The station shook. Hard. 

And then it shook again. Even harder this time. 

They couldn’t keep taking hits like this, Fleet Captain Elsie Drake knew, but there was little they could do. This wasn’t a starship. They couldn’t just take evasive actions, and their fighter screen was being picked off one by one. What she wouldn’t have given to have Polaris Squadron around right now, or even the Lincoln. But alas, they were all alone in the night.

“Ma’am, shields are failing!”

Everything was falling apart. Fast. They were being swarmed by fighters and assault escorts, by battlecruisers and by something could only describe as a dreadnought, a beast almost a mile long, bristling with polaron emitters and torpedo tubes and driven by an absolutely immense power core. It was built for one purpose and one purpose alone.

The dreadnought fired again, and this time, it wasn’t the station’s metaphasic shields that took the hit. No, the emitters were spent and the matrix collapsed, and the high-energy polarons and torpedoes ripped directly into the ablative armor and the duranium triple hull of the Canopus class station.

The floor buckled under her feet and sent her flying.

As she struggled to get back up, she looked around to see what was left of the place. Smoke, flame and bodies filled the once-lively command center. Damage control and medical crews were rushing in to put out electroplasma fires and tend to the wounded, but to what end?

“Any response to our distress call?” Fleet Captain Drake asked, hoping that maybe, just maybe, someone out there would come to their aid. Otherwise, they were doomed.

“Not a one,” sighed the communications officer dejectedly. He’d sent the call, and sent it again, but the blackout had enveloped them. Even if someone was out there, they couldn’t hear it.

“What state are we in Mike?” Fleet Captain Drake asked, although if the command center was any indication, she already knew the answer.

“Shields are gone, structural integrity is failing, and…” Commander Mike Owens reported as his eyes got wide. “And fuck, we’ve got boarding parties now.” As if they didn’t have enough issues to deal with, the Vaadwaur were now on the ground within the station.

Fleet Captain Drake tapped her combadge. “Eriksson, you’ve got company.”

Fifteen decks down, Commander Kris Eriksson heard the call as he charged forward, his Type-3 phaser rifle shouldered tightly, ready to engage the enemy at a moment’s notice.

“Go! Go! Go! We need to cut them off before they hit open ground!” 

If the Vaadwaur spread out and dug in, it would be a nightmare to flush them out. He had no intention of letting this turn into a melee across the station. Not when they had fifteen thousand civilians aboard. They had to hit them hard. And fast.

He rounded a corner, and that was the first time he saw them. The Vaadwaur. A boarding party, nearly fifty armor-clad soldiers in total, had beamed into the middle of the main promenade, and they were beginning to fan out. They moved with military precision, their rifles at the ready as their beady eyes searched for targets.

Without hesitation, the commander dropped to one knee, using a support pylon to shield his burly frame as he squeezed the trigger, holding it down and unleashing a relentless barrage of fire in the direction of the enemy. Beside him, his men did the same.

The Vaadwaur responded in kind, and immediately, the usually-busy shopping and dining area was alight with polarons and nadions as they dueled between storefronts and eateries.

And then the bodies began to fall. 

To the commander’s left, a lieutenant, one of his best young up-and-comers, took a hit to the chest. The light left his eyes, and Commander Eriksson didn’t even bother trying to rush to his side to help. There was no point. The kid was already dead, his innards fried in an instant as high-energy polarons irradiated his cardiovascular and nervous systems.

Then, to his right, an ensign fell, and a petty officer too.

For each of his team that fell, so too did a Vaadwaur soldier. But there were more Vaadwaur than he had security officers, and he just couldn’t stomach these trades. The Vaadwaur, they’d just keep coming, but his men and women, they couldn’t be replaced.

“Fall back! Fall back!” Commander Eriksson shouted to those still standing. If they pulled back, the Vaadwaur would be able to establish a foothold, but he didn’t have a choice. Not unless he was willing to lose everyone.

Swiftly, his team began to fall back.

This was not a good start. The commander tapped his combadge. “Eriksson to Command. We’ve lost the promenade. There’s too many of them. I need reinforcements down here on the double.”

But there was no response. Not because no one was listening, but because comms were dead.

Down another forty levels, another Vaadwaur boarding party had breached the main computer core, and immediately they had gone to work. Within thirty seconds, they’d breached Starfleet cybersecurity protocols, and within another twenty seconds, they’d crippled the station’s master communications system. 

The crew were now as cut off from each other within the station as the station was from the rest of the galaxy. A blackout within a blackout. No one to hear their screams. And scream they would. This was only the start.

Up in the command center, things just continued to devolve.

“I can’t give you a targeting solution because the reactor isn’t putting out enough power to do anything more than tickle them,” Commander Owens lamented as he slammed his hands down on the console in frustration. The station had nothing left to give. Not a damn thing. All that preparation, all those drills, none of it had mattered. The Vaadwaur had walked right over them. This fight was as good as over.

“What about the boarding parties?” Vice Admiral Grayson asked. “Our residents are depending on us.” His mind was on the families and children currently cowering in their rooms, sheltering in place, still hanging onto hope that Starfleet would keep them safe. But their faith appeared to be for naught. Unless they could pull a miracle out of their ass.

“We’ve lost internal sensors,” Fleet Captain Drake reported, now in the seat of an operations officer who’d been knocked unconscious by the last barrage. “They went down right after the comms did.” If the Vaadwaur had compromised their comms and sensors so fast, it would only be a matter of time before they were locked out altogether. “What’s the next move?”

“I…” Vice Admiral Grayson struggled with the words. “I don’t know.” They had no weapons, no shields, no sensors, and no comms. The reactor was failing, life support was on the fritz, and structural integrity was failing. And there were Vaadwaur soldiers crawling all over the station. 

What really could they do?

The only good news was that the Vaadwaur juggernaut and its minions, the ones that’d carved up their shields and turned their great station into a pile of space junk, had stopped firing, now sitting there motionless in the night, their cannons silent.

“What the hell are they doing?” Fleet Captain Drake asked as she looked out the viewscreen. “Why are they just sitting there?” They looked like a pack of coyotes snarling at their wounded prey as they prepared to feast.

“We’re blind, we’re deaf, and we’re mute, lying in a pool of our own blood,” Captain Kurayami Kioshi offered gruffly from a corner bench where he’d kicked back to watch the battle unfold. “They can just sit there and watch us as we bleed out.”

Fleet Captain Drake looked over at the intelligence chief like she was about to rip his head off. The old fuck hadn’t done a damn thing the entire fight. He’d just sat there like he was watching a holonovel unfold. “Do you ever have something positive to…”

But she didn’t get a chance to finish her sentence.

Suddenly, bright shimmers of light intruded their space, all around them, and as the shimmers faded, in their place stood two dozen heavily-armed Vaadwaur soldiers, adorned in full body armor, their rifles raised and ready.

An ensign in yellow went for his phaser, but a Vaadwaur soldier simply brought his rifle around and squeezed the trigger. The kid’s hand had never even made it to the hilt of his weapon.

Another tried the same. Also dead within a heartbeat.

The rest of the crew just froze. What else could they do?

Using their muzzles as cattle prods, the Vaadwaur began to round up the crew, grouping them in the center of the large command center like lambs to the slaughter.

As they did, one of the Vaadwaur, an older creature and with an air of superiority about him, eyed the lot over with a discerning gaze. His eyes fell on Vice Admiral Grayson. In the old man, he could see the look of someone who thought he was in charge, and the pips on his collar confirmed as much. “You there. You, come here,” the Vaadwaur commander ordered.

Vice Admiral Grayson felt the butt of a rifle against his back as one of the Vaadwaur soldiers urged him forward. Knowing he had no choice, he went with it, taking several steps forward. When he came to a stop, he announced himself. “I am Vice Admiral Alexander Grayson, Commander, Archanis Sector Op…”

Thwack.

The butt of the soldier’s rifle hit him square in the back of the head.

Vice Admiral Grayson tumbled to the floor.

“No. No you are not,” the Vaadwaur commander said as he stepped forward, glowering at him like a fresh meal. “Henceforth, you are simply a nameless subject of the Vaadwaur Supremacy. Nothing more and nothing less.”

The admiral forced himself off the floor, getting back to his feet, now face-to-face with the Vaadwaur. He did not flinch. “If you think that you can march in here and demand our fealty at gunpoint, you have no idea who we are,” Vice Admiral Grayson declared with a conviction that was as enviable as it was foolish. “We are Starfleet.”

“Ah yes, I forgot,” the Vaadwaur commander cackled. “The great Starfleet. Yes. How could I forget?” His eyes darted around the room, looking for something. “The fool’s agency that clings to life above all else.” He found what he was looking for.

“You cannot walk in here and intimidate us,” Vice Admiral Grayson insisted firmly.

“Oh, you misunderstand me, old man,” the Vaadwaur commander said as he walked up to the woman adorned with the pips of a fleet captain. “I am not here to intimidate you.” He looked the young lady over, from head to toe. Yes, she would do just fine. “I am here to terrorize you.”

She did not balk, but neither did he.

He simply raised his sidearm, and then, without leveling any demands or giving anyone a chance to beg for her life, he simply pulled the trigger. A life was so easy to take. And so effective as a lesson. They would not soon forget.

Elsie Drake was dead before she hit the deck.

The air left Vice Admiral Grayson’s lungs as he stared at the motionless body of his executive officer. What the fuck?! Elsie had done nothing. Not a damn thing! If anyone deserved that, it was him. He was the one that had drawn the line. Why did she have to pay?!

For a moment, there was desperation. And then anger. That creature, it would pay. He took a step forward, blood in his eyes, but two Vaadwaur soldiers blocked his path.

“Oh, do I have your attention now?” the Vaadwaur commander smiled maniacally, pleased with the reaction. He’d simply assumed the girl was one of his charges, but by his reaction, she was clearly something more. How convenient. “Change your tune and bow to your new masters, or else…”

He raised his sidearm once more.

And again, without a moment’s pause, he simply pulled the trigger.

Commander Owens crumbled to the floor.

Vice Admiral Grayson’s legs went weak. No warning? No chance for him to beg their captor to reconsider? Nothing at all? First Elsie and now Mike? Mike was the happy go lucky member of his staff that always reminded them to keep it playful, and Elsie was the closest thing he’d ever had to a daughter. Was this monster going to do this one by one until there was no one left?

“Alex, I think we should listen to our new master,” came the voice he least expected to hear.

The admiral turned and watched as Captain Kioshi took a step forward. There was no fight on his intelligence chief’s face, but rather just a softness and feebleness in his gait.

The captain approached the Vaadwaur commander slowly, no sudden movements, and then he took a knee and bowed his head. In submission. To the Supremacy.

“I feel like we could have done better than this,” the Vaadwaur commander snickered as took in the sight. This balding man would be the first, but not the last, that would bow beneath the yoke before the day was out. “Alex, you really should listen to the old man. Otherwise, I can just…”

His phaser began to rise again, but this time, Vice Admiral Grayson was faster. 

He dropped to a knee and lowered his head.

No one else had to die. Not today.

The Vaadwaur commander grinned.

Archanis Station now belonged to the Vaadwaur.