The transporter beam faded to plunge them into the dying depths of the USS Liberty. Once, these halls had shone with Starfleet optimism and efficiency. Now, they were stained with the blood-red hues of emergency lighting and acrid smoke, shadows jittering off bulkheads as display screens sputtered and died.

For a moment, there was nothing but the Rooks’ breathing and the blaring of the emergency klaxon. Then came Falaris’s voice in everyone’s ears.

‘Confirm no hostiles in the LZ. Vaadwaur fireteam around the corner, locking down the turbolift junction. Looks like they’re dug in.’

The Blackbird had slid as close as they could to the dying Liberty. With Endeavour still snarling and clawing at the battlecruiser that had wounded her before launching boarding parties, no Vaadwaur ship had stopped them. Close scans had shown a mix of life-signs on the bridge, and Cassidy had shaken his head at the idea of beaming directly into what could have been a firefight. They’d settled for an empty patch of deck two instead.

Sensors said there weren’t more than forty Vaadwaur soldiers aboard, but the damaged ship had struggled to repel strike teams at critical locations. They were likely going for key systems, Falaris explained, but it looked like Liberty’s command team had locked them out before they could reach anything too critical. Her fate, and the fate of her crew, hung in the balance still.

‘Dug in?’ Cassidy repeated. ‘Then we dig them out. Go quiet, go fast.’

On Innes, the Rooks had worn civilian clothing with light armour snuck underneath. Here, they needed no such discretion, deploying in body armour with rifles at the ready. They advanced low and smooth, moving like a single muscle. Rosewood took point, reaching the corner first and checking the tricorder display built into his armour’s bracer before looking back.

‘Four of them. Two in cover, two standing guard at the lift doors.’

‘Lifts are still the best way to get about the ship,’ Aryn pointed out. ‘Better than crawling out of a Jefferies Tube.’

Cassidy nodded. ‘Flash and clear.’

The Vaadwaur didn’t have time to shout. The detonation of the stun grenade was a muted thump, but the effect was thunderous; sensor blinding, inner-ear scrambling, and with a kick of kinetic force that sent two of the aliens staggering out of cover.

Into the weapons fire of the Rooks, rounding the corner like a hammer to glass.

Nallera was first, rifle up, and dropped the closest Vaadwaur with two bursts to the chest that burned through his armour. Cassidy was a beat behind her, his rifle flashing three times to drop another soldier before he could find his bearings. The third tried to rally through disorientation, blazing polaron blasts that hit only bulkhead, before Rosewood, at the corner, dropped to one knee to shoot him.

Q’ira’s blast went wide of the last, but Aryn stepped out into the open, his shot taking the Vaadwaur soldier in the knee. With a howl, he went down, and Nallera stepped in to drive the butt of her rifle into his temple. It was over inside five seconds.

‘Clear,’ she confirmed over comms.

‘Secure the turbolift,’ ordered Cassidy, his rifle sweeping down the corridors for any more hostiles.

Aryn had dropped to one knee beside a sprawled Starfleet body nearly hidden in the shadows of emergency lighting and smoke, tucked underneath an overloaded control panel. Blood matted the officer’s hair, and his shoulder was a singed mess from a telltale blast of a polaron rifle.

‘He’s alive,’ Aryn said quickly, pressing a hypospray to the officer’s neck.

The officer gasped, limbs twitching, and blinked groggily up at them. Cassidy was beside Aryn in a moment, crouched low.

‘Ensign. Bridge status?’

The officer coughed. ‘They took it. We were trying to retake it, but they were too bedded in here. Last sensor reading said six, maybe seven. We think the captain’s alive, that they’re trying to force her to unlock the ship’s systems.’

Cassidy’s jaw tightened. ‘How long ago?’

‘Ten minutes – maybe less.’

‘Rooks.’ Cassidy pushed to his feet, eyes blazing as he looked about them. ‘We breach.’

Rosewood sucked his teeth. ‘Bridges are, uh, famously hard to assault…’

‘Yeah,’ said Nallera, wincing, but her agreement took some of the heat of Cassidy’s glower. ‘Climb out of a tube, get your head shot off while you’re wriggling about on the deck. They’ll have guns trained on the turbolift.’

Cassidy nodded, eyes going up to the ceiling plating. ‘Then we need,’ he mused, ‘another entrance.’

The central deck panel exploded upward, and hell broke loose on the bridge of the Liberty. Vaadwaur soldiers spun their guns towards the sudden movement, and some might have rallied, poured polaron blasts through the gap, or seized – or shot – a surviving Starfleet bridge officer. Then the stun grenade went off.

Vaadwaur soldiers didn’t scream, but they staggered and reeled, clutching at helmets at the pressure spikes and blinding whiteouts. One stumbled back into the ops console, another fired blindly into the air, disorientated and deafened. In an instant, the bridge had become a killzone of blazing shots and barked shouts.

Then the turbolift doors snapped open.

Rosewood’s phaser rifle was already raised, but he didn’t need more than a split second to aim, Falaris’s sensor feeds pointing him towards the targets. The finest adjustments were enough to drop three standing Vaadwaur with clean, chest-centred bursts. Beside him, Q’ira’s shots were less precise, but a spray of fire was enough to make Vaadwaur soldiers flinch for cover. As the two swept in, Aryn was next out of the turbolift, ducking low with his sidearm. On the deck, a soldier still reeling from the stun grenade scrabbled for a downed weapon, until a precision shot from Aryn’s phaser pistol stilled him.

But Nallera had been right. Anyone defending a bridge expected a breaching party from the turbolift, even amidst this chaos, and the last three Vaadwaur rifles spun towards the trio of exposed Rooks.

Then, up through the shattered deck plating, two shapes erupted from the floor like fury incarnate. Nallera was first through the smoke, a combat grapple hook and line still dangling from her harness. The stun baton in one hand was jabbed into the neck of the nearest Vaadwaur soldier before she spun and tackled another into the railing so hard his armour cracked.

One Vaadwaur remained. Perhaps his rank insignia granted him the duty of holding a gun to the head of the knelt figure of Captain Elara Galcyon. If he’d had a plan to use this position of advantage, or if he’d been too staggered by the Rooks’ assault, they’d never know as Cassidy burst upward into the bridge, phaser pistol levelled.

He was still hanging from the line tethered to the bridge ceiling when he shot the soldier in the head. There was no shout of anger. No pithy threat. Just the squeeze of the trigger and the ensuing silence.

In the Rooks’ ears came Falaris’s voice. ‘Rooks, Blackbird. Confirm all Vaadwaur life-signs on the bridge neutralised.’

‘Confirm, Blackbird. The bridge is ours.’ Cassidy detached himself from his grapple line and landed on unsteady deck plating. At once he advanced on Galcyon, pulling his helmet off and taking a knee, eyes blazing. ‘Are you alright?’

She was on her hands and knees, shaking. When she lifted her head, he could see blood smeared down her cheek with a tear-stained trail. She nodded, but he wasn’t sure she was entirely here as she croaked, ‘They wanted… I’d locked us down. They wanted me to unlock systems, they wanted… not the ship, information on us, the squadron, and they… Skies…’

Cassidy followed her gaze to the other fallen figures. Around him, the Rooks helped the surviving bridge crew to their feet. Both of them. His eyes landed on the motionless figure of Commander Dashell Antedy, recognisable only by his uniform. The polaron blast to the face hadn’t left much.

They shot them when you refused. His eyes snapped back to her, and a gloved hand came to her cheek. ‘You stood firm. You did your job, Captain.’

She was like a dead weight when he eased her into the tertiary command chair, and he had to step away afterwards. There was no more he could do. ‘Status?’

Aryn was already at the Liberty’s science console. ‘Looks like the ship was hit so badly internal sensors were taken out. Boarding parties took advantage of this and security teams haven’t known where to rally. I’m already patching them into Blackbird’s sensor feed to hunt the rest down.’

Cassidy looked down at the Vaadwaur he’d shot. Even aliens from the far side of the galaxy would use equipment and devices following recognisable principles, he reasoned. It didn’t take more than a few seconds to dig out what he thought was the communicator and thumb it.

‘Interlopers. We’ve retaken the bridge and killed your leader. Run before we hunt you down.’

Perhaps it worked. Perhaps the security teams did their part. Minutes later, Falaris was confirming, ‘Vaadwaur boarding parties are beaming out, Rooks. The ship is retaken.’

On another day, they might have cheered. The blood-stained, broken bridge of the Liberty did not feel like a place for cheering.

It was Ranicus who spoke next. ‘Vaadwaur ships are withdrawing from the Proxima system. They’re on the run. Exit vector by Proxima IX.’

Cassidy sucked his teeth despite the good news. ‘Drehm?’

‘His shuttle’s in the thick of the withdrawing forces. Orders from squadron command are to let the Vaadwaur go; we’ll take further losses if we try to finish them. He – hang on. We’re picking up a message. All channels – local channels, that is. From his shuttle.’

Nallera shook her fist, said, ‘I’ll get you next time, Federation scum!’ in an approximation of a bad holo-vid enemy, and chuckled.

‘I can get comms online,’ Aryn said. ‘Patching it through.’

The viewscreen image wasn’t clear, Liberty’s systems choking as they sputtered into action. But it didn’t need to be clear to show the image of Commander Drehm before the bright, clean interior of a Vaadwaur executive shuttle. He still looked worn and dusted from his brush with action on Innes, and his lip curled in what Cassidy thought might pass for a Vaadwaur snarl or hiss.

‘You may think you have won this round, Starfleet,’ he began.

Nallera scoffed. ‘“Oh, but we’ll win the game!”’ she hissed in that same mocking tone as before. It was for the best, Cassidy thought, that they were only receiving this transmission.

‘Shock and subterfuge may make even the Supremacy stagger. You’ll say you’ll win again and again, but let me show you what even one victory against us will cost. “Hope burns last,” said your hero of Innes, Commander Rosewood?’ That same curl of the lip. ‘I think you will find that the industrial habitat domes of the third moon of Proxima IX will burn last today. And all who live there.’

Rosewood’s hands hit the railing beside Aryn’s station with a thunk. ‘There are over a hundred thousand people living -’

‘All Vaadwaur ships, target the domes and fire. One salvo only. Then set a course for Toliman.’ Drehm had looked off-screen at this, likely addressing a different comm channel. Then his eyes returned to his address to the Federation. ‘Wound us, and we will make you bleed tenfold. Come for the rest of Alpha Centauri, and either you will be reduced to dust… or it will. This is Commander Drehm, Overseer of Proxima. For the glory of the Supremacy.’

The screen went blank. And as the Rooks stood and stared, in rolled the confirmation from Liberty’s sensor feed, from Aryn’s reports, from Falaris in their ears, from a thousand eyes and mouths of the Starfleet victors of the Battle of Proxima, of the slaughter of countless civilians before it ended.