Cerulean Stars - Chapter 131

Chapter 131 - Infiltration Part 1

Stardate 48533.3 - July 14,  2371 - 15:42:28

As a planet Orion wasn't anything particularly impressive, sulfur heavy oceans, beaches filled with sharp volcanic rock instead of sand, the occasional bout of acidic rain, and temperatures that would quickly leave an Asari miserable if they didn't follow a less is more style of dress.

The Tendi family castle was about a dozen kilometers out from a medium sized hub city by the name of Nazaru with a population of a little over seven-hundred thousand. Which had been their disguised shuttles actual destination since the Tendi's castle had enough hidden defensive emplacements around it to take on a Galaxy class.

It also just so happened to be the city where the Romulan spy was supposedly being held. A coincidence that left Raine deeply skeptical about pretty much all of the information T'Rul had given them on the Romulan Star Empires requirement for using their cloaking device to slip into Orion space.

“Are you sure it's safe to leave the shuttle here?” Bashir asked with a worried glance back towards the questionable looking landing pad they'd parked their disguised shuttle on.

“Nope.” Raine admitted, adjusting the faux leather halter top she had stuffed herself into. “But the database has been wiped, the weapons sabotaged, and there's only enough anti-matter left in the tank to get her a light year at most.”

Which basically meant they could write the shuttle off without worry. Though of course, if that happened it would mean they would need to either find their own way off world, or contact the Defiant for an emergency pickup.

“Shouldn’t we be– Owe!”

Bashir turned a hurt look to Sera as he gingerly rubbed the arm she had just punched.

“Don’t be a whiner.” The small woman said. “The boss knows what she’s doing.”

At 178 centimeters Raine was towards the upper end of the height scale for Orion women. Add in the leather clothing, sword, and half dozen daggers strapped to various places on her body. And by Orion standards she knew she fit firmly into the type of archetype that most Orions knew better then to fuck with.

All of which, along with the obvious fact of her gender, was a big part of why Raine was playing the part of the boss for this particular infiltration.

Sisko and Sera similarly held the looks of someone a savvy Orion would know better than mess with. The former because he had the well muscled build of someone who knew they could lay you out with a single punch. And the latter because the small woman was carrying three times the number of daggers as the Asari herself.

Hence the pair playing the parts of the muscle that most Orion’s of note tended to surround themselves with in one way or another.

Unfortunately however there was an odd man out in their group, because as an Orion Bashir looked like the skinny little brother one of his much more dangerous siblings was being forced to drag around on jobs by their mother.

“That for us?” Sisko asked, ignoring the byplay between the two junior officers to stare at the hovervan that had just pulled up to the curb.

Raine pulled a nondescript padd out of the satchel slung over her shoulder and took a moment to connect it to the local network. “The ID matches.” She motioned towards the vehicle. “Sera, you know what to do.”

With a nod the small woman walked up to the rented vehicle and pulled out what, on the surface, appeared to be a Ferengi hand scanner. Doing a slow circle of the vehicle, she returned to her starting point before looking towards them and making a so-so motion with one of her hands.

That was probably the best they could expect under the circumstances, so Raine gave the others a permissive nod before using her padd to transmit the code-string that she'd been sent when arranging the rental.

The hovervan beeped to tell them its doors were now unlocked, and they piled in with Raine, as the only one who read Orion, taking the driver's seat.

“I hacked the tracking and recording devices.” Sera said the moment the last of the doors shut. “They read as mid grade civilian though, so I'd say it was probably just the rental company spying on their customers.”

“Did Starfleet Intelligence give you access to one of their accounts for this?” Bashir inquired with a frown.

“I’m using my own for this.” Raine answered as she took a moment to familiarize herself with the hovervan's control layout.

“You’re own?” Bashir repeated in surprise.

“My people were extremely mercantile." Raine told him, tapping the control sequence to start the engine. “And in my drive to uphold that tradition I have a number of accounts scattered across various worlds.”

The one on Orion had mainly been for some uncertain future desire to visit the planet, though till now she’d mostly used it to buy smutty pirate themed holo-novels.

“I’m surprised you were able to set this up so quickly.” Sisko offered in a questioning tone.

Pulling back on the control yoke, Raine gently brought the hovervan into the air before turning the vehicle towards the edge of the city hotel she’d arranged for their staging location.

“The downside of a pirate based government, so long as you do things the ‘right’ way nobody asks questions.”

And thanks to years of dealing with Saya’s father, Raine knew how to do things in a way that left Orion civilian’s shuffling her into that same ‘not my business’ category as they did everything else to do with various criminal enterprises.

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“Mutiny!” D'Vana exclaimed happily as she revealed the cards in her hand.

“Not this time.” Saya grinned as she revealed her own hand. “Constalations High!”

D’Vana pouted. “That’s four to three, your lead.”

“Told you I was good.” Saya bragged smugly as her cousin gathered up the cards and began shuffling. “Mom always kept a deck of cards around for anomalous power outages, and we learned how to play Pirate’s Bounty from dad on one of our Risa trips.”

“You’ve been to Risa!?” D’Vana gasped, sounding scandalized in a way that left Saya slightly confused. “I thought that planet was just for…” She made an odd face. “You know.”

Saya’s eyes widened in understanding and she had to hold back a laugh. “Na, the Risian’s are all about,” She made finger quotes. “finding happiness alongside the happiness of others. So there’s stuff for pretty much everyone to do there. And if by some chance there isn't, there are people whose literal job is to figure out what you would actually like to do.”

“That sounds neat.” D’Vana offered as she began dealing the cards. “Our last vacation got cut short by a slave revolt, which, duh, is why only idiots keep unwilling slaves in this day and age. But of course someone forgot to tell the Heilen family that.”

That name sounded oddly familiar to Saya, and she wracked her memory for a second before the realization hit. “Didn’t they sell a slave planet to Starfleet once?”

“Like a hundred years ago.” D’Vana groused. “But you’d think it was yesterday with how often Verat likes to bring it up.” She seemed to notice Saya’s look of confusion at the name. “Verat’s the current prime daughter of the Heilen family. She’s a complete and utter diva so nobody really likes her, but you know how it is, can’t throw a dagger at her without starting a war between families.”

The totally normal way her cousin said the last part threw Saya for a bit of a loop. And while she really wanted to ask just what so bad about the girl that it would justify throwing a dagger at her. Her past few hours of experience with D’Vana had taught that sort of question was likely to lead down a wormhole that would leave her with more questions than answers.

Letting the conversation trail off for a moment, Saya lifted up her cards only to have to hold back a frown at the completely useless hand she had been dealt.

“I’ve kind of been putting off asking.” Saya began as she pulled out the worst of the lot and tossed it onto the center of the table between them. “But did dad tell you why we’re here?”

Sliding a new card towards her D’Vana gave a nod. “Yup! She said you wanted to do the whole challenge thing for your birthday tomorrow.” She offered the Asari a happy grin. “Which is really cool, cause ever since I inherited the title from Aunt D’Rana nobody wants to fight me anymore cause they all think I’ll have them flayed if they don’t give an adequate showing.”

From her cousin’s tone it was clear she considered that fear a stupid one. Which was something of a relief to Saya given she was rapidly coming to like the other girl and didn’t want to think of her as someone who would support that sort of thing.

“And don’t worry.” D’Vana continued cheerily. "I’ll go as easy as I can on you.”

Saya felt her eye ridge twitch at the blatant dismissal. “You aren’t worried about me winning?”

“Not really.” D’Vana returned with a guileless shrug. “I mean…” A brief look of compilation seemed to flash across her features. “It would be kind of neat if you could since then I could hand the title over. But Aunt D’Rana would know if I threw the fight, and then she’d invalidate it and throw both of us in the slime dungeon.”

D’Vana leaned across the table to whisper conspiratorily to her. “You really don’t want to end up in the slime dungeon.”

That was a given, but Saya was still stuck on the other part of the topic at hand. “I’m pretty good with a sword, you know. So I might be able to win without you throwing.”

An awkward look appeared on D’Vana’s face. “I guess…” Her eyes went wide. “Oh! Do you know some super secret Starfleet martial art or something?”

Saya crossed her arms and pouted at the memory that brought up. “No, mom says I’m not allowed to start learning that till I’m sixteen.”

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Author’s Notes: Sorry for the short chapter today, but had a bit of a headach this weekend so that cut into my writing time.