The Enterprise investigates the recently radio-silent Gibbous, a Federation research outpost over the gas giant of Palus I, whose fluctuating gravity interferes with communication. The station appears dark, a retrofitted freighter docked to it. A preliminary scan shows only a handful of lifeforms aboard: one human and over two dozen Nausicaans. Pike springs into action and organizes a boarding party to give aid, while hailing the Nausicaan ship to order a ceasefire.
Commander Una Chin-Riley, Lt. Commander George Samuel Kirk, Dr. M’Benga and a handful of security officers beam aboard an unoccupied area of the station behind the Nausicaans and prepare to take them by surprise.
The bridge crew get no response from the Nausicaan ship, and while tracking the lifeforms aboard the station, find the Nausicaan numbers to be rapidly dropping.
The boarding party come upon piles of massacred Nausicaans and are ambushed by the station’s sole remaining occupant, a feral human male Aggressor, who kills the last of the Nausicaans and then lashes out at the boarding party. The Aggressor displays remarkable martial prowess and superhuman strength and reflexes. The boarding party attempts to subdue him, but he shrugs off stun blasts from phasers, batters the security officers and even overpowers the enhanced Una, before knocking out Kirk and abducting him as he seals himself inside the med bay. He uses Kirk’s Starfleet credentials to rapidly search through computer logs and records as the rest of the boarding party tries to break in. His search complete, the Aggressor destroys the console. When the boarding party breaches the door, they find Kirk unconscious but unharmed, on a medical bed and treated for his injuries, with the Aggressor is on his knees surrendering, uttering his first words: “Apologies, I believe I’m out of time.”
Back on the Enterprise, the Aggressor sits calmly in the brig. M’Benga checked Kirk over and found he was treated effectively, if crudely, and now has nothing more than a headache. The Aggressor gave treatment not unlike a combat medic from days gone by, and seemed to ignore the more immediate remedies available in the med bay — as if he didn’t know what they were. Uhura has sent a report to Starfleet Command, but Palus I’s gravity distortions make it impossible to know if they went through.
Pike gathers relevant bridge crew in his ready room and largely sits back and listens as they deliberate. Spock wonders what the Aggressor was searching for, but Kirk didn’t see, and now that the computer’s been destroyed, the away team securing the station can’t access his search history. Doctor M’Benga wants to run medical checks and psych eval on the Aggressor, but Nurse Chapel and Commander Una protest—sedatives and stun phasers proved ineffective on him, he proved he was of sound enough mind by making a glib remark as he surrendered and he broke his restraints once he was in his cell; there’s no safe way to put the Doctor in a room with him.
Spock suggests genetic augmentation as an explanation, which puts La’an on edge. He questions if Illyrian Augments ever showed similar capabilities, to which Una answers none that she knows of. That aside, Chapel adds, the scanners read him as purely human, not Illyrian. La’an tenses at where the conversation is going, which Pike notices.
Kirk is slightly more sympathetic, reasoning that the Aggressor didn’t kill the Federation staff nor Starfleet personnel on the station, the Nausicaans did. Technically, engaging the Nausicaans was self defense. Una then questions why he attacked a Starfleet boarding party, to which M’Benga counters he may not have known they were friendlies—his understanding of medical treatment seemed outdated, as did his attire: antiquated Earth military fatigues. Spock says that time travel, while it has happened before, doesn’t fit as a theory, lacking the signs associated with it.
La’an breathes uneasily and meets Pike’s eye line, he gives her a subtle nod and she excuses herself. The crew want to protest her leaving, but Pike stands up and says it might be best to just ask the Aggressor himself.
Meanwhile, as the Federation gets closer to the station to dock and send over relief crews, the Nausicaan ship engages a booby trap set in advance, latching onto the starship without their notice.
Pike enters the brig with La’an and pulls a table up to the cell, half on his side, half through the force field within the cell. Though usually cordial and diplomatic, Pike puts on his stalwart navy man side, recognizing the Aggressor is obvious military and may respond better to such an approach. The Aggressor is calm and respectful, but evasive and cagey. He gives his name — Rylond Visser, his rank of Major General and serial number, like a captive soldier. Pike says he needn’t stand on such ceremony, he isn’t a prisoner of war, to which Visser notes he’s being held in a brig on a warship. Pike corrects him that the Enterprise isn’t a warship, and Visser then questions why it’s so heavily armed. Pike is taken aback by his ignorance, and asks how he came to be on this station. Visser says he was simply adrift in space after his voyage went wrong, his ship had a catastrophic malfunction which he could only salvage by detaching part of the ship, the one with him inside. He sealed himself in an escape pod and detached from his ship. Pike questions the story — if Visser were on a starship, he’d be knowledgable of Starfleet protocol at least by osmosis. Visser says he’s a soldier, he’s been on many deployments and learned not to ask questions. Pike is again confused, as there ARE no militaries of Earth any longer, thus no one to employ him as a soldier. La’an breaks rank and interrupts the Captain, saying she might have an idea—Visser asks who this lesser is to dare to interrupt the Captain. Pike defends her, but La’an answers “My name is La’an Noonien Singh.” Visser’s eyes widen. Pike and La’an both notice, and Pike presses him.
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Visser is one of the Augments of the Eugenic Wars.
While Khan was the great and wise ruler who reigned over a peaceful dictatorship, that peace had to be upheld by someone, and that someone was Visser—he led the secret police/death squads of the Augments who ruled a quarter of Earth, did the dirty work so that men like Khan could be benevolent tyrants. When the tide of the war changed, he was one of the 72 aboard the Botany Bay, but as a soldier and protector, his cryotube was designed to wake him up in the event of emergency. It woke him up and he saved the ship, at the cost of his own marooning. The Nausicaans picked him up, thinking his pod was space debris to pick over, and when they attacked the space station, he was freed. Pike questions him extensively, and the two have a long conversation about hierarchy and “superiority.” Visser argues that Starfleet isn’t so different from the Augments. They still believe in rank and command structure, and Pike has hundreds of subordinates who follow his orders because he is the most fit to lead—Pike counters that he doesn’t know everything and can’t be everywhere, the importance of a crew is to compensate where others lack, being their “superior” doesn’t make him “superior.” Philosophy aside, Pike acknowledges that Visser is a war criminal, to which Visser argues he’s as guilty as Pike would be for engaging enemy combatants during wartime, stating that the Federation’s decadence and distance from violence has made them naive. Visser says peacetime NEEDS men like him to make ugly choices so the “heroes” don’t have to.
The booby trap is sprung, a directed EMP cripples the Enterprise’s weapons and impulse power just as a Nausicaan battleship emerges from Warp. The bridge crew learns this station has been derelict for years now, but its communications seldom go out because of the gravity of the gas giant scrambling their signal. The Nausicaans have used it as bait to lure in ships to raid.
Power is unstable across the ship, Pike is called to the bridge. Visser tells Pike he knows the way of war, he knows a trap when he sees one. He appeals to the Captain: they can try to repair the ship and all die, they can send a handful of officers onto the Nausicaan ship on a suicide mission unlikely to work anyway, or Pike can risk only one life, and a life that isn’t even his to protect: beam Visser over to the Nausicaan ship so he can do what he does best, let him make the ugly choices while Pike remains clean and the ship escapes. Holding to his principles, Pike refuses and heads for the bridge, but La’an stays behind.
The Enterprise’s shields are holding but not for long, if they can’t run and can’t fire back it’s only a matter of time. Pike wants to give his engineering crew time to undo the booby trap, so he uncouples from the station and lets the gas giant pull the Enterprise into orbit, letting momentum carry them as the Nausicaans pursue.
La’an, ashamed of her lineage but feeling Visser is right, releases him. They sneak into the Transporter Bay and La’an prepares to beam him over, Visser’s parting words a genuine “Khan would be proud of you.” Before he’s beamed over, Visser grabs La’an in a chokehold and uses her as a human shield against security officers breaching the Transport Bay, then throws her into them as he’s beamed out — her alibi as a hostage is established. Now on the Nausicaan ship, Visser slaughters his way through the crew.
The Nausicaans cease fire, granting the Enterprise enough time to counter the booby trap and restore their power—but before they can retaliate, the Nausicaan ship disappears beneath the gas clouds. Pike is glad to be out of danger, but furious to hear Visser escaped. He asks La’an how it happened, she says the unstable power on the ship disabled the force field in the brig, allowing him to take her hostage and force her to activate the transporter. The security officers corroborate the story, but Pike suspects. In a theoretical, he says if she had done it, he would be disappointed in her, but also himself, for facing a no-win scenario and denying a winning strategy because he didn’t want to stoop to the level of a killer and conqueror. Had Visser not beamed over to assault the Nausicaan vessel, the Enterprise would’ve been lost and many other ships may have suffered the same fate.
It’s a somber close on the Enterprise. Pike not only laments Visser being vindicated, but now he lives with the guilt and fear that he may still be alive—and the Enterprise just cut him loose.