The square unfolded before them like a stage set for nightmare. Pale dawn light dragged itself between Innes’s grand civic buildings, casting long shadows across the flagstones where hundreds of civilians had gathered – silent, tight-packed, cowed. The crowd’s stillness was not peace but pressure, like a held breath that could not be released lest they drown. Somewhere, someone stifled a sob. A mother clutched her child tighter. The only motion was a ripple of tremors passing person to person.

Above them, the skeletal frame of a hastily assembled metal scaffold rose, stark and brutal against the elegance of old Federation architecture. Atop it stood figures bound and beaten, stripped of rank and dignity. And before them, commanding the stage like the star of a grand opera, was Commander Drehm. Tall, rigid, the leather of the Vaadwaur overseer’s uniform caught the light. Soldiers in armour flanked him, polaron rifles sweeping the square, the crowd, watching for a spark.

Cassidy took one look at the scene and breathed, ‘Fuck.’

The Rooks kept to a knot near the rear of the crowd, deep enough to not draw attention, close enough to a nearby street to cut and run. Nallera shifted uneasily. Aryn kept his head down. Q’ira looked like she’d rather melt into the pavement.

‘That’s Anders Drevayne,’ said Rosewood, nodding at one human prisoner on the platform. ‘Governor of Proxima.’

When Drehm spoke, his voice didn’t merely rise. It descended, crawling from speakers in the old music system built into the square. They’d been installed so festivals could be enjoyed here on hot summer nights. ‘Citizens of Innes. I thought I had made myself clear barely more than a day ago. Fire has sundered your skies and your homes have been shattered, and yet… you resist?’

‘The thing about this guy,’ murmured Nallera, ‘is that he likes to talk.’

‘What he likes,’ said Rosewood, jaw tight, ‘is a public execution to bring people in line.’

‘If we’d made contact with the resistance,’ Aryn muttered, ‘we could have -’

‘Yeah, well, we didn’t, because the Veebwoo kept everything down tight,’ butted in Q’ira. She gave Cassidy a pleading look. ‘Boss, can we get out of here?’

Rosewood’s voice cut like a blade. ‘We have to do something.’

Cassidy was silent. On the platform, Drehm paced and continued to talk. Nallera was right; this wouldn’t be quick. He pressed his earpiece. ‘Rook One to Blackbird. Any luck pulling us out?’

‘Negative,’ came Falaris’s quick reply. ‘Powering our transporters would expose the ship.’

‘The moment the squadron arrives, they won’t care about us,’ Rosewood pointed out. ‘ETA?’

‘Ten minutes, still. The square’s on public broadcast across the system. Again.’

Cassidy exhaled hard. ‘Nothing we can do.’

Rosewood stared at him for a long second. The others looked just as weary, just as resigned. He turned his gaze to the crowd – not his team, but the people. Hollow, terrified, frozen faces were locked on the scaffold, on Proxima’s new masters, on Drehm.

Then he said, ‘Okay. The mission comes first.’ And turned and walked into the crowd.

His first step was through a gap between people. Then a purposeful push that made someone stagger back, and by the time Cassidy had hissed, ‘Two!’ after him, he was gone far enough that the Rooks would cause a scene by following.

A second later, Cassidy’s voice was in his earpiece. ‘Two, get your ass back here right –’

Rosewood switched channels. ‘Maive, I’m about to do something real dumb. Won’t hurt the mission. But I need a favour.’

A beat. Perhaps on the bridge, Ranicus was giving orders. Perhaps Falaris was just thinking. Then her voice came back. ‘What do you need?’

He moved with purpose now, through the crowd, towards a shuttered bakery whose front doors hung loosely on their hinges. Inside, dust hung in sunbeams so thick he had to resist the urge to waft it away. Rosewood slid behind a counter, ducked through a broken kitchen, and found the stairs.

Up three floors to an old viewing room. Wooden chairs. Empty mugs. Windows once used for sunrise coffee. Now covered in the dust of shattered masonry and forgotten. He eased open a latch and dropped behind the frame. Pulled out his phaser. Extended a collapsible stock. Across the square, Governor Drevayne had been forced to his knees.

‘Your own governor,’ Drehm was intoning, and Rosewood thanked the stars this man was a performer. A soldier stepped forward and levelled a pistol at the back of Drevayne’s head.

Rosewood flicked back to Rooks comms. He could hear Cassidy swearing. ‘Rook Two. Taking a shot.’

Commander Drehm had assembled these prisoners, people known and loved by the community, to murder them. Those gathered in the square were not the audience, really; they were part of the performance. Scared and cowed faces, all shown on the transmission of this demonstration of force about the city, the world – the entire star system.

Who all saw when a clean bolt of energy took the Vaadwaur soldier in the face before he could murder Governor Drevayne. The Vaadwaur collapsed.

A beat.

Then the square erupted. Screams. Chaos. Soldiers spun, shouting in their own tongue. Polaron rifles were raised, some turning towards the crowd.

Before any could fire, Rosewood’s voice poured through the square’s speakers, through the same comms system that had projected Drehm’s voice, that had transmitted these scenes across the system – that the Rooks had uploaded a virus into that could let Falaris Maive seize control.

‘People of Alpha Centauri. My name is Lieutenant Commander John Rosewood. I’m a Starfleet officer. And I was born in AC City.’

In his ears, Cassidy’s voice burst through. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

‘You’ve been right to fight back,’ Rosewood continued, calm, clear. ‘You’ve been right to defy them. You’ve been right to hope. Because help is coming.’

On the ground, civilians blinked up, murmurs passing through the crowd, flickers of recognition. Starfleet.

Then the soldiers, frozen only for a moment by confusion, moved. And panic flowed back in.

‘Two,’ came Aryn’s voice, ‘soldiers converging on your position.’

‘Fuck it,’ hissed Cassidy. ‘One to team – take ‘em!’

A phaser flashed from the crowd, from wherever Aryn was, and a soldier approaching the bakery’s doors fell. Below, Vaadwaur rifles swept up again. One officer shouted, soldiers turned to the crowd, and hesitated.

Drehm was being wrestled off the scaffold, but wrenched free of his guards. His eyes scanned the rooftops. ‘Shut him down!’ he roared.

Polaron blasts came spraying towards the bakery, and Rosewood ducked low as the window frame shattered around him. He pressed his earpiece, desperate. ‘Three!’

Nallera’s voice was steel. She understood, without him even asking. ‘On your mark, Two.’

Rosewood had to push himself up as shattered wooden windowframe sprayed around him, as broken masonry fell inside. From this angle, he could see the devastated rooftops of Innes, see the smoke still pluming up from the district Drehm had ordered destroyed.

Battered, but not defeated. Terrified, but not ground down. Not if the flashes of defiance Drehm was trying to crush meant anything. The glint in the eyes of the crowd when he’d spoken. The messages of rebellion he’d seen scrawled in street graffiti.

‘People of Alpha Centauri,’ Rosewood whispered into the comms. ‘Hope burns last.’

And the communications tower exploded.

And the sound of screaming, the sound of weapons fire, the blazing chaos of Vaadwaur oppression and nascent resistance, was all drowned out by the thunderous explosion of the communications tower some klicks away as Nallera detonated the charges.

Before it could even fade, Ranicus’s voice was booming over their comms, barely audible as windows shattered and screaming continued. ‘This is Blackbird. Sirius Squadron has entered the system.’

The battle for Proxima had begun. And the Rooks had fired the first shot.