Battle of the Recovery Site

The starship Enterprise arrives in orbit of the Avatar world and attempts to scan the surface of the planet for lifesigns. Unfortunately, it runs into the same sensor difficulties and has to send surface landing parties to carry out a manual search for human survivors. Having determined to the best of their knowledge that the area that they were searching was for the most part uninhabited, they failed to take the precaution of disguising themselves and instead landed in force, reasoning that the only humans they were likely to run into were crewmembers of the downed NX-02. Not knowing that two local factions were already actively searching the area for Columbia crewmembers and debris: a large battalion dispatched to the area directly on the orders of ' ' to search for more prisoners to interrogate along with Erika Hernandez and most of her senior staff with the exception of her first officer, Commander Arya Naidu, and the airship Fearless, under the command of  attempting to make peaceful first contact with Starfleet personnel. Enterprise personnel fortunately made first contact with the crew of the Fearless, establishing a temporary alliance to fight off the Fire Nation soldiers that began attacking their positions soon after contact was made.

Reinforcements arrived soon after the commencement of hostilities with the Fire Nation when Columbia security personnel and MACOs under the command of MACO officer Major Mirza Shadi arrived along with Columbia's remaining shuttlepods, who though helpful were unable to make a significant impact against the overwhelming numerical superiority of the Fire Nation forces, forcing him to call in Enterprise and her superior weapons in to defeat the enemy. (Ashes of the Columbia)