“In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.”
-Theodore Roosevelt

Beaming down was being peeled apart molecule by molecule by a damned bloody sadist behind a console, if you asked Lieutenant Commander Dren Lor.  Every nerve ending shrieked with numb tingles as they were consumed into the plane of the molecular netherworld.  The experience could just never feel clean to him – your teeth crackled with energy, your guts felt intertwined, and that overly chatty bastard in the back of your head who never shuts up was telling you ‘Hey man, this just ain’t right!’

The whole scam boiled down to one simple thing; convert your mass to energy.  Shoot it down a channel of controlled subspace.  Then from hundreds of kilometers away the rematerializer remotely re-jumbled an infinite amount of your atoms back together like a jigsaw puzzle before the waveform of your existence collapsed into nothingness.  Of course, the pattern buffers were there to prevent that eventuality, at least for a time.  But the thought just never sat right with him.

No, that wasn’t exactly it.  The thought never sat quite right with the Lor symbiont, who was old enough to remember a time when the transporters really were shaky miracles at best, seeming a half science, half witchcraft method just as likely to turn you into a malformed mass of biological goo on the transporter pad .  He was still fresh enough from the joining that he was trying to parse who he had become.  His heart and soul, his memories themselves – all scavenged into some Frankenstein’s monster that was never quite sure from who’s perspective he was viewing things from.  Just who was added to who?

He shoved the sentiment down deep where all the other uncomfortable things lived.  Didn’t matter.  The wriggling slug portion of him nested in his guts would just have to come to terms with the fact that transporters were a frequent part of life living as a Federation officer.  He supposed in the end he had – but he was still allowed to find the whole thing as distasteful he wanted to.

Four other ghosts around him clawed their way out of nothingness (yes, Dren still found himself feeling dramatic about the process) as the forms of Commander Zheen, Ensign Revek, and two security officers handpicked by Vorak coalesced into existence next to him.  The irascible Tellarite had been fuming he hadn’t been able to accompany them to the surface of Pieris IV, but Captain Dart had wanted his expertise kept at the Tactical console in case any more Vaadwaur ships came through.  Commander Zheen was the logical choice to head their team.  Her authority to make the calls was superseded only by the Captain, and she’d headed up the Security department on her last post.

They’d spent days hiding in that asteroid and setting the Fresno back to some semblance of order.  They’d all pulled together to tear into the ship like hyenas on a carcass.  Sleepless, half mad, hammering panels and rerouting systems with skinned knuckles, stained and disheveled uniforms, wide frantic eyes.  Anything to keep the wounded girl breathing just a bit longer.

They’d all heard the message that some clever mind in the Fourth Fleet command structure had managed to get out, piercing the veil that had suddenly been draped across Federation Space.  Systems isolated.  No warp travel.  Communications suppressed.  Ships claiming to be a risen Vaadwaur Supremacy pouring out of the Underspace like bats out of hell to strike systems and then retreat.  It would seem that Starfleet’s shiny promises of unity had been shattered like a dropped wine glass by this mysteriously implacable foe.  Orders?  Write your own.  The authority for each isolated ship to handle the situation as they saw fit was handed over like an adult granting a toddler a neutronic grenade already primed and charged.

Pieris IV was their live grenade, and it had already gone off.  The Fresno had finally slunk away from licking her wounds in the dark belly of that asteroid, and their scans from orbit confirmed the wreckage of the colony.  But somewhere down there, past the shattered buildings and the glassed earth were folks who just maybe still clung to life by their fingernails.  The Vaadwaur hadn’t come through the Underspace for a simple meet-and-greet.  They’d left scorch marks.  The Fresno had been powerless to stop them.  All they could do was make their repairs and look on as the Vaadwaur materialized on their sensors like a hellish hallucination to descend on the colony of researchers.

And now that they’d vanished?  The Fresno had limped on in, they owed it to the poor souls of the damned to at least show up and clean up what they could.  This would not be heroism.  This was custodial work served up fresh with a side of guilt.  No good way out but through.

He was still sorting through his tangled mess of mental soul-rot when Thalissa’s hand shot up – sudden and absolute.  A snake’s hiss followed from her lips.  “Everybody down, find cover now!”

From their point of vantage, roughly half a kilometer of ugly, dust choked utility road stretched out to the mouth of the colony.  Thalissa’s decision to beam down to a point that had kept their distance?  A damned good call as it turned out, as they all gathered to huddle behind a rocky outcropping and stare at the half-dozen pack of wolves gathered outside the gates.

It would seem the Vaadwaur had left a contingent of soldiers behind, and Dren couldn’t take his eyes off of the bizarre way their necks flared out like the hood of a cobra.  They’d dug a wide trench off to the side of the entrance path, and while two stood watch the rest of them were tossing forms into the chasm with a careless ease.  For one rancid heartbeat, he clung to the desperate hope he was wrong.  But recognition crawled up his spine on filthy hands.  Those were the limp forms of colonists, being pitched in with all the ceremony of clearing out the refuse of spoiled meat behind a slaughterhouse.

The sharp click and sickly whine of a charged phaser snapped through the murk of his coiling horror.  He turned – slowly, cautiously – and caught sight of a man who looked like a character rejected from a B-grade holonovel.  The lunatic had them all staring down the barrel of a phaser as he rounded the rocks, clad in a brown grease smeared jumpsuit and a slanted cowboy hat perched atop a devil-may-care smirk.

“Well, look what the buzzards done spat back!  Ain’t you a sight for sore, sorry eyes!”

Thalissa’s phaser had been ready and locked on the stranger from the start of his approach, as far as Dren could tell.  But as both weapons were lowered, the only real thing that dropped was the temperature that hung in the air.  The look in her eyes was sheer acid, and Dren couldn’t tell if she were trying to decide whether to laugh or scream.

“Montana Colburn.  Of course.  Who else would it be?  The universe has a sick sense of humor, and you – you – are the damn punchline!”