The command chair in Roosevelt Station’s Operations center was more akin to a throne than anything that Starfleet had ever installed on one of its ships, a place for the Thots who built the station to sit and command armadas from well behind the lines. For Karinu, tall even for a Kelpien, it was also the nearest thing to a comfortable seat she had found on duty in her entire Starfleet career.

Alpha Shift worked efficiently, as they always did, though little seemed to be happening this particular morning. Lieutenant Commander T’Ren debated fine points of law with Arbiter Keyere, while Lieutenant Commander Kron and Ensign Hawke discussed the ethics of warfare in frontier space.

All work got done, and the banter across Ops warmed the cold Breen-built space.

“Commander!” Hawke called out, turning in her seat. Her eyes were bright and blue, her hair short-cropped, and her dialect occasionally took a twist into the archaic, but she was probably the best engineer in the fleet at convincing Breen, Dominion, and Starfleet technology to work together. “The Lieutenant Commander insists that pacification of potential hostiles is a legitimate use of force, while I…”

She trailed off, eyes widening as she gazed at Karinu. “Commander?”

Karinu’s hand reached up, brushed the line of her skull. Twisting, twitching, her threat ganglia extended, and she closed her eyes. Death came. Death came, as vividly as she had ever felt it.

Ops fell silent. No one served with a Kelpien commander without knowing what this meant.

No alerts sounded. No pings, no explosions. Karinu rose. “Keyere, access your contacts. I will contact Starfleet.”

The crew went to their work, the Arbiter leaving via the turbolift. And Karinu stepped into her office. The seat there was made for a human, less comfortable than the one in Ops, but it did swivel, which let her turn to face the large screen on the stone wall to start her work.

Her first four calls, to other local commanders and civilians, accomplished very little. But then came the message from Admiral Beckett. By the eighth, she was starting to wonder if her threat ganglia were infected; by the twelfth, with three in a row returning no contact, she was certain they were not.

The man was difficult to get along with, next to impossible to put up with. But when he was afraid, it was always justified, and, while he disguised it well, no human could hide fear in his voice from a Kelpien. She listened to the message, then drew a breath.

“Trust only the Fourth Fleet.“

Karinu hit her call button. “Senior staff and the Arbiter to the command office immediately.”

It was less than ten minutes later when the staff was gathered. T’Ren and Kron sat opposite her, Hawke and Keyere flanking them. Karinu waited for everyone to be seated before she spoke.

“We do not know how or why,” she said. “But at least a part of the Dominion fleet that vanished in the Bajoran wormhole has returned. From what I have been able to gather, they have been attacking Starfleet ships and facilities, as well as civilian assets. They have been seen working alongside the Breen, and have not responded to hails.” She exhaled slowly, then met each of their eyes. “What I say next is not to leave this room. I tell you because you need to know, for the jobs you will do.”

Keyere raised an eyebrow. “I am not a Starfleet officer, Commander, and the law is the law. I will not…”

“It is not classified,” Karinu said. “It cannot be, because it is not officially acknowledged. We should expect little backup. Starfleet Command has denied the attacks, and is insisting they are the acts of rogue elements in the Breen government. Admiral Beckett is investigating why, but… he says to only trust the Fourth Fleet. That no one else is safe to trust.”

The words settled into place, and the room was silent for a long moment. Hawke was the first to speak. “Empty the bag, Commander. What’s coming?”

Karinu offered her youngest officer a small smile. “They will come here. I have no doubt of that. They will come here in force. I have already contacted local Fourth Fleet assets for backup, but I cannot be certain they will arrive in time, or that enough will be available. We don’t have time to evacuate the station. The best case scenario is that they are intelligent… they come, hit the station, destroy our communications and sensor arrays to deny Starfleet our logistical support, blow the shuttlebay to keep us from repairing them quickly, and move on.”

“What is the alternative?” T’Ren asked?

“They take the station.” It was Kron speaking, the blue of his uniform a contrast to his firm Klingon voice. “They board via the Long Shaft and the shuttlebay. Our position is strong, our crew well trained. They will pay in blood for every corridor, ten or more Jem’hadar dead for every one of our officers killed. But the Dominion’s tactics account for losses like that. They will take the station, and they will kill everyone on board, should they choose to board.”

Karinu nodded. “We have to be ready. Arbiter…” She looked at Keyere, the woman’s pure white robes the sign of her office as judge and priest. “See to your people. Everyone else, prepare the station for combat. We have a maximum of twelve hours. They are coming.”

A Dominion task group was on its way to the station. The ships had broken off from the main force three hours before, and were coming fast. They would arrive in six hours, and Starfleet had no resources in place to intercept them.

The scholar in T’Ren wanted to go to the Promenade, to see the civilians and enlisted crew’s response to the stress they were under. She could likely gather enough information for a paper, something that would earn her acclaim on Vulcan and advance the understanding of the differences between various cultures’ responses to extreme anxiety.

The person in T’Ren wanted to huddle in her bunk until there was something useful for her to do, deliberately avoiding the contemplation of her own mortality. There was little practical need for an anthropologist in preparing for an invasion, and she and Commander Karinu had given the necessary orders, delegated the required tasks. If the station could be made ready, their crew would accomplish that. They were capable, well-trained, and while the senior staff leaned heavily toward scientists and diplomats, she and Karinu had worked to fill out the junior officer complement with officers who had significant combat experience.

She had sat with Kron, whose parents and grandparents had all been warriors, and with Keyere, who had been a child on Lagash on the Breen border during the Dominion War, to discuss what was coming. The conclusion was inevitable – the Dominion force was large enough that, if they should choose to take the station, they would. Their only chance was to make it too expensive, to convince the Vorta that their Jem’hadar would be better spent on softer, more valuable targets, and that was a slim chance.

She would be called back to duty soon, to allow Karinu time to rest before the battle began. This was, she decided, no time to be a scholar, and time off-duty was no time to be an officer. It was time, T’Ren decided, to be a person.

The communications and sensor arrays were prioritized for critical traffic, but there were moments when personal messages could be sent. Many on the station were using that time to send messages to family. They had, T’Ren decided, the right idea. She took a PADD in hand.

“My dearest brother Sorel…”

Keyere Hala Hualing rose from her seat, a large mug of tea cupped between her hands, and sat on the edge of her bed. A PADD was resting atop the blankets, a letter on it. She had written the letter six months before, when she first arrived at Roosevelt and the reality of serving on the Breen border struck home. It was addressed to her family – her husband Yichen, her wife Zhang, their children. Looking at it now, when the possibility of death at the hands of the Breen had become a significant likelihood of her falling to Jem’hadar, it seemed… insufficient.

Three months ago, Yichen had given birth to their second son. Keyere hadn’t seen the boy anywhere but a viewscreen. Now, she likely never would. What could she say to a child she had never met, never held, but loved as much as she did their eldest son, their lovely daughter?

Hualing took the PADD, closed the letter. She would start anew. But first, she queued a message to the Arbiters’ Council for delivery in the next available cycle.

“I, Keyere Hala Hualing, declare my intention to take a two-month leave of absence from my duties two weeks from today.”

If she survived this attack, she would make certain her children knew her. She would make certain her beloveds remembered her presence.

A quill and ink were a profoundly inefficient way to compose a message for subspace transmission, but Ensign Amie Hawke didn’t plan to transmit her message. She had few friends outside the crew – few within it, either, her youth and low rank creating a boundary between herself and the rest of the senior staff; her place on the senior staff putting a barrier between herself and the rest of the crew. Her only family was a mad old man who had been dead far longer than Amie wanted to think about, the nearest thing to family she had was a Temporal Investigations agent who had vanished before she finished the Academy. But sometimes talking to someone she loved helped, even if that person couldn’t answer.

“Benji,” she said slowly as she wrote, her fingers as certain on her pen as they were working within the tight confines of the Breen-built maintenance spaces, where comfort didn’t matter and everything oriented itself to the profoundly inhuman physiology of the monsters who had hollowed out the boulder she called home. “I would say it has been too long since I wrote, except that I have waited far longer before, and given that you are dead I do not expect a reply from you, which is deeply unsocial of you. Still, I suppose I could blame the tyrant that is time for your absence, though I worry that would be absolving you of yet further culpability for your many, many vices.” None of that was necessary to her point, but if the Beyond had post, he did need to know it was her writing.

“They’ve done well, this lot,” she added. “Fell to our fears, then rose above them. Achieved dreams we would never dare to dream, either because we did not know what was possible or because Man had already spent too much of our faith in him. But there’s evil here, the wickedness we knew painted across the stars, and that wickedness is coming to me. I fear I may be joining you soon, Benji, but if I do, I come protecting the good things I have found since last I saw you.” She wiped a tear away before it could smudge her replicated ink.

“If I see you soon, save a pretty girl or two for me to kiss. If I somehow walk away from this with head still on shoulders, tell my da he’s still a bastard and my ma I wish I’d known her. Remember it was all, in the end, worthwhile.”

A good day to die.

Kron’s father would have described this day as that. His mother, his grandparents, his siblings and aunts and uncles. He stood at the center of his quarters, his gin’tak in both hands, stepping into an imagined strike as he performed his forms. Warriors, all of them. He had been born a commoner, on the far edges of the Empire, but his family had all leapt when the call to war had come. Two brothers dead in Romulan space, an uncle and a grandmother killed by the Dominion, all at the bosom of Kahless. They had died warriors’ deaths, and those who lived had lived warriors’ lives.

Kron was a scientist. He would fight – he felt the call of his blood, the call to battle – but he preferred the laboratory, his enemies the puzzles no one had yet solved, the contaminants in his samples, to the battlefield. He had chosen Starfleet because it honored its scientists in ways the Empire did not, and because it would offer times for him to answer his blood’s call.

Tradition and instinct told him that today was a good day to die. His studies said something different – that there was no good day to die. That death was a loss of potential, a loss of all the skills and knowledge the dead had accumulated. Of weapons against the enemy that was ignorance.

He spun, jabbing his spear hard at the air he came to face, let out a roar of rage. He did not fear death, but he did fear the loss of the people he had worked with for the last year. He feared the universe losing the four hundred good people aboard the station. So, today, he would not be a scientist. He would be a Klingon.

He would keep them safe.

Karinu rose from the command throne as T’Ren came in, nodded to her XO, and stepped into the turbolift. It was a four minute ride even in Roosevelt’s priority turbolifts from Ops to her quarters, and Karinu spent that time thinking about the inevitable.

Too many Dominion ships, too long before backup could arrive. Her orders from Admiral Beckett were to hold, as best she could, to keep Roosevelt’s logistical support in place long enough for Beckett and Fourth Fleet Command to determine the destinations of the Dominion attack groups as they broke away from the main fleet. It was an uncharacteristic bit of kindness that Beckett had not brought up the chances of her crew’s survival, and she had not asked him if rescue would come. The best answer that question could possibly have brought her was uncertainty.

Her letters were written, sent to family on Kaminar and friends on Earth and Bajor. She had spoken with her senior staff, with members of the crew she knew, with the leaders of the civilian population of the station, prepared them as best she could for what was coming. The civilians had been moved to the lowest levels, the power core and other critical systems secured with codes only her senior staff had access to, the orbital weapons arrays set in regeneration mode so they would be fully powered when the enemy arrived.

Karinu had only one duty remaining before the Dominion came to Roosevelt – to sleep, to rest as best she could before the fighting began. Her threat ganglia had not retracted. Death had come to the Deneb sector, on a scale not seen in decades. She would have a sleep full of nightmares.

Nightmares, Karinu decided as she pulled her heavy blanket into place, were a small price to pay.

“Situation.” Karinu stepped into Ops, and as she did T’Ren rose from the command throne, moving to the tactical station. The space was quiet, staff working at their stations.

“Four attack ships have broken away from the main force,” T’Ren said as she took her seat. “They are approaching at top speed. The remainder of the attack ships are remaining with the cruiser.”

“They will seek to move our defenses out of position,” Kron said. “To prevent us from focusing our fire on the cruiser.”

“Good strategy,” Karinu said. “The Vorta in command has memories of battle, at least. How long until they arrive?”

“Six minutes,” T’Ren said. “The orbital platforms are in place to intercept them.”

“Suggestions?” Karinu looked around the room.

“We give them what they want,” Kron said. “Let them split our defensive platforms, then cut their attack ships apart.”

“And the cruiser?”

“Harry it,” Hawke said from her place at Operations. “A massively superior force can fall against a sufficiently clever harrying attack. The Dominion will expect us to use our runabouts against their attack ships, where the matchup is closer – where two or three runabouts can possibly match one. We use them all to keep the cruiser distracted, damage its systems, keep it from focusing on the station’s shield.”

Karinu nodded. It was a good plan – anything that kept the cruiser’s fire off the planetary shield would help with their mission. “The nearest support will be thirty minutes away when the attack ships arrive, assuming they aren’t delayed.” With how widespread the Dominion attacks had already become, there was no guarantee any help would come at all, regardless of how long they held out. “We have to hold at least that long. Deploy the runabouts in sentinel positions around the platforms, where they can benefit from the platforms’ shields. In four minutes, go to red alert.”

It was the longest four minutes of her life.

Garen Epok hung in space, a rogue asteroid cast against the violet of the Valoris Nebula. Lights spotted its surface, though one by one they winked out, until the only way the station could be seen was its occlusion of the light from the Valoris and the swarm of smaller lights on its trailing side – the running lights of its complement of runabouts and the five Dominion-built orbital platforms that defended the asteroid, and the station at its core, from attack.

Suddenly, four streaks of light appeared, flashing and becoming objects. The violet scarabs immediately scattered, dodging shots from the polaron weapons on the platforms, though Platform 3 scored a hit on the starboard nacelle of the third attack ship.

T’Ren’s fingers moved quickly, and she once again appreciated the time she had spent in simulations of Roosevelt’s odd tactical setup before her assignment to the station. She sent one platform after each of the attack ships, the thrusters on the platforms sending them spinning to spread hits across their shield facings and maximize the benefits of their regenerative shields. The runabouts broke away from the platforms after the initial attack, splitting into pairs and attacking. Phaser fire from the runabouts and polaron beams from the platforms sliced at the shields of the attack ships, and the attack ships spun to retaliate.

“Targets Alpha and Delta are damaged,” T’Ren said. “Shields on the platforms holding.”

“Hold torpedoes,” Karinu said. “Stick to beams. You’re doing well.”

“Six minutes until the main Dominion force arrives,” Kron said. “Nine until Starfleet gets here.”

That meant three minutes of Roosevelt standing alone against the Dominion fleet. T’Ren let her expression slip into a frown, her focus on her console. She passed control of platforms three and four to Kron, focusing on the three she retained. The Klingon took them smoothly, and the two officers began their grim work. It was luck – an error on the part of the Jem’hadar pilot – that netted them their first kill, as Bravo shot to the side to avoid a hail of phaser fire from two runabouts and dodged directly into a shot from platform one. The ship exploded as the spinning platform shot away from it, coming in to support platform three.

There were many reasons working in Ops on Roosevelt was different from any other combat posting in Starfleet. Where battle aboard a starship or starbase was a shower of sparks and plasma fire, Roosevelt’s operations center was quiet apart from the barked words of the staff and the beeping of consoles. The floor stayed stable under Amie Hawke’s feet, the systems simply continued to function. Ops was simply so far from where any enemy fire might impact the asteroid that they were physically shielded from the battle.

That did not mean there wasn’t work to do. Keeping the station’s weapons remote had many advantages – the orbital platforms could spin and move, covering more of the station’s surface than turrets possibly could. They operated independently of one another, so damage to one would not impact the operations of the others. But there was one flaw – disruption of communication could disable the platforms. The Dominion knew this. They had built them originally, though the platforms had seen numerous upgrades since Starfleet took the station. And they were trying to exploit it.

“Charlie down! Shields on platform 3 at 78%!” Kron’s voice rose, filling the room.

The battle Hawke fought was less dramatic than that T’Ren and Kron waged. She did not fire weapons or command runabouts. But it was no less critical. With quick shifts between encryption protocols and communications frequencies, Hawke held off whatever Vorta or automated systems on the Dominion ships were attempting to block or hijack the station’s communication with the platforms.

It was ironic, she thought as she worked, that there was no one of her generation with her skill and talent at forcing technology of disparate origins and purposes to work together. For one whose home had seen the lightning rod as a cutting-edge invention to rise to her position…

She smirked. If only they could see her now.

“They are here.” Kron spoke the words, and Hawke looked up to the viewscreen in time to see the arrival of the main Dominion force. One cruiser, flanked by another eight attack ships, appeared out of warp.