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Chapter Text

PROLOGUE

They were good enough soldiers. They’d fought in the civil skirmishes back on Prime. They’d attacked the fishing villages of the Archipelago Zone and rounded up prisoners to sell to Orion slavers. Some of the hardier among them had even been conscripted into the Klingon Empire’s Alien Legion and deployed to Imperial worlds to quell insurrections that had arisen during the war. But now they were facing something else. Something unimaginable and unstoppable.

“Get behind cover, you half-wit!” Colonel Getch angrily spat at the rifleman who stood awkwardly in the center of the pre-fab base’s vehicle bay, his plasma-rifle levelled at the hip. The young soldier gave him a poisonous look, but tamped down his resentment long enough to duck behind an insectoid-looking mass of machinery.

“The perimeter guards aren’t responding!” cried his sub-lieutenant, a reedy Southern Continenter who was, nonetheless, quite competent when it came to maintaining their equipment in this environment.

“Give them a moment,” Getch said. “They are likely dealing with our mysterious intruder as we speak. By nightfall his head will be on a pike at the main CAC to greet all visitors. Seems appropriate enough, eh boys?” Getch turned his head to throw a rakish smile at the half dozen soldiers who—unlike the green rifleman—had presence of mind enough to take cover and now had their weapons trained on bay doors. In return, he received a chorus of guffaws echoing his confidence.

Then they all heard the staccato whine of multiple plasma-rifles on rapid fire and overlapping cries of terror.

Getch felt his stomach turn to ice, and he struggled to keep the growing anxiety out of his voice as he shouted, “This is it, men! We hold the line!” He squinted through his rifle’s holographic sighting reticle and waited to kill his enemy.

1:

Acting Captain’s Log: Stardate 1029.12. Christopher Pike Reporting.

The USS Discovery has returned to the Alpha Quadrant after our encounter with the human colony on New Eden. While we wait for next red signal to provide us with yet another piece of this puzzle, the Discovery has undertaken surveying the M-Class planets in the Noviani System. The inhabited planet, Noviani Prime, served as a vassal state for the Klingon Empire during the war, and since the cessation of hostilities has cut off all contact with United Federation of Planets. Fortunately, the Novianis have never made a claim for the other planets in their system, and Starfleet has long wanted to study them. Since the Novianis seldom venture offworld for exploration or conquest, a hostile encounter with them is highly unlikely. This period of relative calm means that I can offer my bridge crew the rare opportunity to undertake a planetbound mission. Lieutenants Detmer, Owosekun, and Linus as well as Ensigns Nilsson and Osnellus have taken a shuttle to Noviani-Five to begin cartographic and topographic scans. After the events of the past few days, I’m sure they’ll find it relaxing and rewarding.

“I just don’t understand who the other men were,” Joann Owosekun said as she nimbly hopped from rock to rock, managing to cross the gurgling stream without so much as getting her cuffs wet. “The ones in the greyish uniforms? They clearly weren’t the Vietnamese…”

“They were Soviet spetznaz commandoes,” Linus explained, pausing for a moment to ensure the universal translator managed the tricky task of converting his native communication sounds into Galactic Standard, while also recognizing the insertion of a Russian proper noun in the midst of the sentence. To his relief, the device did its job perfectly, the words rolling out of his mouth in a smooth baritone, and he once again gave thanks to the legendary Hoshi Sato for gifting him the power of speech.

“What is a Soviet?” Osnullus asked as she held her arms straight out at her sides like a high-wire artist trying to balance on her own slippery rock.

“It was a power bloc during Earth’s Cold War of the Twentieth Century,” Johanna Nilsson chirped from the rock behind Osnullus’s. “A collection of countries joined by ideology for mutual economic and military support.”

Osnullus turned to face the blonde, sun-blotched woman and cocked her enormous head. “So, society was divided by ideology as well as nationality? Weird.”

Nilsson shrugged.

“What I don’t get is why a bunch of elite Soviet commandos are doing hanging out in a prisoner of war camp in the ass-end of the Asian jungle.” Keyla Detmer opined. She hadn’t even bothered with the rocks, but had instead taken off her boots and socks, and rolled up her uniform pant cuffs and was paddling through the stream in her bare feet. Linus noted that it seemed to give her undue satisfaction.

Owosekun looked over at her. “Maybe the same thing a bunch of elite Starfleet officers are doing in the…rear-end of a Noviani-system jungle?”

“Fair question…prude,” Detmer answered and stuck out her tongue at Owosekun.

“Presumably they were training with the Vietnamese at that outpost,” Linus explained. “Vietnam was close allies with the Soviet Union.” He gave a little hop and landed on solid earth on the other side of the stream. He turned and waited for the rest of his comrades to complete their respective journeys across it. The sun, when it flickered through the jungle canopy, made their uniforms glitter as blue as amethysts.

“Okay, but you said a cold war.” Owosekun hopped over beside Linus. She counted mountaineering among her shore-leave activities, and she moved with the most grace and ease out of all of them. “So how did this soldier, this John…”

“Rambo,” Linus corrected.

“John Rambo legally engage in hostilities with them if a state of war hadn’t been declared by his government?”

Linus stared at her for a full three blinks. “He disobeyed orders. That’s the point of the story. His superiors wouldn’t allow him to repatriate his countrymen, because it would cause a political scandal. But he did what he felt was right and liberated the prison camp.”

“And committed a war crime,” Owosekun said.

“Many, many war crimes,” Linus nodded enthusiastically. “He used a helicopter gunship to destroy the camp, and then shot down a Soviet aircraft for good measure. But the point is, he did what was right.”

“Did he, though?” Owosekun asked skeptically.

“Eeeewww!” Detmer voice curled from the stream. “Slimy rock!”

Owosekun called out to her, “Keyla, explain to me again why you thought it was a good idea to wade barefoot through that thing?”

“It is refreshing,” Detmer said crisply. “I am making the most of being planetbound. Also: I don’t believe the claims that these boots are watertight,” she held up her boots and pointed to them exaggeratedly.

“It won’t be so refreshing if you step on a sea urchin or something.”

“We scanned the bottom,” Osnellus said, the act of speaking causing her to totter precariously to the left. Her mandibles waggled in alarm.

“I’d throw you off my expedition if you did that,” Owosekun grumbled.

“You’d never throw me off,” Detmer said as she gingerly climbed the shore. “You’d miss my company.”

“I wouldn’t miss hauling off the side of a mountain after you did something foolish like twist an ankle.”

Nilsson gave a little yip and hopped ashore. “Made it!” she beamed.

“Great, how about a little help,” Osnullus said. Nilsson reached out and helped steady her until she could jump to the bank of the stream. In a few moments they stood in a loose cluster in a modest clearing in the brush.

“Good campsite,” Okosekun noted. “Nice and level. We should be able to fit the tents and fire pit and not be completely on top of each other.”

“And it’s right by the water supply, so we can watch the predators stalk their prey,” Linus nodded.

The team looked at him.

“Well, it’s true,” he said defensively.

“Welp,” Detmer said, “I’m sleeping with a phaser rifle. Try not to startle me in the middle of the night.”

Owosekun gave her a chiding look as she began to unfold her portable tent. “Don’t be silly, Keyla. Bio scans don’t indicate anything larger than a dog in this hemisphere.”

“Which is great…until the pack shows up.” Detmer began unfolding her own tent.

“So, um, silly question…” Nilsson began uncertainly, “but why didn’t we just stay near the shuttle?”

“We wouldn’t be able to cover enough ground.” Detmer explained as she planted her tent’s stakes and stood back. “With double canopy jungle like this we’d have to hover so far off the deck we wouldn’t get any detail in the sensor readings. Might as well just scan from Discovery if we’re going to do that.” As if in agreement, her tent obediently popped up into existence.

“Besides, it’s a nice camping trip,” Owosekun said as her own tent unfurled.

Linus nodded, rolled up his uniform sleeves and help out his arms. “As much as I like my UV lamp, it always feels great to get from a natural source.

“If you’re lucky, maybe you’ll find a nice rock to sun yourself on,” Detmer said as she stowed her pack inside her tent.

“From you lips to The Hatcheries ear,” Linus said with a laugh, which the universal translator didn’t bother with.

“You can keep that,” Nilsson said. “The sun and I don’t mix.”

“With that complexion, I’m surprised you don’t explode like a Tiki torch in the sunlight,” Linus replied.

She laughed.

“Hey, I resemble that comment,” Detmer said, fingering a long, curlicue of strawberry-blonde hair behind her ear and exposing flesh nearly as pale as Nilsson’s. “Don’t discriminate against the melanin-challenged.”

“How do you know what a Tiki torch is?” Owosekun asked Linus.

“I know what a Tiki torch is,” Osnullus said defensively from where she was fighting with her tent. “Tiki culture was one of the first things human’s shared with the space-faring races they met that weren’t Vulcans.”

“Fruity alcoholic beverages,” Detmer nodded. “The universal language.”

“I even have a set of Tiki glasses,” Osnullus added. “I need a straw to drink out of them, but I use them pretty frequently for guests.”

“Don’t you need a straw to drink everything?” Detmer asked.

“Well, yes.”

“Wait,” Owosekun poked her head out of her tent. “So, didn’t the destruction of one of their aircraft inflame tensions between the competing power blocs?”

Linus shrugged. “Maybe. The movie ended before that could happen.”

“Are we still talking about Tiki drinks?” Nilsson asked. “Because I’m confused.”

“I assume,” Linus continued, “that once the government was appropriately shamed by John Rambo’s heroics, they took a more aggressive stance against the Soviet Union. That’s probably what hastened its dissolution five years later.”

“I don’t think we’re talking about Tiki drinks,” Osnullus said as she extended the legs of a camp stool.

“Ensign Maki has been playing action films from the late 20^th century for recreation night,” Owosekun explained. “He claims that they’re an important chronicle of a significant moment in Earth’s history, but really I think he just like’s seeing things explode.”

“I saw the one about the cyborg that comes back in time to kill the mother of the leader of the resistance,” Nilsson chirped. “It was exciting. Those movies were very kinetic.”

“Was that a documentary?” Osnullus asked. “About the Zariath Incident? Caused time-ripples for light-years?”

Linus shook his head. “No, that film was also called ‘speculative fiction’ or spec-fi for short. That was a genre of literature and film that imagined the future and what it would be like. Of course most of what they showed was total imagination, but that one did end up being somewhat prescient.”

“I saw that one, too,” Owosekun said. “Why did the cyborg use an enormous sword if he travelled back to the 20^th century?”

“I’d have brought a plasma rifle,” Detmer mused.

“Ah,” Linus said, holding up a talon. “That was a different film with the same actor. That film was a legend from your Hyborian Age. About one of your great kings.”

“I don’t think Earth had a Hyborian Age,” Nilsson mused.

“You did,” Linus assured her. “And it was savage.”

“So what, precisely, is the historic value of these stories again?” Osnullus asked.

Linus set up his own stool and sat down with his back very straight, like a teacher addressing a small study group. “According to Ensign Maki, these films preserve the last moments of where humans believed in the nobility of the common person. These stories are all about fairly ordinary humans facing impossible odds, making difficult moral choices, and fighting evils much larger than themselves. Take, for example, last night’s film: in it a lone police officer becomes trapped in an office building that has been occupied by terrorists. He is only one man, but as the film shows, one man can prevail over impossible odds if he is clever and determined and willing to jump off the roof of a skyscraper with a fire-hose tied around his waist.”

“I was onboard until that last bit,” Detmer said.

“Linus,” Owosekun said, “I’m a bit skeptical of the common person part. That John Rambo character doesn’t look common at all. Or even human. He’s the size of a Klingon berserker.”

“That is true,” Linus conceded. “I can only assume humans at the time embraced a beauty standard that prized sweaty, ludicrously-muscled bodies.”

“Oh, that could be,” Nilsson said thoughtfully.

“But even so,” Linus continued, “John Rambo was clearly human. That’s what makes the films of that era different from the era of the New Gods, which succeeded it.”

“New Gods?” Osnullus cocked her lightbulb-shaped head and waggled her mandibles in curiosity. “What were they? And what happened to the old ones?”

“The New Gods were fictional heroes much in the same mold as ancient Earth legends,” Linus explained. “They were humans who were gifted with extraordinary powers—a boy with the powers of spider, for example. A brilliant scientist who wore a suit of combat armor that’s far beyond anything we could even develop was another. There was even a living god of Norse mythology, explained to be a member of a race of near-immortal aliens.”

“That all sounds pretty rococo,” Osnullus said.

“I heard those stories from my grandparents,” Detmer said wistfully. “My Gran said the Norse god was hot.”

“The New Gods fought other, more evil gods, and they also fought one another—all in early 21^st century Earth. As you can imagine they destroyed whole cities. The underlying message of those stories is that the common human is not exceptional in any way, but instead subject to the whims of superior beings—even those dedicated to protecting them.”

“Ugh. Who would want to be a live in that world?” Detmer shook her head. “Just sitting around, watching a bunch of cosmic weirdos fight over you and hoping you don’t get killed by a collapsing building in the process. Talk about being powerless.”

“Precisely,” Owosekun said seriously, “And when people feel powerless, they do terrible things.”

“Yes,” Linus agreed. “It’s generally accepted that the Earth-peoples’ obsession with the New Gods is what inadvertently led to the rise of the genetic supermen and to the Eugenics Wars. Gone were the days when one person could use their wits and bravery to defeat a foe. Now the heroes of the day were superior beings. And when real superior beings were created, the population fell in behind them, since they were conditioned to do so by the movies about the New Gods.”

“So you’re saying the period in history which prized jingoistic stories of violence perpetrated against foreign cultures was a more enlightened time?” Owosekun asked skeptically.

Linus shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s your planet. I just like the explosions.”

********

About an hour later, the same string of blue beads made their way through the jungle. Keyla Detmer whispered an Andorian curse and slapped away a branch which seemed intent on burrowing into her ear. Already she could tell her patience would be sorely tested on this mission. She was a helmsman, a ship driver. Her natural habitat was a nice climate-controlled bridge and an expanse of controls at her fingertips, not fumbling along on an alien landscape. She was content to leave that fun for the science officers—hell, they lived to stick their heads into weird caves and have alien parasites explode out of their chests. It was fun for them.

At least it was comfortable, she mused. The temperature-controlling fabric of her Starfleet corrected for the heat of the environment and she felt as if she were surrounded by a cool washcloth. Still the humidity was not doing much for her hair, and after ten minutes she had to pull it into an unruly ponytail, causing Nilsson to remark, “Awww…cute!”

“You should make a note in the log,” Owosekun said.

“There’s no log,” Keyla said definitively.

“You’re in command, you should keep a log.”

“Like a Captain’s Log,” Nilsson said. “Maybe you could call it Mission Commander’s Log.”

“Or Team Leader’s Log,” Osnullus suggested. Of all of them, she was having the most trouble in this environment, her bulbous head seeming to find every tree limb or low-hanging branch. It didn’t help matters that she’d been charged with recording their route, and had to keep consulting the display of her tricorder while she walked. (“I could really use a set of compound eyes right now,” she’d joked).

“There’s no log!” Keyla snapped. “And I am not in command, here. We’re all lieutenants.”

“I’m a junior-grade,” Nilsson pointed out.

“And I’m an ensign,” Osnullus said. “So you can order the two of us around.”

“I’m not keeping a log. I’ll make notes of things as we discover them.” Keyla pulled out of her communicator and flipped it open. She opened a direct-line channel to Linus, who answered immediately.

“I am almost done here,” he reported, the communicator’s translator giving his words a smoothness they didn’t always have in face-to-face conversation. “The main analyzer was locked in self-diagnostic mode, but I think I’ve gotten it working.”

“Great,” Keyla said. “We’re about one klick out from the camp. You want us to hold position until you catch up?” She looked around. The terrain was fairly even, though covered by a low layer of fern-like plants. It wasn’t a nice, bare clearing like the campsite, but they could wait here if necessary.

“Not necessary,” Linus said. “You can continue your survey mission, and I’ll circle around and meet you. We can cover more ground that way.”

“Right,” Keyla said, “because splitting up is always a good idea in these situations. We’ll hold here. At least that way you’ll be covering terrain we’ve already counted and know is safe.”

“Copy that.”

“See? That’s command thinking,” Owosekun whispered. Keyla waved her away.

“I’m sending you the route info now.” She synced her communicator to Osnullus’s tricorder, then transmitted the route data. “There, now you don’t have any excuse if you get lost.”

She heard Linus chuckle through the open line. “Don’t worry about me, human, this is my element.”

“Yeah, well, try not to get eaten by a giant carnivorous plant or anything.”

“Do they have those on this planet?” Nilsson asked nervously.

“I don’t think so,” Owosekun reassured her.

“This is odd,” Osnullus said, holding up her rapidly-chirping tricorder. “I’m reading some kind of an intermittent energy signature.”

“Did one of the rubber trees just turn on a computer?” Keyla asked.

“Hold on, I’m getting readings” Linus’s voice startled her. She didn’t realize that she hadn’t closed the link. “It’s a fairly common…” The signal dissolved into static.

“Linus? Linus, did we lose you?”

His voice nearly overloaded the speakers. “Get out of there! All of you!”

And then the blue energy bolts exploded all around them.

Chapter Text

“Keyla! Keyla!” Linus shouted at the communicator that had gone silent after the burst of unmistakable plasma-rifle fire. He swore in his native language, savoring the profane taste of it on his tongue. He cursed himself for being just a moment too slow in recognizing the energy signature as the bleed from a low-power dampening field. The kind a reconnaissance team would use…

And now they’d been found…by someone. Panic bubbled up inside him as his nervous system ticked into fight-or-flight mode, while his brain didn’t have enough information to choose either option. Instead he concentrated on his field equipment—the hardy, transpari-steel computer display that was relaying data, and the communicator that seemed to get lost in his long-taloned hand. He went for the communicator first.

“Keyla! Keyla, do you read me?” He was rewarded by silence. He drew breath to call out for Owosekun, but stopped himself. “Survey team!” he said instead—no need to transmit more personal information than he already had—“Survey team, this is Research Base, do you copy?” There was still no response, but at least he’d used non-threatening titles in case the mysterious others were listening. Research Base and Survey Team sounded a lot less like an invasion force. Maybe whoever was responsible for this was mulling that over as Owosekun gently explained Starfleet’s role as an exploration and peacekeeping organization.

Maybe the communicator was chattering his translated voice to the uncaring jungle from Keyla Detmer’s limp, cold hand.

He felt the urge to flee again, his Saurian blood bellowing do something NOW!!! His people weren’t contemplators or tacticians, they were doers. Their long climb up the evolutionary ladder—millions of years in the making, much longer than that of the mammalian humanoids—had been informed by the hazards of their world, and on Varunus contemplation got you killed. Assessing a situation got you boiled in a mudburst if you came from the deserts of the Glassland. Planning and plotting got you eaten by a celeosaurian if you were from the Great Green. Varanus taught its inhabitants that to act was to live and to ponder was to die.

But you are not your quadruped ancestors!!! Linus thought furiously. Use your developed brain! There are no mudbursts here, and no raptor plants, and if a celeosaurian shows up, you can just scratch its belly until it falls asleep. There is a problem and you’re going to have to come up with a solution. Think, dammit, think!

Wait…that seemed familiar…

The first course of action came to him with mind-boggling simplicity: call the ship. The Discovery could scour the planet with its high-intensity sensors until it found the team, and then beam them to safety. Or perhaps, they’d send a security team, and the pretty Security Chief with the fragile lungs who’d recently joined them from the Enterprise would lead a recovery team to get them. Either way, they’d be back aboard the ship in time for first dibs on Taco Tuesday.

Linus switched to the Discovery’s channel and bounced it off the shuttlecraft’s power repeater. “Linus to Discovery…do you read me, Discovery?”

Silence. The communicator may as well have been a solid hunk of molded polymer or an ornately-painted rock. After three more tries he had to fight the urge to throw it into the jungle.

Think, dammit, think!

********

USS Discovery

Three Nights Earlier

“Think, dammit, think!” the human with the fraying head-pelt said furiously to himself.

“Why doesn’t he use his bio-transceiver?” Linus asked around the bamboo shoot he was gnawing in lieu of the “popped corn” Ensign Maki had baked (broiled? Fried?) for the occasion. He was sorely tempted to try some, but there was too much risk of exposing his tongue and he tried not to do that in human company.

The invitation for Maki's Morale Welfare and Recreation Movie Night had been extended to the entire crew, but Linus had been the only one to take him up on it. Apparently, the rest of the crew didn’t like popped corn.

“They weren’t invented yet,” Maki explained. He was a pleasant-looking human—doughy and pale—with a neat goatee and short, bristly hair.

Linus snorted. “Well, he could have just alerted the building’s internal communication systems and accessed the metropolis’s comm net.”

“Neither were those,” Maki said, grabbing a handful of the popped corn. “In the late 1980s buildings were basically just big boxes with some rudimentary power systems. That will factor into the plot later.”

Linus blinked as the watched the human on the holo-viewer. For the first time, the sheer enormity of the human’s situation dawned on him. “So…he has no transporters? No communications equipment? No sensors?”

“Nope,” Ensign Maki said with relish. “Just his wits and his firearm.”

“He’s doomed,” Linus concluded grimly.

“Just wait,” Ensign Maki said and grinned.

********

ACCESSING…

“Access faster!” Linus growled at the field station. His people were renowned for their patience—a reptile’s patience, the patience necessary to wait beneath a tree until the quarry they’d bitten succumbed to sepsis and fell out—but today he wasn’t feeling it.

LINK CONFIRMED…STAND BY FOR RETINA SCAN…

Linus forced himself not to blink at the flash of the laser-sensor as it played over his eye. A moment later, the screen transformed into a list of the shuttles control systems.

Holographic interfaces were delicate and didn’t work well in naturally-lit environments, so the field station had a cludgy tactile interface. Making matters worse, it was designed for the average mammalian humanoid’s hands. Linus had to type using two talons.

He ignored the flight controls—even if he knew how to pilot a shuttlecraft (he didn’t), Detmer was the only one of the group qualified to remote pilot one. Instead, he slid the highlight cube to the communications systems. The screen flickered and transformed into a one-dimensional facsimile of the shuttle’s comm controls. Linus patched the shuttle’s transmitters to the field station and opened a channel to Discovery.

“This is Survey Team hailing USS Discovery…do you read me, Discovery? Repeat, this is survey team to Discovery, do you read? There is an emergency. Request immediate beam-out.”

He waited. The readout showed that the signal strength was nearly 100%, so the shuttle was firing arrows of subspace information at high-warp speeds. The question was the distance it would have to travel before Discovery’s subspace receivers picked it up. When that would be depended upon where they were and the “loudness” of the space around them—the concentration of various forms of radiation, x-rays, and assorted other emissions. And Linus didn’t have an answer to that.

He tried again, this time feeding more power into signal. A moment later a voice answered him on a transmission too strong and clear to have come from Discovery.

“Hello Linus.”

********

“The good news,” Keyla said, “is that they’re probably not going to eat us.” The ground transport bounced abruptly, tossing the four prisoners about inside their metal box, then settled back onto a sloped, but stable course.

They’d been piled inside of it after the sudden hailstorm of gunfire rained down on their short column. The poorly-jacketed, energy inefficient plasma bolts exploded into the trees around them, engulfing the party in a stinging cloud of wood chips. By the time Keyla had blinked the sawdust out of her eyes and leveled her phaser they’d been surrounded.

Now, the four of them were seated on two uncomfortable metal benches with their hands cuffed in front of them, and the cuffs cable-wired to the floor. They were well-secured, but not safe. Kayla knew if the vehicle overturned they’d all dislocate their shoulders.

“How do you know that?” Nilsson asked, her voice skirting the edge of breaking. Keyla felt a pang of sympathy for her. She was doing her best to project bravery, but the effort showed more than the result. Her blue eyes were a touch too wide, rimmed with red, and her white-blonde hair was fast becoming a hazy corona around her head.

“I used to date a xeno-anthropologist,” she explained. “She told me that the main factor which determines whether a species will regard another species as food is how much they resemble one another. If they look too much alike, it seems too much like cannibalism. The Novianis look basically like us with some forehead ridges. So we’re in luck.”

Keyla smiled at Nilsson reassuringly, and got a hesitant smile in return. The woman seemed to be turning a corner, shaking off the shock and fear of their sudden abduction, and Keyla felt a flush of pride at helping her less-experienced crewmate through her personal gauntlet.

Osnullus clicked her mandibles nervously.

“Oh…” Keyla said awkwardly, as another bump bounced her painfully on her bench. “I mean, they probably won’t eat you either…”

“You’re very thin,” Nilsson nodded. Osnullus turned and stared at her. “I mean…not a lot of meat? Like you’re probably sinewy. And they’re not going to want to…”

“No one’s being eaten by anyone,” Owosekun said in her best schoolmarm voice. The one Keyla had heard her deploy countless times to quell arguments over dahm-jot games. “The Novianis will probably hold us for a while until they get a formal request from Captain Pike, or an apology or something. It’s just sabre-rattling.”

“They might also have monitoring installations here leftover from the war that they don’t want us to scan,” Osnullus suggested before turning to Nilsson. “And I am very edible, thanks.”

Nilsson wilted a bit.

“The Novianis worked with the Klingons during the war. They may still be bent out of shape about that,” Keyla suggested. “They also supplied them with slaves. Michael and I very nearly got sold off to Orion slavers by a group of Novianis. It was a bad scene.”

“Slavers?” Nilsson whispered.

“Yeah, the Orions deal through the Noviani’s as a cut-out in order to sell to races who don’t want to be associated with human trafficking.” Then she noticed that she had just undone virtually all of the progress she’d made improving Nilsson’s mood.

“Um,” she said awkwardly, “but this probably isn’t that.”

“Whatever the case is,” Owosekun, “remember Starfleet’s protocols for cooperation with a captor.” She looked at the group seriously, the schoolmarm replaced by the tough athletic coach.

“I…I don’t remember,” Nilsson said. “Starship protocol training was so long ago…”

“’Cooperation with captors is allowed if it relieves or deters the threat of execution or mistreatment,’” Keyla recited. “’However, cooperation must be limited to anything that does not compromise the safety and security of other Starfleet personnel or assets or intelligence. At no time should cooperation cause a violation of General Order Number One.’”

“Are we clear?” Owosekun said. They all nodded, and Keyla felt a layer of her own bravado falling away.

The transport lurched, slowed, and eventually ground to a halt.

“Okay,” she said. “This is it.”

********

“Who is this?” Linus demanded.

“I am Commander Thok of the Sixth Noviani Expeditionary Group. I…seem to have found your ship, and all this shiny Starfleet equipment.”

Linus took a deep breath before he replied. “What do you want, Colonel? I’m attempting to contact my Starship, and you’re tying up the channel.”

“Oh yes, the USS Discovery. I see its name all over your little launch. Is that in case you lose it?” The channel dissolved into barking laughter.

Linus bared his teeth. He didn’t mind good-natured mocking, but being taunted for his vulnerability tapped directly into his aggression center. In the hatcheries and rookeries of Varunus, such acts would have called for fang and talon. He pushed the anger away. It was what the mystery on the other end of the line wanted, for it would make him foolish and thus an easy adversary.

“We are a scientific vessel,” Linus explained. “And our expedition here is a planetary survey. We mean you no harm.”

“Oh, please stop with the Federation subterfuge. I am spectacularly uninterested in your reason for violating the sovereignty of Noviani space. Just know that this act of hubris will be answered for by your commanders.”

“We didn’t intend to violate anyone’s sovereignty…”

“We shall see if your compatriots say the same benevolent things when we question them.”

Linus felt the aggression rise in him again. “What happened to them? If you have harmed them in any way…”

“Oh, Lieutenant Linus, you needn’t worry. They’re considerably more valuable alive.”

“What do you want?” Linus demanded, gripping the sides of the field terminal, his talons unsheathing and scratching through the thin layer of anti-corrosive paint.

Thok’s laughter crackled over the communications system once again. “I already have it.”

And then a disruptor bolt flashed into his peripheral vision and the terminal exploded.

********

The base was a loose ring of pre-fabricated structures—nondescript rectangles connected by flexible corridors—encircling a battered, two-story dodecahedron, which Keyla guessed was the command and communications center. Blinking against the hazy sunlight as she was prodded out of the transport, she noted a small vehicle depot running from the northwest corner of the perimeter to the edge of the jungle. The eastern edge of the base, she noticed, was a huge, flat expanse of hardball marked with landing indicators and edged with navigation lights. Parked along the far edge were three squat atmospheric shuttles. Keyla stopped walking despite herself and squinted to make out the design. It was alien, of course, but clearly a combat craft. Two of them were slick, she noted, but one—the one closest--boasted two stubby door guns and a chin-turret.

“That’s so cool,” she breathed.

“What is?” Owosekun said from behind her.

“The gunship. It looks like a model I had as a kid.”

“Move!” shouted the Noviani soldier who was herding them along, jabbing her between the shoulder blades with his rife for good measure. Keyla stumbled forward, but managed to keep her balance.

“You don’t have to do that!” Owosekun protested angrily. The soldier spun, and Keyla felt her stomach grow cold. Instead of an explosive outburst of violence the soldier simply pressed the barrel of his rifle into her cheek.

“What did you say?” he hissed. Keyla felt as of her heart had stopped, as if time had become thick like taffy. She felt her pulse throb at corners of her jaw as she watched as the soldier used the rifle to turn Owosekun’s face away. The eye that was visible to Keyla widened and lowered to look at the muzzle of the gun.

“Nothing,” Nilsson said in a small voice. “She didn’t say anything.”

The soldier looked at her, then, after a moment, took the rifle out of Owosekun’s cheek. “I didn’t think so,” he said. “Now move!” He gestured with the rifle at the central building, and the group walked in silence up to a controlled entry point, which another soldier activated and then led them inside.

The interior was about as spare, and utilitarian as the exterior suggested. There were, as Keyla had guessed two levels with a central a walkway. Much of the ground floor was workstations arranged in a haphazard layout and mostly unmanned. The second floor seemed to be a ring of communication and sensory equipment. The base must have been set up in a hurry, Keyla thought as she looked around. She’d seen similar temporary bases deployed by the Starfleet on rim worlds during the first phases of colonization.

“So these are our guests, yes?” A stocky Noviani man walked out of a small, electronics-laden alcove. He wore a nominally-fancier uniform than the other soldiers, with shoulder boards and spatter of what appeared to be rank ribbons on the breast. “I’ve been looking forward to looking to meeting you all.” He sauntered over to the group, his beady, piggy eyes sizing each one of them up. “I am Colonel Getch of the Sixth Noviani Expeditionary Group. Welcome to our little home away from home here,” he said with a malevolent avuncularity.

“Keyla Detmer, Lieutenant…” Keyla began, but the man cut her off.

“I know who you are, and I know where you’re from. The USS Discovery. One of the Federation’s tools of stealth conquest.”

“That’s not true,” Owosekun said, and Keyla immediately wished she hadn’t. It was pretty clear this guy was just looking for an excuse to give a speech. “We were on a scientific survey mission.”

“Isn’t that what you always say? You arrive in your massive starships with all your guns hidden and you say that ‘we come in peace…we simply want to explore…’ and then you rob them of their culture and their individuality. You force them to surrender all that is that makes them who they are, and when they stand up to you, that’s when you send your fleet to subjugate them by force. The Klingons know this.”

“We don’t do that!” Nilsson protested.

“Save your lies,” Getch waved a hand dismissively. “I am spectacularly uninterested in your justifications and rationalizations. You may keep them to use later.”

“Later?” Keyla asked, in spite of herself.

Getch opened his arms, “We only caught you. You’ll be cooked by others.”

“What others?”

Getch smiled, showing a row of alabaster teeth. “The Klingons, of course.”

Chapter Text

Official transcription of remarks of the 2162 Annual Starfleet Medical Conference for Health Care Providers

Wednesday, March 5^th 1100hrs

Topic: Xeno-biology and the future of Starfleet

Speaker: Physician Phlox

PHLOX: …which, as I am sure you can imagine, was even more difficult in a zero-g environment.

[audience laughter]

PHLOX: But there is no doubt in my mind that Saurian officers serving in Starfleet will be nothing but an asset as we search further into the galaxy and encounter stranger, and stranger worlds. It is true there are certain dietary and environmental requirements that will need to be met in order to ensure their health, but these are easy to meet and sustain on long-range missions.

And in exchange, Saurians are very hardy. They have extremely durable epidermises—not nearly as vulnerable to abrasion or puncture as most humanoids—and extreme strength owing to their quad circulatory systems. It would seem the pounding of four hearts has other effects than untrammelled romanticism.

[audience laughter]

 ********

The blast threw Linus backward off the camping stool, and he shielded his face from the spraying plasticine shrapnel with one arm. Hands grabbed him from behind and threw him to the loamy earth. His vision was filled with the body of one of his assailants. He felt the arm he’d raised being twisted aside and the low whine of a set of restraints being powered up.

“Come on, come on, come on!” A voice snarled from someplace to his left. “Get him cuffed.”

Linus grunted and tried to move his arm, but it was pinned fast. A cuff slipped around his wrist. Linus twisted, and managed to get his other arm up and gained purchase on the uniform of the man atop him. He dug in with this talons and felt flesh give way beneath them. The man yelped in pain and surprise and Linus yanked him off his body. Now he had vision and freedom. He saw a Noviani soldier kneeling beside his outstretched right arm, wrapping a restraint around his wrist. His eyes went wide with surprise. Linus growled and rolled off his back. He got his legs under him and felt for the first time like he had a fighting chance.

A rifle butt slammed into the back of his skull, and his head snapped forward as his vision went blurry. A second blow exploded in the small of his back, and his knees buckled. He saw the soldier in front of him—the one who’d been fixing the restraint—reach for his pistol. Linus acted without thinking, grabbing the man by the shoulders and heaving, throwing the man bodily off the ground and into the treeline. He heard the soldier behind him curse and Linus spun and lashed out with his talons.

And suddenly the world was still. Linus noticed the tingling in his hand and the blood stripes appearing on the soldier’s throat. In another moment they became bold lines, and finally the soldier grabbed his throat and choked, then gargled. His eyes lost focus and he pitched forward onto the ground. Linus knelt down beside him and tried to press on the wound.

“Quick! Do you have a med kit? A medical kit? Field dressing? Anything?”

The solider didn’t hear him. His eyes scanned the jungle canopy--and perhaps someplace beyond--and then they went blank. Linus let out a sigh and let go of the man’s throat. He’d never used his talons on a humanoid before—he’d scratched plenty of fellow Saurians, but that did little beyond leaving some shallow scrapes—now he’d just torn someone’s throat out.

The blip of a communicator distracted him from thinking about it too much. It wasn’t the chirp of a Starfleet communicator, so he inspected the Noviani soldier’s body until he found a clunky comm device. He pressed buttons until he got a channel.

“Theed, come in! Don’t tell me you still haven’t subdued that damn lizard yet! It’s a grelfing scientist!” Thok spat the word like it was a piece of rotten fruit.

“I am not an ‘it,’ Colonel,” Linus said politely into the comm device. “My name is Linus, and I’d thank you to refer to me as such. Or you may refer to me as ‘Lieutenant Linus’, although that has a strange consonance to it in Galactic Standard.”

There was a moment of silence, then Thok’s voice crackled over the channel, blunt and forbidding. “So you have bested my men.”

“Yes,” Linus said. “One of them is dead the other…” Linus abruptly realized that he had no idea where the other soldier was. He whipped his head around, saw nothing, then raised his gaze and saw the man’s motionless, crumped body in the bough of a nearby tree. “Well, I appear to have thrown him into a tree.”

“And now you feel confident?”

Linus blinked. “Well, no…not really.”

“Because despite what you may believe right now, I assure you that by this time tomorrow your hide will upholster my favorite chair.”

Upholster…? Why would anyone…? Linus shook the question away. He couldn’t afford to get distracted. “Where is the rest of my team?” he demanded.

“You have merely delayed the inevitable, lizard. I have a full team of Noviani commandos at my disposal—“

“Minus two,” Linus pointed out. It was just basic math.

“--and more troops at our base. Night is coming, my friend. Can you see in the dark? Because my men can. If you surrender now you may just live. If you don’t, your death will be certain and soon.”

“You haven’t really given me a very good case for turning myself in,” Linus said. “Maybe if you’re men hadn’t shot at me…”

“Fine. We do it your way. Good luck, Lieutenant Linus. We’ll see you soon.”

Linus opened his mouth to respond, but stopped at the last moment, thinking of something better. He keyed the mic.

“Yippie-kai-yay, motherfucker.”

Chapter Text

As near as Keyla could tell, their holding cell was just a modified storage unit. Still, having been designed to keep its contents intact even in the end of intra-atmosphere freefall, it did the job just fine. Just four strong walls and a heavy door with a deadbolt. On the other side of it were two Noviani soldiers. Owosekun was on her hands and knees inspecting the seam around the doorjamb.

“Hinges,” she said at last and with a sour expression.

“Low-technology. Just our luck,” Osnullus said from her perch on some empty supply crates. “No panel to rewire or short-circuit.”

“You know low-tech,” Keyla said to Joann. “How do we get out of here?”

Owosekun’s eyes narrowed. “How am I supposed to know? The door is locked. So unless one of you has a hidden phaser or portable torch…”

“You grew up on Luna-Seven,” Keyla said exasperatedly. “You have to know how to pick the lock or something! Use two pieces of wires? Wiggle them vigorously?”

“Do you see a lock? I don’t. There’s nothing to pick.”

“You must have had some experiences growing up like this one,” Keyla noticed her voice was close to whining now and corrected. “What did you do?”

“Keyla, Luna-Seven was a luddite colony, not a Russian gulag. We didn’t lock people in cargo containers very often.”

Keyla swore and kicked at the wall. All it did was make her foot hurt.

“Maybe there’s a seam someplace,” Osnullus said tentatively. “A weak spot?”

No,” Keyla said, determinedly, a plan crystalizing in her mind. “There’s only one thing that’s going to get us out of here.” She looked at her three compatriots.

“Sex.”

The other three looked at one another with befuddled expressions.

“Like with each other, or…” Nilsson asked.

“No,” Keyla snapped. “We need to…wait, what? Never mind…”

Nilsson looked at Osnullus and shrugged.

“I mean, sex is what is going to get the soldiers to open that door and let their guards down long enough for us to overpower them and take their weapons. Sex.” She gave the group a confident wink. “Or at least the promise of it. Because if there is one universal constant, it’s that men think with a certain part of their anatomy. And we are going to use that.”

They stared at her.

“That fact, not the body part,” she clarified.

“Are you completely insane?” Owosekun asked. “No, it’s a serious question: Are you, right now, here in this cargo container, having a complete psychological break from reality? Is that happening to you right now? Because that’s the only explanation I can think of what such a cockamamie plan.”

“Cockamamie?” Osnullus asked.

“Absurd,” Nilsson clarified. “Ridiculous, hare-brained, idiotically-stupid--”

“Enough!” Keyla cut her off. “It’s a time-tested plan. Oldest one in the book, and there’s a reason for that: it always works.”

“Does it, though?” Owosekun asked skeptically, “I feel like it’s one of those things that only ever happens in films and novels.”

“Oh, it’ll work,” Keyla said confidently, throwing back her shoulders, thrusting out her chest. “Trust me, I’ll have Thing One and Thing Two eating out of my hand in five minutes flat. That’s when you all make your move.”

“Wait,” Owosekun said, holding up a palm. “You are going to…why you?”

“Because I’m the most sexually-attractive of the three of us,” she said slowly. The group was obviously more shaken by their ordeal than she’d originally noticed, given the way they were missing obvious facts like this.

“What?” Owosekun exclaimed.

“Excuse me?” Nilsson’s eyes went wide.

“They might be into weird stuff,” Osnullus said, waggling her mandibles in a come hither gesture.

“Look,” Keyla said over their raised voices. “I’m sorry, I’m just saying: we need to get these guys’ attention, like, fast. And on that point, the most obvious, superficially attractive one of us is the one who should be the diversion. I’m not saying I’m a beauty queen, or any kind of a sexual goddess, just the most conventionally-attractive of the four of us.”

They stared daggers at her.

“I mean, you all have great inner beauty…” she added lamely.

“Nilsson is gorgeous, you conceited cow!” Owosekun almost shouted.

Keyla made a diplomatic gesture. “She is very pretty…like a mother of three who enjoys white wine and mystery novels. But I don’t get any heat off her. And we need heat.”

“I had three guys propose to me in college,” Nilsson said.

“That’s cute, honey” Keyla said, gently.

“One of them only knew me for an hour.”

“Look,” Keyla cut her off. “We’ve decided.”

“We didn’t actually decide,” Osunullus pointed out.

“We have!” Keyla felt her face flushing. Why were women so catty? This was hardly the time for them to deal with their insecurities. “Now, we need to concentrate on the plan.”

“Is you acting like a jackass part of the plan?” Owosekun asked.

“The plan,” Keyla said through gritted teeth, “is that I get the guards to open the door and then keep them distracted with the promise of sex with a gorgeous Earth-woman. While they are distracted, you all overpower them and take their weapons. Do you think you can manage that?”

“I have several questions about the plan,” Osnullus said.

“I have a lot of questions about a lot of things,” Owosekun said dryly.

“We don’t have much time, so ask them while I’m getting ready,” Keyla said as she began to unzip her uniform. “You three should get ready, too. Maybe find something you can use as weapons.”

“The crates over the corner might work!” Nilsson chirped.

“That’s good thinking,” Keyla said approvingly as she wriggled out of her pants, pausing to adjust her underwear. Mentally, she castigated herself for wearing the practical athletic shorts and sports bra. Still, she was confident she could make it work.

“Yeah, they’ll make nice shields when the Novianis start gunning us down,” Owosekun said sourly.

“Stop being pessimistic,” Keyla admonished. “Ninety percent of success is positive thinking.” She stepped back into her boots and activated the claps.

“What are you doing?” Joann asked.

“What?”

“Why are you wearing your boots? I thought the point of this was to seduce the guards.”

“I’m showing off the good parts!” Keyla gestured vaguely to her torso. “And this floor is all dirty. I’m not stepping on that.”

“You were frolicking barefoot through the stream this morning,” Owosekun protested.

“That was in nature,” Keyla explained. “Who knows what they’ve been storing this this thing. There are probably old solvents and chemicals and stuff. Besides, they’re not going to be looking at my feet. There’s nothing sexy about feet.”

“Oh, that’s not true,” Osnullus said.

“Nope, not at all,” Owosekun said almost simultaneously.

“That’s not accurate,” Nilsson shook her head.

“What?” Keyla asked, perplexed. “You’re telling me men like feet?”

“Yes,” the other three said, more or less in unison.

“Trust me,” Osnullus said, “I had to sift the porn out of the vid filters last month, and for human men feet are a huge thing. You didn’t know this?”

“I knew that,” Nilsson said.

“Everyone knows that,” Owosekun said. “It’s weird.”

“Okay, gross,” Keyla shook her head. “But I’m still not taking off the boots. They can just deal with this real estate here.” She gestured again.

Owosekun shrugged, “Well, if you want to half-ass it…”

“You all just concentrate on your part of the plan, okay? And that is tackling the guards when I get them to open the door. Leave the sexy time to me.” She took a deep breath and shook out her hair. “Game on,” she said in the breathy, sultry voice she knew made men helpless and pounded on the door.

********

Linus kept the radio on while he worked. He knew that neither Thok nor Theed would be communicating with one another over an unencrypted channel, but that didn’t preclude the possibility of one or both of them taunting him again. As he’d come to learn, those taunts could be instructive.

Night was rolling in, quickly and inexorably, as if a great bowl had been placed over the sky, and already Linus could hear the agitated cries of nocturnal hunters—insects, birds, and mammals all lifting their voices to the hunt. It reminded him of home.

His people were omnivores like most big reptiles, but they didn’t farm, because that was stupid. Truly, why would any intelligent species just sit around waiting for things to grow, when things were growing all over the planet? But even scavenging meant competition, and so the night was where advantage lay. It was a lesson every young Saurian learned when they left the hatchery, and one the Noviani commandos would learn tonight.

He knew how this part went. He’d seen it in nearly all the films he watched with Ensign Maki. There was no music to accompany him—diegetic or otherwise—so he hummed as he performed The Ritual of Preparing for Battle.

He tore his uniform shirt off his midriff—his cold-blood would make him more difficult to track on infrared sensory equipment.

He charged the Noviani plasma rifle and slung it over his shoulder.

He threw a bandolier of power-packs over the other shoulder, crosswise across his chest.

He buckled a web belt around his waist and stuffed photon grenades in the pouches.

He slid a tricorder into its pouch in his uniform (this was, he had to admit, somewhat anticlimactic).

Suitably equipped, all that was left was to perform the rituals. So he tore a long strip from his uniform shirt and tied it around the crown of his skull to make a warrior’s headdress, being sure to keep several centimeters free to hang over his shoulder. Then he kicked off his boots, and enjoyed the feel of air and the jungle’s loamy floor on his toes. He extended his foot-claws and tilled the ground until he unearthed a good tangle of roots. He tore them loose and used the fine tips of his talons to shape them into crude humanoid forms. Then he lined them up on the wrecked console, making an irregular procession. The XL-716A Starfleet-issue Survival Tool he carried in his pocket contained a small fire-starter and he lit each of the little figurines, and watched the grey smoke curl into the darkening sky.

On Varanus, burnt offerings were for your guardians: parents and siblings, and teachers, alive and dead, who had given you the skills necessary to survive among the predators. But this was not Varanus, and there were no guardians here. Instead, Linus offered to his new guardians. The Old Gods of humanity.

He offered to John Rambo, who defied his country to do what was right.

He offered to John Matrix, who alone faced down an entire army to rescue his daughter.

He offered to John McClaine, who battled through a skyscraper full of terrorists to rescue his wife.

He offered to Ellen Ripley, who, despite not being named John, had battled valiantly for survival against a horde of nightmare creatures.

He offered to Valeria, who returned from the dead to fight alongside her lover.

Finally, as the last light the day drown on the horizon, he bowed his head and tried to remember the prayers of his childhood.

Oh great hatchery, the cradle of our life and our future, see me through this day, so that I might be reunited with my friends and crewmates and deliver them alive and healthy back home…

The prayer seemed ridiculous on his tongue. It was a child’s entreaty, and there were men on their way who meant to skin him alive. So he added:

…and if you don’t, then the hell with you!

Linus watched the sun disappear, and then waded into the brush. To do battle.

After about twenty meters, he dumped about half his gear. It was really heavy.

Chapter Text

Strike Team Commander Thok straightened up and adjusted his combat vest. It was a heavy, close-fitting piece of gear, studded with sensor-baffling ECM pods, and energy-projectile diffusers. It could withstand up to three direct hits by a disruptor-rifle and still remain intact, but the trade-off was that wearing felt like being embraced by a large and especially affectionate tick. Thok’s vest was a basic jungle camouflage pattern, but some of his soldiers, had painted theirs with personalized mottos or phrases of import. The personalization of armor—making it a reflection of the wearer and their history of victories—was a direct influence of the Klingons, to whom the Novianis had always looked for guidance in matters of force and violence.

“Are you ready to hunt a lizard?” he asked jovially, and was rewarded with bloodlusty chuckles from his unit. He might have appealed to their sense of vengeance for the comrades they’d already lost to the animal, but within the military promotions were few and fiercely competitive, and the men were already crafting their plans for advancement with the death of Theed and Sanyu. “I know the Klingons will pay handsomely for his skull to mount on the bow of one of their attack ships.”

More laughter. The men’s eyes glittered with barely-restrained cruelty. Thok nodded approvingly as he looked over his team.

Zantho was built like a bog monster from the old legends, with long, flowing hair that he kept wild and unwashed. His face was gridlined with thin scars from his hobby of knife-fighting. In his arms, he cradled a massive pulse-cannon on which he had painted evil eyes and teeth. Two wide-bladed amputation knifes cross-crossed one another on his vest.

Wachtu was his demolitions expert, and a veritable wizard with anything explosive. He built shaped-charges as a hobby, and was exceptionally skilled at deploying them against vehicles on air, land, sea, or space. He had personally been responsible for deploying a mobile minefield around a particularly unruly colony planet last year, and had successfully starved them into submission when their food supply ran out and transports couldn’t get close enough to resupply them. He spoke little, and didn’t socialize much, but it was a joke among the men that one would know when they’d gotten on his bad side when his hooch exploded.

Klechka was the opposite: lean and wiry as a sapling. His thin arms were run through with a tangle of crude cybernetics he’d had installed at black-market and off-the-books modification centers all over the sector. Thok had seen the man bend duraniam rods with those enhanced limbs. As the flesh around the implants became infected and necrotic, he had more and more cybernetics installed. He would never reach command level, Thok knew, the cybernetics would poison him first. Best to get as much violence as possible out of the soldier before that day.

Celtriss was the most likely to make command-grade, and Thok feared his ambition and guile. He was a good soldier—not exceptional, but he also understood that he did not need to be. He was a skilled tactician and a crafty opponent. Unlike the others, he didn’t decorate his armor or his hair. He looked every bit the part of a responsible officer. Command would have no compunctions about promoting him quickly, which was the only reason Thok didn’t fear the man would kill him: he didn’t need to. The day would come when he simply surpassed Thok and would be his superior officer. Best to get him killed before then.

Finally, there was Doreel, who was known as a berserker. Tales abounded of him throwing himself bodily into the fray, his rifle spitting fire at close range until a shortage of ammo or patience caused him to reverse the weapon and use it as a club. Doreel, it was said, delighted in nothing as much as the physical destruction of an enemy’s body: shattered bones, pulped organs, smashed faces. Thok strongly suspected it would be Doreel who brought home the kill today.

“All right,” he said authoritatively and began punching coordinates into the nav-tracker strapped to his arm. “Here is the last location of the target and our formation. We will fan out and cover the traversable portion of the forest between here and the base. It will not be long before one of us locates him. Any questions?”

There were none.

“Then let us disappear,” he said. He and his men activated their vests, then, in the growing darkness, donned their sensor-goggles. Only then, effectively invisible, but able to see clearer than any of the predators around them, did they dissolve into the jungle.

********

The deadbolt on the cargo container’s big door slammed open, and the door itself widened just a crack—enough for the blunt muzzle of a disruptor rifle to poke through the gap. When no resistance was forthcoming the door opened wider and the doorway was filled with a wild, thrashing, hissing spitting animal.

Keyla Detmer to be exact.

She squirmed and kicked impotently, while the Noviani soldier retained a grip on her forearms as strong as a set of docking clamps and held her several centimeters above the ground, like a fussing child.

“YOU SON OF A...YOU MOTHER-EATING, GRASS-HUMPING…DIRTY…YOU CAN ALL JUST GO BACK TO YOUR GRUBBY LITTLE CAVES AND SHOVE ROCKS UP YOUR…” She swore, hissed, howled, barely able to piece together a coherent sentence.

The soldier let go of Keyla, and she stumbled as she gained her balance, her feet in her uniforms boots nearly tripping over themselves. Then they withdrew and secured the door again with a heavy clang!

“Yeah, you better lock that thing! Next time I see you, I’m gonna kick your teeth in and use your skulls as castanets!” She hitched up her panties, and readjusted her athletic bra before taking a deep, composing breath.

“You know what they said? Do you have any idea what they said?” she demanded. “Apparently I and not suitably-attractive by Noviani standards! Can you believe that shit? They said that—and I quote—‘my hair was the color of rotten mullet!’ What the hell even is mullet, anyway? Oh, and on top of that, the other one—the small one—said I looked ‘sickly’ and ‘malnourished.’ And that sex with me would be like having sex with a refugee from a plague colony!

“Oh, I am sorry, but these people just need to be photon torpedoed off the face of the planet. No Prime Directive, no negotiations. We just need to bring the fire. I mean, can you believe that?

“These people are a bunch of back-water, space-hicks who’ve been licking Klingon ass for the better part of two generations. I’m not attractive enough for them? Oh sweetie, they are so far beneath me there is no unit of measurement big enough to quantify it.

She exhaled heavily, then straightened up. “They mock,” she said, “what they do not understand.”

“So,” Owosekun asked from her perch atop an overturned crate, “were we supposed to tackle them right then?”

********

The heat was brutalizing them, Specialist Wachtu thought as he struggled through a tangle of wild growth. The air had grown so thick it felt like gel, and that portended coming monsoons, but he knew it wouldn’t bring any relief from the heat.

He hated this accursed world, with its endless jungle, oppressive heat, and constant rains. He hated the fact there was no population to break, no recreation to be had, no action whatsoever. These Starfleet people should have been their entertainment for the day, hunting them through this primeval jungle like animals, and then making their deaths slow and enjoyable to watch. Instead, they only had this animal to catch and kill. It was barely worth their skills.

“There!” Doreel’s voice whispered through his earpiece. “Ahead, six arcs of the circle. Perhaps a remicam out. A trap.”

Wachtu looked in that direction and cycled his goggles through the band of sensor inputs. He didn’t see anything humanoid. When he clicked through the levels designed to pick up energy-emissions, he saw the small cluster of cylinders wound into the branches of a tree.

“Grenades,” he replied, and muscled through the growth until he could see the explosive belt woven into a tree-branch.

“Keep your distance!” Commander Thok’s voice snarled over the comm-web.

“It’s an amateurish job,” he replied angrily. Thok knew nothing of explosives or traps, yet he was like most officers: arrogant and demanding and too proud to let his men take any initiative. “The activators still have the safeties engaged. The grenades wouldn’t go off.” He reached up and unclasped the belt’s buckle. The extra explosives would come in handy…if they ever faced an opponent worth any effort.

Something flashed in the periphery of his goggles and then his world exploded.

Chapter Text

Linus leaned out as far as he dared from his perch several meters off the ground in the flexible but sturdy branches of some kind of rubber tree variant. In the purpling twilight the explosion was a white/blue plume. He wondered how many of his attackers he’d taken out with the explosion. He decided that he should conclude it was only one. Now was not the time for overconfidence.

He left that to his enemies.

They were so certain of their invisibility to sensors that they didn’t even notice the disruption they made as they moved through the overgrowth. Perhaps at ground level, it would only be a distant commotion—some rustling on the wind someplace—but from here, in the dimming light of the fire caused by the explosions, he could see the shaking of the trees where they crashed through them like the clumsy primates they were. They were moving in no particular direction, and that fact gave Linus some satisfaction. It meant he’d rattled them.

A moment later angry red disruptor beams slashed wildly through the night sky. Behind him, a tree exploded. Linus blinked away sawdust.

Time to move.

********

It was just the barest flicker of light on his sensor goggles, but Doreel charged it anyway. He ignored the lashing branches and tearing underbrush as he ripped through vegetation, imagining himself an unstoppable force like an extinction-level comet or a one of the destroying gods of the Old Religions. He had reason to be confident, for he had adjusted the input sensors to sift out most of the planet’s indigenous fauna. If life-signs showed up on his HUD, it almost certainly was The Animal.

Doreel saw another flicker—more pronounced this time, with a humanoid shape—about twenty meters in the distance. He increased his pace and felt the jungle gash his flesh more deeply.

“I have him!” He shouted over the comm-web, and gave coordinates. “Come join me for the barbecue!”

“Be careful,” Thok’s voice admonished through his earpiece. “This animal killed Wachtu. He is crafty!”

“Then he will pay for his cleverness,” Doreel snarled and fired his rifle from the hip, stabbing at the trigger stud as quickly as he could. The gun’s tri-barrels spit sizzling disruptor bolts which chewed up the dense foliage ahead of him, carving a steaming, hissing tunnel out of the jungle.

Doreel charged the animal’s last position and felt the jungle grab at his ankles. He kicked free and continued his charge.

And then his HUD lit up with proximity alerts.

Doreel barely had time to process what his sensors were telling him when the log swung down in a tight arc and crushed him against the trunk of a tree.

********

“Damn him!” Thok choked past his rage and –yes, he had to admit it—his fear. He stood over Doreel’s crushed body, the man’s face locked in a perpetual state of stupid surprise. “He was always too reckless! I told him hundreds of times, I said to him: ‘you need to evaluate the situation.’ I used those words—evaluate.”

“This beast is more cunning than we anticipated,” Celtriss mused, not failing to miss an opportunity to flaunt his thoughtful approach to command, Thok thought. “He lured us into underestimating him.”

“He will die slow for this,” Zantho rumbled like a volcano waking. He flexed his biceps for added effect.

“Better yet,” Kletchka piped in his reedy, damaged voice. “Keep him alive long enough to watch what the Klingons do to his comrades.”

“No!” Zantho, growled. “He killed our teammates. We will be the ones to make him suffer, not the Klingons!”

Thok said nothing, understanding the value of letting the fury and bloodlust boil amongst them. He hoped Celtriss would say something to further inflame their passions. Instead, the man just looked at the dangling log that had killed Doreel, then traced its path his gaze until he found the perch, high in a nearby tree where it had been staged.

“How did he get something so heavy up there?”

********

Official transcription of remarks of the 2162 Annual Starfleet Medical Conference for Health Care Providers

Wednesday, March 5^th 1100hrs

Topic: Xeno-biology and the future of Starfleet

Speaker: Physician Phlox (Starfleet, Retired)

Doubtless, gentlemen, you have seen my rather…vociferous objection to Starfleet’s Personnel Resources categorization of Saurians. I stand by my remarks. Classifying Saurians as—and I quote—“assets to planetary missions, due to their extreme strength as a result of having four hearts” unquote reduces their contribution to one of merely brute strength, and while I have nothing but the utmost confidence in the forward-leaning policies and attitudes of Starfleet, such a descriptor does run the risk of marginalizing this newest member of our spacefaring family. There is no reason to believe Saurians cannot and will not become valuable members of the engineering corps, science division, Medical, and so on.

Of course, no one I denying there are times when brute strength is an asset…

********

“There! There! There!” Thok stabbed the air like a lunatic, and dozens of plasma bolts sizzled through the humidity and shredded and boiled a section of jungle several meters from their intended target.

“Check fire!” Cetriss’s voice came over the comm-net, irritatingly calm and precise. “New coordinates incoming.”

Thok’s HUD lit up with the appropriate target coordinates. He stifled the urge the smash his fist through the smug little climber’s HUD goggles and pulverize his face. Of course the man would take the opportunity to make him look the fool! Thok had come up enlisted, a ground-pounder in countless campaign where he and his comrades in arms were regarded as nothing but cannon-fodder. Meat-padding for the officers. They hadn’t been issued HUDs, tracking goggles, or even advanced optics—those were reserved for the troops who had a chance for survival. For Thok and those like him, the only advanced targeting they had was probing fire.

But Celtriss had come up in the new Noviani military—the one with all the toys supplied by the Klingons. He was a thoroughly modern warrior, and now he had his chance to show off his understanding of cutting-edge war technology and make Thok look like the obsolescent old dog he was.

“Kletchka, lay down tracking fire…”

Gods! The man was giving orders now! And worse, his unit was obeying them. Kletchka unhesitatingly brought his rapid-fire plasma rifle to bear on the target.

“No!” Thok shouted. “You’ll give him our position, that damn gun is an arrow pointed—“

But the wiry man’s cybernetic limbs had already activated the gun, and fired a raking burst, the red plasma bolts fired so rapidly that they resembled a solid beam. Immediately, that section of growth evaporated, while great tree trunks halved as if by a laser scalpel.

Thok huffed with impotent rage. It had finally happened. He had lost his command.

He didn’t recall making the decision; his arms had simply moved of their own accord, and a moment later he was staring down the sights of his rifle at Celtriss’s skull. His finger hesitated on the trigger stud. Should he at least give the man a warning first? Would a public dressing-down be more effective than an execution? Command forced one to consider these options.

Suddenly Ketchka cried out in shock and surprise, as his arc of fire went wide.

“What the hell are you doing?” Thok screamed over the ‘net.

“I can’t control them!” the man replied his voice crossing from panic to hysteria. “They’re not my arms! They’re not my arms!” Then the pulsing, whining, sizzling fire swung around toward them. Thok leapt to the side and rolled onto his shoulder, the rough terrain of stones, and packed dirt, and roots digging into his side. He looked up to see Celtriss caught in the merciless beam. The man held out his hands as if to implotre Kletchka to stop. And them he was cut in two.

Kletchka cried out in horror. Zantho did so in grief. Thok brought his rifle up and fired into Ketchka until he and his hacked cybernetics disintegrated into ash.

Chapter Text

Linus melted into the surrounding foliage, and then winced as the powerful bolts from the huge soldier’s portable cannon blew craters into the earth and sent geysers of dirt and vegetation into their air. Even from his vantage about a hundred meters away, he could see trees crack and topple and collapse, bringing down small chunks of the lower canopy. Linus had left the unit he’d used to remote-operate the soldier’s cybernetics—a tricorder slaved to a portable subspace transceiver that he’d stuck together with the sticky fabric wrap Engineer Reno was so fond of—in a relatively bare patch in the overgrowth and set it transmit aggressively in the hopes it would draw out just this type of response.

Whatever else the man was, he wasn’t surgical, Linus concluded. He wasn’t tactical either; otherwise he wouldn’t have exposed his position. Linus scanned the origin point of the plasma bolts with a set of   binoculars he’d taken from the Noviani soldier’s field kit. They didn’t really fit his face very well, and he had to turn them sideways and use them like a spyglass.

The binoculars gave him a quick readout of the distance and angle between them. Linus was about a thousand meters away and on a slight rise, perhaps twenty meters. The two remaining Noviani soldiers were on a slightly bare patch on a stretch of relatively flat land, with a steep drop-off on the southern side. The big one was firing off this side at the decoy Linus had set up. It was perhaps two hundred meters below them, and the havoc caused by the massive energy bolts was bleeding over into their position: the falling trees were entwined with others and taking them down as well. If the soldiers cared about the possibility of being crushed, they didn’t show it.

He lowered the binoculars and shouldered the Noviani plasma rifle. His enemy’s rage had made them incautious and that made them vulnerable. He twisted his head so he could peer through the optic. It was set to a 3x magnification and gave him a decent view of his enemies’ location, though he couldn’t see them through the foliage. His thumb found the selector knob on the optic’s side to set it to the sensor bandwidth, which would effectively look through the vegetation…

--And stopped—

Linus froze, his breath trapped in his chest, his muscles turning stone.

Too easy! A voice deep inside his mind shouted furiously. These are not animals! Not tessinarks during mating season! They’re warm-bloods with all the cunning and resourcefulness their breeds possess. They’ve watched you trap them several times already! Will they just stumble into another?

Very slowly, Linus removed his hand from the optic’s controls, and then let out a heaving sigh.

The soldier firing madly broadcast his position perfectly.

The optic’s sensor bandwidth was an active sensing device, meaning it could be detected…and traced back to its source.

A trap! And they’d nearly caught him in it, too. Slowly, quietly, he lowered the rifle. Of course, they’d finally figured out how to play to their strengths. They knew he’d stolen their gear, and they knew how their gear worked, so they knew how he’d use it.

All-righty, then, he thought, echoing one of Ensign Maki’s aphorisms, time to take it to limit.

The sky rumbled, and a moment later a furious tropical rain began to fall.

I can use this, he thought.

********

“Come on, damn you. Show yourself,” Thok muttered from his makeshift blind, wedged between the trunk of some great tree and a strategically-built pile of a vegetation. His plasma-rifle was propped on his field pack, and he squinted through the optic, which was set to scan for sensor emissions. He was covered in vegetation and his uniform baffles prickled against his skin as they dissipated his heat signature. His combat ECM kit was emitting a low-level dampening signal. He was, for all intents and purposes, invisible.

The sky had turned black and buckets of rain pounded him. That was good for him, too.

“Come on…”

“The bastard isn’t coming!” Zantho shouted over the roar of the driving rain. He was about fifty meters away from Thok, in a wide clearing and facing away from the man as he spoke—if the animal was watching them from trees, he would think Thok was elsewhere.

And the animal was watching, this much Thok knew.

He was cunning, but overconfident, and Zantho was a very tempting target. All Thok needed was one little sensor ping to find him. One ping only…

He almost didn’t hear the rustle of the underbrush behind him over the sound of the rain, and by the time his hand went to the blaster on his hip, strong hands gripped him by the collar and the belt.

Lighting flared and the world became brilliantly clear.

And Thok saw the thing, much of its uniform stripped away, as it hoisted him above its head and threw him bodily toward Zantho.

********

Starfleet Academy

San Francisco, Earth

Five years ago

“Don’t do that,” Kyle said as they walked across the great lawn. Linus was sluggish from the city’s natural coolness, though Kyle said he would acclimate in time.

“Don’t do what?”

“Flick your tongue. Humans don’t like it.”

Linus clamped a hand over his mouth self-consciously. “They don’t?”

“No, it squicks them out.”

“But it’s a perfectly natural sensory input. It’s like seeing. There’s nothing strange about seeing.”

“If your eyes popped out of your skull when you looked at something, then, yes, seeing would be a strange thing to do.”

“What about Crustailians?”

“Their eyes are on stalks. Not the same thing. Besides, humans like keeping their tongues in their mouths. It’s considered bad form to just let it hang out.”

“I’m testing their air,” Linus protested.

“And it reminds them of snakes,” Kyle continued. “And humans hate snakes. They freak them out like you wouldn’t believe.”

“Snakes?”

“Like, half of their culture is based around hating snakes.”

“Snakes are harmless. Why would they have such animosity toward them?”

Kyle shrugged. “Beats me. Near as I can tell, all Earth snakes do is eat disease-carrying pests, but man, you mention snakes to a human and they look like the damn thing killed their family and their canine. Point is, don’t remind humans of snakes. Trust me. I learned this the hard way.”

“I can’t believe I have to dull my senses just to accommodate humans’ irrational prejudices,” Linus huffed.

“Put it neutral, dude. We both know our species evolved past the need for that sense millennia ago. We have actual working eyesight now…and speaking of, are you seeing Cadet McCluskey over there? She changed her hair. Looks niiiice.”

“It just…it just doesn’t seem right,” Linus said, shame and confusion roiling him.

“Hey, you want to fit in, don’t you?”

********

Kyle would have been mortified at him now, Linus thought with some amusement as he lashed at the air with his tongue. He could taste the fecund rain forest of course, but filtering that out, he could also taste the synthetic tang of the Noviani’s equipment, and spiciness of their endorphins and perspiration. It was heavy enough to lead him right to the source.

He could taste the other one as well—his sweat bitter with performance-enhancing chemicals—but the scent wasn’t as powerful, and Linus guessed he was several meters off in the distance. Linus charged through the blackness, the rain and night air cool on skin.

Just cool enough to stay off your infra-red vision…

The marksman never saw him coming. Linus’s claws tore through his armor and the Noviani twisted and let out a yelp of surprise and fear. His tongue flicked the air again, and he tasted the other one more distinctly now on a gust of storm-tossed air.

Lightning flared. Linus saw the hulking beast. Ten meters off to his three o’clock. He spun and aimed his massive blaster.

Linus heaved the marksman at the huge one, then spun and drew his phaser. Lightning flared again and he saw his humanoid missile bounce off the soldier, throwing off his aim. Linus fired into the darkness. In the strobing red of the phaser bolts he saw the massive soldier lurch backward as Linus’s shots tore through his huge blaster in a small waterfall of sparks. Linus adjust his aim, but the darkness reclaimed the jungle, and all he could hear was furious roar of the falling rain.

Then, a sensor whined in the darkness, and Linus pivoted, covering that section of darkness when an invisible force slammed into him, sending him sprawling onto the rough terrain. Linus aimed up into the darkness, but an invisible boot kicked it from his grasp just as he pressed the firing stud. The shot went wild as the phaser spun away into the darkness. The phaser’s stray bolt struck a dead tree and turned it into a large torch, nominally protected from the rain by an overhang of foliage.

Now, caught in the warm, orange glow of the burning tree, Linus saw the massive soldier towering above him like rough cairn of stones. One hobnailed booted foot was raised to deliver a devastating stomp to his ribcage. Linus rolled with all the nimble speed of a gecko, and the huge foot stamped the ground impotently. Linus imagined he felt tremors.

He leapt to his feet and threw a punch--a wide arcing blow Ensign Maki called a ‘haymaker” (though he couldn’t explain where the name came from). His fist slammed into the soldier’s face, and Linus felt the impact all the way up his arm. The soldier’s head snapped to the side, but he showed no other signs that the blow had landed. He smiled cracked teeth and nailed Linus with a quick jab to the chest that knocked the air out his lungs and sent him staggering backward. Linus fought for breath through the pain. Another blow came at him like a rock hurled from a catapult, and he just barely dodged it, felt the metal-studded glove that encased the man’s fist tear a groove in the hide of his cheek.

Linus took a deep breath, gathered all his resolve and rushed the man, closing the gap, and ramming the crown of his head into the man’s face. Eat a reinforced skull, pal! His arms pounded like pistons, delivering blows into the soldier’s armored midriff.

Mistake. They did nothing. He realized too late that he’d left himself vulnerable, and the soldier delivered a two-handed chop to his exposed back like an axe into a log. His breath exploded from his lungs and he went down again, flat on his face this time. He tasted mud.

Linus rolled again, but this time couldn’t avoid the kick that slammed his ribs. He gasped airlessly at the pain. Above him, the massive solder grinned through blood and broken teeth. His body armor showing no signs of Linus’s blows—of, course, why would it?—the equipment fastened to it barely moving.

Red lights twinkled amid the driving rain and in the dying light of the burning tree, its embers slowly being drown by the rain that reached it through the jungle canopy. Linus blinked, then recognized them as the soldier’s gear…

His gear!

Linus forced himself to breath, to move, to avoid the next kick, and to drag himself to his feet. All right, he thought through the haze gathering in his skull, I’m gonna have to Rambo III this guy…

Linus lunged, talons reaching for the man’s throat. The soldier blocked, but at the last instant Linus dropped his hands and grabbed the source of those blinking red lights.

The concussion grenades in the man’s armor pouches.

Linus threw himself free and slammed up against the smoldering tree, shaking loose a shower of stinging, glowing embers. The solder’s smile became a look of abject panic as his hands went to the grenades on his chest…

…and deactivated them.

The smile returned, more feral this time, more filled with bloodlust.

Linus flattened against the tree, his foot sunk into the mud and became tangled in the dead roots which were now exposed from the driving rain.

The soldier let out a horrific cry and rushed him.

Linus spun, his foot held fast by the root, then lifted his leg with all the strength he could summon. The root system came loose with a great sucking sound, and the tree, unmoored, toppled into the darkness. The soldier’s charge led him into the space where the tree had been, where the ground had been churned up by the uprooted tree.

Linus jumped backward as he felt the ground disappearing beneath him. He pulled a flare from the web belt across his shoulder and activated it. In the unforgiving white light he saw the soldier sink to his waist in the mud. He thrashed his arms about uselessly, his face a mask of confusion. The mud continued to give way and pour into the newly-formed hole. The soldier grabbed at it, but he might as well have been trying gain a handhold on water.

“Sorry, friend,” Linus rasped through the pain in his torso. “Looks like you’re sunk.”

The soldier cried out one last time—this time in sheer, unfiltered terror—and then was lost in the sinkhole with a short, satisfying gurgle.

Linus watched until he was sure the man couldn’t extricate himself, then walked over to the marksman. The Noviani was slumped against a tree trunk, clutching a phaser burn in his midriff.

“One…of your shots…” he gasped, “…was lucky.” He smiled ruefully up at Linus. “And I guess…I’m not.”

“I’ve got a med-kit,” Linus said, reaching for the med pouch on his belt. “I can probably stabilize you. But you’re going to tell me everything I need to know about your base, first. Starting with where my comrades are.” He knelt down in the mud beside the Noviani and held up the mini-hypospray he’d taken from the med pouch.

The Noviani shook his head and coughed blood. “You’ll never make it to them.”

“Why don’t you let me worry about that? You just talk.”

“It’s not just…my people…” the soldier hacked and coughed, then twisted in the pain it caused him. “There are…Klingons…”

Linus shrugged. “So what? The war’s over. We signed a peace treaty.”

The soldier smiled grimly. “Not with House Hak’karrl. They make those fancy birdlike ships. And they never agreed to the treaty. They’ve been dead-ending it against the rest of the Empire. L’rell’s forces have been trying to wipe them out, but they…have proven….hard to eradicate.”

“And you allied yourselves with them?”

“The rest of the Empire…had no need for us…” the soldier keeled over, his features contorted in agony.

Linus waggled the hypospray. “So, what do I need to know?”

Chapter Text

“Something’s happening out there,” Nilsson said, taking her ear away from the door. Said ear was now flushed red at being pressed against the door for the better part of a half hour.

“They’re probably going off to mate with the domestic animals of the god-forsaken rock,” Keyla grumped from where the other end of the room, where she sat curled in a sullen ball.

“No, it didn’t sound like that,” Nilsson replied. “Like, a lot of running and shouting.”

“I wonder why the sudden activity,” Owosekun said.

“Maybe Discovery showed up, and they’re trying to figure out how to explain that they’ve captured four of their crewmen,” Osnullus opined, looking up from the elaborate mural she was drawing in the layer of dirt of the floor.

“I’d think they’d want us for that,” Owosekun said thoughtfully. “If only to show Captain Pike that we’re still alive and unharmed.”

“Mostly unharmed,” Keyla corrected sharply.

“Your ego doesn’t count,” Owosekun shot back.

“The hell it doesn’t. I—“

And then they heard the sounds of dozens of boots pounding the ground outside their cell.

“What is going on?” Owosekun wondered. “Are they going to war or something?”

********

Linus shifted in his tree and scanned the small compound with his monoculars, flipping through the various settings and watching the small scattering prefabricated buildings change from wireframes to heat blooms to colored blocks of molecular bonds. None of them yielded any new information: the damn thing was just a thrown together camp with some rudimentary sensors and two guard towers at either side. There was no complicated duct work to crawl through or long-abandoned tunnel network to exploit. There was just, well, a big poly-alloy fence and a vehicle gate.

So, he had to it the hard way.

He climbed down from the tree and set up at its trunk. He was about a quarter of a kilometer away from the camp, and the side with the vehicle entrance was cleared of all vegetation. The westernmost side of the compound, though, only had about three meters of clearing before the woodline began. That was convenient. Apparently, when the Novianis built this base, they only got partially done with the deforesting process before deciding it was too much like work and just gave up.

Linus sat at the base of three on the wet and cool foliage. The rain had tapered to a scattering of droplets, and the air was growing heavy with humidity. It was perfect weather for a reptile, and Linus imagined he could feel his blood pounding faster and turning a richer shade of red in his veins.

He laid out his remaining equipment on the ground before him: his rifle, seven power packs, a half dozen grenades, his phaser, a med kit, a retooled tricorder, one Starfleet ration pack, and a large, serrated hunting knife he’d found in a scabbard in the boot of one of the Noviani soldiers.

It wasn’t much of an arsenal.

Linus scoped the guard towers to be armed with heavy, rapid-fire disruptor cannons, likely supplied by the Klingons. The Noviani soldier he’d spared told him there were upwards of fifty more soldiers (not nearly as elite as his team…he’d stressed that several times) in the base. Even if they were just spear-carriers, it was still a lot of spears.

This wasn’t going to work.

Linus snatched the ration pack off the ground, frustrated. He might as well eat something while his crewmates were tortured or executed or Hatchery-knew-what. There’s no sense being hungry as well as useless, he thought bitterly as he opened it and rummaged through the MREs. They were all variations on chicken recipes. Linus pondered for the hundredth time why humans liked chicken so much.

Then, near the bottom of the pack, he saw the cylindrical metallic tube. He jerked his hand away as if the thing could burn him, such was his instinctive reaction to it. It was the reaction any Saurian would have toward this particular substance, one of the most dangerous things his species had ever come in contact with.

But what if…

No! The protective, rational side of his mind slammed shut on that line of speculation like steel trap.

But he needed something! Some edge. The lives of Keyla and Joann and Nilsson and Osnullus all hung on what he did.

Loyalty to his crewmates—his friends—shouted down the warning in his mind.

He activated the cylinder.

********

Official transcription of remarks of the 2162 Annual Starfleet Medical Conference for Health Care Providers

Wednesday, March 5^th 1100hrs

Topic: Xeno-biology and the future of Starfleet

Speaker: Physician Phlox (Starfleet, Retired)

Phlox: The digestive tract of the Saurian is a remarkably hardy thing—probably owing both to its omnivorous ancestry and the exceptionally durable nature of Varanus’s vegetation—so their ability to devour and process standard Starfleet rations is not much of a question. Maybe they’ll require a few standard vitamin supplements, but not in quantities that would affect starship duty. Additionally, it should be pointed out that the nutritionists in Starfleet Medical have done truly amazing work synthesizing generic base proteins that allow food replicators to address a vast spectrum of physiologies. Starfleet cuisine, it seems, has come a long way since my days when it was just one man in the galley…and he was a secret agent sent from an alternate future, which might explain why the eggs were always a bit runny.

[Audience laughter]

However, as with all physiologies, Saurians do have some characteristics that need to closely monitored—-particularly when it intersects with some of the more benign foodstuffs of other serving species. So, I will say this as directly and forcefully as possible: do not…do NOT…for all that is good and holy…let them eat processed sugar!

********

The cylinder quietly whirred and dispensed the first spongy, white capsule into Linus’s palm.

The humans called them “marshmellons.”

Linus ate three.

********

“Anything?” Colonel Getch asked the young comms operator, who was hunched in a perspiring question mark over the sub-par communication and monitoring equipment the Noviani War Office had doled out to this base. The small pre-fab office was cramped and stuffy, and the ventilation system didn’t do nearly enough to drain the humidity from the air.

“Nothing sir,” the enlisted man said. “Last communication remains Thok’s transmission about they were going to trap it…the thing, sir.”

“This is not good,” Getch muttered and straightened up. If his plan had a chance of succeeding, Thok should have eliminated the enemy by now and radioed back a gloating report about what effective killers his men were. But now all the heard on his channel was silence.

“Run through the sensor bandwidths once again,” he ordered.

The young operator looked up at him with alarm. “Sir, do you really believe it could come here?”

Getch shrugged. “There aren’t many other places for it to go. Even if it just wants off this rock, it’ll have to come here to reach its ship. So run through the sensor bands again.”

The operator nodded. “Yes sir.”

“And send another transmission to the Klingons. Let them know they should expedite their arrival.”

The operator nodded and punched a few more control. He paused and wiped his brow with his sleeve, then noticed a flashing signal on his screen.

“Sir, House of Hak’karrl frigate Res’paTh responds that an atmospheric craft is en route. ETA—“

He was cut off by the wailing alarms and then the distant sounds of explosions.

Getch straightened from the console and grabbed for his short-barreled rifle.

“It seems we found our missing lizard.”

********

Linus:

Fire!Fire!Fire!ThesentriesshootingfromthetowermissmissmissdisruptorboltstearitupthewholeexplodesbrightplumeflameYES!YES!YES!NoonecanstandagainsthimfireinhisveinsseeingeverythingsoclearlyhyperclearlybetterthananyscannerISEEYOU!ISEEYOUALL!MoreguardsspillingfromthebarracksdiruptorboltsburnaroundhimTOOQUICK!IMTOOQUICK!Jump!Roll!ComeupfiringYES!!!TheyallgodownStormthebuildingtossagrenadedontwaitdon’twaitfortheexplosionthey’llbeexpectingthatJohnMatrixneverwaitedandneitherdidJohnRambothedoorblowsfillthespacewithdisruptorfiretakedownanyoneinsidetossanothergrenadeFOOLEDYOU!I’MNOTCOMINGIN!DodgejumprolltumbletothesideheavydisruptorcannontearstapartthegroundwherehewasFIRE!FIRE!FIRE!Themassivesoldier’sblastercannonthistimeheavyboltsshearawaythebaseTUMBLE!ItallcomesdownexplosionfireballbloomingflowerofflamethenightturnsorangebutIcanblendwiththeshadowsintotheinkyblackheadinguptheaccessladdercomingfromabovewhiletheammocooksoffFire!Fire!Fire!TakeoutallthoseguysthatjustcameraoundthesideofthebuildingwalkthemrightintothefireIAMUNSTOPPABLE!IAMMAVERICKTHEPILOTIAMALIVINGF14TOMCATPUNCHITAFTERBURNSTRAIGHTINTOTHEDANGERZONEONWARDTOTHEDANGERZONE!!!!!KEYLAOWOJOHANNAONSULLUSI’MCOMINGFORYOUUUUUU!!!!

************

“What’s happening? Dammit, I need a report!” All Getch got in response was a jumble of panicked cries from the darkness. A moment later the emergency lights kicked in, and he could see the looks of terror painted on the faces of the command post staff.

“I need a report!” he demanded again, putting some snap into it this time. Duty was the only thing that could move them past their fear, he knew, otherwise it would paralyze them. They needed something to do.

“I…uh…energizers have been compromised,” one of the OPSCOs responded, the fear in his eyes draining away as he scanned the readouts before him. “We’re reading only one-third power…”

Getch cut him off. “Where are our soldiers?”

“There are…I can’t make out the reports…”

“Viewers are up,” someone called, and Getch turned to the tree of surveillance monitors in the center of the room. They showed various angles of a furious firefight. The screens flared with crisscrossing energy bolts and explosions. Getch blinked, trying to process what he was seeing.

…On the monitor looking out to the east where a half-dozen soldiers shuddered and fell amid a storm of plasma fire…

…on the north side three members of the elite Scalptaker Unit were tossed like toy dolls when a photon grenade exploded…

…on the northwest side a transport craft tumbled end-over-end as its avti-grav unit went up in flames under the onslaught of a furious, crackling phased-energy beam, the pilot and occupants spilling out and landing splayed on the ground…

…the centraline monitor showed a dark, humanoid shape—backlit by orange fire—like something out of a nightmare. The shape held a rifle in each massive claw and sprayed fire in all directions like a demon summoned by the most evil of The Alchemists of the Highlands to bring about the end of world, as in the Old Religions.

“It’s a beast…” the frightened OPSCO breathed.

“Arm yourselves,” Getch said, “there’s only one place left for it to go. Send someone to round up the prisoners. We may need them as shields.”

“Will that stop it?” someone asked.

“It might slow the thing down enough for someone to kill it.”

From the edge of the screen, a soldier leapt into frame from the side and yanked the big pulse rifle out of the creature’s claws. The beast spun, and the glow from nearby fires reflected in its scaly hide.

In one quick move, the creature drew a knife across the soldier’s throat.

********

“We have to do something!” Owosekun said urgently after the last whine of disruptor fire died down. It had been going like that for the past few minutes or so, with the frantic cries of multiple Noviani rifles all firing at once and seemingly at random, only to be brutally cut off either by another rifle’s voice or a structure-shuddering explosion. Even from the imposed isolation of their makeshift cell, one thing was certain: the Novianis were in a hell of a firefight.

“I bet it’s Captain Pike,” Detmer exclaimed with something approaching glee. “The Discovery just returned to orbit and now he’s send a rescue mission!”

“Why wouldn’t Discovery just beam us out of here,” Nilsson pondered.

Keyla turned to her furiously. “Because he wants to teach the Noviani a lesson! A lesson about respect! Appropriate respect for Starfleet officers, and human females in particular!”

“I don’t know Captain Pike well,” Owosekun said, “but I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t shoot a bunch of Novianis just because they didn’t find you sexy. I don’t think that’s what he’d do.”

Keyla glared at her.

“Well, regardless of who is shooting and the Novianis—and why—we’d be stupid not take advantage of this distraction,” Osnullus said.

“If the guards are still there, they might be too preoccupied with whatever opposing force is attacking the base,” Nilsson said. “If we can lure them in here, they may not be as cautious.”

“Now that they have something more threatening than us to worry about,” Detmer said. “Sounds good. Should we do the whole, ‘Oh my god, my friend is really sick!’ thing? I mean, we know seducing them is off the table—“

“Might work,” Owosekun said.

“We have to hit him all at once,” Osnullus said. “No being pretty. Team effort, just rush him and get him on the ground. If he can get his rifle aimed we’re all dead. And that armor is going to deflect any blows, so he needs to be on his back the second after he comes through that door, otherwise we’ve lost any chance we may have. Once we get the rifle away from him we can stun him or threaten for information, but he needs to be dropped fast.”

As if in response to their conversation, the door unlatched with a cloud clang and swung open, and their Noviani guard stepped into the room. He looked intense, his eyes slightly wild, and he was breathing heavily. He pointed his rifle in the direction of the group.

“You all,” he said, slightly breathlessly, “come with me!”

Nilsson punched him in the face and he dropped like a sack of bricks.

“What the shit?” Keyla exclaimed.

“How did you learn to do that?” Owosekun asked.

“My hand hurts,” Nilsson said as she cradled her fist to her chest.

“You cold-cocked that guy!” Keyla continued, surprised at the level of admiration she felt.

“I think it’s broken,” Nilsson whimpered.

Osnullus picked up the fallen guard’s rifle in one hand and yanked the pistol out of his belt holster with the other. She handed the pistol to Owosekun. “Johanna’s hand I hurt, and I’m not sure I trust Keyla with a gun yet,” she explained.

“Hey!”

“All right, so where do we go now?” Owosekun asked, taking the disruptor pistol from Osunullus. “There’s no point in escaping if we’re just going to get caught again. Or worse.”

“There are gunships on a landing pad on the other end of the compound,” Keyla said. “We could grab one in the diversion.”

Just then a storm of disruptor bolts tore through the corridor and forced them back inside the makeshift cell. Osnullus made herself flat inside the doorway and returned fire, shooting from the hip.

“Looks like somebody missed the guard,” Keyla mused.

Chapter Text

“This is it, men! We hold the line!” Getch squinted through his rifle’s holographic sighting reticle and waited to kill his enemy. Around him he heard plasma rifles powering up, and laser sights danced across the main hatch to the control room.

Then the whole building lurched as if being pulled from the ground by the claw of an angry deity, sending soldiers tumbling like toys. Debris rained down around them. Getch looked up—too late. There was already a ragged tear in the ceiling exposing the tops of trees and an inky, star-spackled sky between them.

The beast descended on a tether.

Getch tried to draw a bead on the moving target, but another explosion threw him to the ground. He saw bodies fly through the air.

Grenade! The damn thing was smart…

He fired without aiming this time as the beast laid down a curtain of fire—how???—Getch’s brain processed the image: the beast descended head-first, using its foot-claws to hold the tether, while it fired a rifle from each hand.

The room filled with the panicked cries of his soldiers being mown down.

Getch fired again, missed, scrambled to his feet, brought the rifle to his shoulder and took aim.

The beast released the tether, dropped with gravity as Getch’s bolt sailed over him and sliced the tether in two, then somersaulted in mid-air and landed on its feet in the center of the room.

Getch re-adjusted his aim, just as the beast fired both of its rifles on rapid-fire.

He was cut down before he could even pull the trigger.

24

Linus tossed aside his spent rifles and picked a new one up from the body of an unmoving Noviani soldier. It hadn’t been fired. The control room was silent except for the slight crackle of a fire his grenade must have started, and the occasional sharp rasp as a power system overloaded and sprayed sparks. He felt the nighttime air pour in through the hole in the ceiling.

The driving, propulsive force of the marshmellons in his system had crested and he felt more focused now, more able to think strategically. He looked over the monitors that were still operational until he found one with a layout of the complex. It had a big blinking square and the words PRISONER HOLDING, which made things easier. Linus hitched up his rifle and headed off.

The compound was quiet except or the sounds of secondary explosions as he ran down the prefab corridor that connected the control room to the makeshift prison cell. Linus rounded a curve in the corridor and ran into a flurry of disruptor bolts, forcing him to one knee. He returned fire, and was rewarded to see two Noviani soldiers tumble against the walls and slump to the poly-formed deck plating.

He had just lowered the rifle when a second flurry of blasts arced over his head and burned away at the walls of the corridor. Linus aimed at the source and saw that they were coming from a slight gap between a door and a doorjamb up ahead. A moment later he saw an eye and a slice of a face appear in the gap.

“Joann!” he shouted.

“Linus?” she answered.

“It’s okay! I’m pretty sure the base is clear,” he said, slinging the rifle over his shoulder to point safely at the ceiling.

“Linus?” Keyla’s strawberry-blonde head abruptly popped out from the opening.

“Keyla! Are you all right? Are the rest with you?”

“We’re all here,” Joann answered, and Linus’s heart leapt from the chasm where it had been precariously perched from the moment he’d heard their panicked cries over the communicator.

“Thank The Hatchery. Now we need to go. There are—“

“—Klingons!” He and Joann and Keyla said it together and they paused a moment at their synchronicity.

“Is that Linus?” He heard Johanna’s voice from the room and a moment later, she emerged, cradling her right hand gingerly.”

“Johanna, what happened to your hand?” he asked.

“She maybe broke it putting a guard on the deck,” Osnullus said, as she stepped out of the room, holding a disruptor rifle.

“It was pretty epic,” Keyla said admiringly.

“We need to go,” Joann said urgently, bringing them all back into the moment. “Keyla spotted a landing pad with atmospheric craft. If we move quickly—“

“—and are very lucky—“ Osnullus added.

“—we can steal one and get a safe distance from here when the Klingons land.”

He heard it before they did, the sound of boots on the deck plating rounding the corridor. He saw Owosekun’s eyes widen and she fumbled with her phaser.

Linus spun and threw the knife in one smooth motion. It embedded itself in the soldier’s chest up to the hilt. The soldier skidded to a halt, stumbled, his face a mask of shock, then collapsed. Linus turned back to his comrades.

“I think he got the point,” he said with a chuckle. They stared at him dumbly.

“The point,” he explained. “Because of the knife.”

“Oh…” Johanna nodded, “Got it.”

“Point,” Osnullus affirmed.

“I mean, it was mostly the blade that killed him,” Keyla said.

“’He got the blade’ doesn’t sound as cool,” Linus protested.

“You could say, ‘I haven’t lost my edge,’” Joann suggested.

Linus nodded. “You know that’s not bad.”

“Um,” Keyla said, sounding testy. “Klingons?”

Linus brought the rifle down. “Right. Let’s move, then.” He took two steps, and then felt the strength leave his limbs like an android whose servos had lost power. “Uh-oh,” he said, and fell forward.

********

“Linus!” Joann called out and managed to cover the distance between them and prop him up with her free arm. Keyla darted over and threw one of his bare arms over her shoulders.

“I got him,” she told Owosekun. “Cover our flank. Johanna, take his other arm.” Nilsson joined her and took Linus’s left arm over her shoulder, holding it with her left hand and letting her injured hand dangle.

“Why is he shirtless?”

“I don’t know. Because it’s hot outside? Whatever, let’s move. Osnullus, head that way outside. The landing pad will be off to your left a couple hundred meters. You can’t miss it.”

“Laaaa…” Linus slurred, his head rolling.

“Don’t try to talk Linus,” Johanna said as they pulled/dragged him along the corridor to the egress hatch. “We’ll get you fixed up once we get to the craft.”

“Shuuu…ggger…”

Keyla turned her head to look at him. “Linus, did you eat sugar? Refined sugar?” Linus’s head bobbed, and he smiled stupidly.

“Maaarsh…melllllons…”

“Oh god,” she griped. “Linus ate a marshmellon. His metabolism is crashing.”

“A what?” Osnullus asked. The egress hatch opened with a hiss, and she swept the area with the muzzle of her rifle.

“It’s basically a sugar sponge,” Keyla answered. “And Linus ate one…”

“Three…” he corrected.

“Jesus,” she grunted as she tried to match pace with Nilsson. “Three marshmellons turbo-charged his metabolism. Now he’s coming down.”

“He must have had the energy of a Arcturian hummingbird,” Nilsson huffed from the other side of Linus’s head.

“An Arcturian hummingbird on meth,” Keyla added. Abruptly, there was a hiss and whine of fire from behind them. She tried to turn, but struggled against Linus’s weight, and Nilsson’s grasp.

“Don’t look, just go!” Owosekun called out. “I got this.” A few more blasts rang out and the night was silent again.

“Musta…missed…those guys…” Linus giggled.

“There!” Osnullus pointed. “Up ahead. Let’s go!”

“That’s it, all right,” Keyla muttered, spotting the chunky form of a gunship silhouetted against the landing pad’s lights. Involuntarily she picked up her pace, pulling her side of Linus and nearly causing Nilsson to topple. “Sorry,” she said.

“No problem,” Nilsson said tightly, and Keyla had to remind herself that Nilsson was also fighting an injury. She was a tough woman, Keyla admitted, and she felt a little bad about pointing out how comparatively less-attractive she was.

Nonetheless they made decent time to the landing pad.

“That one!” Keyla said and pointed to a low-slung, stub-winged gunship. They opened the hatch on side and hopped inside, then pulled Linus up and laid him out on one of the passenger benches.

“Mark Twenty-Three StarFire,” Keyla said with no small amount of glee. “I have wanted to fly one of these things since I was thirteen years-old.” The interior of the gunship was utilitarian, three parallel passenger benches cross-hatching its interior. Each side had a sliding hatch alongside which was mounted a rapid-fire disruptor rifle hardwired to the ship’s power systems. The ass-end, Keyla knew, housed two packages of countermeasures--ECM spinners, decoy drones, and good old-fashioned magnesium flares. Beneath its chin was a three-barreled photon grenade launcher. Keyla used to point the one on her model in general direction of her older brother’s room whenever he got on her nerves.

“How many people need to fly this thing?” Osnullus said from where she was securing Linus to his bench.

Keyla looked at Owosekun. “I need a navigator.”

“Let’s go then,” she answered.

Keyla turned to Osnullus and Nilsson. “Better hang on to something.” They nodded their affirmation. Keyla led Owosekun to the cockpit and sat down in the pilot’s seat. She flicked a control and the long control/nav panel lit up. Beside her, Owosekun took the navigator’s position and bucked herself in.

“Are you certain you can fly this thing?”

“Sure,” Keyla answered. “All ships are more or less the same. Atmospheric ones just mean one joystick and not two, since you don’t have a full three-sixty range of motion. And it’s extra easy when you’re dealing with humanoids built along more or less the same lines as you.” She gave Owosekun a sly grin. “Interface accessibility is key.” She found the engine controls and fired up the antigravs. The big ship wobbled slightly, then lifted easily off the deck.

“And awayyyy we go. Now, thrusters…thrusters…”

“I thought you said you could fly this thing,” Owosekun said skeptically. Keyla scowled at her.

“I’m trying to be cautious. It would be bad if I confused the thrusters for, say, the nuclear-missile launchers. Stuff like that you don’t have to worry about on a Starfleet shuttlecraft.”

Owosekun sighed. “Fine. Just be.—“she was cut off by a wailing alarm.

“Unidentified craft incoming! Unidentified craft incoming! Unidentified craft incoming!”

Keyla looked out her window and saw a dark, jagged blotch blot out the starfield above them.

“Uh-oh,” she said.

Owosekun’s head swung back and forth until she found the sensor readouts. “This says…Keyla, it’s the Klingons!”

Keyla flipped the comm switch. “Buckle up back there. This is going to get bumpy,” she announced then turned to Owosekun. “Time to go.”

She punched the thrusters.

Chapter Text

Holy…!” Johanna Nilsson wasn’t sure which expletive to use, but she didn’t get it out anyway, not before the gunship banked hard and sent her rolling on the passenger bench, the straps barely containing her. She braced herself with her bad hand and then howled at the bolt of pain that ran up her arm.

The view outside the open hatch showed a blur of dark, jungle canopy, the rushing stars, then the jungle canopy again.

“Watch it, Keyla!” Osnullus shouted over the open comm-link to the cockpit. “This thing has performance limits!”

Keyla’s laugh rang over the link. “Oh we are definitely taking this bitch to her limits!”

Johanna and Osnullus exchanged a look which very clearly said, we are going to die and it is all Keyla Detmer’s fault.

The gunship lurched again, and Johanna felt the G-forces grab her stomach in an iron claw. A second later the world outside the hatch flared and she saw jungle canopy bloom with orange flame.

“They’re shooting at us!” Johanna yelped, then felt silly for stating the obvious.

“Well, we better start shooting back,” Osnullus snapped, and unlatched her straps, then wound them around her waist in a makeshift tether. She stumbled her way to the door gun.

“Aw, dammit…” Johanna sighed and rearranged her own straps in the same manner, then she staggered toward the door gun, fighting the centrifugal force all the way. Finally, she managed to grab the gun’s grip in her left hand and she felt it come alive; its servos and gyroscopes engaged at her touch. She was pleased to find she could use it one-handed.

The gunship lurched again and picked up altitude, leaving Johanna’s stomach somewhere to the left of her boot soles.

“Always run in a zigzag from a Komodo dragon…” Linus drawled from his supine position.

“Geez…” Nilsson griped, and draped her right arm over the gun’s receiver and sighted out into the darkness. The gunship dropped, returning her stomach to her body—somewhere in her pelvis now—and she saw the ferocious, bat-like shape of the Klingon landing craft. Green energy crackled near its wingtips and harsh disruptor bolts hurled past the gunship. Johanna felt the side of her face prickle with their heat. She squinted through the optical sight and pulled the trigger. The door-gun fired disruptor pulses in such rapid succession they were almost a solid beam of light.

“Cool!” she shouted to Osnullus. “It real easy to aim!” Osnullus gave her a thumbs-up.

Suddenly, the Klingon ship drew abreast of them, close enough that Johanna could see the insignia for House of Hak’karrl on one leathery-looking wing, illuminated by the running lights. A hatch opened on the ship’s skin-like surface and Johanna found herself looking across the expanse at a half-dozen or so Klingon warriors clad in their ornate armor, their heads shaved. They shouted and pointed, then raised weapons that to Johanna’s eyes looked for all the world like French horns fused with survival knives.

Green energy bolts exploded inside the cabin, burning the bulkheads and blowing out the interior lights. Osnullus lost her balance and fell to the deck. Johanna gritted her teeth and sprayed the Klingon ship, walking the rapid disruptor pulses to the open cabin and sending Klingon warriors falling to the deck as she mowed them down.

Johanna raked the Klingons with fire until the ship tilted and fell back.

“Yeah, you better run!” she shouted.

Then something flashed.

*********

Keyla watched as the night became day, ever so briefly. White, burning, bright day.

“What the hell was that?” Owosekun exclaimed.

“Impulse missile,” Keyla answered. “Warhead with an impulse drive. Should be fire-and-forget, but they must be too close for the AI to kick in.”

“How do you know these things?”

“Tell you later.” Keyla cranked on the stick and gunship nosed down and ripped the tops off of a swath of jungle as she dropped the craft into a ravine carved by a river.

“Keyla, that’s too low!” Owosekun shouted, her eyes saucers. “Sensors can’t even read the ground at this attitude!”

“Exactly. They can’t get a lock on us. This is called nap-of-the-Earth!”

“Stop enjoying this!”

Keyla just laughed. She thought, fleetingly, of her mother—a fine pilot in her own right—and of Old Greta Shiemann, who’d taught her to fly and then her daughter. Old Greta was full of stories about the waning days of World War Three and the air war against the Gallic Air Force that had played a crucial role in stopping the French Imperialist Forces from spreading any further West. Old Greta was dead now, some twenty years.

She couldn’t wait to tell her mom about this.

Another missile flared past. Closer this time. It exploded in the treeline, sending a sheet of organic shrapnel into their fuselage.

“Goddamn it! They decided to be clever.” She launched flares and spinners. The monitor near her left knee that displayed the rear-facing camera feed showed the Klingon craft tilt and break off at the onrush of fire and unknown objects.

Disruptors flashed. Treetops caught fire. The river exploded and hissed steam.

“Dammit, they’ve got us boxed in,” Keyla swore.

“We need altitude,” Owosekun said. “But we’ve got no lateral clearing. If we pull up right now we’ll be right in front of their guns.”

Keyla felt sweat crawl like insects behind her ears and down her the neck of her uniform.

Think, dammit, think! What did she know about House of Hak’karrl ships? They liked presentation. Their birds-of-prey had biomass skin grafted and cloned from the dead flesh of their enemies. They were very maneuverable in space…

Everything’s maneuverable in space, dumbass! What about those big batwings in atmosphere?

They sucked.

“Everyone strap in! I’ve got a plan!”

“We’re secure back here!”

“What are you going to do?” Owosekun asked.

“You’re going to hate it,” Keyla said, then throttled down and cranked the stick and stomped the pedals simultaneously.

The gunship rolled up and over in a lazy barrel roll. Disruptor bolts flared through the windscreen, but Keyla knew the Klingon was out of position and moving too fast to get target lock on the gunship, it’s big wings bleeding energy and maneuverability. The gunship’s corkscrew path took it above the Klingon at the moment their trajectory overtook the gunship.

It was too fast for the human eye to process the image and send it to the brain, but not for the Orbis Industries NL-8 Cortical-Linked Occular Implant that currently resided in Keyla’s skull, and she was pulling the trigger on the chin-mounted photon grenade-launcher before she even knew what she was seeing.

A fan of glowing orbs reached out for the Klingon craft.

Lightning. Thunder. The sky exploded.

25

Acting Captain’s Log: Stardate 1029.17—Christopher Pike Reporting.

We have returned to Noviani Five and recovered our science team. Thankfully, none of them were injured following the hostile assault by Noviani forces. We discovered that the Noviani government had been overthrown and a military junta—propped up by House of Hak’karrl--installed in its place. The Discovery was successful in running off a House Hak’karrl warship and Chancellor L’Rell has dispatched an attack wing to eliminate the House Hak’karrl threat from the Noviani system. How they will deal with the Noviani as collaborators with an enemy of Empire, is, unfortunately, an internal Klingon matter, and Starfleet had ordered us not intervene.

In the meantime, the reports from the science team have been, well, entertaining is one word. Unorthodox is another.

“So, you gonna do it?” Detmer asked as she opened her bag of red, stringy candy. “You gonna take what’s-her-name, brace-face, up on her offer?”

“Commander Nhan,” Owosekun said pointedly from her seat beside Detmer.

“Right, her.”

Linus shook his head. “It’s very flattering, but in my heart I’ll always be a scientist, not a security officer.”

“Plus you survived the mission,” Ensign Maki said from his seat beside Linus, “so that’s a disqualifier right there.”

Everyone laughed. Maki plucked a kernel of popcorn out of the communal bowl on the table they sat around in a rough semi-circle and tossed it in the air. Linus let it hit the apex of its ascent before flicking his tongue and catching it in mid-air.

The room applauded.

“That’s amazing!” Nilsson said.

“Five-for-five,” Osnullus pointed out.

“You mammals don’t know what you’re missing,” Linus said, chewing the popcorn kernel.

“I have thoughts about the tongue,” Detmer said.

“No!” Owosekun admonished her. “You will stop talking right there.” Detmer gave her a shrug: what’s the problem?

The screen flickered as the movie loaded and they all faced it.

“What’s this one called, again?” Nilsson asked.

“I Come in Peace,” Maki answered. “Alternate title is Dark Angel. I think I Come on Peace has a better ring to it.”

“I bet he doesn’t come in peace,” Detmer said eagerly.

“If he did, Dolph Lundgren wouldn’t have to blow up half the city fighting him,” Maki replied.

“Is that the lead actor?” Nilsson asked. “Is he any relation to the Nobel Prize winner?”

“Same guy,” Maki explained. “After he retired from Hollywood, he formed the Lundgren-Lundberg Research Institute and helped develop artificial gravity.”

“Is that before he became Prime Minister of Sweden?” Owosekun asked.

“Yeah. Before.”

The movie started and they watched an extra-terrestrial criminal decimate a drug gang in a maelstrom of gunfire, explosions, and destruction.

“This is so cool,” Detmer said.

“It really is,” Nilsson responded.

"Watching things explode is more cathartic than I would have thought," Osnullus observed.

Linus grabbed more popcorn with his tongue.