Gant and a team of five security officers from the Shenzhou materialized from a transporter beam on the edge of the circular plaza at the center of New Astana. Several meters away, another six-person security team beamed down from the Enterprise. Gant and his team from the Shenzhou wore dark blue Starfleet utility jumpsuit uniforms with black trim, while the Enterprise team sported pale gold or light blue jerseys over black trousers—a new uniform style that so far had been issued exclusively to the crews of Starfleet’s vaunted Constitution-class starships.
The leader of the Enterprise’s landing party approached Gant. His counterpart was a tall, slender woman with pale skin and short, slicked-close dark blond hair. As they arrived at a respectable distance for a conversation, Gant spoke first. “Lieutenant Kamran Gant, senior tactical officer, U.S.S. Shenzhou.”
“Lieutenant Elena Donnelly, deputy chief of security, U.S.S. Enterprise.” She shook his hand quickly, then cast a worried look around the otherwise empty plaza. “I thought a squad of local law enforcement was supposed to meet us.”
Gant made his own anxious survey of the empty streets and building fronts marked by closed doors. “That was my understanding. Looks like the colonists didn’t get the memo.” He snapped an order over his shoulder to one of his own people. “Goldsmith, run a tricorder scan. Get me a twenty on the colonists—especially the governor.” He tried to reassure Donnelly with feigned confidence. “If they’re here, we’ll know soon enough.”
Donnelly surveyed the windows and looked toward the surrounding rooftops. “I have no doubt they’re here. Right now I’m just wondering how well armed they are.”
“Substantially, I’d guess,” Gant said. “The Kayo Mining Consortium played fast and loose with the laws and regulations on this rock. It’s a good bet everyone’s armed.”
The Enterprise’s deputy security chief looked disgruntled. “Wonderful.”
Chief Petty Officer Goldsmith sidled up to show them the results of his scans. “Sirs? We’re surrounded, and not just by people cowering inside their prefab houses. We’re reading several dozen armed people on the rooftops, and more out of sight behind corners.”
Feigning amusement, Gant raised his voice to mock and goad the colonists into showing themselves. “What the—? A surprise party? Whose idea was this? You crazy scamps. You know how much I hate surprises.” He drew his phaser. “I mean, I really hate ’em.”
The rest of his landing party followed his lead and brandished their phasers. The group from the Enterprise waited for Donnelly to draw her weapon, then they did the same.
Donnelly lowered her voice to ask Gant, “Now what?”
“We do what we came here to do—and hope the colonists don’t make an issue of it. Everyone, set phasers on heavy stun.” Gant led the two parties toward the nearby Executive Complex, a drab block of a building whose only flourishes of style resided in the columns atop its short flight of steps and the tall, narrow windows that lined its façade. The two security teams fanned out as they advanced on the government building. By the time they reached its steps, they were almost a single rank, twelve bodies across, climbing the steps in wary unison.
Then came a man’s voice from the shadows behind the columns: “That’s far enough.”
Gant and the others halted. He strained to see the person who had spoken, but the shade ahead was too deep to pierce. “Who are we talking to?”
“Not important,” said the gravel-voiced sentry. “This building’s transport-shielded, and you’re surrounded. Take one more step up those stairs, and we’ll put you down.” A blast of charged plasma streaked out of the darkness and left a scorch across the steps in front of Gant. “That’s the only warning you’ll get. Now I suggest you turn back and return to your ships.”
Donnelly raised her voice to answer the threat. “Sorry, that’s not an option. We’ve been sent here with clear orders: to arrest Governor Kolova and her senior advisers, as well as anyone suspected of participating in the planetary survey fraud. We have a warrant from the colonial court. Unless you stand down you’ll be facing charges of obstruction, and you might end up charged as accessories after the fact. Do you understand?”
Another blaster pulse scored a diagonal black streak across the steps in front of Donnelly. The gruff voice from the dark shouted, “What I understand is we have cover, and you twelve are standing in the wide open. Now, go back to your ships before this gets ugly.”
Gant pulled out his communicator and flipped it open, while keeping his phaser at the ready in his other hand. “Lieutenant Gant to Chief Le Fevre. Chief, do you copy?”
He was answered by Cameron Le Fevre, the capital’s chief of police. “I read you.”
“Chief, my shipmates and our colleagues from the Enterprise are facing stiff resistance at the entrance to the Executive Complex. We could use some backup out here.”
“Look up and behind you,” Le Fevre said.
The two landing parties pivoted slowly about, then looked up to see a team of colonial law enforcement perched along a roof’s edge—all of whom were aiming long-barrel blaster rifles at them. In the center of their formation was Chief Le Fevre, manning his own rifle.
“I think you’d best do as the governor’s man tells you, Lieutenant.”
All around the landing parties there was movement. Shapes emerged from patches of shadow, from around corners, over the edges of rooftops—all of them armed. Gant could see at a glance that he and his Starfleet colleagues were outnumbered at least thirty to one on the ground.
He put away his communicator and turned back toward the man in the shadows atop the steps. “This doesn’t have to go sideways, for any of us. Just tell us what you want.”
“We want you to go back to your ships,” said Gravel Voice, “stop that alien Juggernaut from wiping out our planet . . . and then we want you to go.”
His demand incensed Donnelly. “Are you kidding? First you threaten us, then you want us to save your asses. And once we do, you want us to just walk away and forget about all the crimes that led us here in the first place?”
“Our capital is still burning from the last attack!” Gravel shouted. “We see the news! The Juggernaut’s moving closer by the hour. It’s heading right for us, and you people are doing nothing! Instead of stopping that thing, you’re harassing us! Where the hell are your priorities?”
Out of the gathering twilight came a shimmering blur—a bottle that smashed at the feet of an Enterprise security guard, who quick-stepped backward and pointed his phaser back the way the bottle had come. His finger tensed in front of his weapon’s trigger—
“Hold your fire, Mister Gupta,” Donnelly said, clearly just as committed to avoiding a riot as Gant was. To the mysterious figure atop the stairs, she continued, “I assure you, we’re doing everything we can to stop the Juggernaut, but you—”
A blaster shot tore through her left shoulder. The hit spun her about-face as it knocked her to the ground. As she fell, a storm of charged plasma rained down on the landing parties.
Incoming fire of a potentially lethal nature meant the rules of engagement had just changed. Around Gant, his men and Donnelly’s laid down overlapping fields of wide-angle suppressing phaser fire, forcing their attackers back under cover. He grabbed Donnelly, threw her over his shoulder, then added his own phaser blasts to those blanketing the top of the stairs. “Go forward!” he hollered over the shrieking of weapons fire. “Get to the columns!”
He had no idea how many hostiles awaited them at the top of the stairs, but that was a problem he’d face when he got there. For now, he needed to get his team out of the crossfire.
By the time they reached the top step, they found only a handful of armed civilians lying stunned—but the entrance to the complex, as well as all its windows, had been barricaded with blast shields. To either side of him, his and Donnelly’s teams divided into pairs and took up positions behind the architectural columns. Most of their phasers’ emitter crystals were on the verge of overheating from having sustained so lengthy a barrage, so they were forced to duck and weather the latest incoming barrage of blaster pulses without responding in kind.
Gant set down Donnelly, who was conscious and clearly in great pain. “Hang on,” he told her, flipping open his communicator. “Time to call in the big guns.” He tuned the communicator to its ship-to-shore channel. “Gant to Shenzhou! Do you read me?”
Captain Georgiou answered. “This is Shenzhou. Go ahead, Gant.”
“Captain,” Gant said, “this op is one-hundred percent FUBAR.”
A magnified optical sensor view of the battle in New Astana was not the best vantage point, in Pike’s opinion. It could be difficult to know what was really going on based on an almost straight-down perspective, but the image of the street fight that currently filled the Enterprise bridge’s main viewscreen was clear and detailed enough that he saw the shot that felled Lieutenant Donnelly, and the intercepted comm signals that Garison was routing through the overhead speakers enabled Pike to hear most of the pandemonium as it erupted.
As soon as Donnelly hit the ground, Pike’s thumb was on his armrest’s intraship comm. “Bridge to security! Get riot teams to transporter rooms one and two, on the double!”
His navigator and acting first officer, Lieutenant Yoshi Ohara, swiveled away from his post at the forward console to face Pike. “Captain, are you sure you want to risk escalating the situation? Captain Georgiou said—”
“She isn’t responsible for the lives of my landing party, Lieutenant. I am.”
“Aye, sir,” Ohara said, returning to his duties without pressing the point.
On the viewscreen, a swarm of bodies pressed in upon the Executive Complex. Blaster pulses crisscrossed with phaser beams, and missed shots and ricochets quickly clouded the area with smoke. Impatience drove Pike to clench his fists as he watched the battle inch toward becoming a slaughter. He thumbed open another intraship channel. “Transporter room, have you beamed down re inforcements yet?”
“Negative,” said Chief Pitcairn. “The locals have activated a scattering field. We can’t get a clear lock within two kilometers of the center of the capital.”
“Which means we can’t beam our people up, either.”
“Affirmative, sir.”
“Beam down our reinforcements outside the scattering field. They should still be able to reach the combat area in less than six minutes.”
“Aye, sir. Setting new coordinates. Commencing transport in thirty seconds.”
Pike closed the channel with a jab of his thumb, then muttered, “What a damned mess.”
Garison swiveled his chair away from the communications console. “Sir, I’m intercepting chatter between the Shenzhou and her landing party.”
“On speakers,” Pike said. He leaned forward and listened with intense focus.
The voice over the comm was one of Georgiou’s officers, a man. “Repeat, we’re surrounded and taking heavy fire. Request fire support and medical assistance.”
“Acknowledged,” Georgiou said. “Sit tight and stand by for protocol Theta.”
Pike faced Garison. “Hail the Shenzhou.” It took just a switch-flip, and Garison nodded in confirmation, cuing Pike to speak. “Captain Georgiou, this is the Enterprise. Be advised, I am sending in reinforcements. They’re beaming down beyond the scattering field, but—”
“Belay that order if you can, Captain,” Georgiou said. “Or tell your backup teams to stand down and wait for my signal to move in.”
Georgiou’s warning made him sit up—she was about to do something unorthodox. “Why?” he asked. “What are you going to do?”
Her voice was as cold as death. “I’m going to handle this.”
He opened the channel to the transporter room. “Chief, hold that transport!”
“Caught me in the nick of time, sir,” Pitcairn said. “Holding transport, aye.”
The image on the viewscreen flared with an electric-blue glow. It bathed every street, rooftop, and exposed surface within two kilometers of the center of the colony’s capital. Though the pulse lasted for less than two seconds, when it faded everyone in view lay sprawled and unmoving. Pike turned his chair toward the sensor console, which was being monitored by Ensign Navah Wolfe of the sciences department. “Wolfe! What just happened down there?”
The petite dark-haired woman checked her data readouts. “The Shenzhou fired a five-percent-power, wide-dispersal phaser pulse into the colony’s capital. Just enough to stun everyone in the area—and to neutralize the scattering field.”
Georgiou’s voice filtered down from the overhead speakers. “Enterprise, this is Shenzhou. The crisis in the capital has been contained, and you are clear to beam down reinforcements. Also, please send in additional medical personnel, if you can spare them.”
“Understood, Shenzhou,” Pike said. “And might I add, Captain, that’s one hell of an effective crowd-control tactic you’ve got there.”
“It might not be pretty,” Georgiou said, “but it gets the job done.”
“Copy that. Enterprise out.” He reopened his internal channel. “Transporter room, the scattering field is down. Revert to original coordinates, beam down reinforcements, then stand by to beam up wounded before dispatching medical teams to the surface.”
“Understood, bridge,” Pitcairn said.
On many levels, Pike still felt he didn’t understand Captain Georgiou, but now he was sure he knew at least one thing about her: she was both pragmatic and restrained. Those were admirable qualities in a person to whom had been entrusted the power to mete out life and death. Knowing she possessed such virtues would make it all the more difficult for him to overrule her when Burnham’s mission to the Juggernaut failed, and the time came to carry out Starfleet’s order to blast Sirsa III into an orb of radioactive molten glass for the good of the galaxy.
Difficult, but not impossible.
Georgiou had her principles . . . but Pike had his orders.
And when death’s hour came round at last, that would be all that mattered.