It hadn’t worked. The fleet admiral hadn’t blinked. He’d have to try something else. “Get me Grayson. We’re going to take him down to the shuttlebay. Let’s see what she does when it’s him that’s next in line to die.” Maybe that would be enough. Maybe that would change her mind.

The Vaadwaur commander had no doubt his forces would prevail in the end. Still, it had turned into a messy affair belowdeck, firefights breaking out across a half dozen decks. He wanted to end this before it spiraled further, and that meant getting inside the fleet admiral’s head.

The station shook as an errant spread of torpedoes impacted its shields.

The battle was in full effect beyond their walls, the Polaris, the Diligent, the Ingenuity and the Kennedy locked in a mortal struggle with his ships and with the station itself. Further out on the perimeter, his other forces were consumed too, battling the Juno, the Vesta, and the Lincoln at the system’s edge. “Sir, what of the battle?” asked his deputy. “Are you really going to leave right now?”

“I’m sure you can handle it while I’m gone,” the Vaadwaur commander replied, his tone vitriolic. “Consider this a field promotion.” Not that the fool deserved it, but he had better things to do. He was going down to the shuttlebay to handle this personally.

One of his officers emerged from the admiral’s ready room with the old man undergrip.

“Good of you to join us, Alex,” the Vaadwaur commander smiled cruelly. He was going to miss their pleasant conversations – except not really. The man had outlived his usefulness, but his death might prove motivation enough for the idiots knocking at the gates.

Vice Admiral Alex Grayson didn’t have the strength to look up, so brutalized over the ten days as the Vaadwaur interrogated him relentlessly for intelligence. He was slumped over, simply dragged by the security officer towards the turbolift. If he’d had the energy, he might have wondered where they were taking him, but he didn’t. He didn’t care. He had nothing left, not to resist, nor to even speak or think. He was just floating towards the end, one meter at a time.

The guard, the vice admiral, and the Vaadwaur commander came to a stop at the turbolift doors, and they waited as the system dispatched a lift. It took a bit longer than usual, but at last, the doors slid open.

What awaited them on the other side, though, was anything but what they were expecting, eight heavily armed Starfleet officers in flak jackets and helmets, their ruggedized phaser rifles at the ready.

Even though the Vaadwaur guard stood mere inches from the vice admiral, Dr. Lisa Hall, at the front of the assault team, didn’t hesitate. She simply pulled the trigger, turning the guard’s head to goop, the shot so close to Vice Admiral Grayson’s head that it singed his hair and caused his ears to ring.

Lieutenant Commander Keaton Ryder, standing beside Dr. Hall, almost did the same to the other Vaadwaur, but then he realized he recognized the man. It was the chief commander of the Vaadwaur forces, the one they’d identified during the pre-op. That would be a valuable capture, so he dropped his rifle and dove at him.

Behind him, Ensign Evelyn Luna and the three security officers from the Polaris poured out of the lift, fanning out across the command deck. They didn’t demand a surrender, and they didn’t wait for the Vaadwaur to make a move. Much to the Commander Robert Drake’s chagrin, Captain Kurayami Kioshi had set the rules of engagement as immediate shoot to kill due to imminent civilian life safety risk, and so they just sprayed rounds across the command deck without hesitation or delay, no heed for whether or not any of the Vaadwaur in the room had actually managed to get a hand on a weapon or not.

While his team flattened the room, Lieutenant Commander Ryder and the Vaadwaur commander tussled on the ground. As strong as the Vaadwaur commander was, Ryder’s grappling prowess gave him the upper hand, and eventually he got around on the Vaadwaur’s arm, locking in an armbar. But this wasn’t the gym. He didn’t wait for a tap. Instead, he just thrust upward with his hips, breaking the man’s arm in an instant.

The Vaadwaur commander howled in pain, and he tried to lift his other hand, but a heavy boot stepped down on it. He looked up to see Captain Kioshi, the old man, standing over him.

“Long time, no see,” Captain Kioshi smiled as he looked down at him. He remembered this asshole. He was the one that’d executed Fleet Captain Elsie Drake and Commander Mike Owens. “I brought friends this time.”

And then Captain Kioshi whacked him over the head with the butt of his rifle, knocking him out cold.

“You know I had him,” Lieutenant Commander Ryder grumbled as he got off the floor and dusted himself off. “Strength never beats form.”

“I know, but we’ve got more important things to do than roll around like a pair of lathered up pigs,” Captain Kioshi noted as his hand went for his combadge. “Command deck secure.” He then glanced over at Ensign Evelyn Luna, who had already slung her rifle back over her shoulder and was now seated at station operations, her hands flying furiously over the keys. “How’re we looking, Evelyn?”

“Not so good,” Ensign Luna replied frustratedly. She looked down at the dead guy by her feet. “This asshole tripped a lockout switch before I shot his face off.”

“Anything you can do from here?” Captain Kioshi asked.

“Besides access the public address system, I’ve got nothing,” Ensign Luna sighed as she glanced out at the cruisers trading blows in the space beyond the station. “At least the station’s not shooting at Polaris anymore.” Its phaser arrays and torpedo tubes were dormant now, the Polaris no longer having to contend with the station in tandem with the enemy ships.

“There’s that, at least,” Captain Kioshi nodded, and then he tapped his combadge. “Shafir, we’re locked out. Tell me you’ve got something.”

Belowdeck in the computer core, Chief Petty Officer Ayala Shafir and the shooters from the Lucre had cleaned out the place, and now she was jacked in at a station of her own, trying to work past the security routines the Vaadwaur had implemented on top of it. “I’m working on it, Kioshi.”

“Priority is shields first,” Captain Kioshi instructed. He wanted to open the way for the boarding parties from Polaris to reinforce the work Commander Eriksson was doing. “Then get us firing control.”

“Affirm. Call you back when I’ve got it.”

If they couldn’t get the rest of the Polaris shooters over to the station yet, maybe there was another option? Another way to reinforce Commander Eriksson’s teams that were tearing across the station? He looked back over at his intelligence officer. “Evelyn, you said you’ve got the PA, at least?”

“Yep, but that’s about it,” Ensign Luna frowned. “Pretty much as useless a system as they come.”

“That’ll do just fine,” Captain Kioshi mused as his gaze drifted to the back wall where Commander Drake and one of Ryder’s security officers had gotten Vice Admiral Grayson sitting up, at least, as they worked to stabilize him. “Robert, can you get Alex in a state to address the station?”

Commander Drake glanced over at the intelligence chief. Was he serious? The vice admiral had been beaten half to death. “He’s in no shape to…”

“No…” Vice Admiral Grayson struggled to get the words out. “No, Robert. Kurayami is right. I need to address the station.” Even as discombobulated as he was, he understood where his intelligence chief’s head was at, and so, with labored breaths, he struggled to his feet.

Captain Kioshi came by his side to help him, and together, the two old men limped their way over slowly to Ensign Luna’s station. “You good for this, Alex?”

“I’ll manage,” Vice Admiral Grayson assured him with a light smile. After all the station had been through – a station he’d let down – this much he could do. He’d find the strength.

“Evelyn, activate the PA,” Captain Kioshi ordered. “Prepare for a station-wide address.”

While the command deck and the computer core were calm, the rest of the station was still a madhouse, nadions and polarons being exchanged between Starfleet and Vaadwaur soldiers as they traded blows.

Commander Kris Eriksson and the officers he’d freed had made access to the weapons locker in the office off the main promenade, and then, once they were loaded out, they’d fanned out in teams to secure various objectives across the station. But they didn’t make it far.

Crouching behind a large storage crate two decks beneath the promenade, Commander Eriksson and his squad dueled with a platoon of Vaadwaur that had pinned them down. He peaked out, lining up a shot and getting one kill off before he was forced to drop back again.

If it was going to be like this across five hundred decks, it was going to be slow going. And bloody too. In his periphery, he caught movement and glanced over as one of his men fell to the ground, having caught a stray from the enemy. Frick!

But suddenly, a voice came over the air, echoing across the station.

“This is Vice Admiral Alex Grayson to all persons… all persons on Archanis Station.”

He sounded horrible, Commander Eriksson thought to himself. Nothing like the sector commander he knew. But at least he was alive.

“For ten days, you… I… we have bled under the yoke of the Vaadwaur… but no more. No more, I say! If you have been waiting for the right time to rise up, that time… that time now!”

This was a rallying cry, an attempt to mobilize the station against its oppressors.

“Sailor or soldier, Starfleet or civilian, it doesn’t matter. Not now. We are all people of Archanis, and… and if you can shoot, stab, or punch, I call on you now to take up arms against our enemy… and to fight back… for yourself and for all those who call this place home. We need you, and we need you now!”

Holy shit. Even if his delivery had been rough, Vice Admiral Grayson had just done it. Against his own best instincts, those to preserve life over all else, he’d mobilized the entire station, calling on everyone, Starfleet and civilian alike, to rise up and fight.

And they did.

In the minutes that followed, those forced into the labor squads set down their tools, and those cowering in fear emerged from their quarters. Beaten and brutalized as they were, they came in droves, hundreds, and then thousands even, ready to do their part to take back the station.

They had nothing to lose, and everything to gain.