Survival Tactics

Didn't See That Coming

They flattened on the packed, hardened earth just behind the edge of what seemed to be a semi-natural berm, which overlooked a series of interlocking vast flat constructed platforms. "Landing platforms, if I've ever seen one." Detmer said, as Burnham adjusted her binoculars and then swept the area.

"What do you see?"

"Not as much as I'd like," Burnham answered as she tried to make out the range scale on the bottom of her vision. "You know for advanced a ship as the Discovery is, the Starfleet quartermasters really hsort-changed us when it comes to expeditionary equipment. I think these binoculars are from the Romulan War.

"Can you see a transmitter?"

"No, and these stupid things don't have a signal-visualization mode or any connectivity with the tricorders." She toggled the three-dimensional view, zooming in and out, searching for anything that might indicate the array and power source necessary for a subspace signal. "It's like we're in the Stone Age," she griped as she switched to a MGRS overlay and found the rendezvous point. She memorized the numbers, lowered the binoculars and punched the coordinates into her tricorder.

"Okay, we know where the signal is telling us to go, and it looks like we're clear in if we approach from the west side of that lower platform. There's a gate in the perimeter wall, which looks open."

"So we're just going to stroll on in," Detmer said skeptically.

"All of the activity is on the opposite end where it joins with the rest of the camp."

"This all sounds like a plan that ends with us being eaten by Klingons, you realize that, don't you?"

Burnham gave a half-shrug. "It's that or we camp out in the dead woods some more."

"Good point."

They half-slid, half-ran down the steep side of the berm, plumes of calcified top soil creating a low fogbank around their ankles until they reached the flattened ground which led to the perimeter wall, which, up close, was simply a series of pre-fab polymer slabs dug into the ground. A formidable keep, this was not, Burnham though.

The gate was set up to be a Controlled Access Center—heavy, blast-proof doors, opened into a smallish man-trap, which should have been controlled by a guard on duty and now was left wide open. Burnham held her phaser at low ready as they slowly, quietly walked through it, noting the sensors dotting the walls around them.

"Those must be switched off," she observed.

"What would the point be in rolling out the red carpet just to capture us on the inside?"

"That's what I'm hoping."

They dashed across a small, open area to a narrow alley between two tall pre-fab buildings. Despite the desperation of their situation, Burnham's Vulcan-trained curiosity couldn't help but assert itself. The whole environment felt artificial, she noted, as if the entire complex had been replicated as a piece by an industrial-model replication printer and pressed into the sick planet's crust by the hand of a giant child. The buildings, walkways, equipment areas, all seemed to have come from the same mold. She wondered what it said about Klingon industry. It was very different from the environment aboard the Sarcophagus ship, which seemed almost to have built by hand like a Medieval cathedral. Was this disposability a result of the tenants of a different a distinct Klingon house, or was this how they spread their Empire over their conquered worlds?

"About a hundred meters northwest," Detmer read off the tricorder. Burnham flattened against a wall and peered out of the alley. No one was around. She lifted the binoculars to her eyes and zoomed in on the area, peering through a gap between a low building and a pile of crates. It was a cargo area, she could tell, littered with crates and conex boxes and equipment.

"Looks clear all the way, but stay close to me just in case."

"Like I'm gonna wander off?"

Burnham bolted from the alley, phaser held out before her, looking through the holographic sights at the complex beyond. They cleared the empty expanse in seconds, and ducked between two conex boxes stacked in neat, horizontal lines. Detmer reached to open the tricorder, but Burnham placed her hand over the device's hood and shook her head. She didn't want the machine's characteristic noises to give away their position. Detmer nodded her understanding.

She flattened against the smooth, plastic wall of the cones and sidled to the edge and peered around it.

She saw a Starfleet shuttlecraft landed snugly amid stacks of cargo containers and a figure in nondescript coveralls standing in front of it, operating a communicator.

Sorensen.

Burnham scrambled from between the conex boxes, all her exhaustion and discomfort swept away by the adrenaline rush of seeing deliverance parked so close. Behind her, she heard Detmer heave a great sigh of relief.

"Commander!" she called. "Thank god you're here. Where's Conn'klyn? Did he make it?"

Sorensen looked up from his communicator with an expression Burnham couldn't read. Confusion, then alarm flashed across his features, then thought.

"You were supposed to be alone," he said.

"Our shuttle went down."

He nodded. "We can still make this work." He closed his communicator and stowed it one of the coverall's pockets. Then he looked at Detmer. "Lieutenant, I'm going to need your help in salvaging this thing.

"Anything you need," Detmer's voice was as firm and confident as if she were on the bridge of the Discovery acknowledging an order from Captain Lorca.

"I'm glad to hear that. Will you check the shuttle's nav system?"

"Yes sir," she bounded past him to the shuttle.

"What about Conn'klyn?" Burnham asked, suddenly feeling useless.

Sorensen cocked his head. "Conn'klyn's been dead for weeks. He got burned by the Noviani Security Division. They killed him to appease the Klingons."

Burnham suddenly felt light-headed and wondered for a brief, vertiginous moment if she wasn't hallucinating this whole exchange while she actually lay dying in the wreckage of the shuttlecraft somewhere. "What? I don't understand? We were supposed to—"

"This was never about Conn'klyn," Sorensen said, then drew his phaser and shot her.