The Outer Edges, Pt. 2: Enemy at the Gates
Posted on March 21st, 2023 by Nico Slate

“I’m telling you, Karthosa and B’Dek would be the match-up of the century!” Ramirez sat with his feet up on the table and continued on his tirade of ideal matchups in… some sport.

Nico wasn’t really paying attention. He didn’t mind watching an event now and again, or participating in activities when it was a suitable time, but he never understood the fascination with being so wrapped up in something as trivial as sports that one would ponder such hypothetical possibilities. Nico nodded absently, “Yeah, I’m sure that’d be a hoot.”

“Unless you think Planterski from Earth could sneak into the finals?”

Exasperated sigh. It had been hours. Nico had finished his rounds and his talk with the President and returned to his station. Ramirez had been in pretty much the same position since he returned with the occasional detour to the food processor for food. “Look, Ramirez, I’ll be straight-forward with you. I admire your interest and respect your hobbies, and I say this with all the respect I can… I don’t care.”

Stopping verbally in his tracks, Carlos smiled slightly. “Fine, I get it. Work-mode Nico.”

“Non-sports-enthusiast, Nico.” Slate corrected him.

Ramirez’s feet touched the floor as he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, his chin on his hands, “So, what does interests you?”

“You’re looking at it.”

“No, no, no,” Carlos stood and paced around to the other side of the desk, “I mean other than being a marine and work. When you have time off to do whatever you want, what do you like to do? And please tell me you have a creative answer, because if you say somethings stupid like reading or ‘working out’, I may have to ask to be assigned to a different partner.”

Nico paused and looked up from his console. What he did on his own time was just that: his own. Talking about himself normally led down a path that he didn’t like to follow. Casual conversation was one thing, but sharing details of his life was something that always set him on edge. What would be a simple question about hobbies would be followed up with how one found those hobbies and where, etc. There was no shame in wanting to keep his private life private, but it would appear to others that Nico was standoffish or aloof. He was and he wasn’t. He was the perfect blend, he thought.

“I like to build things.”

“Build… things?” Carlos asked, raising and eyebrow and folding his arms.

Nico raised his head again, attempting to hide his look of irritation. “Yes, build things. Anything. Take parts and assemble them into something different and new. Take computer programs and adjust and change them to serve a different function. See how fast I can strip down a power relay and put it back together. I like working with my hands to make something out of nothing. Or something out of something else.”

“Uh, okay. What do you find so cool about that?”

Cool. He disliked that word. “It’s calming to me. It allows me to focus on a singular task and the components within it. Nothing else matters when I’m dedicated to a project where I can see and feel a tangible outcome. It’s hard to explain.”

Ramirez stepped away from the desk, gazing into the high ceilings overhead, “No, that seems succinct. I just love the nitty gritty of sports. The competition, the athleticism, the sweat, the adrenaline, all of it. I wanted to go into Hoverball professionally. However, my father was old school and thought it was a waste of my time and my talent. I’d always played as a young kid, though, and into my teens and early 20s. Where’d you pick up the ‘building stuff’ thing?”

There it was. “Same. As a young kid and it stuck,” Nico said simply, not elaborating or making eye contact with the younger lieutenant, “Were you any good at Hoverball?”

“Oh, yeah, man!” Carlos exclaimed moving back to his chair, propping his feet up again, and putting his hands behind his head. “I was almost undefeated every season. Maybe two or three losses each. I think I’ve still got school records up on the walls at the Academy for points scored, vertical recovery, blocks…”

And there it went. Nico allowed Carlos to continue on his nostalgic journey. The ramblings diminished into the background as he focused intently on checking perimeter sensors, guard assignments, and the communication feed between checkpoints and their staging area. It wasn’t long before he realized something was amiss. None of the things he was checking, which should be posted every fifteen minutes, had been updated recently. The last inputted data was from the front checkpoint on the outer perimeter of the palace at 0100.

He looked at the clock. 0215. Odd.

He tapped his badge in the middle of what he was surely a thrilling story that Carlos was telling about how he overcame a huge deficit to unseat a champion in the final minutes of play… or something like that. “Slate to Kaplan, why hasn’t Checkpoint Alpha updated their status recently?” He really wasn’t concerned about it as people would get busy from time to time and forget. On the other hand, usually, it was one missed check in or two at most before they got back on track.

“This is Kaplan,” a female voice came over the comm, “Uh, Lieutenant Slate, we’ve updated every fifteen minutes per protocol.”

“I’m not showing anything on the feed, can you confirm?”

There was a silence for a brief minute, “I’m seeing ours posted, but nothing from anyone else, including you.”

He double-checked his own feed and saw his notes posted according to procedure as well. Technical glitch? “Kaplan, I’m going to run a diagnostic on the feed reporting subroutines. I suggest you do one as well and see what we come up with.”

“Copy that, Kaplan out.”

“…and that’s how I became the Starfleet Academy leading scorer.” Ramirez finished. It was obvious he hadn’t been paying attention to Nico’s communication. The proud sportsman’s smile faded into a frown, “You don’t care, do you?”

“Not even in the slightest, Carlos. Our communication system is having an issue. We’re not getting informational updates from any of the other checkpoints or the command center. I’m running a diagnostic – ” His words were cut short by a dissatisfying beep. “What the…? I don’t have uplink anymore and the diagnostics aren’t responding to my system or the network.”

Ramirez chuckled, “Ah, technology. Sometimes it does exactly what you want it to do and other times it’s a major pain in the ass. Have you tried smacking it real hard?”

Nico shot him a look, “If we were sitting on a starship or starbase – ”

“Kaplan to Slate. I can’t access the network to run any tests. It seems I’ve been isolated from the system. I’ve got my guy working on it now, but I wanted to inform you of some new developments that you may want to alert the President about.”

“Lay it on me.”

“The Trinoran negotiators are approaching.”

Ramirez glanced at the chronometer on the wall and mouthed to Nico, At two-thirty in the morning?

“I’ll let the President know. Keep them at your checkpoint until I get further instructions.”

“And, Nico, they’re approaching with an armored contingent. I thought that diplomatic – ” And the line went dead.

Nico’s eyes widened and he tapped his badge again, but got nothing but static. A couple more times trying to reach Kaplan was met with the same results. He turned to Carlos and nodded for him to try and that also ended in failure. Nico attempted to reach out to other checkpoints but got the same buzzing sound. Spinning on his heel he pointed to the internal chamber, “Go, let the bodyguards know to wake the President.”

Carlos grabbed his phaser rifle and bolted into the President’s residence and the door sealed behind him. What now? A network failure for all information to all checkpoints? Now the communication over standard badge comm was offline. Armored contingent? What Kaplan was about to say was exactly what Nico was thinking: both the Rylanans and Trinoran had agreed to not bring weapons to the negotiating table as a symbol of trust to find a resolution to the conflict. Something was wrong, very wrong.

Ramirez appeared again, “Bodyguards are waking the President now. Their communications with their staff are offline too. We’re isolated.”

Nico tapped some more on his console and got nowhere. “We need visual confirmation. There’s a weather vane-like outcropping around the corner there,” Nico said pointing to his left. “I need you to climb up on it and check the view. You should be able to see Checkpoints Beta and Charlie from there. Tell me what you see.”

“Climb?”

“Come on, athlete, move!”

Ramirez disappeared again and Nico sat alone, his thoughts going a million kilometers a second. He didn’t know what to make of it, he didn’t have any updates, and he didn’t have any orders. His one order that stood was to protect President Walora. Nico needed answers and he needed them fast. The last thing he wanted to do was see the President and have no answers or plans. Moreover, if the situation was merely a confluence of events, he’d look foolish disturbing her. Then again, playing his own Devil’s Advocate, he’d rather err on the side of caution than make a life-threatening mistake.

“Nic, there’s a two Trinorans that look like diplomats flanked by four armed guards that just passed through Checkpoint Beta. They’re headed for Checkpoint Charlie. They’re just walking though. They look proper and non-threatening.”

“I highly doubt they’re here for early morning negotiations, Carlos. If there are only six of them they wouldn’t have made it past the first two security doors. There’s got to be more of them coming or here already.” Nico activated his phaser rifle and tossed it over his shoulder. “We need to get Lady Walora out of here just to be safe.”

“I think that’s premature, don’t you?”

“I do not.”

The doors to the residence hissed open and out came Lady Walora looking professional as ever. “I understand we have a tardy delegation arriving? How incredibly inappropriate of them to show up at this hour and expect us to rally our leaders for conversation.” Her two bodyguards flanked her on either side looking a bit perturbed at being disturbed of their own early morning, President-less, relaxation time.

“Ma’am, with all due respect, I doubt they’re here to talk. Is there a back way out of here?”

“What do you mean? Lieutenant, what’s going on?” Walora’s eyes narrowed and her voice steeled with power.

“We need to get you somewhere safe until we know what’s going on.” Nico started to shuffle her back towards the residence’s door. “Secret passage? Private off-network transporter? Shuttlecraft?”

Walora’s tone shifted from power to sarcasm with a snap, “Oh, yes, I keep a shuttle parked on the roof in case I want to run out at three in the morning for a snack.” Nico half expected an eyeroll the way she was speaking. “If they think they can just waltz in here – ”

The sound of weapons fire and screams echoed in the air. Nico estimated that it was from Checkpoint Charlie down the hallway. He turned and perked an eyebrow at the President who had shifted to another, this time a non-verbal facial expression of sheer terror. “Again, is there any other way out of this area?”

One bodyguard spoke first, “What about just heading the opposite direction out the other checkpoints?”

Nico looked to Carlos who was already moving, “On it, I’ll be back.” And for the third time, Ramirez disappeared, this time at a full sprint. Nico would give him one thing, the man could move.

“Gentlemen, would you please escort Lady Walora back inside until we know what to do?”

The bodyguards nodded and didn’t allow the leader to resist as they hurried her back into the inner chamber. The sounds of war continued to permeate the air as he whipped out his tricorder. It was short-range, but it wasn’t tied to the mainframe, so he hopped he’d get something of use. After a minute or two of scanning he picked up a fluctuation above them. Son of a bitch, he thought, it’s got to be a communication, transporter, and sensor dampener. His tricorder’s scan kept shifting around a peripheral without locking onto the disturbance.

Ramirez raced around the corner, “That side has weapons fire too. They’re pinching from both sides.”

“And they’re jamming us as well. No comms, no transporters, no sensors. That’s why no alarms are going off.”

“How’s that possible? It’d have to be right over us.”

“It is. How they got it there is a mystery, but one we don’t have time to solve.” The crack and sizzle of phaser fire against a forcefield emanated from about twenty feet away. The ‘delegation’ was on their doorstep. Nico ran to the panel next to the door and increased the power to maximum. It wouldn’t hold for long. “I’ve got the emitters on full power, but they’ll buckle after a while. If the rest of our team hasn’t been alerted by now, the Trinorans are doing something right.”

“What do we do?”

Nico had looked at the schematics for all the defensive capabilities of the Rylanan capitol prior to reporting for duty, but it had been a while. He closed his eyes, shutting out the sizzling of the forcefield reeling under the pressure of the constant barrage of phaser fire. He visualized the schematics and the protocols. This led to that, that led to this, that relayed back to that, and that connected to the network with safeguards designed to keep all systems talking to each other.

“Sometime today, Slate!”

His eyes bulged, “Got it!” He moved to the panel and ripped the panel off the wall, exposing the inner circuitry. “I’m going to invert the power relay that supports this forcefield. It will overload and short out, which will disconnect it from the main security grid. That will trigger an automatic alarm at all Rylanan stations.”

Carlos shook his head, “We’re off-network, remember?”

“This is the Rylanan’s internal network, hard-lined, as opposed to ours which we brought with us for standard operating procedure. Their communications may be out too, but this is a power grid. If it had been tampered with the forcefield wouldn’t be working at all. It’ll work, hopefully. The problem with this is that it’ll deactivate the forcefield and they’re right there.” Nico motioned to the doorway.

Ramirez activated his rifle and pushed over the table, getting down behind it. “Those bastards can bring it,” he said as he leveled the barrel of the weapon on the table’s edge.

“They’ve overtaken at least three checkpoints that we know of. These aren’t your benchwarmers coming in to play. These are the best of the best for this type of attack. Fall back.” Nico inverted the power relay and the whine of the spooling energy started to fill the room. “Inside the residence, now.”

The two of them retreated into the room, sealed the door, locked it, and moved over to the worried Head of the Rylanan state. She had her arms wrapped around her tightly and the bodyguards stood between her and the door. “Lieutenant, what’s the plan here?”

He heard the failure of the last forcefield outside the last door separating the assault group and themselves. “I ask one more time, is there another way out?”

The other bodyguard chimed in this time, “Yes, there is the maintenance ladder that descends from a hatch on the private terrace. It’s designed for workers to maintain upkeep on that side of the building without having to cross the living quarters.”

Carlos scoffed, “That sounds like a breach of security of waiting to happen.”

“The door into the residence is sealed by President Walora’s command only. It’s isolated to her own system within the residence. You couldn’t bypass it if you tried. You’d have to be IN this room to open that door.”

Walora bobbed her head vigorously, “Trust me, it works. I locked myself out one time and waited – ”

Nico interrupted, “I get it. That’s our plan. Take that down to the main hall, put some distance between us and them.”

“Then what?” Walora asked, concerned.

Nico took a beat to calm his nerves, but that pause didn’t last long as the sound of more phaser fire hit the door behind him. He turned a steady gaze to the President, found his breath, and took charge. “Madame President… we run.”