Star Trek Discovery: Danger Zone

Chapter Five

Strike Team Commander Thok straightened up and adjusted his combat vest. It was a heavy, close-fitting piece of gear, studded with sensor-baffling ECM pods, and energy-projectile diffusers. It could withstand up to three direct hits by a disruptor-rifle and still remain intact, but the trade-off was that wearing felt like being embraced by a large and especially affectionate tick. Thok's vest was a basic jungle camouflage pattern, but some of his soldiers, had painted theirs with personalized mottos or phrases of import. The personalization of armor—making it a reflection of the wearer and their history of victories—was a direct influence of the Klingons, to whom the Novianis had always looked for guidance in matters of force and violence.

"Are you ready to hunt a lizard?" he asked jovially, and was rewarded with bloodlusty chuckles from his unit. He might have appealed to their sense of vengeance for the comrades they'd already lost to the animal, but within the military promotions were few and fiercely competitive, and the men were already crafting their plans for advancement with the death of Theed and Sanyu. "I know the Klingons will pay handsomely for his skull to mount on the bow of one of their attack ships."

More laughter. The men's eyes glittered with barely-restrained cruelty. Thok nodded approvingly as he looked over his team.

Zantho was built like a bog monster from the old legends, with long, flowing hair that he kept wild and unwashed. His face was gridlined with thin scars from his hobby of knife-fighting. In his arms, he cradled a massive pulse-cannon on which he had painted evil eyes and teeth. Two wide-bladed amputation knifes cross-crossed one another on his vest.

Wachtu was his demolitions expert, and a veritable wizard with anything explosive. He built shaped-charges as a hobby, and was exceptionally skilled at deploying them against vehicles on air, land, sea, or space. He had personally been responsible for deploying a mobile minefield around a particularly unruly colony planet last year, and had successfully starved them into submission when their food supply ran out and transports couldn't get close enough to resupply them. He spoke little, and didn't socialize much, but it was a joke among the men that one would know when they'd gotten on his bad side when his hooch exploded.

Klechka was the opposite: lean and wiry as a sapling. His thin arms were run through with a tangle of crude cybernetics he'd had installed at black-market and off-the-books modification centers all over the sector. Thok had seen the man bend duraniam rods with those enhanced limbs. As the flesh around the implants became infected and necrotic, he had more and more cybernetics installed. He would never reach command level, Thok knew, the cybernetics would poison him first. Best to get as much violence as possible out of the soldier before that day.

Celtriss was the most likely to make command-grade, and Thok feared his ambition and guile. He was a good soldier—not exceptional, but he also understood that he did not need to be. He was a skilled tactician and a crafty opponent. Unlike the others, he didn't decorate his armor or his hair. He looked every bit the part of a responsible officer. Command would have no compunctions about promoting him quickly, which was the only reason Thok didn't fear the man would kill him: he didn't need to. The day would come when he simply surpassed Thok and would be his superior officer. Best to get him killed before then.

Finally, there was Doreel, who was known as a berserker. Tales abounded of him throwing himself bodily into the fray, his rifle spitting fire at close range until a shortage of ammo or patience caused him to reverse the weapon and use it as a club. Doreel, it was said, delighted in nothing as much as the physical destruction of an enemy's body: shattered bones, pulped organs, smashed faces. Thok strongly suspected it would be Doreel who brought home the kill today.

"All right," he said authoritatively and began punching coordinates into the nav-tracker strapped to his arm. "Here is the last location of the target and our formation. We will fan out and cover the traversable portion of the forest between here and the base. It will not be long before one of us locates him. Any questions?"

There were none.

"Then let us disappear," he said. He and his men activated their vests, then, in the growing darkness, donned their sensor-goggles. Only then, effectively invisible, but able to see clearer than any of the predators around them, did they dissolve into the jungle.

********

The deadbolt on the cargo container's big door slammed open, and the door itself widened just a crack—enough for the blunt muzzle of a disruptor rifle to poke through the gap. When no resistance was forthcoming the door opened wider and the doorway was filled with a wild, thrashing, hissing spitting animal.

Keyla Detmer to be exact.

She squirmed and kicked impotently, while the Noviani soldier retained a grip on her forearms as strong as a set of docking clamps and held her several centimeters above the ground, like a fussing child.

"YOU SON OF A...YOU MOTHER-EATING, GRASS-HUMPING...DIRTY...YOU CAN ALL JUST GO BACK TO YOUR GRUBBY LITTLE CAVES AND SHOVE ROCKS UP YOUR..." She swore, hissed, howled, barely able to piece together a coherent sentence.

The soldier let go of Keyla, and she stumbled as she gained her balance, her feet in her uniforms boots nearly tripping over themselves. Then they withdrew and secured the door again with a heavy clang!

"Yeah, you better lock that thing! Next time I see you, I'm gonna kick your teeth in and use your skulls as castanets!" She hitched up her panties, and readjusted her athletic bra before taking a deep, composing breath.

"You know what they said? Do you have any idea what they said?" she demanded. "Apparently I and not suitably-attractive by Noviani standards! Can you believe that shit? They said that—and I quote—'my hair was the color of rotten mullet!' What the hell even is mullet, anyway? Oh, and on top of that, the other one—the small one—said I looked 'sickly' and 'malnourished.' And that sex with me would be like having sex with a refugee from a plague colony!

"Oh, I am sorry, but these people just need to be photon torpedoed off the face of the planet. No Prime Directive, no negotiations. We just need to bring the fire. I mean, can you believe that?

"These people are a bunch of back-water, space-hicks who've been licking Klingon ass for the better part of two generations. I'm not attractive enough for them? Oh sweetie, they are so far beneath me there is no unit of measurement big enough to quantify it.

She exhaled heavily, then straightened up. "They mock," she said, "what they do not understand."

"So," Owosekun asked from her perch atop an overturned crate, "were we supposed to tackle them right then?"

********

The heat was brutalizing them, Specialist Wachtu thought as he struggled through a tangle of wild growth. The air had grown so thick it felt like gel, and that portended coming monsoons, but he knew it wouldn't bring any relief from the heat.

He hated this accursed world, with its endless jungle, oppressive heat, and constant rains. He hated the fact there was no population to break, no recreation to be had, no action whatsoever. These Starfleet people should have been their entertainment for the day, hunting them through this primeval jungle like animals, and then making their deaths slow and enjoyable to watch. Instead, they only had this animal to catch and kill. It was barely worth their skills.

"There!" Doreel's voice whispered through his earpiece. "Ahead, six arcs of the circle. Perhaps a remicam out. A trap."

Wachtu looked in that direction and cycled his goggles through the band of sensor inputs. He didn't see anything humanoid. When he clicked through the levels designed to pick up energy-emissions, he saw the small cluster of cylinders wound into the branches of a tree.

"Grenades," he replied, and muscled through the growth until he could see the explosive belt woven into a tree-branch.

"Keep your distance!" Commander Thok's voice snarled over the comm-web.

"It's an amateurish job," he replied angrily. Thok knew nothing of explosives or traps, yet he was like most officers: arrogant and demanding and too proud to let his men take any initiative. "The activators still have the safeties engaged. The grenades wouldn't go off." He reached up and unclasped the belt's buckle. The extra explosives would come in handy...if they ever faced an opponent worth any effort.

Something flashed in the periphery of his goggles and then his world exploded.