Gone were the Starfleet uniforms, pips and combadges. Now, in dirty coveralls with hunched shoulders, they wore badges identifying them as a maintenance crew for the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. Weaving through the sub basement with janitorial carts and dusty bags, no one paid them any notice, completely oblivious to their nefarious purpose.

The four operators stepped into a service lift. Chief Petty Officer Shafir swiped her badge and selected the fourth floor. The lift began moving.

“I find it ironic that the FNN has military-grade network security,” remarked Lieutenant Morgan. “And yet here we are walking straight into their facility because the Galleria’s property manager forgot to put a firewall around their access control system.”

“It’s pretty much how it always goes,” laughed Chief Shafir. “Always a weak point somewhere.” It would have taken her days to hack the perimeter of the Federation News Network’s corporate network, but simply riding up the maintenance lift to gain physical access to systems already connected to that internal network was as easy as cloning a few low-tech access cards.

The door opened and the operators stepped into the dark hallways of the FNN facility.

“All clear,” Commander Lewis declared after checking his tricorder for lifesigns.

Just as they had anticipated, once the sun fell over the Po Valley and the broadcast had shifted west to American news desks, the FNN staff had cleared out of the Milanese broadcast center. While Chief Shafir and Lieutenant Morgan headed for the server room, Commander Lewis and Ensign Rel explored the rest of the facility, looking for opportunities to bug common spaces and private offices with nano-scale surveillance devices.

Lewis and Rel stepped into a large conference room with wall-to-wall windows overlooking the Piazza del Duomo. 

“Wow! This is a view if ever I’ve seen one,” exclaimed Ensign Rel. Directional lighting illuminated the front facade of the millennium-old Milan Cathedral, moonlight reflected off the geometrical patterns of the plaza’s smooth stone surface, and dark silhouettes meandered around the bronze statue of King Victor Emmanuel II. Rel brought herself close to Lewis. “It’s almost romantic, isn’t it?” she asked with a smile.

“It’s an impressive view,” Commander Lewis replied disapprovingly. “But we have a mission to complete.” He had begun to develop feelings for the ensign, just as she had for him, but there was a time and a place, and this was neither. The stakes were too high. They, as Starfleet officers, could not be caught breaking into a civilian news agency. That would not do well in the papers. “Let’s just get his room bugged before we get discovered.”

“Yes sir,” Ensign Rel chuckled with a lighthearted salute as she pulled out a nano-applicator and used it to embed a near-invisible listening device into a ceiling light. “But you know, you can accomplish the mission and still enjoy the experi…”

Pew.

A characteristic sound interrupted Ensign Rel mid-sentence.

Pew Pew.

And then twice more. The sounds were unmistakable.

“Ah hell,” Commander Lewis said as he drew his phaser and bolted for the door. Ensign Rel was right behind him, phaser at the ready.

Pew Pew… Pew Pew Pew.

The tempo picked up, two parties now clearly exchanging fire.

Commander Lewis and Ensign Rel reached a bend in the hallway, and they could hear the gunfire dead ahead. They peered around the corner. Two men in dark combat fatigues had taken up position outside the server room and were unloading volley after volley inside. Chief Shafir and Lieutenant Morgan were returning fire, but the assailants had a clear positional advantage.

“Phasers to stun,” Commander Lewis whispered to Ensign Rel. For all they knew, the assailants could be local police or corporate security here to stop a robbery. Murdering the good guys never looked good, especially when you were the one breaking the law and  conducting a B&E. “I got the guy on the left.”

“I got right.”

“Three… Two… One… Fire.”

In perfect synchronicity, Lewis and Rel opened fire. Their aim was true. The shots hit their mark. Both targets collapsed, incapacitated by doses of low energy nadion particles that had temporarily overwhelmed their central nervous systems.

“Clear!”

Chief Shafir and Lieutenant Morgan emerged from the server room, while Commander Lewis crossed to the unconscious attackers so he could get a better look at the pair. Short haircuts and muscular builds, their type was familiar. These were men trained for combat. He picked up one of their rifles. Sturdy, high quality construction, not a Starfleet model but the sort that top-notch private contractors used. At first, Commander Lewis would have assumed this was the Federation News Network’s security team. However, there was one thing that made him less certain. 

“This is curious,” Lewis observed. “These rifles are set to kill.”

That got everyone’s attention. Starfleet and civilian security officers almost never went lethal since it didn’t offer much benefit. But these guys had gone lethal right here in the middle of a major city center on Earth.

“Who the hell are these guys?” Shafir asked. “Clearly they had no interest in apprehending us.”

Commander Lewis ran his tricorder over each of the two assailants, taking a high resolution imagery of each. “Lewis to Serenity. I’m sending you imagery of two individuals. Run it through our Security and Intel databases and see what comes back.”

“Anything in particular we should look for, Commander?”

“Not sure.” He didn’t bother telling the Serenity where these images had come from. He hadn’t exactly told Fleet Admiral Reyes, Lieutenant Commander Eidran, or any of them what he and his team was up to. Plausible deniability.

“Understood. Will call you back in five.”

The comlink cut off, but before the team could decide on a next step, Ensign Rel’s tricorder began beeping. “Hey Commander, we got company,” she reported as she reviewed the details. “Six new lifesigns just entered the lobby, and four more coming up the service lift.” They’d cut off both of the exits.

“Hell, guess our cover is blown,” Commander Lewis sighed. The team had slipped into the broadcast center in a very low-tech way so as not to trip any alarms, but the phaser fire must have alerted someone to their presence. With two bodies on the ground before them, any hope of stealth was gone, so might as well just bail the easy way. “Hey Serenity,” he ordered, tapping his combadge again. “Got a situation on our hands. Four to beam up. Immediately.”

“Serenity here. Stand by…” came the voice of the officer of the watch. “What the hell are you standing next to? We can’t get a lock on you at all…” The readings didn’t make any sense. It was almost like a jamming field had gone up, but why would there be a jamming field in the center of Milan?

Suddenly, the comlink went static. The line dropped. And they couldn’t reestablish it.

“Well, this is curious,” Lieutenant Morgan mused as he looked at his own tricorder. “Some sort of interference pattern just went up that’s blocking transporters and comms… Never seen anything quite like this.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s incredibly sophisticated, removing specific bands almost as if it’s targeting our equipment specifically without impacting anything else,” Lieutenant Morgan explained. At first, it had only jammed transporter frequencies, but then interference went up over their comlink wavelengths. “And it’s constantly re-modulating so Serenity will never be able to resolve through it.”

“How far does the interference stretch?”

“Half a dozen city blocks in all directions.”

“They don’t want us leaving,” Commander Lewis observed as he raised his phaser and began moving down the hall. “Which means things are about to get messy.” This was going to be hard to explain.