be wasted.

She sent them off to position themselves next to what she thought were the locals… for later. Her squadron of TIE Defenders, on the other hand, she ordered to stay in her shadow where the Sword-class couldn't see them. They would be a nasty surprise, if she needed one.

"This is bad." Enterprise fretted, watching the two enormous ships begin to exchange broadsides like ships had back in the Age of Sail on Earth. There was so much sensor data coming in that Enterprise couldn't possibly analyse it all, not with her crew unconscious. The best she could do was record it for later, and try to pick out the most relevant bits for real-time analysis.

"Far me it from me to order you about, dear, but can I suggest that we leave those two to kill each other?" Babylon 5 suggested to Enterprise. Babylon 5's fighter-faeries gave various cries and gestures of agreement at their station's suggestion.

"We can't just sit here and wait!" Enterprise protested. The Sword-class emerging victorious would be the worst outcome, but Enterprise hadn't missed the threatening undertones in Chimaera's demands either.

"I still have a couple of nukes left." Galactica offered. "My Raptors could jump in close and blow both of them away."

"Um," Enterprise bit her bottom lip. "let's make that Plan B, alright?"

If Galactica was using fusion warheads rather than fission ones, the offer might not be completely worthless, but Enterprise didn't want the unshielded Galactica anywhere near a battle where one hit could cripple her completely, or worse.

Galactica, for her part, simply shrugged and quietly ordered her Raptors to load nukes and spin up their jump drives anyway, ready for when Cloud Nine inevitably changed her mind.

At this point Enterprise's combadge beeped c̶o̶m̶m̶ ̶s̶y̶s̶t̶e̶m̶s̶ ̶r̶e̶c̶e̶i̶v̶e̶d̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶u̶b̶s̶p̶a̶c̶e̶ ̶h̶a̶i̶l̶, and Enterprise suddenly realised that she had forgotten about Yamato.

"Enterprise-san, I am reading strong electromagnetic bursts from the position you directed me to earlier. What is the situation?"

Enterprise quickly tapped her combadge transmitted a reply. "Enterprise to Yamato – do not approach! Repeat, do not approach! Hostile ships have engaged in conflict in the target area! Break off approach at once!"

"…hostile ships?" Yamato transmitted back, sounding cautious but not scared, which was not how Enterprise wanted her feeling, darn it. "Please elaborate?"

Enterprise bit back a frustrated grunt. "Computer, transmit basic details on hostile ships." Without waiting for her computer to respond, Enterprise addressed Yamato again. "One ship threatened to kill us" by implication, anyway "and the other one is a violent xenophobe who said that she would outright!"

"Confirmed, Enterprise-san. Please transmit approach vector, and I will provide fire support."

Enterprise's right eye started twitching. "Yamato," she said, fighting to sound calm "both hostile ships are over five times your length, and must have dozens of times your tonnage! Even assuming technological parity," which Enterprise doubted, given that Yamato didn't even have inertial dampeners "you are outmatched here! Normandy has already left –"

"No."

The voice was so quiet that Enterprise almost talked over it without noticing. "Wha – Normandy?! Where are you?!" Grabbing her tricorder p̶e̶r̶f̶o̶r̶m̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶e̶n̶s̶o̶r̶ ̶s̶w̶e̶e̶p̶, she back-traced the comm laser to… a relay probe, drifting in empty space. Presumably, Normandy was communicating with the probe via another comm laser, which meant that Enterprise wouldn't be able to tell where Normandy was from the probe without going up to it.

"Watching."

"What do you mean, watching?!" Despite herself, Enterprise found a note of hysteria in her voice. "Normandy, if that Sword-class sees you out there –!" You look even more inhuman than I do!

"Stealthed."

"I'm glad you're stealthed, Normandy," Enterprise grit her teeth "now get out of here."

"No." The frigate stubbornly replied. "Watching."

"What do you see, Normandy?" Babylon 5 cut in before it could become a full shouting match. (Apparently, the relay probe had a second comm laser pointed at her, and presumably Galactica).

"Lasers. Plasma." Normandy whispered. "Shields."

"They make shields big enough for ships?" Galactica asked. "I thought the biggest they got were those ones that riot police have."

Enterprise found herself emulating her captain and pressing the palm of her hand into her face.

"Plasma disappearing. Not blocked."

That brought Enterprise up short. "Come again?"

Sensor data began to stream back through the comm laser, and Enterprise suddenly found herself engrossed in it. Normandy either didn't have the equipment to detect subspace radiation or had left it out of this data, but…

"Computer, cross reference mid-to-long range sensor readings with Normandy data regarding the Sword-class's shield composition."

"Bursts of tetryon particles appear whenever Chimaera's weapons impact Sword-class ship's defence technology." Her computer reported, unwilling to call the technology 'shielding' as it was fundamentally different from any shield in its database.

"Extrapolate."

"Defence technology is not blocking weapons fire, but instead displacing it into adjacent dimension or dimensions."

"She's essentially wrapped herself in a dimensional breach!" Enterprise gasped. "That's ingenious! No matter how dangerous the incoming weapons fire is, it all gets displaced and never reaches the target!"

Babylon 5 blinked in confusion. "Um, dear, speaking as someone who routinely opens and closes dimensional breaches, doing that would displace the whole ship and prevent her from seeing us, or firing her weapons outward."

Babylon 5 blinked as Enterprise turned to her, eyes wide. "Um, did I say something odd, dear?"

"Babylon 5, you're a genius!"

Chimaera's face was firmly set in a frown as she and the Sword-class continued to exchange broadsides. While superior tactics could certainly make up for deficiencies in manpower or equipment, it was still best to outdo the enemy in both those categories to ensure victory. In addition, she did not recognise the shielding technology being used by her opponent, which made it very difficult to plan around it.

"Do not pity the traitor, for though his labours come to naught, he has only his own treachery to blame."

Instead of an invisible bubble flaring briefly into visibility when her turbolasers hit, liker her ray shields were doing against the Sword-class's lascannons, her shots were disappearing into bursts of multicoloured light once they crossed some indeterminate threshold. It was quite vexing. Her ion cannons were likewise being stymied.

"The xeno is foul, for it has never known man's holy greatness. The traitor is worse, for he has cast it aside."

Chimaera was not herself from the Unknown Regions, but her ex-captain-now-admiral, Grand Admiral Thrawn (Mitth'raw'nuruodo, if one felt like using his real name), was, and he had taken her in there before. She knew that there were secrets lurking in the galaxy beyond the understanding of the Empire – the Grysk were a fine example. Apparently, Wild Space was the same.

"To even look upon a traitor is dangerous, for through your eyes he can spread the disease of his mind."

Chimaera did not for a moment believe that this shield was invincible, because otherwise there would be no point in armouring the ship underneath so heavily. So the question then became, how would the Sword-class ship fight another of her kind?

"You must hate the xenos, for it is unclean. You must hate the heretic, for he is blasphemous. And you must hate the traitor, for he –"

"You do realise I am a ship, don't you?" Chimaera interrupted, having lost her patience listening to the Sword-class. "And thus, am female?"

"The sins of the leader also lay on the follower, for they did not turn away!" The Sword-class snapped back.

Chimaera considered for a moment mentioning to the human-supremacist spaceship that her ex-captain-now-admiral was a non-human, but decided against it. Driving the ship into a blind rage shouldn't noticeably change her tactics by Chimaera's estimation, and the angry shouting would no doubt get even more annoying.

Her dismissal still seemed to anger the Sword-class, however, and in addition to re-doubling her broadside devolved her recitations to name calling. "Strumpet! Tug boat!"

Chimaera ignored the petty insults. She was a Star Destroyer, and her pride would not be threatened by –

"Rebel scum!"

Chimaera's face went completely blank for a moment, before hardening into an expression of pure contempt.

"What," she said, danger clear in her tone "did you just call me?"

Chimaera's fury was interrupted by one of her still-hidden Defenders tugging on the back of her uniform. She looked behind herself to find Enterprise had disobeyed her orders and was now approaching rapidly.

The Sword-class notice the same thing immediately afterwards, bellowing "XENO!" and manoeuvring around Chimaera so that she could open fire on Enterprise with a second laspistol b̶r̶o̶a̶d̶s̶i̶d̶e̶.

Enterprise winced as the laser beams hit her shields. Years ago, her captain had stated confidently that lasers wouldn't even pierce her navigational deflectors. Of course, the people of Atlec hadn't put nearly this amount of wattage into their weapons, and the Borg had proven with their Cutting Beam that powerful enough lasers would cleave through her hull like a hot knife through butter.

Also, she was going to have to apologise to her helm officers for taking them for granted. Evasive pattern delta was much harder without them guiding her through it.

The Sword-class had never been calm throughout this encounter, but seeing Enterprise fly towards her seemed to drive her to even deeper levels of rage.

"UNCLEAN FILTH!" She roared.

Enterprise really hoped her plan worked.

Behind her, she could hear the worried calls of Galactica, screaming at her not to go without her. Enterprise hoped Babylon 5 would be able to keep Galactica from moving up to join her – she really didn't want the Battlestar in this fight.

Alright Enterprise, you can do this. They're not that much bigger than a D'deridex.

Yeah, but D'deridexs are mostly hollow and I doubt they are.

Not helping, me!

"The Emperor demands your death, xeno scum, and He will not be denied!" The Sword-class raged.

"If you wish to throw your miserable life away, so be it. But if you continue to disobey my commands, then you will have two enemy ships to deal with." Chimaera warned Enterprise direly.

Enterprise shut both of them out, teeth clenched in concentration. Entrap anti-tachyons in a resonating polygon cage. A holographic warning image that most certainly was not a magic circle spread itself out behind her. Match phase variance then diverge 0.76 radians. Her arms d̶e̶f̶l̶e̶c̶t̶o̶r̶ ̶d̶i̶s̶h̶ began to glow with power.

The Sword-class's eyes widened as Enterprise neared point-blank range. "Your foul witchcraft will avail you not!" She screamed.

"Initiate resonance cascade!" Enterprise yelled back, thrusting her arms out and letting fly a huge burst of exotic particles in a yellow beam that shot from her to the Sword-class.

The Sword-class was sure that her void shields intercepted the strange beam, but when the machine-spirits that lived in her shielding bank started to scream and wail she allowed herself to become concerned.

She allowed that concern to become worry when she saw the multicoloured lights of her void shields displacing an attack into the Immaterium not die down as they were supposed to, but increase steadily in brightness.

Displacement-type void shields, like the ones that made up this Sword-class's main defence, were not in fact one big dimensional breach. In fact, they were lots of little breaches, opened and closed as needed. This made the sensors on Imperium ships powerful and reliable by necessity – if they failed to detect incoming fire, the void shields wouldn't activate to intercept it. This is how they could shoot through their own shield – they just didn't open a breach for their own fire.

To avoid accidentally causing a full-blown breach into the Immaterium, displacement-type void shields had been designed back in the Dark Age of Technology to fail-safe so that any dimensional sheering they caused would not be self-sustaining, but would close as soon as the power was cut.

This was not happening now.

"Xeno witch!" The Sword-class screamed again. "What have you done?!"

"I've ended this." Enterprise admonished (trying her best to sound like her captain).

The Sword-class gave a wordless shout of frustration as dimensional sheering began to erupt all around her, enclosing her in a forming cocoon of multicoloured light.

The shout was abruptly cut off as the sheering enclosed her completely, the light suddenly vanishing and replaced by a semi-transparent purple film that seemed to be wavering in space.

Despite herself, Enterprise looked uncertain. "That looks more arcane that I thought it would…"

"Explain." Chimaera demanded. She indicated the purplish haze that formerly been the Sword-class ship with her blaster, leaving no question as to what she meant.

Chimaera did not then point that blaster h̶e̶r̶ ̶t̶u̶r̶b̶o̶l̶a̶s̶e̶r̶s̶ at Enterprise, but Enterprise noted that it would take Chimaera less than a second to do so, and braced herself r̶e̶d̶i̶r̶e̶c̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶a̶u̶x̶i̶l̶i̶a̶r̶y̶ ̶p̶o̶w̶e̶r̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶w̶a̶r̶d̶ ̶s̶h̶i̶e̶l̶d̶s̶.

"She's been trapped inside her own little pocket of space." Enterprise answered tersely. "She won't be able to escape – the effect can't be reversed from the inside."

"Is that so?" Chimaera lowered her blaster. "And where does that leave us?"

"Where it leaves us is, you are going to power down your weapons system, recall your fighters, and then we can talk about resolving this situation, like civilised ships!"

Enterprise panted slightly after delivering her ultimatum, but kept her focus solely on Chimaera, watching carefully for the first hints of her response.

For a moment, the void was silent.

Then Chimaera snorted.

"Sit down and talk? You wish us to, what… form a council of some sort? I've never had any patience for such things."

Immediately after Chimaera finished her sentence, the Defenders that she had sent out from in her shadow finished circling around the patch of distorted space left by the Sword-class.

Enterprise froze, then whirled around and fired off a phaser blast f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶a̶f̶t̶ ̶p̶h̶a̶s̶e̶r̶ ̶b̶a̶n̶k̶. They hid from my sensors behind the distortion…!

Her phaser beam impacted on target, but Enterprise had fired a low-power shot to reduce the time between shots, and the Defender's ray shield (just bearly) held up. Enterprise's eyes flew wide, and even as she hurriedly increased the power of her shots, the Defenders all fired.

Enterprise's shields held, but she recognised the distraction for what it was only after she sensed Chimera powering up her own ion cannons, and realised that she'd rotated her boosted forward shield out of position.

Enterprise cried out as the next bursts of charged particles punched through her side shields and slammed into her saucer-skirt. Her vision began to black out, as electrical discharges played out over her hull.

Enterprise thought she could hear a cry of fury and grief from Galactica.

"I've always found it far more efficient if there is only one vote that matters." Chimaera finished, quirking an eyebrow at Enterprise. "Ion cannons have always been effective against shielding, but not that effective. Tell me, do you have problems with ion storms?"

Well, Chimaera wasn't going to complain about her job being easier than expected.

She turned her gaze to where Babylon 5 and Galactica were hanging in space. "I really only need one of you." She said. "I suggest you hand over your hyperlane maps now, so that we can avoid any more unnecessary violence."

Emphasising her point, the TIE Fighters she'd sent over earlier began to move in…

Inside the newly isolated pocket in space, the Sword-class raged. "What is this?!"

Her machine spirits raged with her, furious as being denied their various purposes. There was nothing for her sensors to see. No target for her weapons to shoot at. Nowhere that her engines could take her. The entirety of her universe was a pocket barely larger than she was.

However, the oldest of her machine-spirits, an ancient algorithm far older than the ship herself, remained calm. It consulted its millennia-old database, searching for an explanation as to the circumstances the voidship now found herself in.

The Sword-class was half-way though a particularly spirited tirade about the impurity of whatever 'foul xeno' dock Enterprise had been assembled at, when the elder machine-spirit sought her attention. "– and doubtlessly your motors are greased with slug intestines – what?" The Sword-class tilted her head to one side. "My Gellar fields?"

The elder machine-spirit responded in the affirmative.

"…very well." The Sword-class declared, having full trust in her machine-spirits. She bowed her head and began to chant. "The Emperor is the light of the void, as He walks beside me no warp-spawn may harm me…"

As she continued, her Gellar fields powered up to maximum output, and the field of enforced normal space they produced extended out from the voidship herself and into the dimensional sheering…

"Galactica, you need to stay here." Daidalos emphasised. She called herself something else now, but Galactica found it more comforting to call her by the name she knew her under.

"I'm not going to let the Cylons get away with hurting her." Galactica seethed, fire in her eyes and a pistol in both hands f̶l̶a̶k̶ ̶t̶u̶r̶r̶e̶t̶s̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶r̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶t̶r̶a̶c̶k̶ ̶t̶a̶r̶g̶e̶t̶s̶. "Not again."

"Galactica, you need to listen to her."

Galactica was pretty sure that Daidalos couldn't see Starbuck floating in space behind her, her old Viper pilot impossibly the same size as she was. Galactica thought that Daidalos not being able to see her was pretty strange, considering that Daidalos was doing what she had been before Cloud Nine came back, and talking without using her mouth.

"She's not sunk." Daidalos reassured Galactica.

"Not yet." Galactica snarled. "But we have to take that Basestar out now, before she finishes the job."

"Galactica, please." Daidalos pleaded. "I think I can talk her down, but if you start shooting we'll have no chance."

"You can't take her on yet." Starbuck stated frankly. "Not like this."

"Do you just expect me to sit by and watch?" Galactica demanded of both of them.

"No." Daidalos replied "I need you and your fighters to work with my Starfuries. If this doesn't work, I'll need you to keep her fighters off the both of us."

"No," Starbuck said "you just need to wait for her to hold still."

Daidalos turned away at this point to focus on the approaching Basestar, and thus didn't see the puzzled look on Galactica's face. Wait for her to…?

Then she realised what Starbuck meant, and looked down at her last few Raptors with a sad smile, feeling the full force of all her years bearing down on her.

"I'm going to need a volunteer." She said.

Meanwhile, Normandy was approaching Enterprise as quietly as she could.

Her stealth systems were running at full capacity, but they only hid her from passive sensors. If Chimaera looked her way with active sensors, she would still see her. Unless she was using radar, that is, as Normandy had the same kind of protections against that as 21st century stealth planes, but Normandy couldn't count on her not using lidar or even just a camera with very good zoom. As such, she was approaching Enterprise from the other side as Chimaera, hoping that the larger ship would block Chimaera's view of her.

Thousands of kilometres away, the probe Normandy had launched earlier was close enough to pick up the conversation between Babylon 5 and the approaching Chimaera. (She was not being included in the transmitted conversation for the simple reason that neither ship nor station knew where she was.)

"I am recognised by galactic treaty as neutral ground. By attacking me, you will be inviting the wrath of the Interstellar Alliance down upon you." Babylon 5 warned.

Chimaera made a show of looking behind her. "I notice you did not deliver a similar warning to my opponent."

"Do you think she would have listened?" Babylon 5 countered.

Normandy continued to listen while she looked Enterprise over. Enterprise had been hit in her saucer-skirt, just below where her main body connected up to her nacelle-wings. The areas of her body h̶u̶l̶l̶ so hit had melted, and she seemed to be bleeding v̶e̶n̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ plasma, but her overall structure seemed intact.

Quietly, Normandy reached down to her belt h̶a̶n̶g̶e̶r̶, and pulled out a tub b̶a̶r̶r̶e̶l̶ of omni-gel. She then carefully smeared the gel over where Enterprise was bleeding v̶e̶n̶t̶i̶n̶g̶, sealing the breaches shut as the gel cooled and hardened. Not really able to do more without knowing how Enterprise worked, Normandy drifted back a little and waited.

"You say you are a diplomatic station?" Chimaera said coldly. "Very well, let us negotiate. I wish to return to the Galactic Empire immediately. To that end, I need the locations of the local hyperlanes. Refusing me access to those places myself and my crew at risk, and I will be forced to act accordingly."

Enterprise's eyes slowly started to open. "Wha…?"

Moving forwards quickly, Normandy pressed her refrigerated body h̶u̶l̶l̶ up against Enterprise, hoping to absorb enough heat to mask the fact that Enterprise was powering up again – at least for a couple of minutes. "Status?" She whispered.

Enterprise made a soft noise of discomfort at the cold (Normandy's Oynx armour not being particularly comfortable to rest against either), but answered anyway. "Huh…? Oh, right. Um, were those ion blasts that hit me?" Gingerly, Enterprise twisted around to look at the back of her saucer-skirt, wincing at what she saw.

Babylon 5 started to speak again, but Normandy kept her attention on Enterprise.

"The energy must have sought the path of least resistance… which would be my electro-plasma system. Huh. For once, I'm glad my EPS conduits tend to blow under pressure. I must have vented the overcharged electro-plasma into space before it could reach my antimatter containment, like the world's most violent fuse box." Enterprise finished her self-assessment. "I think I'll be fine with further repairs, but right now I can't build up enough pressure in my EPS to power up my weapons, even with… are these your repairs?"

The other ships present would have been at the very least surprised at the mention of antimatter containment, but not Normandy. After all, she had her own supply of antimatter – though she used hers as propellant rather than reactor fuel. So instead of being flabbergasted, Normandy simply nodded and moved right on. "Yamato."

"Yamato…?" Enterprise repeated blankly. "Oh, right! Yamato!" Her eyes flew open, and she smacked her commbadge.

"And lastly," Babylon 5 said "I can't give you the locations of the local hyperspace beacons, because –"

"You still use hyperwave beacons out here?" Chimaera interrupted, contemptuously. "How behind the times are you?"

"Yamato, please tell me you've broken off your approach!" Enterprise hissed into her commbadge t̶r̶a̶n̶s̶m̶i̶t̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶o̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶s̶o̶m̶e̶ ̶m̶e̶c̶h̶a̶n̶i̶s̶m̶ ̶N̶o̶r̶m̶a̶n̶d̶y̶ ̶d̶i̶d̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶r̶e̶c̶o̶g̶n̶i̶s̶e̶.

"I am less than a minute away, Enterprise-san." Yamato rejected. (Enterprise having patched Normandy into the conversation). "Please provide an approach vector."

"Yamato, I'm not going to –"

A shock suddenly travelled up Enterprise's spine. She whirled around, nearly dislodging Normandy, and stared in horror at the patch of space that the Sword-class ship had been occupying.

"That's impossible…" She whispered in horror.

Specifically, she was staring at the point of the space where the multicoloured lights had started up again.

Normandy didn't really know what to think of that patch of space. She had known that it was possible to bend space/time – that was how her Javelin torpedoes worked – but she'd never heard of anyone outright folding it over to enclose things like a pocket in cloth.

But, while she didn't understand how it had happened in the first place, she could grasp quite easily that it wasn't going to keep happening much longer.

Enterprise opened her mouth to yell a warning, but Normandy suddenly flew up and covered her mouth with an arm. Flinching back from the cold, Enterprise turned around (presumably to demand an explanation), only to notice that she and Normandy were silently drifting around the area of distorted space, out of sight of the lights.

Enterprise looked perplexed, before looking behind Normandy and seeing the ball of dark energy she was holding behind herself with her other hand. "Is that an artificial gravity well?" Enterprise asked in a hushed tone. (Because she was impressed, running low on energy or had remembered to be quiet, Normandy wasn't sure.) "Oh, of course! A reaction-less propulsion method would make it much easier to mask your energy signature – much less energy to mask. Is that made with dark energy? This area's saturated with dark matter, so it's nearly impossible to pick that out. I think that's brilliant!"

Normandy thought that Enterprise talked too much.

"Listen." Babylon 5 pleaded passionately. "We can work together to resolve this, but first you have to stand down."

"Stand down." Chimaera snorted. "Yes, I'll…" She trailed off. "Are you trying the mind trick on me?" She demanded.

The lights around the edge of the distortion suddenly widened, forming a circle, and with an ear-rattling roar, the Sword-class ship charged out of her prison, plasma spewing forth from her armour's jump-pack t̶h̶r̶u̶s̶t̶e̶r̶s̶ in a full burn.

Normandy's eyes l̶i̶d̶a̶r̶ tracked the Sword-class as she flew, but the Sword-class never turned her head to see the two ships hidden just out of sight behind the collapsing distortion area.

The fighter-fairies surrounding Chimaera suddenly erupted into a panic, blindly firing in the general direction of the approaching threat. Chimaera herself was turning, already firing with a blaster blind-aimed behind her w̶h̶a̶t̶e̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶t̶u̶r̶r̶e̶t̶s̶ ̶h̶a̶d̶ ̶a̶n̶ ̶a̶n̶g̶l̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶f̶i̶r̶e̶, and she finished just in time to see one final melta torpedo, kept in reserve for just such an opportunity, explode in her face.

Chimaera roared in pain as the upper chest and shoulders of her uniform d̶u̶r̶a̶l̶l̶o̶y̶ ̶a̶r̶m̶o̶u̶r̶ simply boiled away into space, the flesh c̶o̶m̶p̶o̶n̶e̶n̶t̶s̶ underneath following suit. Only the faint shimmer of a secondary shielding system had spared Chimaera's head b̶r̶i̶d̶g̶e̶ from the damage.

Babylon 5 gasped and covered her mouth at the grotesque sight of bloody muscles and bone i̶n̶t̶e̶r̶n̶a̶l̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶p̶a̶r̶t̶m̶e̶n̶t̶s̶ exposed to space, but Galactica wasn't even watching, her eyes reserved for the approaching Sword-class and the TIE Fighters closing in.

"Dammit!" Chimaera cursed, the word feeling completely inadequate for the pain she was in. I let my guard down – and more importantly, my particle shields!

Her ray shields had absorbed as much of the damage as they could, but the torpedo had detonated too closely for them to be enough. Only a lucky shot from a turbolaser prematurely detonating the torpedo had prevented a contact detonation.

Without waiting for orders, Chimaera's fighter-fairies immediately swarmed in. Most of them went after the Sword-class, but without direction some of them panicked and made Galactica and Babylon 5 their targets.

"No, no, no!" Normandy heard Enterprise whisper in anguish, watching as fighter-fairies tried their best to protect Chimaera from the still-closing Sword-class. These seemed to be a different model than the ones she had sent out earlier, the same model that had attacked Enterprise from behind, and were doing much better than the other models. But the Sword-class seemed to have restored her protective dimensional breach effect and their fire was not impacting. "The fighting is too close! Galactica and Babylon 5 are going to be blown away without a single shot being aimed in their direction!"

"Then it is fortunate that I have arrived, Enterprise-san. Keep this approach clear."

"Yamato?!" Enterprise frantically searched space for the source of that last transmission, finding Yamato approaching the battle between the Sword-class and Chimera from the other side as Galactica and Babylon 5. "You can't approach from there! Your fire could hit Galactica and Babylon 5!"

"Do not worry. I have plotted a course that avoids this."

"Plotted how?! I've the only one here with a subspace comm array, and I haven't been…" Enterprise trailed off. "Why is my computer currently transmitting tactical data over this comm line?"

That was Normandy's cue to let go of Enterprise and quietly fly away. The furious scream from Enterprise as she left told her that the trojan she had slipped in with the translation files from earlier had been discovered.

To save time, Yamato had decided to go around the planet in the opposite direction that Babylon 5 had been orbiting in. The idea was that she and the station would both be flying towards the other, then she could just slow down and match orbits.

Raise wave-motion engine pressure. Close emergency valves.

When she had received word that combat had broken out, she had abandoned her plans and simply accelerated as best she could the whole time to arrive as fast as possible, not wanting to waste a single precious second.

Open wave-motion gun outlet. Engine pressure at 10%.

However, this left her with far more speed than she could bleed off in time, even if she turned around and used her rocket-wings m̶a̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶r̶u̶s̶t̶e̶r̶s̶. Arriving at the battle so quickly would do no good if she simply shot past it.

All energy to wave-motion gun. Initiate forced induction. Engine pressure at 20%.

But while Yamato lacked internal inertial dampeners, what she did have were her gravity anchors.

Release wave-motion gun safety. Engine pressure at 30%.

Raise target scope. Yamato interlaced her fingers, forming a finger-gun with her left index finger forming the 'barrel' and her right the trigger. At the tip of her finger gun b̶o̶w̶, steams of energy began to coalesces into a ball of bright blue energy.

Brace for shock and flash. Engine pressure at 40%.

"Yamato, what are you doing?!" Enterprise cried over her hyperspace comm line. "Where did you get that kind of – how are you even – is that a weapon?! If you fire that now, you'll blow all of us away!"

Yamato got a brief glimpse of the battlefield as she and it zoomed towards each other, and in that moment she tried to match up the tactical data she'd received with what was before her. Enterprise she recognised, laying helpless far away from the battle. Galactica and Babylon 5 she recognised from the tactical data she had been sent. Both were blazing away with point-defence weaponry and fighter-fairy screens, but while Babylon 5 had the more advanced weapons tech the sheer number of Galactica's flak turrets meant that the battlestar was the bigger threat to Chimaera's fighter complement. Wherever she turned her attention, the fighters there spontaneously failed to continue existing.

(It certainly didn't help that the unshielded and lightly-armoured TIE Fighters had never seen flak before, and couldn't understand how this ship was filling the space around her with ordinance. The last sound dozens of the Fighters heard was their micrometeorite alarms going off a second before impact.)

Chimaera herself appeared to be taking a full broadside from the Sword-class, determined to end the largest threat present before moving on to the others. Starting with Enterprise, Yamato assumed. She was taking hits to her hull, a shield flickering in and out as it tried to reestablish itself between shots.

Engine pressure at 50%.

"Yamato!" Enterprise screamed.

Yamato shot right through the middle of the battlefield, through the melee of plasma, flak and fighter-fairies, and out the other side. She hadn't bothered launching her own fighter-fairies, as they would have no way to decelerate and match orbits in time.

But, as she reached the far side of the battlefield, a scant hundred kilometres from where Galactica and Babylon 5 where, she suddenly engaged all of the gravity anchors on her port side.

Robbed of all momentum, Yamato's port side suddenly tried to come to a stop. Her starboard side however, wished to keep moving. Between the two of them, Yamato ended up swinging around in a sharp turn portward. Clenching her teeth – as though that would help keep her hull from flying apart – Yamato disengaged the gravity anchors and corrected her facing to her actual direction of travel, towards the Sword-class ship.

Effectively, she'd just made a handbrake (or bootlegger's) turn in space. Such a high-G turn should have ripped her in half, but even a partial gravity anchor activation had absorbed enough of her momentum to keep the forces manageable, in exchange for bleeding off most of her speed.

Now staring down her finger-gun with a half-charged wave-motion shot ready, Yamato stared into the Sword-class's eyes, and engaged all of her gravity anchors, bracing for the recoil.

"Sayōnara." She said, softly. Goodbye.

The Sword-class ship, for her part, was breathless at what the machine-spirits of her augurs where screaming at her.

The Despoiler's dark flagship?! Here?!

Her design didn't match her databanks, but no ship of that size could possibly have that amount of power. Not unless she was the Planet Killer, the ship with all four of the Ruinous Powers as her patrons.

The Sword-class had been gladly willing to give her life to end these xeno and traitor ships, but now she worried that her life would simply not be enough. Not with the planet-destroying weapon already aimed and charged.

Her void shields couldn't block this! She needed to escape! She called out to the machine-spirits of her warp-drive, praying for them to be in time…!

Pegasus had been late, as usual. The others were calling her Yamato, but Galactica knew her old friend when she saw her. Still, it was good to see Pegasus catch up to them once again, ready to put an end to one more Basestar.

But in the instant before Pegasus fired, there was a shimmer of light in front of the Basestar, like something was in the middle of jumping in or out.

Then, there was only a bright blue light, bursting forth from Pegasus and swallowing the Basestar whole.

Galactica blinked the spots out of her eyes r̶e̶s̶e̶t̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶D̶R̶A̶D̶I̶S̶, Pegasus's shot having overpowered her senses for a moment. But her sensors were rated for point-blank nuclear blasts, and they cleared up in short order.

Whatever had jumped in – or maybe it was the act of jumping itself – wasn't there anymore. Whatever was left was an ugly swirl of red gas and viscous lightning that seemed to radiate hatred.

There was a moment of stunned silence.

"Yamato, I presume?" Daidalos eventually asked Pegasus.

"Hai, Babylon 5-san." Pegasus replied in an accent she hadn't had last time Galactica had seen her. She wondered what colony it was from.

"What exactly do you normally fire that at?"

"I endeavour not to fire it, to tell the truth."

After a protracted, dangerous instant, the swirl seemed to collapse in on itself. Galactica thought that she could see the form of something screaming, trying to force its way out… but then she blinked and it and the swirls of lightning and gas were both gone.

Leaving behind a sorry mess of a Basestar behind it.

The Basestar's gambit had protected her from the direct force of Pegasus's blast, but some of the energy had gone around the edges of whatever she'd done. The heavy armour that she'd been encased in – when did they start doing that, Galactica wondered – had been boiled away by the radiant heat. Underneath that was –

"No way." Daidalos breathed. "She was a frigate?!"

The ship under the armour had, at some point, taken the form of a girl in her tweens, much like how Blackbird currently looked. But somewhere along the way the ship had changed. Her hair was gone completely, exposing the mass of scar tissue that cross-crossed it and every other piece of exposed skin. It was hard to tell, with the way her flesh h̶u̶l̶l̶ was bubbling and liquefying, but her skin might have been smooth before this – not wrinkled like Galactica's was.

"I…" The Basestar spat, blood and spittle both flying from her mouth "Survived…!"

Several shots slammed into the Basestar, electricity arcing out over her hull, and the light in her eyes finally died.

"Yes." Said the other Basestar, who had fired the shots. "You certainly did."

Galactica wasn't sure which one of the two was the rebel (one of them had to be, otherwise they wouldn't have been shooting at each other), but she had the feeling that whichever one it had been, this one wasn't interested in talking.

She had taken a beating in her fight with the other Basestar. One arm was hanging limply t̶h̶e̶ ̶l̶i̶g̶h̶t̶s̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶r̶b̶o̶a̶r̶d̶ ̶s̶i̶d̶e̶ ̶w̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶o̶u̶t̶ and large patches of her uniform h̶u̶l̶l̶ were missing altogether. Still, she still somehow had fighter-fairies left, and enough of her weapons systems were intact that she was still a grave threat. She hung in space above and behind Pegasus, doing something with the gun in her hand s̶o̶m̶e̶ ̶k̶i̶n̶d̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶n̶e̶w̶f̶a̶n̶g̶l̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶u̶r̶r̶e̶t̶ ̶g̶l̶o̶w̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶o̶f̶t̶ ̶w̶h̶i̶t̶e̶ that held Pegasus still.

"It appears – and it physically pains me to say this –" The Basestar said "– that Grand Moff Tarkin's incessant need for ever-more powerful weapons… may not have been completely pointless." She glanced at the Basestar-frigate. "Still, for all of that power, it leaves you open, doesn't it? You exhaust yourself firing that monstrosity, but if that fails to end the battle you are left helpless. Typical superweapon thinking."

The Basestar pressed her weapon into the back of Pegasus's head m̶a̶n̶o̶e̶u̶v̶r̶e̶d̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶ ̶p̶o̶i̶n̶t̶-̶b̶l̶a̶n̶k̶ ̶b̶a̶r̶r̶a̶g̶e̶, her surviving fighter-fairies also positioned themselves to shoot critical areas of Pegasus at a moment's notice. Pegasus didn't move or speak, so Galactica assumed that the Basestar was correct.

The Basestar turned to Daidalos. "You have attacked Imperial citizens –" Galactica assumed she was talking about the Heavy Raiders she and Daidalos had destroyed just now "– and as such I am obligated to retaliate in kind. However, in this case I will be satisfied with this ship," she gestured to Pegasus "in addition to a course back to the Galactic Empire."

"That wasn't the deal." Daidalos glared.

"I am altering the deal." The Basestar spat. "Pray I do not alter it further."

Galactica sighed. "I'll plot the course, dearie."

Daidalos and the Basestar both turned to her at once, Daidalos with confusion and the Basestar with distrust.

"Excellent." The Basestar said. "Naturally, I will require you to lead the way – to ensure there are no… 'transmission errors' in the course."

"Oh, I couldn't do that, dearie." Galactica replied. "I'm not jump-capable anymore – broke my spine, you see. You'll have to follow one of my Raptors instead." She waved over one of the Raptors that she had loaded a nuke onto earlier.

"Unacceptable." The Basestar responded immediately. "Without sufficient guarantees of this course's genuine nature, I cannot risk the safety of my crew."

Galactica shrugged. "Well dearie, in that case you shouldn't have held still for so long."

The Raptor she had waved over disappeared in a flash of light, and the Basestar made an odd choking noise.

"Oops. Sorry, deary." Galactica said, sounding neither surprised nor sorry. "She 'accidentally' jumped inside of you. Such a shame." Galactica sighed. "I'll miss her."

Sound didn't travel through space, but as radiation readings suddenly spiked from Chimera's aft, every other ship assembled imagined that they could hear a muffled 'boom'.