“Tell me you’ve got something,” demanded Commander Robert Drake before he was even through the threshold of their temporary offices aboard the USS Diligent.

“Your conversation with Lieutenant Commander Rivera went that well, huh?” the gregarious crime scene investigator chuckled. Chief Petty Officer Geoff Morrey had rolled with Commander Drake long enough to no longer be phased by his antics, recognizing they were just the way the avaricious prosecutor let off steam during the pursuit, right until he got his satisfaction when at last justice was served. And justice was almost always served when it came to their pursuits. Rarely did their prey ever get away.

“He’s insufferable,” Commander Drake huffed.

“Some say the same about you,” Chief Morrey laughed.

“Yeah, but really, that guy is a piece of work,” Commander Drake continued on his warpath. “How Gabriel Rivera ever graduated the Academy is beyond me, and how he’s still a Starfleet officer, let alone a department head, it just goes to show that our captains are poor judges of character, and that we hang onto people far too long. He should have been iced long ago.”

“But Robert, he’ll do better next time,” joked Chief Morrey. “Isn’t that what the COs always say?” They’d seen it time and time again, how every time they’d confront a commanding officer about their crew’s malfeasance, the CO would insist on giving them one more chance, right up to the point the failure was so bad they ended up in a tribunal, facing off against Commander Drake as he came for their pips. “I read Rivera’s file. He’s a clown who only joined Starfleet for the badge and the gun.”

“And that’s who Captain Saito thought would be best to quell tensions with an aggrieved colony?” sighed Commander Drake. Poor judgment, for sure, on the part of the USS Pacific Palisades‘ commanding officer.

“I mean Saito, and most of them really, you know how it is,” Chief Morrey shrugged. “These Calis, from the captain on down, they’re filled with the just-good-enoughs that didn’t quite flunk out, plus a few up-and-comers who realized Calis make an easy springboard to bigger things.” Though he had not reviewed the entire manifest, even just a skim of the security officers aboard the USS Pacific Palisades had already confirmed as much.

“If that’s how it is, we really shouldn’t keep any of them around,” Commander Drake lamented. “Just retire the whole lot, and all the officers on them.” It would have made far fewer problems for him to prosecute if Starfleet Operations was more willing to take out its own trash.

“Well, we still need someone to do maintenance on comms relays and resupplies of insignificant outposts, don’t we?” Chief Morrey laughed. “Would seem a waste to use the Kirks, Picards and Janeways of the galaxy for that.”

“Might’ve kept us out of some trouble though if we used them that way, the fools those three were,” Commander Drake shook his head with displeasure. He wasn’t even sure which of the three he despised the most. Probably Kirk for his blatant disregard for every norm in the book, but you couldn’t prosecute a dead guy – or more, you could, as he’d absolutely had done before, but it wasn’t as satisfying or as productive as it was to prosecute the living. “We’re getting off track though. Back to my original question. Have we got anything from the feeds yet?”

“Well, I’ve got some good news, and some not so good news.”

“Give it to me.”

Up on the monitor, Chief Morrey projected a surveillance feed. As he hit play, the pair watched silently as protestors and officers collided, the former slamming into the riot shields of the latter, and the latter pushing back hard with their shields and batons. Both shouted and jeered at each other all the while. The hate between them was palpable.

“This is disgusting,” Commander Drake shook his head. “We are Starfleet. Our officers should have calmed tension, not incited them further. Even if no one had been shot, Rivera and his men should still be put through remedial training in how to effectively manage civil disturbances.”

And then the phaser shots, three quick, successive bursts, leapt forth, the shooter in the back behind the Starfleet line somewhere.

“Woah, it wasn’t from the line,” Commander Drake observed. “It wasn’t pure panic, someone thrust to the ground who fired out of what they’d claim was self-defense.” That was the only defense he’d even managed to muster in his head, someone who’d found themselves in a fight for their rifle and panicked.

“No, it wasn’t,” Chief Morrey agreed as he paused the video, rolled it back a few frames, and zoomed in. There they saw the shooter, a Starfleet ensign in yellow, standing calmly with his rifle seated in his shoulder, his hands steady on the grip and his eyes focused down the sight. “This guy took his time and lined up the shots before he pulled the trigger. This was deliberate and, if I may, doesn’t he look mighty cool and collected?”

“Indeed,” nodded Commander Drake as he studied the ensign’s features. He was an unremarkable, fairly generic human male,  maybe twenty five years of age, clean shaven with short hair and a soft chin. “Who is he?”

“And that’s the not so good news,” Chief Morrey explained. “Facial recognition comes back as a negative on Pacific Palisades.”

“He’s not a member of the security team?”

“Nope, not a member of the crew at all, at least according to the computer,” Chief Morrey confirmed. “I triple checked, just to make sure. Nothing even close to a match.”

“What about Diligent?” Commander Drake asked. They had arrived in orbit just as the escalation began, and while a stretch, it was possible, albeit improbable, it was one of Lieutenant Commander Koh’s men.

“Negative on Diligent too,” Chief Morrey replied. “Shooting occurred at 1957 hours, and our first beam-ins, as recorded by the computer, didn’t happen until 1959 hours.” If they’d arrived a few minutes earlier, he knew, they might have stopped this entire travesty from even happening.

Commander Drake grew quiet, considering the implications. Lieutenant Commander Rivera was an idiot, and his people were idiots. He could totally have seen them doing it, given their behavior in the lead up, but if it wasn’t coming back as one of his men, there was another option. “Could this have been a false flag?”

“I had the same thought.”

“Were you able to track our shooter in the aftermath?”

“Unfortunately, the cameras lost him somewhere in the scuffle,” Chief Morrey sighed as he advanced the tape, showing the all-out melee that developed after the shooting. And indeed, the chief was right. Somewhere in amongst the chaos, they watched the ensign rush into the throng of bodies piling atop each other, and then he was gone from view. “I reviewed everything from after Koh’s team arrived too, and his face never reappeared, neither among the protestors, nor our people.”

“People don’t just disappear,” Commander Drake grumbled. “Keep at it.”

“I will,” nodded Chief Morrey. “I’m also working on getting a few other angles from the locals, who have a few cameras in the area, and I sent his face down to them to the local security office to see if they had anything on him.”

“And did they?”

“Nope,” Chief Morrey replied. “In fact, they said in fairly definitive terms that it’s no one from the colony.”

“Of course they did,” Commander Drake sighed. “But do you trust them? The meeting Admiral Reyes had earlier with Governor Erlic didn’t go particularly well, and Voral, the opposition leader, has quite a following. If this was a false flag, I wouldn’t rule out that their security office was involved – or at least aware.”