Battle for the Badlands

Posted on Tue Aug 4th, 2026 @ 9:58pm by Captain Rhenora Kaylen & Commander Savar cha'Salik hei-Surak Talek-sen-deen & Commander Jenna Ramthorne & Commander Dean House & Lieutenant Commander Thriss Kla'ren & Lieutenant Commander Aurora Vali & Lieutenant JG Jacob Rosen
Edited on on Tue Aug 4th, 2026 @ 9:59pm

2,968 words; about a 15 minute read

Mission: Pirates!
Location: Badlands

"Victory is a fragile thing. It lasts only until another shadow enters the hunt. Every hunter believes himself the apex predator... until something bigger opens its eyes."

Badlands

The Badlands burned. Plasma rivers twisted through towering walls of ionized gas while electrical storms stitched brilliant veins of white across crimson clouds. Debris from the earlier engagement drifted silently between them, glowing briefly whenever another wave of charged particles swept past. Space itself seemed exhausted.

The five Federation ships no longer resembled a formation. They had become fragments.

The Defiant rolled away beneath one storm front, venting plasma from her port quarter. The Akira-class U.S.S. Sunfire limped through another corridor, shields flickering stubbornly as damage control teams fought to keep pace with the battle. The remaining vessels spread across thousands of kilometers, each captain maneuvering independently after the Imperial carrier had smashed directly through their coordinated attack.

The I.S.S. Sunfire had paid dearly for the maneuver.

Her armor remained blackened from repeated impacts. Entire sections of her shield grid shimmered erratically. One flight pod still vented atmosphere into the surrounding void. Yet she continued her turn with the slow, deliberate confidence of a wounded predator refusing to acknowledge injury.

Then the darkness shifted.

At first it seemed another distortion within the Badlands. A deeper shadow moving beneath the crimson clouds. Sensors struggled to resolve it. Long-range returns scattered into meaningless echoes before gradually settling into something impossible.

Mass. Armor. Weapons. The shadow became a warship. Immense.

Its obsidian hull emerged from the plasma like a mountain rising from beneath the sea, layer after layer revealing itself until the full scale of the dreadnought dwarfed every vessel already engaged. Weapons arrays lined its flanks in disciplined rows. Heavy armor swallowed what little light escaped the surrounding storms. It did not rush toward the battlefield.

It simply arrived.

Across five Federation bridges, conversations stopped. No one spoke. No one needed to. Every captain reached the same conclusion at the same moment. If that ship had been waiting unseen...

...how many others were hiding within the Badlands?

The Marshall's warship loomed large out of the gaseous expanse of the Badlands, choosing to go on the offensive rather than defend the portal. She felt compelled to assist, rather than watch the Sunfire against almost unbeatable odds. Remal had survived worse, but there was a tug deep in her heart that wanted him alive after this.

"Target the Prime Sunfire - bring down their shields and beam my counterpart on board when you do." The Marshall ordered, sitting in the elaborate throne in the centre of the bridge.

---

USS Sunfire - Medical Bay

The first casualties never arrived together. They drifted through the doors in uneven waves, carried by security officers, guided by shipmates, or pulling themselves along handrails with the stubborn determination unique to Starfleet. Blood formed crimson spheres in the intermittent gravity before attendants swept them aside with practiced motions. Burned uniforms, fractured limbs, plasma scoring, decompression trauma. Each new patient carried another piece of the battle into Sickbay.

Cathaur stood near the center of the ward, tricorder in one hand, her eyes moving faster than the display could update. She did not search for the loudest voice or the worst injury. She searched for the patient who would die first if overlooked.

"Lieutenant Voight," she called calmly, already kneeling beside an ensign whose breathing had become shallow. "Pulmonary trauma. Stable for the next forty-three seconds. After that, less so."

She looked up only long enough to find Sarah Wilson across the compartment, directing biobeds into position with quiet authority despite the growing crush of bodies.

"Lieutenant Wilson. We should begin color triage. They are arriving faster than we can finish them."

Another pair of stretchers crossed paths as Roman Chase emerged from behind a privacy screen, sleeves already stained with blood that belonged to several different people. Cathaur caught his eye and simply pointed with two fingers toward a young operations officer clutching her abdomen.

"Internal hemorrhage," she said. "She does not know it yet." Roman altered course without question.

Around them, Sickbay settled into its familiar rhythm. Controlled voices. Focused hands. The sharp hiss of hyposprays. The quiet reassurance offered to frightened patients. Outside, the ship continued to fight for its life. Inside, they fought for everyone else's.

Cathaur paused only once, lifting her gaze toward the closed doors as another distant impact reverberated through the deck. The ship shuddered beneath her feet.

"They are still bringing us work," she observed softly. Then she turned back to the next patient before anyone had time to answer.

Olivia moved as quickly as she could between patients seeing to their needs. It seemed as though things would keep her and the rest of the staff busy for awhile.

---

USS Sunfire - Bridge

Savar stared at the sensor data scrolling across his display. He forced himself to look at the information again not wanting to accept the data it showed, There was no change or denying the information. "Captain." he addressed Rhenora even as the newest arrival to the battle showed itself. It was immense, a virtual colossus, a megalodon among goldfish. An apex predator. This was a warship in every sense of the word.

"Orders?" He finally managed to get out.

For the barest instant there was hesitation, a conflict between their issued orders and the undeniable drive to survive to fight another day. The new arrival was indeed powerful, a massive ship designed to slaughter its opponents, not fight them. But if they yielded now, if they retreated from this battle, the next would be harder, the foothold established, and one small part of the Alpha Quadrant would be lost to a universe that didn't belong.

" Regroup - Tactical, find us somewhere to hide, just long enough to come up with a better plan. We need options - and good ones." She spoke to the entire bridge, allowing anyone the opportunity to speak up and voice their thoughts.

"Agreed," Savar answered simply as he began running through different options to combat the newest entry into the battle. Perhaps they could use their numbers against the massive warship. Take on the role of mosquitoes to harass in the hope of causing enough damage that it withdrew from the battle back into the portal.

Jacob turned in his chair to face the center command area. "Captain, if we want to focus on hit-and-run tactics, we could program probes from all ships in the task force to give off spoofed drive signatures, creating duplicates of all our ships. That may give us an opening and give us the chance to slip away from each successive strike."

Bonnie looked up from her console, the damage reports momentarily forgotten as another set of possibilities began assembling themselves in her mind. "That's a good idea," she said, already reaching for her controls. "Sensor echoes... We don't have to convince people, we only have to convince their sensors." Her fingers engaged in a fluidic dance across the LCARS display as diagrams bloomed upon the console.

"If every ship launches a spread of probes broadcasting synchronized warp field harmonics, shield modulation bleed, impulse plasma signatures, and subspace telemetry matching the parent vessel, enemy targeting sensors won't just see decoys. They'll see legitimate sensor returns." She zoomed in on a cluster of icons. "If we vary the phase offset by a few picoseconds and introduce stochastic gravimetric noise, each signature will accumulate its own sensor history instead of looking like a copied transmission. They'll have to spend valuable processing time deciding which contacts are real before they can establish a weapons lock."

Bonnie glanced toward Jacob with an appreciative smile. "It won't fool a visual scan at close range, but inside the Badlands they'll already be fighting plasma interference, gravimetric distortions, and subspace scattering. We'd be asking their computers to solve an impossible equation while we're changing the variables."

Jenna's eyes never left the tactical overlay as red threat indicators blossomed across her flight display. "Whatever you're planning, make it sooner rather than later. You have about ten seconds to make that plan brilliant." Her fingers swept across the helm, laying in an evasive flight path before the dreadnought's targeting solution could fully converge. Another escape vector appeared beside it, then a third, each one calculated to branch from the last depending on how the enemy responded. "The dreadnought has us painted."

"Send that to all ships in the fleet, Engineering. We need probes yesterday. Tactical, come up with the best firing solution you can, Ops - download the sensor data into the probes and prepare them to launch," Rhenora snapped out orders as the dreadnought continued to close in on their position.

"Jenna - I need you to buy us some time.. a few minutes even to get this happening. Co-ordinate with your equals on the other ships"

"Aye, Captain," Jacob replied in response to the orders as he began to configure the spread of probes for launch with the sensor download. Looking back to Bonnie, he smiled sheepishly. "Commander, I could use a double check on my math. I only got a C in Diffy Q with Professor Vizzog back at the Academy." Jacob tapped a few commands, sharing the config file with her station.

Bonnie accepted the shared configuration automatically. The moment Professor Vizzog's name reached her ears, she stopped typing and looked at Jacob in genuine disbelief. "Why was he so mean?" she blurted. "I still have nightmares about his exams." The memory vanished as quickly as it had arrived. Her eyes returned to the stream of mathematics filling her display. Eigenvalues. Phase functions. Harmonic propagation. Her fingers moved almost as quickly as the computer, tracing each assumption through the calculations instead of simply accepting the result.

"Your math is solid," she said after a few seconds. "You compensated for the subspace phase drift and accounted for the plasma shear in the Badlands." A small smile crept onto her face as she forwarded the verified solution back to his console. "Professor Vizzog would probably deduct two points for your notation..." She shrugged. "...which means it's close to perfect."

"You know, if it wasn't for the fact that it would give it away that we have this weapon, we could use the Bouncie Bonnie. Since that's not exactly an option to give away. Simplify it. Make the computers try to beat themselves at chess." Dean winked.

"And how do we get their computer into an eternal loop when they know exactly where to find us and where to hit us?" Rhenora asked, twisting around in her seat to eyeball Dean.

"Indeed, captain, though if we could get it to figure out the value of Pi to the last digit, that would effectively lock up their computer," Savar stated/suggested and waited for reactions.

An eyebrow raised, well, healing on Dean's left side. "We let them. You're wanting to send out how many probes? Every single one is going to be programmed a certain way. They are going to try to take that information." He gave a pause, "To try and triangulate our position, or any other ships in the fleet. Slight code in there, with coordinates, just jumping on the back of what Lieutenant Rosen was talking about."

"Can you get it done in the next two minutes before they find our location and blow us out of the sky?" Rhenora asked, wincing as a hot lance of phaser fire blasted through the nebula just off their port bow. "They're probing for us, trying to flush us out"

Bonnie's hands blurred across the LCARS controls. "Already on it, Captain. I've always wanted to weaponize homework." She released a noise akin to a giggle, just as a console nearby erupted in a shower of sparks.

"Get it done before they find us," Kaylen ordered as the Dreadnought continued to methodically fire at them through the nebula. After a few moments, Rhenora frowned, then issued what appeared to be a random heading.

"Jenna, 145 mark 4, 200 kilometres, thrusters only. I've seen this pattern before...."

Jenna's hands guided the Sunfire through the ordered course correction, impulse engines falling silent as maneuvering thrusters took over with delicate bursts of controlled force. The great ship seemed to drift with the nebula itself, altering her heading almost imperceptibly.

"Aye, Captain. Coming to 145 mark 4, thrusters only." Her eyes flicked between the tactical overlay and the fleet telemetry streaming across her console. "The task force is closing ranks. The Defiant has taken damage to her port nacelle and is falling slightly out of position. The Bristol is moving up to take point while the remaining ships continue to engage." She paused as another volley lit the sensor display with fleeting icons. "They're holding the line, Captain... but that dreadnought is shrugging them off like insects."

"Launch the probes the minute they're ready" Rhenora ordered as another shot lanced by them. It was an old Bajoran sweeping tactic. One she knew well.

"Change heading 160 mark 45, when they begin the counter move it should take us under their belly" she continued. "1/8th impulse on my mark, standby all weapons to fire on their secondary power relays"

"Probes away Captain." Jacob reported crisply, reading reports from his interface. "Task Force is showing the same... Spread pattern complete. Beginning sensor spoof protocol Scarecrow 1 now." He smirked at seeing the probes of their little fleet begin to emit very convincing sensor duplicates. "Suppose they'll crack open a window?"

"It would be the logical thing for them to do Mr. Rosen as well as give us and the task force the time we need to inflict sufficient damage to the..." Savar stated from his station.

Jenna guided the Sunfire with the same concentration she reserved for threading a shuttle through an asteroid field. Every pulse of the maneuvering thrusters nudged the much larger ship exactly where she wanted it, carrying them beneath the dreadnought's sprawling ventral hull with only kilometers to spare.

"Coming to 160 mark 45." She watched the targeting solution drift harmlessly overhead and allowed herself the smallest hint of satisfaction. "We're under her. Whoever designed this thing never expected a pilot to sneak under her back door."

The Sunfire ducked under the dreadnoughts underbelly, weapons arcing as they lashed out in close proximity. The Dreadnought began taking potshots at the probes, confused at this new tactic.

"Inflicting damage to the dreadnought but is minor so far." Savar reported.

"Keep at it while they're confused - it's only going to be a limited window before they figure out what is happening" Rhenora said grimly.

---

I.S.S. Sunfire – Bridge

The tactical display erupted into chaos. One contact became three. Three became twelve. Twelve became dozens. Federation transponder signatures blossomed across the holographic projection until the Badlands appeared filled with starships. Akiras. Defiants. Steam-runners. Every heading contradicted the last. Weapons solutions dissolved as quickly as they formed while targeting computers struggled to decide which ships actually existed.

Bridge officers exchanged uneasy glances. The computer had stopped making sense. Remal watched the display without expression. "What," he asked quietly, "am I looking at?"

Bonnie studied the flood of telemetry racing across her console. She zoomed in, discarded one solution, then another. Her brow lifted. "...Oh, that's adorable." She smiled to herself. "They're haunting us." She almost sounded impressed.

"Sensor echoes. Ghosts. They've seeded the Badlands with probes broadcasting synchronized ship signatures." Another cluster of contacts split apart before her eyes. "Unless we destroy every probe..." She looked up with a crooked smile. "...we'll expend energy hunting reflections."

Remal considered the display for one measured heartbeat. "Remove the lies."

Bonnie blinked. "Captain?"

"The tactical display." For a brief moment nobody moved. Then the projection vanished. The bridge suddenly seemed larger. Colder. Beyond the transparent aluminum viewport the Badlands stretched before them in crimson storms and drifting plasma, no longer filtered through algorithms or probability models.

"We fight visually."

The navigator adjusted course using nothing but sight, the storms, and instinct.

Remal stepped closer to the forward viewport. "There."

Beneath the Marshal's immense dreadnought, a familiar silhouette skimmed along the armored underbelly, exploiting the one angle too close for the larger ship's heavy batteries to engage effectively.

The Prime Sunfire. A faint smile touched one corner of his mouth. "Persistent." Remal was already moving toward the viewport.

Bonnie had moved somewhere else entirely. Not physically. Mentally. Subspace traffic unfolded beneath her fingertips like a language deciding whether it wanted to be understood. Frequency hopping. Burst encryption. Fleet telemetry. "...Wait." She froze. "Oh, you clever monsters." She almost sounded delighted.

Remal turned only his head. "What?"

"They're sharing flight path and targeting data." Another command. Another realization. "They've linked every fire-control computer in the task force into a common tactical network." Her smile returned, wider this time. "It's slutty, but simple."

"Can you break in?"

"Easy." Her fingers resumed their impossible pace. "I can convince it that one ship is more interesting than the others."

Remal regarded her for the briefest moment. "Do it."

The bridge fell silent. Seconds crawled past. "Come on..." Her fingertips danced across the console. "You don't believe them. You obey me now." Another command. "There you are." She smiled. "Good computer."

Nobody reacted. Nobody ever reacted anymore. They had learned that lesson. Then... Across the forward viewport, four Federation starships broke formation. Almost simultaneously.

The Defiant rolled to port. The Bristol altered course. The Steamrunner accelerated. The last escort pivoted in perfect synchronization. One by one...

...their weapons rotated. Not toward the Imperial ships. Toward the U.S.S. Sunfire.

Bonnie leaned back slowly. "I think..." Her grin became positively feral. "...they're about to have a very awkward conversation."

TBC

 

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