Michael Abberton

Nictos stroked his whiskers with his free paw, twitching, his tail lashing back and forth across the stone floor, unable to take his eyes of the closed door in front of him. The package was uncomfortably bulky and heavy for him, cube shaped, hard to hold with his elongated paws, but at the same time he was terrified of dropping it. He kept glancing at the hulking male Orion guard whilst trying to avoid catching his eye at all costs. The guard also looked nervous, constantly fastening and unfastening the strap across the top of his disruptor holster. 

Nictos looked at the chronometer on his wrist. The time display told him it was 23:54, Federation Standard. The bio read out told him that his blood pressure and heart rate were dangerously high. 

Suddenly there was a hydraulic hiss and the massive stone door began to slide open. Nictos had to stop himself leaping forward through the slowly opening gap. His move was detected by the guard who extended a large hand. “Wait,” the guard said firmly. Nictos nodded and bowed repeatedly, now grasping the package in his left paw with both paws, in front of his breastbone, like a shield. 

After what seemed an age, the hissing stopped. Nictos could now see a lavishly decorated office, decorated in a style he recognised as belonging to one of the ancient nation states on Terra. His colour perception was different to that of humans, and so the colours of the lush carpet, drapes and furniture were lost to him. On the left of the desk stood a young Andorian male, wearing some sort of official looking robes and holding a large padd. Behind the desk, looking up from a computer display, was the person he was here to see. 

“Go,” said the guard. Nictos skipped forward and scurried across to stand in front of the desk. The way his claws snagged in the carpet was very unpleasant and so his gait was more like a series of hops than a run. He could hear the door beginning to close behind him. Looking around, it seemed that it was the only possible route if he needed to escape. 

The door rumbled closed with a thump that Nictos felt through the floor. He jumped again. 

The Andorian looked at him disdainfully. “You have it? Is that it?” he said, pointing with a blue manicured finger. 

“Yes… yes… just as you asked. Here…” Nictos stepped forward to hand it to the person behind the desk but was halted by a sudden gesture. 

“Put it on the ground,” the Andorian said. Nictos complied, gingerly lowering the package to the floor. It was a box, a cube 50cm square, wrapped in decorated paper. Again the design of the paper was lost on Nictos’ eyes. 

“I… I’m here on time, as…as you asked,” he squeaked. 

The Andorian looked at the person behind the desk, who nodded once. 

“Go,” he said, “You will be paid in the usual way.”

Nictos gasped with relief and bowed deeply – not something his species was accustomed to but he knew it was a sign of respect in some cultures. He turned and skipped towards the door – which was not opening. Just as he was about to turn to find out why, a disruptor beam hit him squarely in the back, and he screamed as his body boiled into atoms. 

The Andorian’s antennae twitched involuntarily, surprised by the murder he had just witnessed. 

“He was late,” said Philippa Georgiou, dropping the pistol into an open desk drawer and nodding at the computer display, which showed 00:01. 

Phillipa Georgiou, once Emperor of the Terran Galactic Empire and in another life, a decorated starship captain, sat back in her desk chair. Not a throne, not  a symbol of command, just a chair, fitted to her body by a Vulcan chiropractor, as years of combat and training were taking their toll on her lower back. Georgiou, relegated to a not entirely insignificant crime boss on an entirely insignificant border colony, living comfortably under an alias. Comfortable, a word that a part of her still despised and distrusted. Comfortable – but unfulfilled. 

“Well, Sebeth, let’s see if I wasn’t too hasty. Scan it.” 

Sebeth put down his pad and pulled a tricorder out of a pocket in his robes, and scanned the box. It showed the paper, paper composite box, some packaging to protect the contents, and an electronic device, as he had been told to expect. There were no power emissions he could detect, and nothing hazardous to his or any other major humanoid species. 

“Looks fine,” he said, “same as the security scan at the door.” 

“Put it on the desk,” she said, and so he did, placing the box, gaudily wrapped in red and gold, in the centre of the desk in front of of his boss. Georgiou reached for the box. Without warning, there was a flash of energy between her hands and the sides of the box. Sebeth recoiled, covering his eyes with his arm. 

“Oh NO!” shouted Georgiou, as she and the box disappeared in the golden glow of a transporter beam.