‘You didn’t leave when we told you to, Logan.’

Blood dripped from his nose as he staggered to his feet in the middle of the main square of Teros’s Sanctuary District Alpha. The Romulan who’d punched him had let him fall, struck to send a message not just to him, but to the gathering crowd. This was a confrontation, a reckoning. Nobody else should get involved.

Logan lifted a hand to his lips, fingers coming away red. He looked up at the bystanders watching with wide, worried eyes. At the Romulans he’d been confronting. And smiled. If grins had a gait, this smirk swaggered. ‘Don’t think I take orders from you, Vortiss.’

Vortiss had once been a broad, muscular Romulan. He was still strong, but years of surviving on this rock had left him leaner, harder. There was a sharpness to his face, a beadiness to his eyes which came only from fighting to stay at the top of the food chain on a place like Teros. Now he stepped forward again, rubbing his knuckles where he’d struck. ‘Maybe not. Maybe it was friendly advice. But you ignored it, so we’re moving to unfriendly.’

‘Aw, really? I thought we were becoming right buds.’ His face ached. His ribs ached. He’d lost his phaser in the confrontation, Vortiss and the other members of the Romulan Rebirth Movement had him cornered and outnumbered, and nobody, nobody in the crowd was going to stand up to them. Logan set his hands on his hips as he drew a raking breath. ‘I only came here to ask some questions.’

Vortiss extended a hand to one side, and a lackey passed over a disruptor pistol. It was on the highest setting. ‘It started with questions. Didn’t like them much. Then you started to screw around on our turf. Liked that even less. You know what we can get for your implants, xB?’

‘You know, I don’t. Do I get a share of the profits?’

‘Cute.’ Vortiss rolled his eyes. ‘You didn’t leave, and now you’ve run out of goodwill, and you’re out here all on your own.’

Logan’s grin remained intact. ‘You sure ‘bout that?’

But he was lying through his teeth, and history made that clear enough to Vortiss. The Romulan scoffed. ‘Starfleet doesn’t come here no more.’

Even as he said this, someone in the crowd said something. Logan couldn’t hear it, but the message was a pebble heralding an avalanche. Someone else picked it up, then another, then whatever it was had one of Vortiss’s lackeys reaching for a twenty year-old PADD tucked into her belt. She read what was on the screen and hissed an oath before she leaned over to Vortiss.

By the time Vortiss heard, it didn’t matter that she was whispering. The news had rippled through the crowd loud enough that Logan could hear it.

Starfleet ship in orbit. USS Endeavour.

Logan’s eyes didn’t leave Vortiss’s. As if he’d planned all this, he tilted his head and repeated, even more smugly, ‘You sure about that, bud?’

Vortiss stared at him. When his disruptor came snapping up, so did every other weapon the Rebirth had to hand, and Logan’s fingers moved in a flash to the combadge nestled inside his jacket.

‘This is Commander Logan, requesting emergency transport now!’

Valance’s head snapped around at the words echoing across the bridge. ‘Thawn, can you get a lock on that signal?’

There was a beat as Thawn sucked her teeth. ‘No, Captain. They’re in the heart of Sanctuary District A, there’s a lot of life signs on top of each other, and the ionisation in Teros’s atmosphere isn’t letting me single them out.’

But Kharth gripped the edge of the tactical console tight. ‘There are no records of Starfleet returning to Teros since we left. Who is this guy?’

Valance turned to Kally. ‘Ensign?’

‘He’s, uh, well, this is definitely coming from a Starfleet combadge!’ Kally warbled. ‘And he’s moving.’

‘Thawn, can we beam down? And if so, can we beam back?’ Valance demanded.

‘Yes, to an open area, and maybe.’

Kharth clicked her tongue and stepped back. ‘I’m on it. I’ll call Rhade and a security team,’ she said, even as Valance turned to her. ‘Kally, tell this guy to get his ass somewhere useful.’

‘Remember,’ Valance said, frowning as the security officer headed for the turbolift, ‘we’re here to assess –’

‘Don’t tell me how to handle my planet,’ Kharth interrupted as she stepped into the turbolift and turned. As the doors shut, she grimaced and managed to bark out a more respectful punctuation of, ‘Captain!’ before they closed.

The crowd had burst into uproar once the guns had come out. In the chaos, Logan had been able to grab one of the Rebirth, shove him in the line of fire, and break for the nearest alleyway out of the main square.

Teros was a dustbowl so unremarkable that neither the Romulans nor Earth had complained when it fell into the Neutral Zone two and a half centuries ago. With nobody wanting it, everyone had agreed it was perfect for a sanctuary district built in the 80s and intended to be temporary. The prefab structures had been kept long beyond their expected lifespan, rebuilt and repaired and rearranged, and now fell into a sprawling warren throughout the district. That made life here difficult, the city itself working against any sense of community. It made fleeing easier.

With the ragged hood up, all anyone who didn’t know him saw was a running man. While those who recognised him might want to help, might love to shelter an enemy of Vortiss’s, he didn’t risk it. Plenty more would see his ocular implant and think he needed murdering or robbing. So he stuck his head down, slid through the crowds of Romulans, and kept moving.

Only when he was a block away did he smack his combadge. ‘Hey, Endeavour, about that lift?’

‘Sorry!’ came an unexpectedly chirpy voice. ‘We can’t beam you out from a crowded area. Apparently you should head for, uh…’

‘I don’t know the “uh” district!’ Logan swerved down the next corner.

‘Sorry! Cemetery. She says the cemetery.’

‘Trying to save time dumping my corpse?’ But that gave him a heading. Yelling from behind made it clear Vortiss and his goons were in pursuit. People might try to shield his flight, but they wouldn’t stand up to the Rebirth for anyone. And not for an ex-Borg outsider.

He couldn’t shake them by the time he was bolting down the long pathway at the outskirts of the sanctuary district, towards the open stretch where the refugees of Teros had buried their dead these long fifteen years. By now, some of those graves housed those who’d been born, lived, and died all on this same dustbowl. Logan did not feel like joining them.

But when he broke from the buildings into the open, the tumbling slopes of Teros on the horizon and its anaemic sun shining overhead in the pale sky, his only company was the markers of the dead.

Logan spun, kicking up dust, and smacked his combadge again. ‘Endeavour? Where’s my beam-out?’

Then as Vortiss and a trio of the Rebirth burst into the clearing, guns raised, the air around him shimmered for twice as many figured in Starfleet uniforms to materialise.

The small voice from his combadge chirped again. ‘It’s okay Commander! You’re not alone now!’

‘Vortiss!’ the lead officer, a Romulan woman in gold, hefted a phaser rifle as she took three steps forward. ‘Don’t make this a reckoning for years gone by.’

The narrow-faced leader of the Teros Rebirth skidded to a stop. At once, he raised a hand to gesture his team to lower their weapons, but his eyes did not leave her. His lip curled. ‘Kharth. Here to make things better again? I’d damn you for the double-cross, but really, I guess I owe you one. Thanks for the industrial replicators.’

The woman called Kharth looked like she had to force herself to lower her rifle. ‘Starfleet’s back in the sector, Vortiss. I wouldn’t get comfortable if I were you.’

‘Comfortable, where? In the town Starfleet built, then abandoned? With the resources Starfleet gave us, then abandoned? One of us has a track record for consistency here. It’s not you.’ Vortiss’s toothy grin didn’t reach his eyes, though, and at last, he looked at Logan. ‘You better not show your face here again, xB.’

‘It’s cute you think I’m scared of you,’ Logan chuckled.

‘You ran enough just then.’

‘Guns are scary. Who’s got more right now?’ Logan shrugged. ‘Just remember, Vortiss: it weren’t hard for me to find people here who hated your guts more than mine. Me.’ He tapped his ocular implant. ‘She’s right. You shouldn’t get comfortable.’

Vortiss’s eyes dragged across them. Then he shook his head and jerked a hand to usher his followers back. In the end, he looked at Kharth. ‘Only way this is over is if you stay gone. Or it’s going to get bloody.’

‘With you, it usually does. But not today.’ Kharth watched him and the rest of the Rebirth go before she rounded on Logan. Her eyes had been cold as she’d regarded Vortiss, but now they flashed red-hot. ‘Who the hell are you?’

‘Jack Logan. SFI.’ He clicked his fingers as it all fell together. ‘You must be Saeihr Kharth.’

‘How do you -’

‘I did my homework on Teros before I got here. Starfleet don’t exactly have long files on the place, and you’re probably its most famous citizen. One of the few Romulans in the fleet, decorated officer, oh.’ He beamed. ‘And now my own personal hero.’

Her gaze was only exasperated, though, and she turned back to the huddle of buildings. Very few of them had been built to last as long as they had. ‘While you,’ growled Saeihr Kharth, sounding like she was more talking to herself even though she was addressing him, ‘have dropped another screw-up on this damned world.’