“Well, that was easy enough…” Captain Lewis chuckled almost nonchalantly as he and Sena strode back into the security office, their interrogation concluded for now. But then he saw his first officer standing there. “Commander, I thought you went back to the bridge?” 

The look on the young man’s face said it all. “I… I… I wanted to see.”

“Doesn’t look much like you actually did,” Lieutenant Commander Sena observed scrutinously as she walked over to the sonic sink in the corner of the room. “But welcome to adulthood, commander. The first time is always the hardest.” She seemed not even the slightest bit perturbed by what they’d just done as she began to wash the Vaadwaur’s blood off her hands.

“We got what we came for,” Captain Lewis added with a tinge more empathy for his first officer. He had told him to go back to the bridge for a reason, but what was done was done. “We have a way to strike back.” He looked over at the Romulan. “For her people, and for ours.” That’s what this was about, after all. The Vaadwaur had launched an all-out invasion of the galaxy. This approach, while a tad messy, was the fastest way to get some answers, and it’s not like they’d even killed their prisoner or anything.

As the captain spoke, the Betazoid’s eyes fell to the captain’s jacket, to the blood that now stained it. That blood belonged to the Vaadwaur in their brig, blood spilled as they cut him up with Sena’s blade and then patched him back together, only to do it again and again until at last he broke. “That… that wasn’t normal. That’s not what we do.”

“We do what we must,” Captain Lewis answered flatly. “You heard the intercepts. You know the stakes. The ends justify the means, and we got what we needed. We know now how to hit them where it will hurt. When compared to that, what is a little blood?” Still, this was why he’d told the young man to go back to the bridge. He hadn’t wanted him to have to live with those images etched in his mind for the rest of his days. “Trust me, Ekko. It had to be done.”

“I… I suppose,” Lieutenant Commander Eidran replied, but he wasn’t convinced. He had trusted the captain to the literal ends of the galaxy, but this? This was something he’d never be able to unsee, a mark that would be indelibly burned into him even just for the fact he’d stood there and watched it happen. He’d have to confront that someday, but right now, the captain was right on one thing. The interrogation had yielded an opportunity to strike back, and they needed to take it while the lead was hot. The galaxy, it seemed, needed this from them. “So what are we going to do? What’s the plan?”

“Destroy the arrays, and destroy the hub,” Captain Lewis shrugged. Wasn’t that obvious?

“Yeah, I got that much,” Lieutenant Commander Eidran laughed lightly, but as simple as it sounded when he said it that way, he knew it wouldn’t be so easy. “As soon as we hit the first array though, they’re going to know the game is up, and if they’re smart, they’ll harden the second one with additional defenses. Once they do that, we’ll never be able to take it.” Not with a Duderstadt and a Pathfinder. Not against the sort of armada they’d seen the Vaadwaur deploy even just to this one system. This plan would only work if they struck while the Vaadwaur were still confident in their position, just like their prisoner still seemed to be.

“We’ll just hit them both at the same time,” Lieutenant Commander Sena volunteered as she came back over from the sink, her hands now free of the blood that had been on them just moments earlier.

“How? You heard his description of the defenses we can expect,” Lieutenant Commander Eidran pointed out. “It’s going to take all we’ve got between Serenity and Ingenuity just to take one out. We can’t split up.”

“We put our friend’s ship to work,” Lieutenant Commander Sena suggested as she looked back at the monitor where the Vaadwaur sat broken in their brig. “We use it to slip an away team aboard one and blow it up, while the Serenity and the Ingenuity take out the other.”

Not a bad idea, Captain Lewis had to admit. While he had never trusted the former Tal Shiar operative, it was nice working with someone of the same mind. “I assume you’re volunteering?”

“To get up close and personal with the Vaadwaur?” the Romulan smiled. “I’d relish the chance.” The captain hadn’t allowed her the satisfaction of killing their prisoner, and for what that Vaadwaur and his ilk had done to her people, she was craving that intimate sort of revenge you only got as you stood face to face with your foe and watched the light leave their eyes. She would enjoy every moment of it.

“Excellent,” Captain Lewis nodded contentedly. “I guess it’ll be you, me and the hazard team then.” Their hazard team was no regular team either. Since their stranding in the Beta Quadrant, he’d taken it upon himself to train them in his image, just in case they might ever need it. And now they would.

“Almost right,” Lieutenant Commander Eidran corrected. There was only one issue with the captain’s plan. It wasn’t something he was going to like, but it needed to be said. “It’ll be Sena and the hazard team going, but you are not. You will be staying here.”

Captain Lewis looked at his first officer incredulously. “Ekko, don’t tell me you’re about to give me one of those lectures about COs and away teams.” He’d heard that bullshit enough times over his many years that he knew the exact citation: Section 12, Paragraph 4.

“Oh, most certainly not,” Lieutenant Commander Eidran shook his head. “It’s just that the away team doesn’t need you. They’re just going to slide in there all nice and quiet and blow the place to bits. The Serenity and Ingenuity though, it’s going to get real hot when we go in, and we’ll need your voice and experience on the bridge.” His mind went to his girlfriend, the commanding officer of the Ingenuity. Cora was an incredible engineer and a compassionate leader, but she was no battlefield commander, nor truthfully was he, and if Captain Lewis left with the away team, it would be him and her calling the shots. “You don’t leave your best player on the bench when you’re going into your most important game.”

“One of us needs to go with the away team,” Captain Lewis pointed out. “We’re sending them halfway across the galaxy without backup.” Even if the former Tal Shiar operative and the hazard team were some of the best in the business, they’d be days, even via the Underspace, from anyone. No comms, no escape route, and no support. “I’m not going into a fight with Sherrod in the big chair, and that means we can’t send Cora either.” The executive officer of the Ingenuity, Lieutenant Commander Sherrod Allen, would be shitting bricks even riding shotgun, and that meant Commander Lee had to be in command of their sistership.

“By process of elimination, I guess that means it’s me that’s going then,” Lieutenant Commander Eidran concluded. He didn’t relish the fact. Not like Sena. He didn’t really even want to go at all. But the captain was right that one of them needed to be there.

Captain Lewis did not look pleased. He wanted to be there.

“Sena and I have got this, captain,” Lieutenant Commander Eidran promised. As much as what had happened in the brig had shaken him, it didn’t change the fact that this mission would deal a crippling blow to the Vaadwaur advance. He wouldn’t fail them. “Just do me a favor and make sure we see you and Cora on the other side.”

“Of course,” Captain Lewis nodded, although he knew it a lie. In war, which this very much appeared to be, there were no assurances that any of them would get out alive.