Dust, heat and discontent. That was all Ensign Alessa Elara could feel. These colonists, they were weary from a hard frontier existence, and they were wary of Starfleet’s sudden arrival. Some were even angry. Downright angry. Disconcertingly so. The only reassurance the young Betazoid had of her safety was her disguise, a pair of well-worn coveralls and dirty matted hair, plus a familiar figure beside her. Jason Gideon, the Executive Officer of the USS Pacific Palisades, had gone local too, abandoning his neatly pressed uniform, his commander’s pips and his clean shave in favor of a pair of cargo shorts, a jean jacket, and a scruffy beard.

“Starfleet won’t help! They’re too late! On Duraxis, we decide our own fate!” 

Raised fists and raised voices, a thousand angry men and women shouted in unison. The ground shook beneath her feet. Whether it was a physical manifestation or just unadulterated emotion flowing off of them, the Betazoid intelligence officer wasn’t sure, but either way, it was unsettling. Quite unsettling. What had made them like this? Didn’t they realize the Pacific Palisades was here to help?

“Starfleet’s aid comes with a cost! We won’t be bought, and we won’t be bossed!” 

Absent boundless energy, industrial replicators, and the other niceties most took for granted, life was hard on Duraxis. You bartered for what you needed, and you offered what you produced. The idea that Starfleet had come for purely egalitarian purposes was as foreign to them as their frontier experience was to the crew of the Pacific Palisades.

Another chant should have followed if their cadence stayed consistent, but instead, the angry cacophony began to soften, quieting to a muted din as the crowd began to part in the middle. Through the seam, a man stepped forward. With his soot-stained cheeks, shadow-drowned eyes and weather-worn skin, it was evidence he was a man of this place, a man built by the hardships of this place. Slowly, the man climbed onto a makeshift stage, duranium sheets lain atop stacks of cinder blocks, as the crowd waited expectantly.

“Who’s that?” Ensign Elara asked quietly, hoping someone would offer an answer.

“Where’ve you been, kid?” laughed a middle aged man. “That’s Voral, the speaker of our truth, our savior from Starfleet, and, come the elections next week, our next governor!”

“Ah yeah, of course,” Ensign Elara smiled sheepishly, trying to excuse her ignorance in case he took it for something more. “Forgive me. I’m from the outer vill…” 

But the middle aged man didn’t care. He hadn’t waited for an explanation, vanishing into the crowd before she could even finish, pushing forward to get a better look.

“Voral! Voral! We stand tall! Voral! Voral! We heed your call!” 

The man on the stage looked out over his congregants as the crescendo built. Whether relishing in the moment, or letting the crowd work itself up, or some mixture of both, the Betazoid intelligence officer wasn’t sure. She reached out, trying to touch his mind, to get a better sense of the person he was, but against the backdrop of emotions emanating from the frenzied crowd, she couldn’t sense anything from him. Nothing at all.

When at last it seemed the anticipation couldn’t have built any more, Voral raised his hands and, like a conductor cutting off the pit, the crowd grew silent. “Friends, neighbors, colleagues, from the Veilspur Mine to the Cragspire Refinery, we come together to say enough is enough!”

“Enough is enough!” they chanted back.

“We’ve been on our own for so long I doubt most of our newly arrived benefactors could even pick Duraxis off a star chart,” Voral continued. And he wasn’t wrong, Ensign Elara knew. She’d certainly never heard of Duraxis before they received their orders. “Where was Starfleet during the drought of ninety-five? Or when the Klingon raiders descended on us in ninety-eight? They know nothing of what we’ve endured, nor the successes we’ve made for ourselves, yet now they ride in on their high horse like somehow they know what’s best for us. Now, their ship and their engineers descend on us, and for what?”

The crowd was silent, waiting.

“To poison our children with their supposed water purification system?” Voral spat, vitriol rolling off his tongue. “Our wells and our filters worked just fine before!”

The crowd erupted in jeers, shouting how they or their loved ones had become sick from the water ever since Starfleet had replaced the colony’s trusty multi-stage filtration system with some fancy new paramolecular decontamination unit that they claimed would be far more efficient.

“Is that true?” Ensign Elara whispered quietly to her colleague.

“Unfortunately, yes,” Commander Gideon nodded. It had gotten so bad, in fact, that Doctor Goodwyn was forced to deploy a medical field unit to treat the sick while the Corps repaired the system. “Feng is clueless as to why though. She’s deployed hundreds of these across dozens of worlds, and never before has there been an incident.” Truth be told, it was low tech stuff, leveraging well-understood mechanisms that’d been put to practice for hundreds of years.

“And what of their empty promises to fix our subspace communications array?” Voral poured more fuel on the fire. “Just delays, delays, and more delays! If I shout up at the sky, my grandmother on Kyban is as likely to hear me as if I use their fancy new system!”

Again, the crowd erupted.

Ensign Elara looked at Commander Gideon again. “What about that?”

“Westmoreland says his shit keeps going missing,” sighed Commander Gideon. “And even stuff he’s sure they fixed, it ends up broken again. His best guess is the locals.”

“There are solutions to that…” Ensign Elara mused. “Can’t Rivera do something?” The Pacific Palisades had a well-staffed security department, and while Lieutenant Commander Gabe Rivera wasn’t the greatest security chief ever to exist, surely he and his team could protect a handful of power couplers and subspace antennas.

“That useless bag of air…” Commander Gideon grumbled. “He’d probably accidentally shoot someone or something.” It didn’t take an empath to sense his displeasure he felt towards their security chief. Commander Gideon had taken his assignment aboard the Pacific Palisades as a stepping stone to greater things, but what he found aboard the California class utility cruiser was a ship full of mediocrity, save for a few of the young ones like Ensign Alessa Elara.

All around them, the crowd’s anger just continued to build. “Better off before!” Their chant was loud and rhythmic, their fists pumping the air, their feet pounding dirt, rage in their eyes. “Better off before! Better off before!”

“Are we sure this was a good idea?” Ensign Elara whispered.

“I’m really not sure,” admitted Commander Gideon.

The reactor whirred with life, the rhythmic hum reassuring to those who understood its workings, a consequence of small vibrations resonating across the reactor’s superstructure as a bioneural processor made nanosecond-scale micro-adjustments to the magnetic containment field surrounding the superheated plasmas at the core of the fusion reactor. 

It was nothing new, and it was nothing fancy. The reactor was an economical and utilitarian design, a configuration the Corps of Engineers had deployed for decades to frontier colonies and outposts. Still, as Captain Kiara Feng, head of infrastructure construction for the Corps detachment, stood watching the gauges, she knew how life-changing it would be for the backwater world. It would offer a near-boundless supply of energy, allowing them to deploy a host of modern technologies from industrial replicators and transporter systems to climate control arrays and subspace relays. Life was hard on Duraxis, but this would make it easier.

“It’s crazy to think that last Friday, they relied on hydrocarbon-based systems to power their word,” came the voice of Lieutenant Commander Hana Cho, the Chief Engineering Officer of the USS Pacific Palisades, as she stepped into the control center. “I mean, how the hell do you get by like that?”

Captain Feng chuckled as she turned to the younger woman. “If you don’t mind me asking, commander, where’d you grow up?”

“Mantilles,” Lieutenant Commander Cho replied. “Up until the Academy, of course. Hardly ever make it back that way anymore.” So was the life of a Starfleet officer, going wherever the ship took you, often so far from home that when shoreleave came, it was too far to return to. It’d been almost two years since she’d last been back to Mantillies.

“So you wouldn’t know life as these people know it,” Captain Feng noted. Mantilles had a population in the tens of millions, and it had been part of the Federation for over a century. Such a place was one where such niceties were taken for granted, a place where, like most of the Federation’s core, a post-scarcity economy was in full effect. It was the sort of place that made service in Starfleet possible, where you didn’t worry about putting food on the table or clothes on your back. “Out here, they live with fears and worries none of us have ever had to experience, where a drought means the threat of famine and where a fire means the loss of essential goods and capacity.”

“What would bring one to live in such a place?” Lieutenant Commander Cho wondered aloud.

“Some like it that way,” Captain Feng explained, thinking back to the Vesparans, a group they’d encountered just recently who’d fled Federation industrialism in the hunt for a simpler and more self-sufficient life. “Others simply can’t make another choice. I mean, if you’re born here, and you grow up here, what sort of mobility do you actually have? These borderlands are off the beaten path, and even traders headed for Klingon space typically use a more coreward route.”

“I’d never really thought of it that way,” Lieutenant Commander Cho admitted. “I didn’t even realize places like this existed before the Palisades got orders to come out this way.”

“That’s Federation propaganda at work,” laughed Captain Feng. “Roll with Amit and the rest of us long enough though, and you’ll realize it’s not even half the story.” The mandate of the Archanis Corps of Engineers detachment under Commodore Amit Agarwal was to establish and strengthen civilian infrastructure in the borderlands as part of a multi-pronged initiative to address decades of neglect. “Out here, there are far more worlds like this than like the places where you and I grew up.”

“You’ve given me a lot to think about…” Lieutenant Commander Cho offered, her voice droning off as she became consumed in her thoughts. “But look, it’s getting late. I came down to relieve you so you could head back up and get some sleep.” There wasn’t much to do up on the USS Pacific Palisades as it hung in high stationary orbit over Duraxis, and thus, until they trained up the locals to run the facility, Cho and her staff had been helping the Corps with operations planetside. 

“I appreciate that,” Captain Feng smiled as she gave one last lookover the gauges. It’d been a long and dull shift, keeping an eye on a piece of infrastructure that a freshman science cadet could have designed and a freshman engineer could have operated. “I’ll just…”

But suddenly, the captain froze.

“No… it can’t be…” she muttered as her fingers flew across the controls.

“What?” asked Lieutenant Commander Cho as she approached. But then she saw it. Temperature was climbing in the reaction chamber, one hundred and forty megakelvins already, and it was still racing upward. It didn’t make any sense. “How?”

“How doesn’t matter!” Captain Feng replied, dismissing the question. All that mattered was what they were going to do about it. It was as if the injectors driving ion cyclotron resonance heating had gone crazy, and the plasmas at the core of the fusion reaction were now in the midst of a thermal runaway. Heat translated to energy, and all that energy was pushing the containment system to its limits. It wouldn’t be able to keep up for long, and if they lost containment… she didn’t even want to think about what would follow. “Emergency shutdown! Now!”

Lieutenant Commander Cho nodded and hurriedly pulled up a console alongside Captain Feng.

“I’m going to cool the chamber,” Captain Feng declared as she began to feed liquid deuterium into the chamber, keeping a watchful eye on pressure buildup as supercooled heavy hydrogen collided with the superheated plasmas at the core’s center. “Can you disable the injectors?”

“On it!” Lieutenant Commander Cho confirmed as she brought up the injector controls and entered the commands to power them down. 

But nothing happened. 

She tried again. 

Still nothing. 

“Controls unresponsive!” Lieutenant Commander Cho lamented as she slammed her hand against the display in frustration, fully aware of what would happen if they couldn’t depower the ICRH injectors. “Microwave emissions still increasing!”

“Take over for me!” Captain Feng ordered as she switched spots with the younger engineer, thinking that maybe she’d have better luck with the injectors.

When Lieutenant Commander Cho drew up at the station where Captain Feng had been working, her eyes widened. “The pressure build-up… this is way outside operating parameters.” Standard procedures called for a slower rate of coolant release to minimize the risk of an explosive decompression – but then again, those procedures were for a controlled shutdown. On a starship, if something went wrong, you could eject the core. Here on the surface of Duraxis though, they had neither the time for a measured cooldown, nor the ability to eject the core.

”I know what my reactor can withstand!” Captain Feng insisted. “Besides, if we don’t cool this thing down, a blow off is the least of our worries!” The resulting crater, if they lost containment, would be a kilometer in diameter, and not a single structure within a dozen kilometers would be left standing. They couldn’t allow that to happen.

Turning her attention to the injector controls, Captain Feng tried, just as Lieutenant Commander Cho had before her, to power down the injectors. But her experience was the same as the Chief Engineer of the USS Pacific Palisades. No matter what she did, the microwave emissions just kept climbing. It was as though the system took her inputs and promptly disregarded them. It made no sense.

“What the hell is wrong with our injector control system?!” Captain Feng grumbled. The reactor was built with redundancies upon redundancies. She knew. She’d installed many of them herself. They couldn’t all fail at the same time… “Screw it! I’m going for the EPS trunk!” If the ICRH injectors would not accept her inputs, she’d just deprive them of fuel manually. “Just keep coolant flowing to buy me time, and vent what you can to avoid a blowoff!”

“Yes ma’am,” Lieutenant Commander Cho replied, her eyes never leaving the gauges and her fingers never leaving the keys. The was tickling the dragon, riding it to its limits, and she couldn’t make a mistake.

Captain Feng raced out of the control room into the interior superstructure of the reactor. Time was not on their side. She needed to get to the main trunk of the reactor’s EPS grid, and she needed to get there now!

After what felt like an eternity, but in reality was less than a dozen seconds, Captain Feng finally reached the main power distribution panel. She ripped the duranium cover straight off the hinges and was met with a twisted mess of circuitry. To most, it would have been an unintelligible rat’s nest of couplers and conduits, but she’d built hundreds of these. She knew them inside and out. 

Her hand shot straight into the middle of the chamber, and without a second thought as to if she was right or what the consequences would be, she yanked the coupler out that she was certain fed the microwave injectors.

Sparks flew as it came free, the now-free supercharged ions of electroplasma arcing through the negatively-charged atmosphere as they sought out a positive grounding with the surfaces beneath. The force launched the sixty kilogram frame of Captain Feng off her feet. 

The captain’s head hit the deck hard. But she had to fight through it. 

They weren’t out of the woods yet. The rhythmic whir of the containment field was gone now, replaced by a frenzied scream as the containment system tried, with all its might, to vigorously oscillate the magnetic fields to restrain the impossibly-energized fusion reaction. Even with ion cyclotron resonance heating subsided, the plasmas at the core were still energized over tolerable levels, and the coolant wasn’t doing enough. 

They needed to quench this thing, and quickly. Captain Feng forced herself back to her feet, her vision splotchy as she struggled back to the control center.

As she stepped back into the control system, Lieutenant Commander Cho gave her an update. “Injectors have been disabled, but lingering reaction is still at critical lev…” she explained, glancing over quickly at the older engineer. There was blood running down the side of her face. “Oh shit! Captain, you’re bleeding!”

“We’ll all be worse soon if we don’t stop this thing completely,” Captain Feng snapped as she reviewed the readings on the gauges. The liquid deuterium, even at the high rate of flow they’d chosen, wouldn’t be enough. Not before the containment system, screaming in the background, gave out. They needed something more bold. “We need to go for a magnetic quench.”

“You mean crank the mag emitters to the moon?” Lieutenant Commander Cho asked as a wave of terror washed across her face. “That’ll cause existing containment to lose coherence.” The system would not be able to keep up with the extreme flux density that’d be caused by what Captain Feng was proposing.

“Doesn’t matter if the reaction is fully quenched,” Captain Feng replied as she brought the emitters up. “Shattering the field lines will induce rapid destabilization of the plasmas.”

“Sure, but there’s still many megapascals of pressure in this thing, and all that’s holding that in place is the existing containment field,” Lieutenant Commander Cho warned. “As soon as it scrambles that, we’ll have a blow off.”

“A pressure blow off is better than a reaction runaway!” Captain Feng shouted back as she queued the instructions into the system. “This plant may not survive, but the colony will.” Of course, what that also meant was that they might not make it either. There were more important things at stake though, and she didn’t hesitate. Not even for a moment. “Going with two fifty kilogauss. You’ve got ten seconds to vent what you can before the rest goes free.”

Lieutenant Commander Cho worked frantically to let off as much pressure as she could, the pressure they’d created by introducing coolant against the plasmas at such a high flow rate. It’d been necessary to buy time to get the injectors shut down, but now it could be their end.

As the seconds ticked down, she could see it wasn’t venting fast enough…

And then her ten seconds were up.

The speeches had drawn to a close, and the sun had fallen beneath the horizon, but even in the twilight, the crowd continued to make its voice heard. “Our planet, our choice! Offworlders, hear our voice!”

They were still worked up, and with the coming of darkness, they’d grown rowdier too. Now, instead of their fists, they raised plywood and crowbars, and an occasional flaming bottle arced overhead. This was no longer a civil demonstration. Now, it was becoming a riot. But why? Why had the arrival of Starfleet, their mission meant to help the colonists of Duraxis, worked them up like this?

“I think it’s time we get out of here,” Commander Jason Gideon leaned over and whispered. It had been a fruitful fact finding mission, but nothing good was going to come of what was happening now. If they hung around much longer, he feared there was a significant chance that one or both of them might end up gravely injured.

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Ensign Elara exhaled. She was relieved, truth be told. Sure, they were disguised in local attire, and sure, everyone was far too preoccupied with their rage to notice them, but still, the rage effusing off the frenzied colonists was more than a bit overwhelming to the young Betazoid.

As they turned and began to make their way out of the town square, suddenly, the sky became fire, a blue-white flash arcing across the night’s sky, searingly bright, bathing the square in harsh relief. 

Ensign Elara reached up to shield her eyes, but then the shockwave hit, a gut-punching rush of air accompanied by a deafening series of booms reverberating through the square. She was thrown from her feet as dust covered her body and the panic of a thousand terrified colonists, those in the square, and those all around, flooded her senses.

It was over as swiftly as it began, the imprint burned against her corneas lasting longer than the flash. But as her eyes began to readjust, she realized it was dark. Very dark. Every lamp, every window, everywhere she looked, there wasn’t a light in sight, the only illuminance coming from above, the low lying clouds now lit in a deep orange.

“What the…” she asked as she got back to her feet and looked around for her colleague. Commander Gideon was also just getting his wits back about him. “You alright, commander?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m okay. What the hell was that?”

“Based on the fact all the power’s out, the reactor would be my guess,” Ensign Elara offered. “What else explodes like that?” It was a grim thought though, to say the least.

“But they don’t explode like that,” Commander Gideon offered. Fusion reactors were used for power planetside because their mechanisms were intrinsically safer than matter-antimatter annihilation or fission-based atom splitting. Reactors like the one the Corps had installed here over the last week also had safety systems on top of safety systems. They were all but bulletproof. But as his tricorder confirmed the point of origin, he couldn’t argue with what was on the screen. “Fuck, yeah, it was… we need to go!”

The pair broke into a sprint, as fast as they could muster, rushing through the narrow and completely blackened streets of Duraxis colony. 

As Commander Gideon and Ensign Elara rushed towards the reactor, glass cracked beneath their feet, the result of windows shattered by the force of the shockwave. All around them, there were colonists too, all in various sorts of disarray. Some were still on the ground or just getting back to their feet, while others had emerged from their dwellings, staring dumbfoundedly as they tried to make sense of what had just happened. Nothing like this had ever happened on their world, not even when the Klingons raided them in ninety-eight.

After what felt like an eternity, although really was just shy of two minutes, Commander Gideon and Ensign Elara covered the half kilometer distance to the reactor facility’s perimeter. What they saw was something akin to a post-apocalyptic holovid. The massive dome at the plant’s center was still mostly intact, but a hole had been blown out of the superstructure, and several massive fuel tanks were ablaze. All around them too, Starfleet officers were beaming in, a sea of yellow and teal, some in full fire turndown gear and others carrying medical kits.

Commander Gideon grabbed one of the fresh beam-ins, not because the ensign in teal with a medical kit appeared to be in charge, but simply because he was the closest. “Report?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, sir,” the ensign replied, a look of terror in his eyes as he tried to process the scene. “I was just about to get in the sonic shower when the call came in… something about a fire at the reactor.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Commander Gideon huffed. Even a Pakled toddler could have deduced that. “Carry on.” 

As the man hustled off, the commander again found himself wondering why it was that he’d taken this assignment. Was his career really worth it? 

“Let’s go inside and find someone who has more than two brain cells to rub together,” he then said, motioning for Ensign Elara to follow.

Together, the pair made their way into the facility, stepping over concrete blocks and duranium piping. Soon, they found themselves stepping into the control center for the reactor, where they found two of their colleagues, Captain Kiara Feng and Lieutenant Commander Hana Cho. The pair looked shell shocked, covered in dust, soot and blood, but they were alive and standing, deep in conversation with Commodore Amit Agarwal and Captain Reed Westmoreland. By the attire of the latter two, still dressed in their bedclothes, it was evident they’d beamed straight down.

“I swear it wasn’t us,” Captain Feng was insisting to the commodore as Gideon and Elara approached. “Lieutenant Commander Cho had just come down to relieve me when, all of a sudden, the core went psycho.” And that was the only way she could describe it, the way it’d taken on a life of its own, bent on superheating core plasma to critical no matter what she and Cho did.

“You sure?” Commodore Agarwal asked, glancing between the pair with a concerned expression on his face. It was incredible, truth be told, they had even survived given the extent of the damage around them, but it was also odd though too that something like this could have happened given all the built-in safeties.

“Absolutely positive,” Captain Feng nodded, her eyes filled with conviction. She was certain it wasn’t them. “This is standard shit, Amit. We could run this thing in our sleep.”

“Yeah, I know,” Commodore Agarwal nodded. “But you know I have to ask.”

Captain Feng nodded understandingly. Whenever something like this happened, operator failure was the first thought. Systems were designed with redundancies, but people were not. This time though, she was sure it wasn’t that. “We weren’t making any adjustments when the fusion runaway started, and all safeties were in place and active.”

“So tell me then, what exactly happened?”

“First indication of an issue was when we detected temperature rising in the reaction chamber,” Captain Feng recounted. “For safety reasons, standard operating procedures dictate running planetary fusion reactors within the range of one hundred to one hundred and twenty megakelvins, but they’re rated to one fifty. First reading we got was one forty, but then it was one fifty, one sixty, and well, you get the idea…”

Commodore Agarwal nodded. Heat was only a byproduct of the reaction, but it was directly proportional to the energy of the superheated plasmas, so it served as a barometer. If temperature climbed above allowed levels, it indicated that the reaction could be eclipsing what the containment systems could restrain.

“We immediately began emergency shutdown procedures,” Captain Feng continued. “I flooded coolant into the reaction chamber to buy us time, while Cho attempted to disable the ICRH injectors.”

“Attempted?” Commodore Agarwal furled his brow, noting the word choice.

“The injector control systems were non-responsive,” Lieutenant Commander Cho jumped in, flashing back to that moment, the feeling of helplessness she’d felt as she keyed in the commands and nothing happened “No matter what we did, microwave injection just continued to increase.”

“So how’d you stop it?” Commodore Agarwal asked. They had, after all, eventually succeeded as they were all standing here. If they had not, this’d have been nothing more than a kilometer-wide crater, and instead the limited casualties the med teams were tending to, it would have been a colony-scale catastrophe.

“I yanked the coupler that powers the injectors straight out of the PD trunk,” laughed Captain Feng as she raised her hands, showing palms scared by burns from the discharge caused by the desperate move. “We still weren’t out of the woods though. The reaction wasn’t getting worse, at least, but the containment systems could barely keep up with the energy and pressure already in the chamber, so, without time for a proper cooldown, I went for a straight shot two hundred and fifty kilogauss magnetic quench.”

“Ballsy,” Captain Westmoreland chuckled. 

“Stopped the reaction dead in its tracks,” Captain Feng pointed out. “But threw any semblance of pressure containment out the window, hence the explosive decompression that followed.” She had no idea how bad it had been, except that she was still alive and the whole place hadn’t been reduced to rubble.

“Yeah, we saw the damage on the way in,” Commander Gideon offered, making his presence known. Everyone turned to look at the commander and the ensign that’d just stepped into the room.

“How bad was it?” Captain Feng asked warily, fearful for the answer. She hadn’t had a chance to go outside yet – hell, she could barely stay standing – and since Commodore Agarwal and Captain Westmoreland had beamed directly into the control center, they had no details on the damage either.

“You got a shuttle-sized hole in the superstructure,” Commander Gideon reported. “And several fuel tanks are currently on fire.” He could see concern wash across their faces as he spoke. “Don’t worry. Damage control is already on it. We saw dozens of beam-ins, fire suppression and medical both, as we came inside.”

“Guess Saito is good for something, at least,” Captain Westmoreland scoffed. He wasn’t one to keep his opinions to himself, and he was no fan of the forever-captain. He and his colleagues in the Corps achieved their ranks by competence, but Kenji Saito had come to his by nothing more than tenure.

“Reed,” Commodore Agarwal said, disregarding the shot his colleague had taken at the USS Pacific Palisades‘ captain. “You and I, let’s get started on forensics. Kiara and Lieutenant Commander Cho, why don’t you both head back to the ship and get checked out by Doctor Goodwyn?”

“Amir, if you don’t mind,” Captain Feng said, straightening her uniform as if trying to shrug off what she’d just been through. “I’d rather stay down here and help you guys put the pieces together.” There was a deep burden of guilt in her eyes. Even though she was certain it wasn’t her fault, she felt deeply responsible for what had just unfolded.

“Very well,” Commodore Agarwal nodded, knowing better than to tell her off. “Let’s start with…”

But before he could finish his statement, Gideon’s combadge chirped to life. “Palisades to Commander Gideon,” came the voice of Captain Saito. “We have a situation.”

“No shit,” Captain Westmoreland grumbled under his breath.

Commander Gideon, though, was more graceful in his response. “We are aware, sir,” he assured the captain. “We’re already on site. Damage control is underway, and Ensign Elara and I are currently debriefing with the Corps team about…”

“Not the explosion, Commander,” Captain Saito interjected. “Or more, not only the explosion. We have another problem.” There was a sense of panic in his voice. “We’ve been monitoring the colonists, and it looks like a riot is forming in response to what just happened.”

“Yes, we observed a shift in attitude as the protest devolved through the evening,” Commander Gideon confirmed. Truth be told, it had probably qualified as a riot even before the shockwave hit the town square. He could only imagine what it’d devolved into now, if the colonists had put two and two together. And it wasn’t hard to do, given that the power was out, and smoke and fire were rising from the reactor facility. “Do you…”

“I need you up here, now,” Captain Saito ordered. “We need to figure out how to contain the situation before it gets worse.”

“Yes sir,” replied Commander Gideon. “I’ll be right up. Gideon out.”

“The fuck he need to gameplan with you?” Captain Westmoreland sighed as the commander closed the link. “Management of civil disturbances is something every security officer is trained in, and y’all got forty of them aboard the…”

Captain Agarwal raised his hand gently, cutting the captain off. “Not everyone has the same experience with frontier tensions as we do,” he reminded his colleague. “Commander Gideon, why don’t I join you back on the Palisades to help Captain Saito sort this out?”

“To help him, or to calm him?” Captain Westmoreland laughed sarcastically.

Commodore Agarwal ignored him and turned to the Palisades‘ Executive Officer.

“Works for me,” Commander Gideon nodded, appreciative of the support from the commodore. “Cho, you come back with us so the doc can check you out, and Elara, why don’t you remain here with Captains Feng and Westmoreland in case they need any help?”

“Will do,” Ensign Elara nodded. She wasn’t sure what an intelligence officer could do to help two engineering captains with the burned out shell of a fusion reactor, but still, she was more than willing to be an extra pair of hands for anything they needed – even if it was just to patch up the contusion on Captain Feng’s forehead. That much, at least, she knew how to do.

“Alright then,” Commander Gideon said as he gathered together with Agarwal and Cho. “Palisades, three to beam up. Energize.”

In a shimmer, they were gone, leaving Ensign Elara standing there with a concerned expression on her face. She wasn’t one to speak critically of Captain Saito like the others, but that didn’t mean she was ignorant to his weaknesses.

Captain Feng walked over and set her hand on the young Betazoid’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, Ensign,” she offered compassionately. “This is one of the things the commodore is particularly good at.” Frontier rabble rousing might have been new to the crew of the Pacific Palisades, but unfortunately, it was far more common out here than one might’ve thought. The Federation had neglected this place for too long, and in that vacuum, militant localism took root all too frequently.

“Hey, Kiara… You installed the latest version of the standard firmware on this thing, right?” Captain Reed Westmoreland asked as he looked up from the console where he was performing forensics on the faulty injector control system that had almost destroyed the colony.

“Of course,” Captain Kiara Feng confirmed, but her curiosity was piqued by the question. “It should be running version 2401 mark 8 pulled from Starfleet Engineering during the last dump we pulled at Archanis Station. Why do you ask?”

“Because this most certainly isn’t running that,” Captain Westmoreland frowned. “Or, more specifically, it isn’t only running that.” Large portions of the bytecode were what he expected, but there was something else laced into it. Something definitely not of Starfleet origin.

Captain Feng walked over to his console. “What am I looking at?” It was some sort of low level quantum assembly code, but what it implied, she had no idea. As head of the infrastructure construction unit for the Archanis detachment of the Corps of Engineers, she was a seasoned engineer, but her specialties were in civil and industrial. What was on the screen might as well have been a foreign language to her, the finer nuances of computer science typically left to Captain Westmoreland and the cyberjunkies of the communications and information systems unit.

“It’s a mutated form of our core firmware, baked deep into the fabric of the bioneural processor,” Captain Westmoreland explained. “Essentially a rootkit, it’s all but undetectable without an external core dump as it overrides the system calls our built-in cybersecurity routines rely on to detect malware. How it got embedded here though, I have no idea.” Or more, he knew how it could have been embedded in a system, but he wasn’t sure how it had been embedded in this system.

Ensign Alessa Elara, standing awkwardly alongside the aged pair, didn’t understand the finer points of the technobabble, but what she did get were the implications of what Captain Westmoreland was implying. “Could this be the root cause of tonight’s fiasco?”

“This stuff is pretty advanced, maybe even beyond me,” Captain Westmoreland cautioned as he continued to page through the code, trying to infer its purpose. “All I can tell you for sure is that it’s not right, and it’s not supposed to be here. As for how long it’ll take me to reverse engineer to gather a full picture of its purpose, I…” 

But then he stopped scrolling as his voice droned off.

“What is it?” Captain Feng asked nervously, recognizing the expression on his face, one somewhere between discomfort and terror. And closer to the latter. And there wasn’t a lot that shook a guy who’d spent his career working along the messiest frontiers of the Federation.

“I’ve only seen something like this once before…”

“Where?”

“Salvage Facility 21-J.”

A shadow washed over both their faces. Their visit to that haunted place was what nightmares were made of, and the subroutines contained within that cursed mausoleum most definitely didn’t belong anywhere near a Federation fusion reactor. How had they ended up here?

Ensign Elara, though, had no idea what they were talking about. “Sorry, where?”

“It’s nowhere,” Captain Feng replied darkly. “And it’s nothing.” The ensign had neither the clearance to be briefed, nor had she been part of that mission in the aftermath of Beta Serpentis. “But are you certain, Reed?” Her eyes cut into him, the seriousness of his supposition lost on neither of them. “Are you absolutely fucking certain? The implications are…”

“Yeah, I know,” Captain Westmoreland nodded grimly as he continued to stare at the code. “But yes, I’m positive. Look at this here.” He pointed at a block that again neither of the women standing over him understood. “This is an adaptive synaptic routine with a signature that could only have originated from a single source.”

“And what source is that?” Ensign Elara asked, still lost in the cryptic exchange.

“The Borg.”

Ensign Elara’s face went white with fear. Did the captain just say the Borg? The memories of Frontier Day were still fresh in her mind, and while the USS Pacific Palisades had been spared from the battle for Sol, she’d seen the aftermath.

“How did a Borg subroutine end up embedded in my reactor?” Captain Feng asked. “These systems are completely isolated from the colonial network. You’d need physical access to even install it.” Had someone intentionally installed it? Or was this be more Frontier Day shenanigans, another trojan horse the Borg had left them somehow?

“You already know the answer, Kiara,” Captain Westmoreland observed. “It got here because someone wanted it here, and they went through a lot of work to install it here.” The security systems of the facility, while not insurmountable, were not insignificant. It’d take a fairly sophisticated threat actor to achieve physical access.

“Well that’s concerning,” Ensign Elara blurted out.

“Alessa, I’m proud to say that you win the biggest-understatement-of-the-night award,” chuckled Captain Westmoreland. “But if you wanna talk about just how concerning this really is, it’s that, unless there’s a Borg drone just posted up on Duraxis, it means someone who is very not-Borg knows how to weaponize these Borg subroutines.”

“How do you figure?”

“Because even if someone happened upon some Borg malware, what’s the likelihood that it was specifically designed to attack SCoE Mark XI planetary fusion reactor injector control system running the 2401 mark 8 version of our firmware?” Captain Westmoreland asked rhetorically. “Someone modified it specifically to do that, and then they compromised our physical security to install it.”

“This was intentional, wasn’t it?” Ensign Elara asked, although it too was mostly rhetorical as she was fairly certain she already knew the answer. It was just hard to process.

“Absolutely,” Captain Feng nodded grimly. “Someone set out tonight to kill tens of thousands.”

Ensign Elara just stood there, mouth agape. Sure, she’d seen the anger of the colony on full display in the town square, but it was the anger of a people that wanted to live their own lives. This, on the other hand, was nothing short of suicide. If Captain Feng and Lieutenant Commander Cho hadn’t pulled off a miracle, everyone in that town square, and everyone for a dozen kilometers in every direction, would have died on this cold December night.

“We need to tell Amit,” Captain Westmoreland concluded.

“Agreed,” Captain Feng nodded. “You two go back to the Palisades and let him know. I’m going to stay here with my reactor, just in case something else goes awry.”

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” Captain Saito insisted to the group packed into his ready room. “It’s just too dangerous, and the people of Duraxis have made it crystal clear: they don’t want us here.” Standing beside him, Lieutenant Commanders Miriam Gessler and Gabe Rivera nodded in concurrence. Even before the catastrophe at the reactor, both had questioned why they were even here to begin with.

“No, this is exactly why we should be here,” Commodore Agarwal countered. Why couldn’t they see it? It should’ve been plainly obvious to all. “If ever we want to change the narrative across the Archanis Sector, we must start by lifting up its people, to show them the future is brighter with us than without us.” It was because of Starfleet’s decades-long neglect of places like Duraxis that these localist attitudes had been allowed to fester.

“It’s too messy,” Lieutenant Commander Gessler insisted. All this craziness, the slipped schedules, the missing equipment, the frontier resentment, none of it was to her liking. She preferred things controlled and predictable, like how she ran her operations department, and she wished the whole galaxy would get in line too.

“And it’s not safe,” added Lieutenant Commander Rivera. He liked himself far too much to throw his life away defending construction meant to support a people that didn’t even want it.

Commodore Agarwal frowned. “Go down there. Walk among these people. See the life they live. It’s a hard life. They need us.” Unfortunately, none of the officers he stood opposite of had so much as set foot on Duraxis, nor did they have any interest in doing so.

“You almost blew them all up today!” Captain Saito snapped back. He’d debriefed with Lieutenant Commander Cho while Doctor Goodwyn was checking on her injuries. He understood the scale of the harrowing catastrophe that had only narrowly been avoided.

“That’s not fair, and you know it,” Commodore Agarwal glared at Saito. This captain was barely a captain, only in his seat by tenure, nothing more. Who was he, sitting up here, to lay criticism on his Corps of Engineers? “We deployed a stock standard reactor, no different than those that power a hundred other colonies just like this one.”

“Then what happened?” Captain Saito replied. He had the Commodore there, he knew. Stock standard or not, it had almost gone critical tonight. And that was on him.

Commodore Agarwal had no response.

“It was terrorism,” Ensign Elara blurted out, causing everyone to turn. Freshly returned from the protest in the town square and the disaster at the reactor, the intelligence officer’s hair was still matted, her skin still covered in soot, and her outfit still a scrappy pair of dirty coveralls. There was a sharp contrast between her and her colleagues from the Pacific Palisades, all of whom were dressed in clean, pressed uniforms, having spent their entire shift sheltered within the comforts of their ship.

“Come again, missy?” Lieutenant Commander Rivera asked, his tone somehow managing to be equal parts aghast and infantilizing. What a leap the child had made, he thought to himself.

“It’s Ensign to you, Lieutenant Commander,” corrected Captain Westmoreland, the other officer to step through the door with her. While he wasn’t as disheveled as Alessa Elara, he too looked out of place, dressed in the sweats he’d been wearing in bed when the call had come in that something had happened at the reactor. “And yes, your Chief Intelligence Officer is quite correct. We have reason to suspect that a malicious actor penetrated the facility’s physical security and planted malware with the intent of causing widespread destruction.”

“That’s quite a claim,” Captain Saito observed warily. “What makes you so certain?”

“After decompiling the bioneural processor used to mediate ion cyclotron resonance heating within the fusion reaction, we found malicious subroutines present within the firmware,” Captain Westmoreland explained. “I can say confidently that they were planted after installation, and further, I can say with certainty that it wasn’t just some mistake made by Captain Feng’s team.”

“I think you’re making our point for us, cap,” Lieutenant Commander Rivera said as he directed his next point back towards Commodore Agarwal. “Commodore, if ever we needed more proof that we should just pack it up and leave, the colonists trying to blow everyone up would be it.”

Captain Westmoreland frowned. What sort of security chief didn’t want to track down the bad guys and stomp out crime? But it wasn’t just about fighting some local crime either. “Actually, based on the signature of the malware, I would say we absolutely cannot leave now.”

“What would a jumble of bits and bytes tell you that these unappreciative colonists have not already?” Lieutenant Commander Rivera spat. “This is proof of how far they’re willing to go to send us on our way. Why don’t we just listen?”

“They were of Borg origin,” Captain Westmoreland stated flatly.

Suddenly, all the air left the room.

“Amit, it’s time we call Reyes,” Captain Westmoreland continued. “The Advanced Science, Technology and Research Activity has specialists with far more background in Borg technology than me and my team.” While his team had helped clean up Salvage Facility 21-J in the aftermath of Beta Serpentis, it had been the ASTRA folks that had solved it in the first place.

“I’ll put in the call as soon as we’re done here,” Commodore Agarwal agreed. If what Captain Westmoreland had found was accurate, this had just become significantly more complicated.

Before anyone else could speak, the door to the ready room hissed open again, and this time, it was Commander Gideon to step through. He’d been manning the bridge while the others discussed the next course of action, but now he had news. More troubling news. “We just received work from our damage control teams on the surface. The riot that was forming earlier, it’s now headed directly for the reactor facility, currently a quarter klik from the gates.” He handed a PADD to Captain Saito with the details.

The captain skimmed it quickly and then handed it over to his security chief as he turned to the head of the Corps detachment. “Commodore, you still bent on us staying?”

”After what we just learned? Frankly, there’s no other choice,” Commodore Agarwal replied firmly. What else could they do, knowing that there was Borg technology in the wild down there?

“It’s quite a mob, commodore,” Lieutenant Commander Rivera warned as he passed the PADD to Agarwal. “I’m not sure we can hold them.”

Commodore Agarwal glanced down at the PADD. A couple hundred angry colonists advancing towards the reactor facility with signs and rocks? “I’m sure your well-staffed, well-trained security department can handle some upset colonists,” he assured Lieutenant Commander Rivera. And besides, he thought to himself, even if that mob was a horde ten times the size, they still had no choice given what Captain Westmoreland had determined. They could not leave until they got to the bottom of this.

Lieutenant Commander Rivera sighed frustratedly. This was most definitely not how he had envisioned his night going. He had a Wyatt Earp program on the holodeck he’d been looking forward to playing, and then he’d planned to go down to the lounge to enjoy a few tall boys.

“Looks like you’re up, champ,” Captain Westmoreland chuckled, patting the security chief on the back. He was enjoying the discomfort splayed across the security chief’s face a bit too much.

“We’re going to be severely outnumbered,” Lieutenant Commander Rivera warned.

“You and your men have ballistic gear, stun batons, and the best training the Academy could offer,” Commodore Agarwal countered. “I’m sure you’ll be fine. But if it makes you feel better, I’ll ask Reyes to bring a few extra hands with her when they come.”

At least it would be someone else’s problem soon, the chief thought to himself.

“In the meantime,” Commodore Agarwal cautioned. “Just remember, the goal is to calm the mob, not to incense it.” He’d unfortunately seen far too many security teams take the wrong tact and end up escalating the situation. “After what they’ve just witnessed, the colonists are going to be an emotional bunch, and rightfully so.” This wasn’t just about tonight either. It was about the years of neglect these colonists had to endure while the Federation turned a blind eye.

“Any idea what this is about, cap?” asked Commander Kerrigan.

“Not a clue,” Captain Vox shrugged as he took his seat at the head of the table. “But when Admiral Reyes calls and says to prepare for immediate departure, that’s what you do.” There was a deep sense of duty in his voice, not on account of rank, but their shared experience. Over Nasera, together they had fought the Lost Fleet; in the shadow of Wolf 359, together they had stopped the colonists of Beta Serpentis from summoning the Collective; and through the labyrinth, together they had navigated the turbulence of the Underspace. “How’re we looking for departure?”

“All staff taking leave on Archanis Station have been recalled,” Commander Kerrigan reported as the conference room door slid open. “And we’re at full readiness, prepared to get going… as soon as we know where we’re going.”

“And that’s something I can help with,” Fleet Admiral Allison Reyes declared as she stepped briskly into the briefing room. “We’re headed for Duraxis, a small colony three days’ journey from here that abuts the Klingon border.”

Behind her, two more officers filed in. One was an older gentleman unknown to them. Balding with a thick salt and pepper beard and a soft physique, he looked little like a Starfleet officer save for his teal uniform and the lieutenant commander pips on his collar. The second man, on the other hand, was known to all of them, the JAG prosecutor that had zealously pursued court martial proceedings against Captain Jake Lewis and Dr. Lisa Hall just a few months earlier. It’d been the talk of the ship for weeks, and he had few fans across the squadron.

“Why is JAG here?” Captain Vox asked warily. He had no love for Commander Robert Drake. In fact, he pretty much despised everything about him. Even though Captain Lewis and Dr. Hall had somehow escaped court martial, it was unforgivable to Captain Vox that Commander Drake had even tried them after all they had sacrificed on Nasera to see victory in the end.

“Because the rule of law remains a cornerstone of our society,” Commander Drake replied proudly, unphased by the captain’s tone. Few understood the importance of the work he did, but it wouldn’t stop him from doing it.

Before Captain Vox could snipe back, Admiral Reyes jumped in. “Since it seems you are already familiar with Commander Drake,” she said, directing a discerning glare at both officers before gesturing towards the other man that’d come aboard with her. “Let me take a moment to introduce Lieutenant Commander Linus Rhodes, a research fellow in cyberintelligence from the Advanced Science, Technology and Research Activity. Given recent developments, he will be equally important on our mission to Duraxis.”

“What sort of mission are we talking about, admiral?” Captain Vox asked curiously.

“Two weeks ago, Commodore Amit Agarwal and the Archanis detachment of the Fourth Fleet Corps of Engineers deployed to Duraxis on a mission to upgrade aging colonial infrastructure,” Admiral Reyes began. “From the start, they’ve been plagued with issues. A vocal minority has taken to the streets to protest their presence, and the Corps has struggled with equipment gone missing and new systems that have failed almost immediately after installation.”

“And we suspect sabotage?” Captain Vox asked, leaping to the obvious conclusion. “Wouldn’t be the first time…” The colonies of the Archanis Sector, neglected by the Federation for far too long, had developed a sense of independence and localism that caused them to look skeptically upon Starfleet’s now-renewed focus on the region.

“Yes, but we’re not hauling an Alita out there for some local rabble rousers,” Admiral Reyes elaborated. “The Pacific Palisades would be more than enough to handle that. No, tonight things just got a lot more complicated.”

Admiral Reyes walked up to a wall-mounted console in the center of the room and pulled up a recording. It started with a serene scene, the dome of a Corps-spec fusion reactor eclipsing the evening sun as it fell beneath the horizon. But then everything changed as a blue-white flash that momentarily blinded the camera, and then, when the camera came back into focus, they were greeted with a scene that could only be described as post-apocalyptic, a massive hole in the side of the facility’s superstructure and a massive conflagration burning on its perimeter.

“Those don’t do that,” observed Commander Vince Slade, the Chief Engineer of the Diligent. “They’re tough as nails, and pretty much bulletproof.”

“They shouldn’t, you are correct,” nodded Admiral Reyes. “But what you’re seeing is the result of the reactor team preventing a far worse catastrophe, a thermal runaway after the plasmas at the core of the reactor spiked over two hundred megakelvins.”

“How?” Commander Slade asked. That was a lot of heat, more than double standard operating practices if he recalled correctly, but fusion reactions didn’t just experience thermal runaways of their own accord. Instead, if something went wrong, they’d typically just fizzled out. It was one of their most endearing qualities, and the principal reason they were used over matter-antimatter annihilation or fission-based atom splitting for planetside facilities.

“That’s where Commander Rhodes comes in,” Admiral Reyes offered as she yielded the floor to the cyberintelligence researcher.

“Thank you, admiral,” Lieutenant Commander Rhodes nodded as he stepped forward. “Based on initial forensics by the team on the ground, we have strong reason to believe that this was the result of a sophisticated cyberattack designed to compromise the ICRH injectors and drive the reaction to energy levels where containment would fail.”

“You’re saying the reactor was made intentionally to go critical?” Commander Kerrigan asked. “Sure, the locals might be wary of us – wouldn’t be the first time we’ve seen that – but if it had gone critical, would it not have killed more of them than of us?” That hardly seemed an effective way to protect your way of life.

“Indeed,” confirmed Admiral Reyes. “Based on our calculations, the blast radius would have leveled every structure within a dozen kilometers, and the death toll would have numbered in the tens of thousands.”

“Is it possible that these saboteurs didn’t understand what they were doing?” asked Lieutenant Commander Kehlani Koh. The Chief Security Officer had seen, more than once, how a slightly subversive plan could take on a life of its own and transform into something far more than its conceivers originally envisioned.

“Oh no,” Lieutenant Commander Rhodes shook his head grimly. “Whoever planted this virus knew exactly what it was going to do.”

“How do you figure?” Captain Vox jumped back in. He was on the same page as his Chief Security Officer. To go from protests and light sabotage to straight up suicide made no sense.

“Reactor control systems are completely isolated from the wider network for security reasons,” Lieutenant Commander Rhodes explained. “To pull this off, the threat actor had to be sophisticated enough to bypass our physical security, and more than that, they had to possess the competency to modify a complex piece of malware, one of extraplanetary origin, to target the injectors in a very specific way – one that would indicate they knew exactly what they were doing.”

“You said extraplanetary?” asked Captain Vox. Localist movements rarely embraced means from beyond their own world. It sort of went against the entire philosophy. 

“Yes, the malware did not originate on Duraxis,” explained Lieutenant Commander Rhodes. “It is of Borg origin.”

A pin drop could have been heard in the silence that followed.

“And this is why we’re making, with all due haste, for Duraxis,” Admiral Reyes jumped back in. “Our mission will be threefold. First, we will reinforce the diplomatic and security mission of the Pacific Palisades, which is struggling to make progress.”

“Struggling to make progress?” scoffed Commander Drake. “They’ve straight up bungled the whole thing and now have got what is tantamount to an all-out riot on their hands.” He’d read the reports from the California class utility cruiser already. The second rate captain and misfit crew of the Pacific Palisades had done nothing whatsoever to effectively manage the situation on the ground, and he had no faith they’d do any better going forward.

“Yes, and we’ll look to smooth that over,” Admiral Reyes nodded calmly. She was unwilling to rake Captain Saito and his staff across the coals in such a public setting, although privately, she too was very disappointed with what she’d read of their proceedings to date.

“What’s the situation with local law enforcement?” Lieutenant Commander Koh asked.

“Unsympathetic with an election coming up next week,” Admiral Reyes sighed. “Plus, they’ve lived the same life as those around them. We will have to play nice, but I wouldn’t put my faith in them.”

“And what’s our current security posture on the surface?” Lieutenant Commander Koh continued.

“There’ve been sporadic protests against Starfleet’s presence ever since the Palisades arrived, but now, following the explosion, reports suggest it’s turning violent – or, at least near violent,” Admiral Reyes explained. “Lieutenant Commander Rivera, their Chief Security Officer, has deployed his team, almost to the last man, to the reactor facility to maintain its security.”

“We’ll be prepared to re-enforce the moment we arrive,” Lieutenant Commander Koh assured the admiral.

“Very good,” Admiral Reyes acknowledged before returning to the objectives at hand. “Beyond securing our presence, our second objective will be forensics.” She turned towards the specialist from the Advanced Science, Technology and Research Activity. “Lieutenant Commander Rhodes, once we arrive, you will assume responsibility for that from the Corps team. You have subject matter expertise that even Captain Westmoreland and Commodore Agarwal do not.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Lieutenant Commander Rhodes nodded. “I assume I can continue to leverage them as needed though?” He had no reason to suspect them of malpractice or malfeasance, given the presence of the Borg malware, and everything he’d read of suggested that, as opposed to the crew of the Pacific Palisades, the Corps team was highly competent.

“Of course,” agreed Admiral Reyes. She too had no reason to suspect Commodore Agarwal or any of his team. She then turned towards Commander Drake. “And as for our final objective, we will investigate and apprehend those responsible for the proliferation of this Borg technology.”

“And anyone else that has committed other crimes against the Federation,” Commander Drake added. If the reports of stolen equipment and sabotaged installations were accurate, he intended to bring back home all who were responsible for any of it.

“Within reason,” Admiral Reyes cautioned. “As long as it does not undermine our other objectives.” She was fully aware that, in order to stabilize relations with the colony, they might have to look past some of the petty stuff. But not the Borg virus. Whoever was responsible for that, they weren’t leaving Duraxis until that person, or those people, were in custody.

Commander Drake knew better than to argue, for now, so he switched gears. “If you don’t mind, I’m also going to send Chief Morrey to embed with the locals.” The gregarious investigator could talk his way into any clique, and more than a few times, he’d ferreted out perpetrators long before conventional means even got close.

“I’m good with that,” Admiral Reyes nodded. “As I understand it, the Palisades has an intel officer who already knows the place and can facilitate.” The very thorough humint report from Ensign Alessa Elara, and the accompanying operation, was pretty much the only thing Admiral Reyes had read out of the Duraxis mission that seemed even reasonably successful so far.

“I’ll let him know.”

“Alright, then if there’s anything else,” Admiral Reyes said as she turned to address the whole table. “It’s a three day pull to Duraxis, so let’s get this show on the road. We can work out the finer details en route.”

And hopefully nothing else would happen on Duraxis before then.

“I dread the night. It always gets worse after dark.” For three days and three nights, ever since the explosion at the reactor sent fear rippling through the colony, that’s how it’d gone. During the day, speeches and signs, and at night, the unadulterated rage of a frenzied mob.

“That it does,” Lieutenant Commander Gabe Rivera nodded in agreement. The sun had just fallen beneath the horizon, and the night was once more upon them. Glancing down, he rechecked the settings on his phaser rifle. If things got out of hand, this would be what kept him safe. That’s what he told himself, at least. “Keep your head on a swivel, and show no signs of weakness. Just as we did the last two nights, we hold the line, and we don’t let them pass.”

“Yes sir,” the young man next to him nodded eagerly and trotted off. He was ready to do his part, as ordered by his chief. They’d hold the line, even if it came to blows.

Lieutenant Commander Rivera looked over his shoulder at the fusion reactor. The fires were out, but smoke still rose from the gaping hole in the superstructure. Why again were they putting their lives on the line for this? The ungrateful colonists of Duraxis didn’t even want their help. If only Commodore Agarwal hadn’t been so self-righteous, they could have already been half way back to Archanis Station by now. There was an exotic dancer on the station who was waiting to trace ice cubes along his chiseled midsection, but instead, he was stuck here on this dusty shithole, risking his life for a bunch of nobodies the galaxy had forgotten. They should have just been left forgotten.

The chants grew louder and louder, minute by minute, and quickly, the mob swelled in size, and in temper. “Your lies aren’t worth our lives! Take your ships, and leave our skies!” they shouted, now so close to his men that their spit hit the visors of their face shields.

Over the next few minutes, the messaging devolved to disorderly shouts and jeers, the momentum continuing to build. Starfleet needed to go. Soon, words became sticks and stones, but for now, the small projectiles bounced harmlessly off the ballistic vests and riot shields. It would be only a matter of time though, Lieutenant Commander Rivera knew, before something would get through.

And then it did, as a flaming bottle arced overhead. The bottle collided with a shield. The glass was deflected, but as it shattered, its contents splashed against the holder, singeing the face behind the mask and the skin beneath the armor. The man – his man – howled in pain and dropped to his knees as another rushed to his aid.

At least two more filled into their places along the line, and the line held, but that was it. No more, Lieutenant Commander Rivera resolved in that moment. If he didn’t draw the line here, it’d just get worse and worse. The protest needed to be put in its place. “Rivera to Saito,” he said as he tapped his combadge, calling up to the captain of the Pacific Palisades.

“Saito here. Go ahead.”

“Sir, the mob has escalated to kinetic force and chemical incendiaries,” Lieutenant Commander Rivera reported. “As we agreed this morning, we can’t have another night like last.” Four of his men had ended up in sickbay as a result of injuries sustained on the line. “I am hereby requesting authorization to declare an illegal assembly and issue a dispersal order.”

“I leave it to your discretion… but ugh, what a mess.”

“You’re telling me,” Lieutenant Commander Rivera vented. He was the one down here trying to protect the reactor they shouldn’t even be bothering with, and it was his men paying the price. “I’ll keep you in the loop. Rivera out.” The security chief tapped his combadge, closing the link, and then tapped it again to open another. “Rivera to all teams. We got the greenlight!” His voice was laced with adrenaline and excitement knowing that they could, at last, finally stop sitting on their hands. They could finally put down this mob. “Prepare to move in. It’s time to end this thing!”

Along the line, his men straighten their stances. They knew what would come next. They’d gone over the plan at the morning briefing, and admittedly, some were almost even looking forward to it. He couldn’t blame them either. He felt that way too. After three nights of abuse, he was ready to finally do something about it.

“Attention! Attention! To all in the proximity of the reactor, this gathering has been declared an unlawful assembly!” Lieutenant Commander Rivera shouted the words through a megaphone, his chest thrust in the air projecting an aura of confidence and charisma. “You are ordered to disperse immediately! Failure to comply will be met with force and arrest!”

His men on the line beat their batons against their riot shields and began to advance forward towards the waiting protestors.

The protestors, though, were undeterred, their voices shouting in unison: “First you come with gifts, but we said no! And look at you now, your real colors show!” The order had just incensed them further as they howled at the advancing line of Starfleet security officers.

Again, Lieutenant Commander Rivera shouted over the megaphone: “You are ordered to disperse! I say again, you are ordered to disperse!”

They weren’t dispersing though.

They would not back down.

This was their home.

And so, the melee began. 

Riot shields pressed against protestors, and protestors pressed back. Then came the plywood, cracking against shields and glancing off vests, the colonists trying to repel the phalanx. The security officer, in turn, swung their batons without mercy, dropping protestors one by one.

This’d be over in minutes, Lieutenant Commander Rivera thought to himself. Never did it go through his mind that this was not how it was to be done, that this wasn’t becoming of a Starfleet officer, and that this wasn’t winning them any friends. All he could see was red.

His confidence was a fool’s confidence too. The chest thumping and fancy gear hadn’t scared the colonists, nor had it defused the mob. It had, instead, ignited it. The colonists were in a frenzy now as the once-peaceful demonstration turned into all-out riot. Starfleet might’ve had better equipment, but for each colonist that fell to the strike of a baton or the shove of a shield, five more took their place. They had something to fight for, and fight they would. This was their home.

Soon, as the line began to crumble, it became clear to Lieutenant Commander Rivera that they were losing control. He tapped his combadge again: “Rivera to Palisades! I need more men or we’re gonna be overrun! Send more men!”

“How many?”

“I need every single…” he began to reply, but then he stopped as a crack pierced the night, a sound he recognized instantly. It was the sound of energized polarons igniting atmospheric ions as a phaser rifle coughed out a shot.

Lieutenant Commander Rivera looked out over the line. He couldn’t see the shooter, but he could see the shots themselves. One burst, then another, and finally a third. He could see where they’d come from too. His side of the line. And then he saw the bodies, three of them, dressed in civvies, definitely colonists.

“Shit,” Lieutenant Commander Rivera muttered to himself.

“Rivera, say again. How many?” came the voice from his combadge.

But the chief didn’t reply. He was frozen. Everyone was frozen. For a moment, it was perfectly silent, protestor and officer alike, everyone trying to process what had just happened, the three bodies lying motionless in the dirt.

“What the fuck?” came a voice from the crowd.

“Did they just shoot us?!” gasped another.

“We’re unarmed!” shouted a third.

And then all hell broke loose.

Starfleet had shown its colors. If it was willing to shoot them, to kill them, they had nothing to lose. So fuck it. The colonists threw their bodies forward with reckless abandon, fists flying, feet kicking, projectiles and molotovs sailing overhead as they howled with unadulterated rage.

“Lieutenant Commander Rivera?” the officer on the other side of the link asked again.

Oh, that’s right, Lieutenant Commander Rivera remembered. He had the Pacific Palisades on the line. “We have a problem, Palisades. There was a…” He had to pause for a moment to duck as a cinder block flew past his head. “A shooting! Shots fired!”

“Say again, Rivera? Did you say shots fired?”

But Lieutenant Commander Rivera never got a chance to reply as a colonist, one of horde that’d broken through the line, was suddenly on top of him, dislodging his rifle and driving him into the ground.

As the security chief’s head hit the dirt, he looked to his right. There was nothing left of their line. The colonists were everywhere, swarming like hornets, climbing over riot shields, knocking away batons, and pelting his men with anything they could get their hands on. This was not good. Not good at all.

And then he felt the pressure on his chest. He looked up to see a big burly beast of a man with his knee pressed against the chief’s chest. The man had at least fifteen centimeters and twenty kilos over the chief, his eyes full of fire and his hand raised over his head. Before Rivera could even raise his hands to defend himself, that hand curled into a fist and fell upon him, striking him square across the jaw. Once… twice… and then a third time… a barrage of hammer fists, each strike harder than the last.

As Lieutenant Commander Rivera’s skull bounced off the ground, again and again under the barrage, he began to see stars. And then he started to see bright splotches.

Was this the end?

No, those bright splotches weren’t phosphenes, the repeated strikes evoking random impulses across his occipital lobe. No, those splotches were shimmering, almost like… like transporter signals.

Had the cavalry arrived?

As the shimmers faded, in their wake stood Starfleet officers. Dozens, and then well over a hundred, materializing all around him, around his men, and around the protestors. Overhead too, he heard the sound of starfighters, a trio in fight formation blasting overhead. It was a show of force, and it was nothing like what Captain Saito and the Pacific Palisades could have mustered. 

What the hell was happening?

An officer, a lieutenant commander in yellow, someone he didn’t recognize, was suddenly there, standing over him and his adversary. Barely 1.6 meters in height, but well-built and muscular, she reached down and plied the man off him with almost effortless grace. There was no emotion in her movements, nor on her face, almost like it was just another day in the office, just a practiced joint lock creating pressure that allowed her to separate them.

The protestor recoiled as he stepped back, and then he drew himself into a fighting stance, ready to lunge at her. But that’s when her Type-II compression pistol came up, lightning fast on the draw, but also somehow precise and measured in the movement, her face still exuding a calmness that seemed out of place against the chaotic backdrop. “I have no quarrel with you, my friend,” she said, her voice somehow both gentle and forceful at the same time. “None at all. But I need you to step back. Now.”

There was something different about her, the protestor thought as he eyed her over. There was a cold professionalism in her unlike the pricks he’d been protesting against the last week, and so, after considering his options, the man raised his hands and took a couple steps back.

“Thank you for trusting me,” she offered in a tone that almost seemed compassionate.

Behind her, Lieutenant Commander Rivera got back to his feet, gave off a great huff, and then reached down to retrieve his rifle. 

“I don’t think so,” the female officer snapped, spinning on the fellow officer. “Your rifle stays on the ground!”

“What?!” Lieutenant Commander Rivera gasped. “We’re on the same team!”

“We’re all on the same team – you, me, and our friends here on Duraxis,” she replied, nodding at the protester who’d just been mounted atop him. “But you – all of you – you all need to cool it until we can talk things out.”

He still looked indecisive, as if he might not honor her request.

“Consider it an order,” the woman stated. “From someone that far outranks you and Saito.”

That caused him to pause. Someone who far outranked Captain Saito? Huh? She seemed damn serious though, and she was the one with the gun, not him. “Who are you?”

“Lieutenant Commander Kehlani Koh, USS Diligent.”

He didn’t recognize her name, but he recognized the ship. The Diligent was an Alita class heavy escort assigned to Polaris Squadron. It’d been over Vespara Prime when the Pacific Palisades had responded to Admiral Reyes’ distress call.

“I see…” Lieutenant Commander Rivera said as he glanced around. He’d brought forty officers down, but now, there had to be at least two hundred, maybe more, and the newly arrived officers were busy separating officers and protestors with military-like precision all around them. “Thanks, I guess?”

“Don’t thank me,” Lieutenant Commander Koh shook her head. “Not ’til you talk to Vox.” She gestured with a nod towards a clump of officers who’d secured the scene around the three shooting victims. Several medical officers were down on their knees, assessing the downed colonists, and standing over them was a hawkish-looking man with captain’s pips. “He, and the admiral too, they’ll expect an explanation for this… this travesty.”

“I… uh…” Lieutenant Commander Rivera fumbled for the words, caught off-guard by her evident displeasure. But before he could say anything more, a new voice drew their attention.

“Excuse me… excuse me…” came a voice from the crowd, and then, swiftly and deferentially, the crowd split at the seam. In their wake, an old man with soot-stained cheeks, shadow-drowned eyes and weather-worn skin stepped forward. “Who the hell is in charge? I demand to speak to whomever is in charge!”

Allison Reyes stood alone, staring into the great beyond. She’d spent three decades among the stars, yet she never grew tired of the view, nor of the adventures that awaited. Tonight, though, would be no such adventure; no, tonight would be something else, a repentance for decades of neglect and for mistakes more recent.

The door to the observation deck hissed open, and Commander Jordyn Kerrigan, Executive Officer of the USS Diligent, stepped through the threshold. “Ma’am, the chief just called. The guests have arrived, and they’re on their way up. And just as a warning, he said they look awfully surly too.”

“Would you look any different – or feel any different – if you’d been through what they’ve been through?” Admiral Reyes asked pensively as her eyes drifted from the stars to the taupe and ochre planet beneath them. “Since our arrival, our water purification systems poisoned them, our power planet nearly flattened their colony, and when they sought to make their voices heard, our officers shot them.”

“But ma’am, we know the plant was sabotaged.”

“We know that, but do they?”

“Can’t we show them the proof?” asked Commander Kerrigan. Lieutenant Commander Linus Rhodes, the cyberintelligence specialist from the Advanced Science, Technology and Research Activity, had all the evidence. It was clear as day. The implications were terrifying too. How had a Borg subroutine found its way to this backwater world? Who on Duraxis had the ability to modify it for their needs? And why would they try to blow up the colony if this was about protecting it?

“Yes, unapproachable technobabble that’ll fall on deaf ears,” Admiral Reyes pointed out. “After being neglected by the Federation for decades, they have no reason to trust us, and no way to independently verify our claims. As for the three protestors lying dead in the dirt when they were just exercising their right to demonstrate, they undermine any goodwill we might have had.” The failings of the Pacific Palisades on the eve of their arrival had stripped any hope they had of persuading colonial leadership that their intentions were pure.

“How’re you going to handle that, ma’am?” Commander Kerrigan had heard the report from Captain Vox and Lieutenant Commander Koh. It was insane. Starfleet officers did not kill protestors. Period.

Before Admiral Reyes could reply, the door of the observation deck whisked open, and two men walked in, escorted by a pair of her security officers. Courtesy of the intelligence report the Chief Intelligence Officer of the Pacific Palisades had provided, pretty much the only good thing to come off that boat, Admiral Reyes recognized them both. One, the better dressed of the pair, was Erlic, the current governor of Duraxis. The other, his clothes caked in dust and debris, was Voral, the populist opposition candidate in the upcoming election and a leading voice of the anti-Starfleet movement that’d swept the colony. Voral was the one that’d demanded an audience after the shooting, but in consideration of Duraxis’ upcoming election, she’d invited both to the ship.

“Welcome to the Diligent,” Admiral Reyes began warmly. “I am Fleet Ad…”

“Why’d you invite him here?” Voral interrupted, gesturing at the governor with hate-filled eyes. “Are you afraid to face me without your puppet?” It was Governor Erlic that had welcomed Starfleet to Duraxis in the first place.

“Puppet?” Erlic recoiled at the accusation. “Hardly!” He’d only accepted Starfleet’s offer of assistance in the hopes of seeing a brighter future for his people. Being honest with himself though, it had completely backfired. “I want the same answers as you, my friend.”

“Friend?!” Voral countered disdainfully. “You weren’t there, Erlic. It was me out there, fighting for our people. It was me out there, watching as they gunned down three of our people. It was me out there, demanding this audience. Where were you? In your palace painting your nails?”

Ah, so that was how it was going to be, Admiral Reyes thought to herself. Not good at all. Given the upcoming election, the opposition candidate painting the current governor as a puppet was going to force him to show he wasn’t. And that meant they’d be caught in the crossfire. “Gentlemen, please…”

“Ah yes, this isn’t about the governor anyways, admiral-general whoever-you-are,” Voral asked as he spun on her. He didn’t care who she was. He hated what she represented, and it was as simple as that. “It’s about you and your self-righteous Federation, which assumes it knows better than us, those who actually live out here on the frontier.”

“We don’t go where we aren’t invited,” Fleet Admiral Reyes offered gently, aware she was wading into a minefield, one where frontier localism had blended with a nasty political dispute. “We came to your world, at an invitation from and with the consent of your government, in an effort to improve, through infrastructure upgrades, the lives of those who…”

“Well, if that’s what you’re here to do, you failed!” Voral interrupted, disinterested in letting her finish. He didn’t care what she had to say. He was here for a reason. “Let me tell you too, after my victory in the elections next week, you can expect to no longer have this invitation, to no longer have our consent!” And that meant the Corps of Engineers would have to leave their planet, and that the Starfleet ships would then depart their skies. “You may have just arrived, miss admiral, but let me tell you what’s happened so far… your people came with grand promises, but so far, they’ve delivered jack shit save for a water purification system that poisoned our youth and a fusion reactor that almost blew us all up!”

“I…” Admiral Reyes began to reply.

“I’m not done yet!” Voral snapped with a ferocity that caused the security officers by the door stiffened up. The opposition leader, though, was undeterred and just continued his verbal assault. “You see, as bad as those failings were, they could at least be explained as incompetence. But what happened tonight, that wasn’t incompetence. That was a crime!”

He wasn’t wrong, Admiral Reyes knew. Those officers aboard the Pacific Palisades, one of them had made a fatal mistake, and a mistake that would ripple out from here. It wasn’t just about Duraxis either. What had happened outside the reactor was all but guaranteed to spread, and when it did, it would threaten to undo months of work across dozens of colonies across the sector.

“Gerrik, Huran, and Sarai… those were their names, the three who are dead in your attempt to silence us,” Voral said coldly, his eyes narrowing on her. “But we will not be silenced! Not until you leave our skies!” He then spun towards his counterpart, the current – and soon to be former – governor of Duraxis, the man who, whether as a puppet or as a fool, had allowed Starfleet onto their world in the first place. “What say you, Erlic?”

“I, for once, find myself in agreement with my colleague,” Erlic answered as he turned towards the admiral. “What happened tonight was inexcusable, and it marks the end of our relationship.” There was sense of both regret and finality in his tone. He had hoped that, in welcoming Starfleet to their world, he’d been ushering in the beginning of a new era, one where they would be able to move beyond the threat of famine and scarcity, but some things came at too steep a price.

“What happened tonight was inexcusable,” Admiral Reyes concurred. She knew better than to try and defend it. In fact, she very much intended to prosecute it. “The Federation respects civil discourse, and I give you my word that we will conduct a full and transparent investigation into…”

“Save your breath, admiral,” Erlic interrupted. “Your word means little. It is time for you to go.”

Voral looked rather smug, hearing his opposition finally say it, and he piled on: “You said you don’t go where you aren’t invited, admiral. Well, if I just heard the governor right, you are no longer invited, so off you go.” He knew better than to expect the admiral to honor it. That’s not what Starfleet did. It said one thing, but it did another. It always had, as long as he’d known of it.

“Voral is correct,” Erlic concurred, much to the admiral’s disappointment. After tonight though, his mind was made up. “This is over. Take your things and leave Duraxis.” They’d just have to make do as they had before. To make do on their own.

“We can take our things, but I’m afraid we won’t be going,” Admiral Reyes shook her head. “Not yet, at least.” Knowing what was in play somewhere down there, they could not leave yet.

“See?! It’s as I’ve always said! Lies, and more lies!” Voral exclaimed angrily, his face fuming with rage. “This was never out of some form of selfless benevolence! It is, and always has been, an attempt to meddle in our affairs!”

“Quite to the contrary,” Admiral Reyes explained. “The reason I am here is to get to the bottom of what has happened, including both the recent infrastructure issues and the failure tonight.”

“What has happened is of your own making,” Voral insisted.

“Maybe in part, but certainly not in full,” Admiral Reyes replied, watching the pair carefully for any reaction to what would follow next. “We have reason to believe that the reactor failure was an act of terrorism, one propagated not by the peoples of your planet, but by external actors. We will not leave until we get to the bottom of that.”

“But our colonial rights…” Voral tried to counter.

“Your colonial rights extend insofar as it pertains to your world, and it is at your governor’s discretion whether or not the Corps of Engineers will continue its mission…”

“They will not,” Erlic folded his arms across his chest, his mind made up.

“Understood. They will not,” Admiral Reyes conceded, knowing she needed to pick her battles, and there was something more important at stake right now than proving the Federation a good partner for Duraxis. “But as it relates to the peace and security of the Federation as a whole, Starfleet retains the right, anywhere within our territory, to investigate and to intercede as necessary to preserve it.”

“That sounds like a lot of legalese to justify your presence,” Voral retorted.

“Again, I agree with my colleague,” Erlic concurred, somewhat shocked to have found himself on the same page as his vitriolic opponent so many times in one night. “I am a man of this place, but I am no fool. Duraxis is hardly important enough to matter to our neighbors. What the hell does it matter to the peace and security of your Federation as a whole?”

“Our forensics teams have determined that a malicious piece of software, installed after the deployment of the reactor, was responsible for what happened three days ago,” Admiral Reyes explained, trying to keep the technobabble to a minimum. “And this malware, it carried a specific signature, one of Borg origin.”

“You’re saying the Borg Collective is interested in our world?” Voral scoffed. “Fat chance!”

“No, I’m saying that someone on Duraxis came into possession of Borg technology,” Admiral Reyes replied. “And three nights ago, they set out to kill every man, woman and child on your world.”

Voral’s obstinance could not be broken, but now, Governor Erlic looked shaken.

“In an effort to put an end to the proliferation of such dangerous technologies, the Diligent was dispatched to get to the bottom of this,” Admiral Reyes pressed. “And we will not be leaving until we do.” 

There was a firmness in her tone that made it clear this was not up for debate, and Erlic was too shocked to argue the point anyways.

“Additionally, as to what happened tonight, it was a violation of everything the Federation stands for, and I give you my word that we will conduct a thorough and transparent investigation,” Admiral Reyes continued. “And, if it would help, your own security forces are welcome to participate alongside our JAG and Security teams.”

“I would appreciate that,” Erlic nodded.

“We will get to the bottom of this,” Admiral Reyes assured them. “Justice will be served.”

Erlic appeared momentarily appeased. Voral, meanwhile, just stood there fuming. For now though, she’d made the space they needed to conduct the investigations that had to take place. As long as nothing else went wrong.

Commander Robert Drake stepped off the pad with a purposeful stride and a scrutinous intensity, a sharp contrast to the unkempt and weary petty officer working the transporter room for the graveyard shift. “I’m here for Lieutenant Commander Rivera. Where is he?” No introductions, nor pleasantries. Just straight to the point. There were three colonists dead in the dirt down on Duraxis, and the Chief Security Officer of the USS Pacific Palisades had to answer for that.

“Gabe returned a bit ago,” the petty officer replied as he fumbled with the controls at his station, surprised by the energy coming off this official-looking gentleman that’d just beamed over from the USS Diligent. “I’m showing that he’s currently in his office on deck 3.”

“He’s currently in his office on deck 3, sir,” Commander Drake corrected condescendingly. He’d earned each of those three pips, and in doing so, he’d stripped others of dozens in the fight for the soul of the Federation.

He didn’t wait for a response though, and before the petty officer could even get his wits back about him, the commander was gone. He had matters to attend to, matters far more important than the failings of a middle aged washout stuck working the graveyard shift in the transporter room of a utility cruiser.

As Commander Drake made his way through the corridors of the Pacific Palisades, he could not help but scrunch his nose at the stench. This barge was filled with mediocrity, men like that man in the transporter room who couldn’t even muster the basics of protocol. But, then again, why else would they have found themselves stationed aboard a California, the twenty fifth century equivalent of a Miranda? The only Miranda he liked was the judicial principle from five centuries prior, and the only California he liked was the one home to his family estate.

When at last Commander Drake reached the security chief’s office, he was met directly by a sight of mediocrity. Lieutenant Commander Rivera was nothing to write home about, unless it was to complain about his unkempt hair, his unruly beard, and his horrid posture, none of which were becoming of the Chief Security Officer of a Starfleet starship.

“What can I do ya for?” Lieutenant Commander Rivera asked nonchalantly as he looked up from his PADD. He didn’t recognize the commander standing in his doorway, and he could only assume the lad was one of the admiral’s groupies.

“How about some protocol and an English lesson to start?” Commander Drake scoffed, judgment oozing off him as he eyed the man over. What a sorry excuse of an officer, he thought to himself. “But those aren’t worth my time. You’ll find what you need under the tag ‘remedial officer training’ in the Starfleet Office of Personnel Management’s database.”

The lieutenant commander, caught off-guard by the fiery opening, set down his PADD. Who the hell was this guy? And how dare he talk to him so condescendingly? Did he not know what they’d been through tonight? Nor what they’d been dealing with for the past few weeks? It was bullshit, all of it, and he had no intention of being ridiculed here in his own office.

“My name is Commander Robert Alastair Drake, duly appointed representative of the Office of the Judge Advocate General, on assignment to the Archanis Sector,” the commander explained as he helped himself to a seat. “And as much as I think you would benefit from assistance with the most basal and banal aspects of your job, tonight I’m here to speak with you about something far more pressing: the recent incident on Duraxis.”

“Which one?” Lieutenant Commander Rivera grumbled. The ungrateful bastards, the ones they were supposedly here to help, they’d done everything they could to make his life a living hell. “It’s been like that for weeks.” 

“I certainly hope you haven’t been shooting three colonists a night for weeks,” Commander Drake replied flatly. Otherwise, they’d have far worse problems to deal with.

“Oh, that…” Of all the things the JAG was here for, it had to be those dusty drifters. “Yeah, I checked with my guys. They all said it wasn’t them,” he explained as he shrugged ambivalently. “That’s all I got.” Because, really, who cared? Those colonists had it coming, the way they were acting and all.

Commander Drake could not help but notice how unphased the security chief seemed about the shooting, as if it wasn’t something of concern. But it absolutely was something of concern. How could anyone, let alone the Chief Security Officer of a Starfleet starship, be so ambivalent about the use of lethal force against unarmed civilians? “We have three colonists who would beg to disagree… or they would if they weren’t deceased, their bodies covered in burns consistent with a Type-III phaser rifle, the very rifle you equipped your men with to go down there tonight.”

“I dunno what to tell you, Commander,” Lieutenant Commander Rivera leaned back in his chair lackadaisically. “I asked them about it after the Diligent helped us clean up the trash, and everyone says they didn’t shoot.”

That’s not how this worked, Commander Drake thought to himself. You didn’t just ask someone who’d violated basic human rights if they did it. You investigated, and you prosecuted. “We’ll be the judge of that,” the JAG said firmly. “My office has issued orders to your quartermaster to sequester every rifle down there tonight, and as of this moment, you and all of your men present at the time of the shooting are on desk duty until my investigation is concluded.”

“Is that really necessary?”

“Absolutely.”

“But what about the safety and security of our surface operations?”

“Safety and security? That’s what you call what happened tonight?” Commander Drake’s eyes narrowed on the chief. This man and his men created the circumstances that led to a disaster, one that was both a gross failure of their duty and a significant setback to sector revitalization efforts. Did he really not see that? “In light of recent events, the governor of Duraxis has ordered all Corps of Engineers efforts curtailed, and I’m sure the Diligent can manage the security of one lonely reactor facility without you all making it any worse than you already have.”

“Any worse than we already have?!” asked the security chief, aghast at the insinuation. How dare this redshirted bureaucrat question the hard and difficult task his men had been assigned?

“Your job was to de-escalate the situation,” Commander Drake stated flatly. It was damn simple. Lieutenant Commander Rivera and his men had all the equipment and all the training, and yet instead of controlling the situation, they’d ignited it, and three colonists were dead as a result. 

“We were trying!” snapped Lieutenant Commander Rivera.

Commander Drake just stared at him in disbelief. Was this guy for real? “You don’t get points for trying. You get strikes when they start dying.”

“I don’t know you, Commander Drake, so don’t take this the wrong way, but you weren’t there,” Lieutenant Commander Rivera countered heatedly. Who the hell was this picture-perfect little officer to come in here and start Monday night quarterbacking him? “You didn’t see it… their anger, their rage, the shit we were subjected to. Dozens of my men have been sent to the infirmary since this whole thing started.”

“I’ve seen a couple of recordings taken from earlier,” Commander Drake explained. “Your men, they got heated themselves. Frankly, you got heated too. You all brought this upon yourselves, incensing the situation rather than calming it.”

“What would you have done differently?”

“I would have followed protocol and my training,” Commander Drake replied firmly. “And most importantly, I would not have shot anyone.”

The lieutenant commander just sat there. He didn’t know what to say.

“We will investigate, and we will get to the bottom of this,” Commander Drake concluded as he rose from his chair. “And until then, you have your orders.”

The JAG officer then spun on his heels and took his leave without another word. His team was already combing through the facility’s surveillance tapes. They’d find the shooter, and when they did, he’d be there to ensure justice was served.

“Tell me you’ve got something,” demanded Commander Robert Drake before he was even through the threshold of their temporary offices aboard the USS Diligent.

“Your conversation with Lieutenant Commander Rivera went that well, huh?” the gregarious crime scene investigator chuckled. Chief Petty Officer Geoff Morrey had rolled with Commander Drake long enough to no longer be phased by his antics, recognizing they were just the way the avaricious prosecutor let off steam during the pursuit, right until he got his satisfaction when at last justice was served. And justice was almost always served when it came to their pursuits. Rarely did their prey ever get away.

“He’s insufferable,” Commander Drake huffed.

“Some say the same about you,” Chief Morrey laughed.

“Yeah, but really, that guy is a piece of work,” Commander Drake continued on his warpath. “How Gabriel Rivera ever graduated the Academy is beyond me, and how he’s still a Starfleet officer, let alone a department head, it just goes to show that our captains are poor judges of character, and that we hang onto people far too long. He should have been iced long ago.”

“But Robert, he’ll do better next time,” joked Chief Morrey. “Isn’t that what the COs always say?” They’d seen it time and time again, how every time they’d confront a commanding officer about their crew’s malfeasance, the CO would insist on giving them one more chance, right up to the point the failure was so bad they ended up in a tribunal, facing off against Commander Drake as he came for their pips. “I read Rivera’s file. He’s a clown who only joined Starfleet for the badge and the gun.”

“And that’s who Captain Saito thought would be best to quell tensions with an aggrieved colony?” sighed Commander Drake. Poor judgment, for sure, on the part of the USS Pacific Palisades‘ commanding officer.

“I mean Saito, and most of them really, you know how it is,” Chief Morrey shrugged. “These Calis, from the captain on down, they’re filled with the just-good-enoughs that didn’t quite flunk out, plus a few up-and-comers who realized Calis make an easy springboard to bigger things.” Though he had not reviewed the entire manifest, even just a skim of the security officers aboard the USS Pacific Palisades had already confirmed as much.

“If that’s how it is, we really shouldn’t keep any of them around,” Commander Drake lamented. “Just retire the whole lot, and all the officers on them.” It would have made far fewer problems for him to prosecute if Starfleet Operations was more willing to take out its own trash.

“Well, we still need someone to do maintenance on comms relays and resupplies of insignificant outposts, don’t we?” Chief Morrey laughed. “Would seem a waste to use the Kirks, Picards and Janeways of the galaxy for that.”

“Might’ve kept us out of some trouble though if we used them that way, the fools those three were,” Commander Drake shook his head with displeasure. He wasn’t even sure which of the three he despised the most. Probably Kirk for his blatant disregard for every norm in the book, but you couldn’t prosecute a dead guy – or more, you could, as he’d absolutely had done before, but it wasn’t as satisfying or as productive as it was to prosecute the living. “We’re getting off track though. Back to my original question. Have we got anything from the feeds yet?”

“Well, I’ve got some good news, and some not so good news.”

“Give it to me.”

Up on the monitor, Chief Morrey projected a surveillance feed. As he hit play, the pair watched silently as protestors and officers collided, the former slamming into the riot shields of the latter, and the latter pushing back hard with their shields and batons. Both shouted and jeered at each other all the while. The hate between them was palpable.

“This is disgusting,” Commander Drake shook his head. “We are Starfleet. Our officers should have calmed tension, not incited them further. Even if no one had been shot, Rivera and his men should still be put through remedial training in how to effectively manage civil disturbances.”

And then the phaser shots, three quick, successive bursts, leapt forth, the shooter in the back behind the Starfleet line somewhere.

“Woah, it wasn’t from the line,” Commander Drake observed. “It wasn’t pure panic, someone thrust to the ground who fired out of what they’d claim was self-defense.” That was the only defense he’d even managed to muster in his head, someone who’d found themselves in a fight for their rifle and panicked.

“No, it wasn’t,” Chief Morrey agreed as he paused the video, rolled it back a few frames, and zoomed in. There they saw the shooter, a Starfleet ensign in yellow, standing calmly with his rifle seated in his shoulder, his hands steady on the grip and his eyes focused down the sight. “This guy took his time and lined up the shots before he pulled the trigger. This was deliberate and, if I may, doesn’t he look mighty cool and collected?”

“Indeed,” nodded Commander Drake as he studied the ensign’s features. He was an unremarkable, fairly generic human male,  maybe twenty five years of age, clean shaven with short hair and a soft chin. “Who is he?”

“And that’s the not so good news,” Chief Morrey explained. “Facial recognition comes back as a negative on Pacific Palisades.”

“He’s not a member of the security team?”

“Nope, not a member of the crew at all, at least according to the computer,” Chief Morrey confirmed. “I triple checked, just to make sure. Nothing even close to a match.”

“What about Diligent?” Commander Drake asked. They had arrived in orbit just as the escalation began, and while a stretch, it was possible, albeit improbable, it was one of Lieutenant Commander Koh’s men.

“Negative on Diligent too,” Chief Morrey replied. “Shooting occurred at 1957 hours, and our first beam-ins, as recorded by the computer, didn’t happen until 1959 hours.” If they’d arrived a few minutes earlier, he knew, they might have stopped this entire travesty from even happening.

Commander Drake grew quiet, considering the implications. Lieutenant Commander Rivera was an idiot, and his people were idiots. He could totally have seen them doing it, given their behavior in the lead up, but if it wasn’t coming back as one of his men, there was another option. “Could this have been a false flag?”

“I had the same thought.”

“Were you able to track our shooter in the aftermath?”

“Unfortunately, the cameras lost him somewhere in the scuffle,” Chief Morrey sighed as he advanced the tape, showing the all-out melee that developed after the shooting. And indeed, the chief was right. Somewhere in amongst the chaos, they watched the ensign rush into the throng of bodies piling atop each other, and then he was gone from view. “I reviewed everything from after Koh’s team arrived too, and his face never reappeared, neither among the protestors, nor our people.”

“People don’t just disappear,” Commander Drake grumbled. “Keep at it.”

“I will,” nodded Chief Morrey. “I’m also working on getting a few other angles from the locals, who have a few cameras in the area, and I sent his face down to them to the local security office to see if they had anything on him.”

“And did they?”

“Nope,” Chief Morrey replied. “In fact, they said in fairly definitive terms that it’s no one from the colony.”

“Of course they did,” Commander Drake sighed. “But do you trust them? The meeting Admiral Reyes had earlier with Governor Erlic didn’t go particularly well, and Voral, the opposition leader, has quite a following. If this was a false flag, I wouldn’t rule out that their security office was involved – or at least aware.”

“Whoever they were, they were thorough,” remarked Lieutenant Commander Rhodes. “Every log, every recording, all scrubbed clean.” But, for as much as the news he was sharing seemed disappointing, the cyberintelligence specialist seemed unperturbed by the apparent deadend.

“But you’re not worried?” Lieutenant Commander Koh inferred.

“Not at all,” Lieutenant Commander Rhodes smiled. If deleted logs were the end of the road, his cybersecurity firm wouldn’t have gotten as far as it did in the eighties and nineties. “Whoever did this, they knew where to go and what to delete, but they didn’t know the deeper fundamentals of persistence architectures within modern bioneural systems.”

Neither did Lieutenant Commander Koh, though. She just used them.

“Think of it like the difference between affective and episodic memory,” Lieutenant Commander Rhodes elaborated. “It’s like how, even as discrete memories fade from the hippocampus, the feelings and emotions evoked often live on in the amygdala.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m still not following,” Lieutenant Commander Koh admitted. “How does neurology apply here?”

“Have you ever heard of Narrative Exposure Therapy?”

She nodded. It was a technique all security officers trained on at the Academy as it related to investigations where one could walk a victim through a reconstructive process in order to pull forth forgotten details of a traumatic event. Still, she didn’t see how it applied to a digital system.

“We call these bioneural for a reason,” Lieutenant Commander Rhodes smiled. “I’m essentially going to perform a NET-style technique on our digital friend here, using imprints within its engram stack to reconstruct the concrete data that was once encoded within.”

“Does that seriously work?” Lieutenant Commander Koh asked, her surprise apparent. “If it’s really that easy, why don’t they teach it as part of the security curriculum at the Academy?”

“It’s not in vogue because, if you’re too forceful, it can create false memories, sort of like leading a witness,” Lieutenant Commander Rhodes explained. “A high quality match would be enough for probable cause, but it’s not admissible itself because of its potential fallibility.”

“Doesn’t Commander Drake eventually need to prosecute though?”

“Yeah, but that’s not today’s problem.”

That didn’t really reassure Lieutenant Commander Koh. She had no love for Commander Drake. She’d been there at Nasera, just like many aboard the Diligent. But that didn’t mean she wanted him to fail. There was someone out there who was proliferating Borg technology, and after Beta Serpentis, she was all too well aware of what could happen when Borg technology got in the hands of those who didn’t understand it. They needed to put a stop to this, and lock up the offender for a long, long time.

“This is how we get the lead, nothing more,” Lieutenant Commander Rhodes clarified. “Without a lead, there’s no one to interrogate or to prosecute. If we can put them in front of Commander Drake, especially armed with video evidence, he’ll extract a confession from them and then the admissibility of what we get here doesn’t matter.” It wouldn’t be the first time he’d teamed up with the avaricious prosecutor, but it would be the first time since he’d donned pips of his own.

“What if the video is wrong though? What if they confess because, after weighing the potential for a life behind bars, they confess, even though it wasn’t them, just to get a reduced sentence?” Lieutenant Commander Koh asked. She’d seen it happen before. “We could lock up an innocent person, while the purveyor of this terror gets off scot free and can continue to do so.”

“That’s why you only apply a technique like this in specific circumstances,” the cybersecurity researcher acknowledged. “If I prompt it with details about you, I’ll get a reconstruction with you in it. However, in this case, I’m prompting it with details about the event, and then I’ll let it fill in the rest without bias. Even if it hallucinates a subject, there are tens of billions of combinations of facial features in the human species alone, so given the population of Duraxis, the probability it hallucinates a real subject is less than one in one million. In the other nine hundred and ninety nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine cases that it hallucinates, we’ll just get no match.”

“Those aren’t bad odds,” the security chief agreed. “I guess I’d take those.”

And so off Linus Rhodes went, his practiced hands dancing across the keys as he coaxed the bioneural engrams to remember that which they had been compelled to forget. 

As he worked, the one thing that bothered him was that such tracks had been left. Although not a well known technique, given that even the Chief Security Officer of the Diligent was unaware of it, a threat actor with the sophistication necessary to convert Borg subroutines into an attack vector for the Starfleet fusion reactor should have known better.

After a good half hour and a few false starts though, they eventually had their answer. 

“Here we go,” Lieutenant Commander Rhodes smiled as leaned back in his chair triumphantly, making room for her to see the screen. “A reconstruction of the surveillance recording.”

He hit play, and they were treated to a scene of the reactor’s interior. At first, everything sat motionless, the timestamp ticking by offering the only indication the video was even rolling. But then two scrawny and ragged juveniles sleuthed into the frame, bobbing and weaving around the mess of conduit and duranium plating that ran the interior of the superstructure. As they moved, they kept glancing over their shoulders skittishly, fear in their eyes.

“God, they look like emaciated street kids, not hardened criminals ready to end their colony in fire,” Lieutenant Commander Koh observed. “Crazy to think they got past our guys.”

“Not really,” shrugged Lieutenant Commander Rhodes. “We are so trusting of our technology that my guess would be that the Pacific Palisades only had a couple officers physically down here to cover the entire facility’s grounds.”

Eventually, the kids reached the terminal. One pulled a small device from his pack, a gunmetal slip with a quantum-optical port on it, while the other kept watch. The kid with the device fumbled around clumsily for a minute, trying to figure out how to connect it to the terminal’s device bus, but eventually he got it seated.

“They barely know how to connect a standard issue terminal,” Lieutenant Commander Koh added. “How is this the duo that almost blew the colony to bits?”

“They’re just the errand boys,” Lieutenant Commander Rhodes concluded. “Someone else did the work.” There was no way these two kids had come into possession of and then successfully adapted the Borg subroutine to overload the ICRH injectors of the fusion reactor.

Not even twenty seconds passed before a little green light lit up on the device, and that was it. The kid unhooked the device and stuffed it back into his bag, and then they scurried off back the way they’d come, no one the wiser to the fact the integrity of a planetary fusion reactor had just been compromised.

“That was the entire hack,” Lieutenant Commander Rhodes concluded. “Mighty impressive, that little chip.” He had the terminal’s system log up, scrolling it synchronously with the recording, and he was floored by what he saw. “It made all our cyberdefenses look like a child’s plaything. Less than five seconds from first contact until it was through the firewall, and the embeddings within the firmware were complete within the next ten seconds.” Not that he should have been all that surprised given its origins. No one could do it quite like the Borg.

“So who are the kids?” Lieutenant Commander Koh wondered. “If they’re locals, maybe colonial security could help us identify them?”

“I wouldn’t expect them to be particularly forthcoming,” Lieutenant Commander Rhodes cautioned. “These sorts of places, when it comes to outsiders, they’re reluctant to throw their own under the bus without very good reason.”

“I mean, isn’t almost blowing up the colony a good reason?”

He tapped his combadge: “Rhodes to Drake.”

“Drake here. Go ahead Linus.”

“We’ve reconstructed the recordings from the reactor’s surveillance systems,” Lieutenant Commander Rhodes reported. “It took a NET-style technique to get there so it will not, on its own, be admissible, but it should at least give us probable cause for a friendly pickup.”

“Agreed. What did you find?”

“Two perps, human adolescent males, likely in their teenage years, broke into the facility and embedded the malware into our systems,” Lieutenant Commander Rhodes replied. “We’ve got them on B&E and unsanctioned access of Starfleet systems, and since the syslogs indicative of compromise line up precisely with the recording, likely a half dozen cybercrime statutes as well.”

“You think they’re our primary unsubs?”

“Errand boys is more likely,” Lieutenant Commander Rhodes sighed. “Young, scraggly, and nervous, hardly the type to be masterminds of a reactor meltdown. Also, they struggled with how to even connect to a port on the device bus, so I just can’t see them being the wizards that adapted the Borg malware for our reactor. I’d wager a bet they know who or where our primary unsub is though.”

“So you want to pick them up?”

“Read my mind,” Lieutenant Commander Rhodes chuckled. “Unfortunately, we don’t know yet who they are, but I’m assuming the locals would. Do we have a line to them?”

“We do, but I wouldn’t trust them. We have reason to believe the shooting last night was a false flag.”

“I see…” Lieutenant Commander Rhodes replied as he stroked his chin in quiet contemplation. “Well, you know that I have other ways I can get us an answer.” There was a twinkle in his eyes. 

“You want a no-knock for their systems, don’t you?”

“That I do, if you’ll authorize it,” confirmed Lieutenant Commander Rhodes. When Commander Drake was involved, he knew better than to do it without authorization.

“As a duly appointed representative of the Office of the Judge Advocate General, based on the threat posed to interstellar security, I hereby grant you authorization to covertly gain access to, and conduct a search of, any and all databases of the Duraxis colonial government and its agencies insofar as it pertains to ascertaining the identities of the individuals who illegally compromised the integrity of the Starfleet reactor facility on the surface of Duraxis.”

“Appreciate it, sir. Will keep you apprised. Rhodes out.”

“Well, that was certainly fancy-formal,” laughed Lieutenant Commander Koh once the link was closed. “Couldn’t he have just said ‘go for it’ or something?”

“Commander Drake does it by the book, always,” Lieutenant Commander Rhodes offered. “Not my first swim with the shark.”

“Nor us,” Lieutenant Commander Koh sighed.

“Yes, I heard,” Lieutenant Commander Rhodes nodded. “All I can say is that, for as much as we need people like Captain Lewis and Dr. Hall, so too do we need people like Commander Drake.”

She looked less than convinced.

“In cybersecurity, we have a term, gray hat, which refers to when you’re operating somewhere between legal and illegal, doing a good thing but in a bad way,” Lieutenant Commander Rhodes elaborated. “It’s a natural and convenient place to operate, but it’s earned me a couple ass chewings from our JAG friend. I don’t hold it against him though. He’s fighting the good fight, same as us, just a different part of it. If there weren’t people like him, admirals like Banda and Morgan would still be running the place.” Before Frontier Day, before the Lost Fleet, and before even the launch of the Osiris Initiative itself, a crisis within Fleet Command had nearly toppled the place, and people like Commander Drake had been essential to stopping it.

“Alright, well I’ll skeptically give him the benefit of the doubt for now,” Lieutenant Commander Koh conceded. In this situation, they were on the same side, but she still didn’t trust him, and she wondered if someday, just like Captain Lewis and Dr. Hall, she could find herself on the wrong side of him.

Back to work Lieutenant Commander Rhodes went, making quick work of the colonial firewall, slipping past their archaic cyberdefenses and into the colonial registrar’s data banks.

“Here we go, two hits, ninety seven percent match on one, ninety nine on the other, high enough to preclude the likelihood of a hallucination,” he declared as he projected a pair of headshots and biographical details up on the screen. “Meet the Teral brothers, Redrick and Devork, ages nineteen and sixteen respectively.  Addresses, parentage, and… yep, criminal records. Linked to a street clique and a string of petty thefts and small crimes.”

Now it was time to go shake the tree and see what fell out.

Dawn had come to Duraxis. Lieutenant Commanders Kehlani Koh and Linus Rhodes, flanked by a half dozen civilian law enforcement officers, advanced down a narrow shaded street towards the home of the two juveniles that’d planted the Borg malware within the firmware of the fusion reactor. Never implicated in anything more than a petty theft before, this duo had almost ended the lives of every living soul on the colony, and it was time to get some answers.

“Watch where you point that thing,” Lieutenant Commander Koh cautioned sternly as one of the constables swept her with the barrel of his rifle. The way they moved, and the way they handled their weapons, their lack of training was readily apparent.

“Sorry, ma’am,” apologized the constable embarrassedly.

“And finger off the trigger until you’re ready to fire,” Lieutenant Commander Koh coached, noting his index finger had already slid under the trigger guard. “Which hopefully we won’t need to do.” Based on what she’d observed on the surveillance video, their targets might try and run, but she doubted they’d stand and fight. They were errand boys, not the actual monster who’d set out to commit mass murder.

“Understood,” the constable nodded as he trotted off.

Lieutenant Commander Koh slowed her pace, allowing herself to fall back. “Remind me again why we had to bring these guys?” she lamented under her breath quietly enough that only Lieutenant Commander Rhodes, the cyberintelligence specialist from ASTRA, could hear. “I’d take a nurse, a counselor, and an engineer over these guys.”

“Yeah, but the admiral is trying to play nice with the locals,” Lieutenant Commander Rhodes reminded her. “She promised a transparent investigation, and we’d hardly be starting off on the right foot if we nabbed two of their own without their involvement.” Of course, just a couple hours prior, he’d hacked into the colonial registrar’s data banks to determine the identity of their targets, but what they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.

Up ahead, the lead local law enforcement officer, a sergeant by the colony’s rank structure, raised his arm, his fist in a ball and his elbow at ninety degrees, the universal signal for stop. “Their home, it’s just up ahead. Next block, third dwelling down.”

As everyone drew up around the sergeant, Lieutenant Commander Koh cast her eyes forward, surveying the scene. This block, and a dozen just like it that they’d just trotted past, were little more than duranium sheets welded together, some of the insulation even visible through gaps in the sheet metal. Life was hard on Duraxis.

“Sergeant, you and Rhodes, you’re going to go knock and declare yourselves,” Lieutenant Commander Koh ordered. She then looked around, picking two constables most fit of the group. “You two, you’re with me. We’re going to go round back in case of a runner.”

“You think they’re going to run?” one of the men asked.

“They always run,” laughed Lieutenant Commander Rhodes. “Except for when they shoot.”

The eyes of the civilian officers got wide at that comment.

“He’s kidding,” Lieutenant Commander Koh assured them, noting they looked awfully nervous for a group of law enforcement professionals. And she didn’t like nervous. That’s how mistakes were made. “No one – neither us, nor them – are getting shot this morning. Understood?”

The civilian officers still looked uncertain. What if the kids shot at them first? They had seen the video. The Starfleet officers had shown it to them when they objected to the mission in the first place. It’d proven, beyond a doubt in their minds, that these kids had tried to blow up the colony, but if they were capable of such a deed, what else might they do?

“These are your people, and they’re kids, for crying out loud,” Lieutenant Commander Koh begged them to remember. She’d be damned if they had a repeat of the reactor, but these guys were totally giving her the same vibes as the Pacific Palisades folks had been putting off. “This is a Starfleet operation, and contrary to what you’ve heard, we don’t shoot civilians. Am I clear?”

Around the circle, the officers nodded. No shooting the kids.

“Alright, then let’s get it done,” Lieutenant Commander Koh said as she turned for the home. “If you’re not with me, and you’re providing cover for our knockers.” That had to be easy enough, right? “Ideally, they look outside, see you all there, and just come out with their hands up.”

The team then began to advance forward, Lieutenant Commander Koh and the two she’d picked out going around the back, while the others moved towards the front.

“In position,” Lieutenant Commander Koh reported over comms once they’d secured a vantage point of the rear exit from the alley that ran behind the homes.

“As are we,” Lieutenant Commander Rhodes confirmed as they drew up on the rusted door of the decrepit hovel, the sergeant at his side and the others in flanking positions around them.

“At your discretion, execute.”

Lieutenant Commander Rhodes knocked twice, and they waited, but no response.

“Security! Can we speak please?” 

Still nothing.

“We need to speak with you. Please open up!”

A moment later, they heard the bolt on the door release, and the door swung back slowly. Standing there was an elderly woman, her hair frazzled, her skin wrinkled, and her eyes tired. She looked more disappointed than shocked to see them. 

“What’d my boys do this time?” she asked. This wouldn’t be the first time security had come for Redrick and Devork, but she was surprised to see a Starfleet officer among them. Why was he here? She heard Starfleet had shown up and was trying to fix up the colony, but what had her sons done to provoke them?

“We’d just like to have a conversation with them if you don’t mind, ma’am,” Lieutenant Commander Rhodes offered gently. “Are they home?”

“Yes, they were just getting ready for school…”

Behind her, they heard a bustle of noise.

“Boys, come here!”

But they weren’t coming. That little break-in at the reactor, they’d been told it was just a small job to stick it to the man, but after the explosion, they’d put two and two together. And now security and Starfleet were at their door? Nope, it was time to run!

Over the mom’s shoulder, Lieutenant Commander Rhodes saw a pair of shadows make a break for it. “They’re rabbiting!” he reported over the comms, knowing Lieutenant Commander Koh already had the back covered.

The rear door of the home flew open, and the two boys rushed out. 

Lieutenant Commander Koh tackled the first, the older of the two, sweeping his feet out from under him and forcing him to the ground, chest down, applying flex cuffs to his wrists in one smooth motion before he could even react.

The other, the younger of the two, slammed headlong into the two local officers, but they weren’t as adept as Koh was. For a moment, there was a struggle as they tried to restrain him, but the scrawny kid managed to slither out of their grasp, and swiftly bolted down the alleyway.

And then a phaser shot rang out.

From her position mounted atop the older kid, Lieutenant Commander Koh flinched, fearful that yet again, there’d be a dead colonist in the dirt. But the good news was that the shot went wide. For once, their lack of training was a good thing. “What the fuck are you doing?! Don’t shoot! He’s unarmed!”

The guards turned towards her, confusion on their faces.

“Just secure this guy. I’ll go for the other one!”

They reholstered their weapons and took control of the restrained kid as Lieutenant Commander Koh raced off after the other young man.

“If you didn’t do anything, why’d you run?” asked Lieutenant Commander Kehlani Koh as she stared at Redrick Teral, the younger of the two brothers who’d planted Borg malware within the fusion reactor. He was fast, far faster than his emaciated frame suggested, but she was faster. After a chase through narrow back alleys and busy thoroughfares, she’d apprehended him, just as they had his brother back at their house.

“After what happened to Gerrik, Huran and Sarai, wouldn’t you?” Redrick replied defiantly. He’d seen those three, dead in the dirt, gunned down by Starfleet outside the reactor facility during the protests that’d followed.

“That’s not our way,” Lieutenant Commander Koh agreed. “That never should have happened.” They knew now that it was a false flag operation, that the shooter wasn’t one of their own, but they were keeping that close to the chest until they knew who was involved. Instead, she flipped it at him. “And it wouldn’t have happened if not for you and your brother.”

He looked confused.

“If you and your brother hadn’t done what you did, you’d have been enjoying boundless energy rather than what happened,” Lieutenant Commander Koh asserted. “There wouldn’t have been a protest, and your colleagues wouldn’t be dead.”

Now he looked defensive. How dare she turn this on him?

“We have it all on tape,” Commander Robert Drake jumped in. “If not for the Herculean efforts of our brave officers to stop it, instead of three dead, there’d be thousands.” Captain Feng was still recovering from the plasma burns she’d suffered as she ripped the live conduit from the power distribution unit with her bare hands, but it sure as hell beat what would have happened if the runaway reactor had lost containment. “Terrorism is not a petty crime, and for that, I can put you away for a very long time.”

“Unless you help us,” Lieutenant Commander Koh added, her tone gentle not because she was gentle, but simply because she was playing the part. “You see, I don’t believe you’re actually suicidal, nor that you meant to hurt anyone.”

“No,” Redrick shook his head. “We didn’t mean to.”

“You didn’t mean to what?” Commander Drake prompted, seeking an admission of guilt as he knew the tapes would be inadmissible due to the techniques Lieutenant Commander Rhodes had used to reconstruct them.

“We didn’t mean it to hurt anyone,” Redrick replied, his eyes desperate for them to believe him. “My brother and I, we thought it’d just make the reactor shut down.”

“What made you think that?” Lieutenant Commander Koh asked.

“That’s what he told us.”

“He?” Commander Drake furled his brow. Once he’d seen the kids sitting there in the brig, he knew instantly that they were not the criminal masterminds at the root of this. “He who?”

Suddenly, Redrick grew very quiet. He’d said too much.

“Mister Teral, make no illusions here. Your brother is in the other room, giving us all the details we need,” Commander Drake cautioned. “The game is already up. We’re simply asking you to corroborate what he said.” In reality, it was a lie. Devork, the older brother, had spat vitriolically at them, refusing to provide a thing.

“I don’t believe you. My brother knows about Starfleet! He’d never…”

“It’s funny how quickly one’s tune can change when they realize they’ll spend their life behind bars,” Commander Drake interrupted without batting an eye. “Because that’s what awaits you both unless you cooperate. A Federation magistrate, not some colonial judge, will put you away for a long, long time, in a place far, far away.” There was a scary look in the JAG’s eyes, almost as if he relished the prospect. “You’ll be lucky if you see Duraxis again before forty.” Of course, it was all a bluff. The legal system would look past such a draconian sentence on account of the kid’s age, but what did Redrick know of that?

“I… I… I just…” Redrick fumbled. He wanted to be strong, but if his brother had given up, what purpose was staying quiet? His brother knew best. “Can I… can I speak with my brother?”

“No you may not,” Commander Drake replied firmly. “Not until this matter is resolved. Or, if you don’t cooperate, maybe not for years. Or decades even.”

Redrick Teral looked lost, and now it was Lieutenant Commander Koh’s turn to make a heartfelt appeal. “Look, I’ve been in your shoes,” she explained as she stared deeply into his panicked eyes. “I know what it’s to fend for yourself, when life is hard and you can’t escape. But it gets better. Or it can. I’m proof of that. But it all starts with being honest with us.”

Redrick looked like he was debating his options.

“You didn’t mean for this to happen,” Lieutenant Commander Koh offered. “He lied to you and your brother. He used you both, and he almost got everyone you cared about killed… your brother, your mother, and every other living soul on Duraxis. Don’t throw your life away for him.”

“Fine… fine…” Redrick conceded. “It was Voral.”

They knew the name, and to hear the opposition leader was responsible was a shocking development. Still, neither reacted in the slightest. If they had, it would have betrayed their bluff. Both were too seasoned for that. Instead, Lieutenant Commander Koh just continued on with her line of questioning. “And what’d he say about what he was asking you to do?”

“He said that if we did this, you’d be forced to leave.”

“I want his head on a pike!” Commander Drake demanded. They knew who was responsible, and it was time justice was served.

“Of course you do, Commander,” Admiral Reyes chuckled. Since when had the avaricious JAG prosecutor ever wanted any less? “But that’s not how this works.”

“Why not?”

“There are other factors at play,” Admiral Reyes counseled. “Ones you’re not considering.” As long as she’d known Commander Drake, he’d struggled with the dimensionality of complex situations, and this one was multidimensional and complex to say the least.

“What sort of factors outweigh the proliferation of illicit technology and a terrorist attack that nearly leveled the colony?” Commander Drake asked incredulously. Had the admiral gone crazy? This guy had modified Borg subroutines to compromise the fusion reactor, and in doing so, he’d almost killed every man, woman and child on Duraxis.

Standing next to the JAG, Lieutenant Commander Koh let them duke it out, but she fully agreed with the commander.

“Voral is a leading candidate in the upcoming elections, and he’s achieved his standing through outspoken anti-Federation localism,” Admiral Reyes pointed out. “If we go down there and arrest him, what does that look like?”

Neither the JAG nor the security chief replied. Instead, it was the young intelligence chief from the USS Pacific Palisades, the one who’d embedded with the locals and observed the protests firsthand, who offered an answer. “A Federation cover up,” Ensign Alessa Elara chimed in. “Or at least suppression of our opposition.” She’d just been briefing the admiral on the latest from the surface when the duo had stormed into the ready room.

“With all due respect, I don’t think we have a choice here,” Lieutenant Commander Koh responded firmly. “This is Borg tech we’re talking about. We need to move to apprehend him.” They’d seen the consequences of proliferation firsthand on Beta Serpentis, and she wasn’t looking for a repeat.

“I concur,” Commander Drake agreed. This wasn’t some local political squabble. This was about a criminal who set out to commit mass murder.

“Ensign, would you mind sharing what you learned earlier down on the surface?” Admiral Reyes asked.

“Certainly,” Ensign Elara nodded, her expression a bit sheepish as she realized she was in the middle of a tug-of-war far above her grade. “Before Lieutenant Commander Koh had returned from the surface, word was already spreading about our operation to apprehend the Teral brothers. Somebody in the local security office leaked it, and as the story goes, you guys strong-armed them into helping grab a couple young kids who work tirelessly, day in and day out, to put food on the table for their aged mother.”

“That’s a crock of shit…” Lieutenant Commander Koh grumbled.

“Of course it is, but that’s what we’re working against,” Admiral Reyes noted. She knew that perception was often more powerful than reality. “We go down there guns ablaze and capture their populist hero, and any hope we have of rebuilding Duraxis and repairing their views of us will vanish.” She still wanted an outcome that didn’t end with a colony estranged from the Federation.

“Sounds like you’re trying to have your cake and eat it too, Allison,” Commander Drake counseled. “We can’t always make the plebeians happy.”

“By the end of this, you’ll get your pound of flesh, I assure you that,” Admiral Reyes replied. However, it was more than just that which gave her pause. “But you see, right now all we’ve got is the word of a kid to go on. That’s not much to stand on.” It wouldn’t hold up in a court of law, nor the court of public opinion, and Voral wouldn’t roll over as easily as young Redrick had. “Get back down there and find me something more to go on.”