“Prepare to be crushed.”

For a moment, Ops went silent. Surrender had never truly been an option, but it had been a consideration, a choice, the first real choice in all of this. And now that they had made it, there was nothing left but to face whatever lay ahead.

The waiting Vaadwaur closed ranks, and the transmission cut to static. No one dared to say it out loud, but they all knew that they had signed their death sentence. And that of everyone present on the station.

“The fighters are powering weapons.” Velix said quietly. Her voice hoarse and hands shaking as she drew in several sharp breaths that did nothing to calm her down. She reached out for Pereira, who pulled his hand away. Even though they all knew he and Velix were seeing each other.

Velix stared at him, and he opened his mouth to say something. But he never got to it.

The first volley of torpedoes slammed into the station’s forward shields, with enough force to send tremors through the station’s superstructure.

“Shields are holding at 91%” Sh’shiqil called out, correcting herself almost immediately as a second attack caused them to flare in a bright azure arc. “84%. Redirecting power to shields.”

The lights flickered as the powergrid tried to compensate, stabilizing after a few heartbeats.

“Return fire.” Ceix ordered, not waiting for a verbal confirmation as he rose from his chair. “Don’t let them gain confidence.”

Their phasers lanced between the defensive parameters, golden arcs that scored glancing hits against the enemy hulls, disabling a single fighter, without any effect on the rest.

The Vaadwaur retaliated. Fast. The remaining Pythus fighters darted towards them, weaving almost effortlessly between refugee ships and phaser fire. The larger Manasa escorts moved in lockstep, coordinating disruptor blasts to take out a runabout that dared being too close to them. The first casualty.

Ceix pressed his lips together, slamming his eyes shut. He didn’t know who had been on it, but part of him mourned them. He opened his eyes again, settling his emotions through conscious effort.

“What about the battleship?”, he asked.

“Nothing yet.”, Sh’shiqil responded.

The Astika battleship didn’t fire, nor did it move. Not yet. Like a general overseeing his soldiers, it waited. Like a hammer destined to fall.

In response to the destruction of the runabout, the refugee ships tightened their formation into a closer perimeter around the station, some firing their barely-repaired weapons, others acting as decoys to draw the enemy attacks. One Atriari vessel, either brave, suicidal, or both, dove between the incoming attacks, intercepting them with its hull. Until a direct strike caught it. It tried to pull back, its reactor vented plasma for two brief seconds before the vessel vanished in a flash of hot white.

“Launch torpedoes.” Ceix ordered, his eyes tracing their emerald glow as they found their target. Two detonated against enemy shields. One missed. Another almost hit the Surnek ship – a converted mining barge, barely space worthy – that had pushed to the front of the ragged line of refugee ships. It fired a single pulse from a crude mining beam that did little damage, but drew the enemy’s attention.

The Vaadwuar ship they had intercepted fired. Once. Twice. A third time. The Surnek ship  cracked open, spilling indigo flames into the void, and the enemy resumed their attack on the station.

Ops shook. Dark grey eddies of smoke clouded their vision, and filled the room with the biting scent of overheated circuitry.

“Shields at 82% We’re losing power to the forward grid”, a disembodied voice shouted.

“Adjust the shield frequency, use what we know!” Ceix ordered, raising his voice amid the staccato tones from his console.

Outside, more refugee vessels dove forward. A freighter ignited its emergency flares, emitting a blinding pulse of light meant to confuse targeting sensors. The science vessel that followed its lead launched a focussed EM- burst that momentarily scrambled Vaadwaur telemetry.

It wasn’t enough. But it gave the station time to recover power to their shields, and to dissuade two escorts from following a retreating shuttle.

The rest of the Vaadwaur punched through the outer ring of defending vessels, mercilessly cutting down whatever stood in their way.  A medical frigate took a direct hit to its dorsal engine pod, venting plasma and bodies, until a second torpedo cleaved into it to finish the job.

A smaller Esiran ship peeled back and sought cover before its shield collapsed, two others didn’t react fast enough, limping towards safety but never reaching it.

“Redirect fire. Focus on the flanking escorts!” Keller yelled, barely resisting the urge to return to the tactical console that had always been his home.

“Sir, multiple escorts are headed straight towards us.”  Velix warned.

“I’ll keep them at a distance.” Sh’shiqil hissed, her fingers sprinting back and forth across the display, tracking the vessels with surgical precision. One ship dodged and veered, the other exploded mid-turn. Two slipped through the defenses and fired.

The lights flickered again.

“Report!”, Ceix demanded.

“Port shield is gone, we’ve got a small hull rupture.”, Vargas answered, hastily coordinating her engineering teams. “We’re leaking deuterium, it’s the source of the power drain!”

Ceix grimaced. “Shut it down and reroute power to weapons.”

Vargas responded by working her console, her hands moving with expert precision across the controls.

“I’ve let the Surnek know that they need to move to the port side. We’ll cover them.” Sh’shiqil added.

“Then-…” Ceix began, but didn’t get to finish his sentence. On the viewscreen, the warship finally moved from the position it held since the start of the battle. Menacing, demanding respect, not only their attention. Like a cat that had cornered its prey and was about to play with it.

Then it fired.

A single pulse from their energy weapon hit the station broadside, and the docking platform in its way didn’t stand a chance. It disintegrated in an explosion that shook the station, gutting the outer decks in seconds.

“Shield grid breach! Hull breach on decks twelve through eighteen. Casualty reports coming in…” Sh’shiqil yelled, her eyes wide. “Cutting off the affected sections.”

“What about evacuation?”, Keller asked in alarm.

Sh’shiqil shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to maintain composure. “We can’t wait for that.”

Explosive decompression would only be the beginning of a chain of rapid and catastrophic failures that would leave nothing but debris and a bright energy signature where Caireann Station had been.

It was a desperate attempt to prolong the inevitable, and she knew it. And her desperation carried out to Vaadwaur and defenders alike.

The Vaadwaur felt emboldened. The refugees were enraged.

One of the smaller vessels set its engine to full impulse and rammed into a Manasa, detonating in a ball of magnesium white flame.

A meaningless victory.

The refugee line was thinning – some retreated, others were cut off from any escape, the rest was nothing but debris. And the noose around their neck kept tightening.

Ceix barely noticed, staring at the viewscreen as if in trance, as if he was the only one present. So much… death. He should have surrendered. At least then they would have had a chance to survive, whatever surviving meant.

“Hail the battleship.” he heard himself say, detached from his own order. “Tell them we surrender.”

“Captain?”, Keller asked, staring at his commanding officer in disbelief. But he didn’t protest.

“They’re not responding.”, Velix said softly. She was no longer scared. Not now that she was clutching Pereira’s hand, and he didn’t pull back.

“I see.” Ceix said, detached still. Knowing that he had failed. He had failed all of them.

“Captain!” Sh’shiqil called out. “We have additional ships approaching.”

“More apertures?”, Keller asked, snapping back into action, and staring at the readout of his console. The ones they had detected weren’t spewing any further ships. But there was an energy fluctuation he couldn’t quite place.

“No…”, Sh’shiqil said, not sure she believed what she was seeing. “They’re emerging from Yelthx’s Cradle… and they’re not Vaadwaur.”

“Starfleet?” Ceix asked, his voice hoarse, barely daring to hope.

Sh’shiqil shook her head. “Locals.”

The Yogussa. The Na’hame. The Kal’thirax. The Hohtava. The refugee ships that had left when Gant had been allowed to enter the station.

The comms came to life, voices layed on top of each other, some shouting in Suran, others in broken Federation standard, others in dialects the translator struggled to parse.

Keller exhaled. “Reinforcements.”

“But they… they left…” Sh’shiqil reminded him.

“It doesn’t matter now.” Ceix said, ending the discussion. “Tell them to target the warship.”

But they didn’t have to. The newcomers didn’t wait for orders, nor did they need them. They moved fast and with precision, uncaring of the danger that lay ahead. There was fury in their movements, a reckless fire that drove them onward.

The Kal’thirax slid between the station and a Manasa class escort, taking the brunt of its torpedoes. Seconds later, the Yogussa and Hohtava joined them and opened fire, destroying the Vaadwaur vessel before they pressed onwards, towards the battleship.

The Vaadwaur faltered. Briefly. Then they responded.

The Astika shifted again, bringing its full power to bear on the incoming vessels. The Hohtava was hit and had to peel back, but the others moved forward.

The much smaller Na’hame dove underneath the battlecruiser, firing directly into its ventral auxiliary array. Its shields flared, then buckled.

Keller, who had kept his gaze fixed on the readout of his console, trying to make sense of what he was seeing, finally spoke up. “Aperture instability detected.”

“They’re sending more?”, Ceix asked, closing his eyes. It was too much. He was tired. And a small part of him just wanted it to be over.

“I… don’t know”, Keller said hesitantly “I don’t think so… the corridors are … pulsing.”

“On screen.”

The aperture shook and quivered, flaring in bright white. Then it shrieked – not in sound, but they all felt it. A raw wound in space, no longer a stable corridor, bleeding and flickering. Consoles flickered, comms turned into static.

“Did we cause this?”, Ceix asked, unable to tear his eyes away.

“Maybe the apertures couldn’t handle this many ships at once.”, Velix guessed, but shook her head, not believing her own theory.

“I doubt it. The Vaadwaur have been using these corridors for centuries.” Sh’shiquil said.

Pereira confirmed. “The tunnels are collapsing.”

It meant little to them, but it took barely a few seconds before the Vaaswaur sensors picked up the same. And for the first time, they faltered. Their movements grew less coordinated, less aggressive. Almost hesitant.

“It’s cutting off their way back.” Keller said, amazed at the sudden realization.

The Astika turned first, ever so slightly, towards the aperture. The low-pitched, guttural command of the previously so confident commander echoed across all frequencies. There was fear in his voice.

“Fall back.”

As if they had only waited for confirmations, the Vaadwaur began to withdraw. It wasn’t a retreat. They weren’t defeated. It was calculated and tactical.

Three escorts tried to pull back at once and clipped one another in their haste. One was left adrift, the other limped towards the aperture, trailing plasma.

The refugee ships didn’t wait. They gave chase.

“Hail them. Call them back!” Ceix ordered. He didn’t shout, but his voice carried a resonance that carried it above the beeping consoles and blaring alarms.

The Yogussa surged forward, ignoring Ceix hails. The other two vessels, even damaged as they were, followed suit.

“Refugee vessels, stand down. Do not pursue. That’s an order.” This time, Ceix did shout.

But it was too late. The aperture fluctuations intensified. Static surged. One of the chasing ships was caught mid-transit and vanished in a burst of flames. Gone.

“Captain Ceix.” a voice came through, patchy but clear. “This is Vanthi of the Kal’thirax. We’re going through. We have to. If they get a chance to regroup, they will come back stronger.”

“Don’t do this…” Ceix pleaded. Who knew what awaited them on the other end of the tunnel, if they even made it through. “We won. We survived.”

“You let them into the station!” Vanthi hissed. “After all they took from us. We will make them pay.”

Ceix fell silent. Only for a moment. Realizing that they hadn’t returned to help them. They had come for revenge.

“This isn’t justice. This is suicide.” he said eventually, but the line had already closed, and the Kal’thirax had vanished.

“Several refugee ships are following.” Sh’shiqil said, her voice tired and defeated.

“Let them.”

Because who was he to force Starfleet ideologies onto them. Their homes had been destroyed, their loved ones killed.

One by one, the ships plunged into the aperture, the last one making it through the final tunnel just before it collapsed. The space where it had been shimmered, and a ring of etched itself around the aperture before it extinguished.

There was no glory in this.

They hadn’t won.

But they had survived.