Survival Tactics

The Wolf I Chose to Feed

Keyla let out a short cry—almost a yelp—but not a scream. Her brain felt short-circuited by the information and the seeming lag in processing it.

She saw Sorensen raise his arm, holding something in his hand—

--phaser!—

--saw the weapon's emitter cone rotate to the desired setting...

But Keyla didn't see any targets. They weren't taking fire. There were no armor-clad Klingon warriors storming the cargo area. Who...?

Then she heard the wicked hiss of the phaser, caught the flash on her retinas, and through the afterimage, saw Burnham collapse amid a cloud of black smoke.

She cried out when the acrid stench of burning flesh touched her nostrils.

Burnham did scream. It was a wail of indescribable pain that was a dart straight to Keyla's fight-or-flight instinct. She bounded out of the shuttlecraft to Sorensen. On the ground, three meters away from him, Burnham writhed in agony. Keyla saw blackened flesh and muscle, and the bright white of bone. She fought the urge to vomit.

"We need to go," Sorensen said dispassionately. As if that was an acceptable response to the situation.

"What the fuck did you do?" Keyla screamed.

"This is on her!" Sorensen shouted back, facing Keyla with a mask of murderous rage. "This is what she gets for getting Philippa killed!"

Keyla suddenly felt cold and noticed that even Burnham was looking at the intelligence operative quizzically.

"What? Captain Georgiou? Who...?"

"She was getting promoted," he spat. "A program management job in Starfleet Headquarters. Be grounded for the first time. She was looking forward to it. To having a permanent address. To being able to build a life together. We bought a damn brownstone..."

It hit Keyla like gut-punch: Captain Georgiou, always so cagey about what she did on her R&Rs. Always referring vaguely to "meeting friends," or "spending some time with someone I haven't seen in a while," before she deflected the question back with a quick, pert, "and what did you get up to, Ensign?" Of course the lower decks assumed she had a lover—some guessed it was another starship captain, while others romantically imagined they were on Earth, looking up at the stars, pining for her. Jira Narwani stuck to her theory that Burnham was actually the captain's secret paramour, and that they only allowed themselves to succumb to their feelings when they off the ship ("you'd be amazed at what I can see through that targeting helmet. There's more repression on that bridge than a Victorian novel.")

And here was the mystery, solved.

"So this was all just a ruse to kill her?" Keyla asked. Stated aloud, the situation went back to not making sense.

"Well, Starfleet decided to pardon her. What the hell was I supposed to do? Let her live? Let her be free and happy? Not a fucking chance! If the Federation wasn't going to punish her, then I'd just have to take care of it."

"But...why go through all this just to kill her?"

"Not kill me," Burnham gasped. "Hand me over to the Klingons."

Keyla's eyes widened. "Is that true?"

"Almost," Sorensen said. "The Klingons would make too much hay with you as a prisoner. Plus there's always the off-chance you'd be rescued or repatriated when we win this war. Nope. I'm leaving you for the Orions."

"Orions?"

"The Novianis use them as a cut-out when they sell slaves to the Klingon Empire—something about taking slaves offends the Klingon's sense of honor, but I guess buying them is totally hunky-dorkey. They'll sell you to the Orion slave traders, Burnham. And then you'll make some Orion captain a fine concubine. Or maybe you'll spend the rest of your misery-filled existence servicing the miners in this place. The brothels always need fresh talent. You won't be in Starfleet anymore, but you will get to be of service again."

Keyla felt the urge to vomit again.

"How could she have loved you?" Burnham spat, still writhing on the ground. "How could she have loved a man who would do something like this?"

"She loved you!" he shouted and leveled the phaser again. For a split-second—a horrific eternity—Keyla thought he was going to use the heat setting on her face. "She loved you like you were a daughter—and believe me that was a special place in her heart. And you betrayed her!"

"I tried to save her!"

"Only after you set the house on fire! You created that shitshow that got eight thousand people killed and you served less time in jail than a data smuggler. How is that justice? This is justice," he gestured with the phaser.

Before she could think, Keyla had pulled the small, Type-1 phaser from her back pocket and pointed it at Sorensen's throat. "This is over."

The man's eyes widened, but his phaser didn't move. "What are you doing?"

"This is finished," Keyla said firmly. "You're going to hand me the phaser and then we're getting into that shuttle and getting the hell out of Dodge before the locals show up. "

"I wasn't going to hurt you," Sorensen said. "Just her. You understand what she did. You...I mean, look at what she did to you!"

Keyla felt a sudden flash of anger and defensiveness, as if she was a little girl again and a classmate was trying to take her favorite toy starship away from her In this case it was a half-bald head and some hardware wired into her brain, but the reaction was the same: This is mine, not yours! "She didn't do anything to me. The Klingons did. And she didn't do anything to Captain Georgiou—the Klingons did that too. Whatever you're feeling, it doesn't entitle you to do this in her name. Do it for yourself, if you want, but you will not disrespect my captain by pretending this in any way honors her! And if I have to press this trigger-button and turn you into a luau torch, so help me I'll do it. Because Captain Georgiou didn't leave anyone behind, and neither will I."

Something broke in Sorensen's eyes, and the phaser dropped to point at the ground. He nodded, his eyes focused in middle-distance, just nodded.

Then the alarms went off.