Rosewood had set foot on a thousand dustbowls like Tau Mervana during his Starfleet career. The only thing that made this one stand out was the sheer population size, the result of the fall of the Romulan Star Empire and few tempting settlement options for peoples on the run. The Blackbird had wound its way through the traffic of the star system and into orbit, and descended a distance from the largest city, a sprawling metropolitan mess of temp and prefab shelters, buildings made from the remains of grounded ships, and a growing infrastructure of taller towers built of local sandstone. At this distance, far from the eyes of locals, warlords, or even Starfleet who might be curious of their coming, it was a long drive to their destination.

Dusty, rocky terrain rolled past the windows as the Nomad trundled away from the landed Blackbird and towards the distant towers of the city. In the front seat next to Tiran, who drove, Cassidy jabbed in frustration at the vehicle’s controls. ‘Comms here are completely shot,’ he grumbled. ‘Loads of interference. Can’t raise Verior.’ He pressed a finger to the earpiece that served as comms in the field. ‘Cassidy to Blackbird; find me this guy.’

There was a pause, then all of them could hear the voice of Lieutenant Falaris, chirpy and enthusiastic despite Cassidy’s grumbling. ‘You got it, Commander.’

‘Interference is something nasty -’

‘It’s not interference,’ she corrected. ‘The fighting’s damaged local comms infrastructure; towers, orbital satellites. If Verior doesn’t have powerful comms equipment of his own, or isn’t connected to anything directly, no wonder you can’t raise him.’

‘Do we have a meeting spot?’ asked Rosewood from the back.

‘No,’ grunted Cassidy. ‘Find him for me, Lieutenant.’

‘On it,’ Falaris said, still unperturbed. A minute passed. ‘We’ve got records of old local transmissions Verior’s made,’ she said at last. ‘And there’s one confirmed reliable, powerful piece of communications technology we have access codes for sitting in orbit: the Liberty. I’m bouncing a signal to see if I can connect.’

‘Don’t alert the Liberty that we’re here,’ Cassidy warned.

‘Aye, Commander, but there’s lots of surface-to-ship chatter I can hide in.’ Another few minutes, then, ‘Good news and bad news, sir.’

‘Someone clocked us?’

Rosewood rolled his eyes. Falaris had sounded terse, not concerned. ‘Great trust in your team.’

‘She ain’t my team yet,’ Cassidy growled, too low for Blackbird to pick up.

‘I’ve found him with a static-laden ping from a comms device,’ said Falaris. ‘But it’s close to a lot of other Starfleet comm chatter. The Liberty has a relief shelter in the city, and Verior’s there.’

Tiran sucked her teeth. ‘That’s not terrible.’

‘Unless he’s dead,’ offered Aryn, ‘and we’re picking up a signal on a communicator on a corpse they brought in.’

‘Or,’ said Rosewood, trying to inject a smattering of optimism, ‘he came in for supplies, protection, or minor medical aid, and instead of finding him in the middle of a war-torn city, we might be able to roll up to a shelter, put on our uniform jackets, and find him and Ireqh in the hour?’

Nobody looked like they believed that, but the truth turned out close enough for Rosewood to feel vindicated. What was not true was the time-frame; by the time the hour expired, they were only just trundling through the outskirts of the city, the broken up and blockaded roads delaying their approach.

Once they rolled through streets, Cassidy cast a wary eye through the windows at not just the locals, but the tall buildings, broken windows, barricaded doorways. ‘Fighting here stopped only recently,’ he rumbled. ‘Intel suggested the two biggest warlords were still competing for control of the city.’

Rosewood leaned over to take a look. Their vehicle, unmarked as it was, drew plenty of attention from rough-looking paramilitary types, primarily but not exclusively Romulans toting battered military-grade armaments in small clusters. Nobody stopped them or got in their way; anyone who looked ready for a fight stayed poised in case they acted, and other locals hurried out of their way.

‘Did Galcyon really get a ceasefire?’ he wondered aloud. ‘Holy shit.’

‘Like I said; it’s in their interests to let Starfleet drop resources, then hoover up once they’re gone,’ Cassidy spat. ‘But it gives us a window to get in and out without burning power packs.’

Or lives? Rosewood wondered, this time in silence.

Soon, the numbers in the streets grew more dense, with the proportion of locals rising, and the numbers of paramilitary types diminishing for crisp uniforms and clean boots: the Starfleet crewmembers of the USS Liberty who’d beamed down.

‘I’ve been monitoring chatter from the Liberty,’ came the explanation of Falaris from back on the Blackbird as they got further into the city and nearer the relief shelter. ‘From what I can piece together, the Liberty came here first for unrelated reasons; something to do with records from an old Star Empire facility. Captain Galcyon negotiated access, and once she saw the state of the planet, convinced the two warlords to enter a ten-day ceasefire so she could give humanitarian aid to the locals. They agreed. The shelter Verior’s in is the result. We’re on day six of the ceasefire.’

‘Far enough in that everyone feels like they’ve been well-behaved an age, so far from the end they don’t see the end yet,’ Cassidy mused. ‘Perfect time for maximum itchy trigger fingers.’

‘Or everyone’s fat and relieved still,’ Rosewood suggested.

‘Pull us up somewhere quiet out of sight of the shelter,’ Cassidy told Tiran, yet again ignoring Rosewood’s assessment. ‘The kid and me will go in on foot and in uniform to find Verior. You all keep out of sight.’

‘Maybe you should follow my lead,’ Rosewood suggested once he and Cassidy were crunching out of a narrow alleyway where Tiran had hidden the Nomad, and towards the prefab walls and buildings of the Liberty’s aid station. His uniform field jacket, bereft of pips to disguise them as lowly crewmen, felt hot under the blazing sun of Tau Mervana.

Cassidy’s scowl somehow deepened. ‘Why, you think I don’t know how to pretend to be polite? I outrank you, Kid; I’ve been doing the Starfleet dance for longer.’

‘I just think you’re out of practice.’

‘Whatever – fine, do the talking, but try to stink less of the Academy. We’re here to look like we fetch and carry, not like you’re about to corral a team to take into the city.’

‘Looking at the ping I picked out,’ came the voice of Falaris in Rosewood’s earpiece moments later, ‘you want the medical station, north side.’

Mercifully, the relief shelter was much like any other Rosewood had been to over his career: big and busy enough for them to be just another pair of crewmembers in the crowd. Locals lined up at manned supply posts to collect aid packages of food and essentials, and security officers looked more at them than a pair of nondescript, dusty crewman walking in from the city. Clearly, teams had been going into the streets to do recon or offer help, and nobody gave them a second glance.

Rosewood suppressed a smirk of satisfaction when his double-checking of directions from a passing lieutenant drew visible surprise from Cassidy, the big man looking over sharply as Rosewood filed the edges of the finest education from Alpha Centauri off his accent for something more nondescript. He waited until they were tromping across a dusty square towards the medical shelter before speaking up.

‘So…’ Rosewood glanced back at Cassidy and saw him brace for a dig. ‘Know who we’re looking for?’ he said instead.

Silence did its work. Cassidy grimaced anew. ‘I know Verior. Let’s find him.’

The medical shelter was rows upon rows of beds filled by locals and not nearly enough medical staff. Injuries looked mostly from weapons fire, and none of those were fresh. The fresher wounds looked, to Rosewood’s inexpert eye, crushes and head wounds, and he suspected plenty of the city’s buildings were crumbling dangerously after who knew how long sustained fighting.

Cassidy walked the rows, until making a meandering turn for a middle-aged Romulan with his arm in a sling, sat on a bunk. Rosewood caught the Romulan clock them before affecting a casual air as they approached. There was no need to pretend they weren’t talking, with medical staff from the Liberty all but ignoring them, but they didn’t need to look too interested.

‘Long time, no see,’ Verior mused, tired eyes looking across as Cassidy sat on the opposite bunk. ‘Should have known you’d come for pickup.’

‘Tell me the package is intact.’

‘The package is intact. I am, too; thanks for asking,’ Verior said wryly. ‘If you’d been here a day ago, we could have all met up together. But I had a little accident last night.’ He raised the injured arm. ‘Stairwell came down in my building. Well-meaning Starfleet brought me here.’

‘Is she okay?’ Rosewood pressed before he could stop himself.

Cassidy rolled his eyes and ignored the question to look at Verior. ‘Just tell me where, and we can complete the pickup.’

‘Still at my safe house. Enough food to keep her happy a week. She shouldn’t be showing her face to the world.’ Verior sighed. ‘Let me guess. I give you the location, you do pickup, I chow down on more top-quality painkillers here?’

‘And when this is over, you get paid.’

Verior frowned, so Rosewood leaned in and said, ‘We’ll be clear before the Liberty goes. I’m sure we can arrange for you to get ferried somewhere else when they leave.’

The frown deepened. ‘Are you kidding? I’m going to make a fortune in about a week. Once this planet goes back to eating itself alive, I’ve got jobs a-plenty.’ He’d already been squirrelling some of the Liberty’s supplies somewhere else to be sold on later, somehow, Rosewood realised.

Verior took a PADD Cassidy handed him, and thumbed in what looked like directions. ‘Stay alert, Starfleet,’ the old Romulan warned. ‘The package wasn’t sure she’d shaken her tail. If they knew where we were, I think we’d all be dead, but… be careful.’

‘Didn’t know you cared,’ said Cassidy with a humourless grin as he shoved the PADD back in his jacket and stood up.

‘I want to get paid. I don’t want my safe house getting blown up.’ Verior paused. ‘Even if nobody’s looking out for us, this ceasefire only goes so far, too. Arkaran and Korask might be the big fish who’ve agreed to it. But both sides have lieutenants who’ve got their own grievances. Who might want to shuffle off a big dog by undermining them and breaking the peace. Who might just be stupid.’

‘Now that, I believe.’ Cassidy sighed and looked over at Rosewood. ‘There’s a few constants in this galaxy: death, entropy, and the stupidity of people.’

‘Sure,’ said Rosewood, frustrated he couldn’t muster a disagreement. ‘But how come it’s never the useful kind of stupid, and this time is the murderous kind of stupid?’