Cerulean Stars - Chapter 133

Chapter 133 - The Preliminary Job

Stardate 48534.5 - July 15, 2371 - 02:13:12

“And that's the acceleration control.” Raine finished, pointing to the final control on the hover vans wheel. 

The general humanoid form shared by most species in the galaxy meant that the design of certain basic technologies tended to follow somewhat recognizable patterns. So running Sisko through the basics of driving the hover-van had only taken about twenty minutes.

“I can't get used to this.” Sisko sighed.

“Sir?” Raine questioned, getting the distinct sense he was talking about something other than the van's controls.

“Having to sit back.” Sisko explained, motioning to the passenger seat he was currently sitting in as if it was a metaphorical representation of his problem. “I keep feeling I should be the one taking the lead on this.”

He sighed again, slumping slightly in his seat. “Not the least because it’s Jake that’s in trouble.”

She sighed, the feeling of having to have this particular talk with the man who was one of her inspirations for what a Starfleet officer should be, enough to leave the Asari conflicted in several odd ways. “I know most Starfleet career tracks leave you constantly busy. But security's not usually like that. During normal operations on a starship it can be days, even weeks of sitting around doing nothing. Then all of a sudden that red alert goes off, and we have to be instantly on the job.”

That downtime was in fact a big part of why so many Starfleet captains chose to combine the tactical and security positions together. Though her own constantly mounting workload was a good example of why that only really worked well for starship based postings.

“As you can probably imagine, it's often hard to get new graduates to accept that way of doing things. They always seem to think that since the security teams have all that free time they’re not taking the job seriously enough. So they spend that time training, or doing extra work for other divisions.”

Not her of course, but she'd had several advantages others didn't.

“But then the ship gets invaded by alien raiders from a temporarily adjacent layer of subspace. And they’re either too tired to fight them off properly, or are out of position and have to fight their way to the nearest armory with only whatever improvised melee weapon they can get their hands on.”

Figuring out that most Captains would authorize security officers to carry around an off duty type-1 was a thing that tended to come with time.

“The general lesson in all that, is that a person can only do so much and sometimes needs to just sit back and let others do what they’re good at.”

It was clear from the almost tired look on his face that Sisko had heard something similar before, which wasn’t exactly a surprise given the Asari knew various command tests tended to include similar sorts of lessons. But like the lesson about why command officers shouldn’t be the first to go down on away missions, it tended to be something that most command level Starfleet officers just didn’t internalize.

“So you’re saying I should sit back and let you handle everything?” Sisko questioned with a tone that suggested he didn’t think much of that particular idea.

“Nope.” Raine shook her head as a wry grin crept up the corner of her lips. “I’m saying you need to let me handle running the ship so you’re ready to run out and punch people in the face when that red alert goes off.”

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Once, years ago when Raine was a teenager and experimenting with her barrier, she had asked herself the question of just what would happen if she purposefully tried to push her barrier so it covered the bottom of her feet. The resulting effect had destroyed her shoes, and created a brief zone under her feet of what was effectively zero friction.

After she had picked herself up from the inevitable self induced pratfall, she had had the bright idea to try and use a sustained barrier around her feet as a pair of hoverskates. And it had worked, sort of. So she spent a fun few hours zooming around the street, and then had to explain to the nice security officers how she had unintentionally severed several below street datalines.

Not so coincidentally, this was also when Raine first discovered that the gravitational effects of sustained biotic fields tended to extend past both their visible area of effect, and that of her weird dark energy sense.

That had been annoying, and probably would have resulted in her biotics being entirely banned on any sort of starship or space station if it wasn’t for the near omnipresent existence of structural integrity fields. Which could limit the aftereffects of gravitational overlap to low level damage that was just annoying to repair instead of immediately catastrophic.

Interestingly however, all of that had led to her discovering what she was pretty sure would have been known in the Mass Effect universe, as the Warp ability. Something her mother had categorically banned her from using on another living being after her first test of it had unintentionally pulped the tree she was using as a test dummy. 

A wall of a prison however was not a person, which meant she had absolutely no reason to restrain herself when it came to options for blasting her way through.

“All clear.” Sera announced from the entrance of the alleyway where she was keeping watch.

Nodding, Raine got into a forward stance and cupped her hands together. A necessary focusing act given how rarely she practiced with the Warp ability.

Most worlds with an imprisonment based legal system used the same sort of ‘wall around a compound’ design for their prisons that Earth had used in its own 20th and 21st centuries. Those that didn't tended to put their prisons on places like frozen moons or asteroids where escape required some sort of outside force assisting.

Oddly the Orions did neither, their prisons were regular reinforced buildings where the main thing keeping the prisoners inside from escaping, other than the handful of guards, was the knowledge that if they did so the next time they showed up on anybody's scanners they would be sold off as a reconditioned slave to a non-Orion.

She thrust her hands forward, causing the layered biotic energy cupped within to shoot forward and impact the metal wall in front of her as she threw a hemispherical barrier up to contain the backblast.

The sound of screeching metal echoed out as conflicting gravimetric fields warped the wall outwards in a manner not unlike a shaped explosive charge. 

She dropped the barrier the moment warp winked out, rushing through the new entrance and into the wooden sailing ship themed interior of the cell block.

A quick glance around showed six iron barred cells, three to each side of the long hall, with only a single guard on a wooden stool staring dumbfounded at her.

“What the– Gah!”

He fell backwards with a scream before he could finish as a throwing knife lodged itself in his shoulder. Potentially dangerous for a human, but easily survivable for an Orion given their blood's extraordinarily quick clotting.

She stalked over to the guard, taking note as she did that only two of the cells were actually filled.

“You bitch!” He yelled, grabbing for the knife in his shoulder only to scream out again as her stiletto heel came down on his other shoulder and put a stop to that.

“None of that now.” Raine warned with a teasing tone, making sure to use actual Orion for her words. “Just be a good boy and tell me where the keys are, and maybe you'll actually survive this.”

She was channeling her inner supervillainess for this a bit more than was probably necessary, but Orions tended to be over the top like that as a standard so hopefully it wouldn't seem too out of place for the man below her boot.

“Ha!” The guard gave a pained laugh, his eyes flicking to the pouch on his belt in such an obvious tell that the Asari was left feeling a momentary pang of sympathy for whoever he worked for. “Mistress Vanea is going to ki–”

The snap kick connected with the guard's head before he could finish his threat, sending him into the realms of unconsciousness. Reaching down to his waist, she opened the pouch there and after a few seconds of digging around came up with an oddly complex looking set of metal keys on a large ring.

“All right.” Raine announced as she looked between the two filled cells. “We have maybe a minute or two before more guards show up, so which one of you is Neeva?”

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All three of the disguised humans were staring at the pair of Orions as they climbed into the back of the van with varying looks of confusion.

“She refused to come unless we brought him with.” Raine groused as the door shut and Sisko hit the acceleration control to send the van speeding away from the prison. “And there wasn’t any time to argue."

“He’s my fiancé!” The female of the pair protested.

Neeva Benara was almost the very stereotype of an Orion woman. Average height, wavy dark hair down to her shoulders, and swimsuit model curves all packed into an outfit that practically screamed bellydancer.

Her supposed fiancé on the other hand, C’huck Rigarm, looked like a generic Hollywood IT guy who for some reason had decided to cosplay as an Orion version of Aladdin.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” C’huck asked with a worried glance out the van’s tinted rear window. “Worst case it would only have been seven years to pay off our contracts, and then we could have been together without having to be on the run with an escape hanging over our heads.”

The urge to dig into that statement to try and find out just what was actually going on with the pair was high. However that risked leading them down a rabbit hole Raine really didn’t want to dive into until after they had rescued Saya and Jake from whatever bit of stupidity Jellaa had dragged them into.

“We’re being paid to get little Miss Benara off world.” She interjected before the guy could get any bright ideas about trying to do things the proper Orion way. “Your choices are between being either awake or unconscious for that.”

“Who hired you?” Neeva asked with a frown. “My father?”

“Lady Rolotha.” Sisko answered before Raine could make up anything. And she turned a questioning look to the man only to get a slight head shake telling her not to ask in return. “She said to think of it as a thank you for helping to acquire those emerald finches for her aviary.”

Raine felt her eyeridge inch upwards slightly as the sudden suspicion hit that Sisko’s words were part of some kind of code phase. An idea further backed by the interesting series of expressions the Asari caught briefly flashing across Neeva’s face in the reflection of the passenger side window.

“I suppose there’s nothing to argue with then.” Neeva agreed in a somewhat weak tone. 

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Author’s Notes: Part of the agreement Sisko made with the Romulans was keeping certain things about what’s going on a secret from others. Which, well, I suppose isn’t really that much of a surprise given we’re talking about the Romulans.