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But those ten minutes had numbered among the longest of Reynard’s young life.

Despite the relative brevity of the engagement—or perhaps because of it—his recollections of the fight were still largely a jumble. In retrospect his own participation now seemed like the narrowest conceivable triumph of training over the good sense that inspired some people to tuck tail and run. But whatever errors he might have made in the heat of battle, he’d at least managed to remain focused on the fight, thanks in large part to Captain Shea’s calmly delivered orders.

The commander felt justifiable pride in that; that feeling gave him something positive to focus his mind on rather than the wholesale death that had been inflicted upon Endeavour and across the rest of the Coalition fleet. There would be plenty of time to deal with that later.

What Reynard recalled about the battle was that he had stayed at his post throughout the merciless exchanges of phase cannon fire and Romulan disruptor bursts. Through the ceaseless hail of torpedo strikes and the less frequent, if more terrifying, eruptions of spherical nuclear fireballs—one of which had detonated close enough to Endeavour to completely melt her portside defensive hull-plating system— Reynard had done his duty. Endeavour was crippled but still there.

He closed his eyes, shutting out the corpses that still littered the deck, and the forest of scorched consoles, dangling conduits, and burned bulkheads that surrounded him. He imagined Endeavour in her pristine state on the day he’d piloted her out of spacedock right after Captain Winchester, Endeavor’s first CO, had given him the traditional “take her out” order.

Your paint was barely dry, he thought, imagining he was communing with Endeavour herself. And look we’ve done to you already: eighteen days of service and you’re already an old lady before your time.

Opening his eyes again, Reynard resumed studying the large forward viewscreen, one of the few bridge components that still functioned, more or less. Some six hundred kilometers above Altair VI’s partially cloud-obscured surface, at least a dozen battle-ravaged ships were visible describing leisurely ellipses about the planet. Some of the vessels were still in one piece, like the Cooper and the Maryland, while others, like the Montgomery and the Tripoli, had been divided into several. Other starships were moving in to render aid to their crippled brethren. That was a real relief to see, since Endeavour herself wasn’t going anywhere for a while, at least not under her own power.

Reynard turned his chair slightly to the right and watched as Lieutenant Esther Stiles, her blue uniform jumpsuit scorched badly, her forehead bruised and bleeding, limped from an emergency stairwell to the bridge’s center. Obviously exhausted, and very likely in shock, the youthful weapons officer came to a stop beside the command chair and steadied herself on a length of twisted railing nearby.

“Looks like we get to chalk another one up for our side,” Stiles said, her eyes huge and haunted. Although Reynard had never gotten the time to get acquainted with her, he did know that this war had already cost Stiles a number of family members.

“I think we won,” she said, and Reynard nodded numbly in response.

Stiles’s remark reminded Reynard of something Captain Shea had said to him shortly after Commander Goldser had died during a Romulan sneak attack—just before Shea had field-promoted Reynard to the XO position he had occupied for the past one hundred or so hours. “Nobody really wins a war,” the captain had said. “You might prevail. Or they might prevail. But nobody really wins.”

His gaze once again riveting itself upon the main viewer, Reynard nodded noncommittally to Stiles, whom he realized with a start was the only person on the bridge, other than himself, who remained alive. “At least it looks like we... prevailed.”

More than half of the wrecked or damaged Coalition ships that now slowly tumbled around Altair VI were of either Andorian or Tellarite