Star Trek Discovery: Danger Zone

Prologue

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

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

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

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

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

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