Cerulean Stars - Chapter 125

Chapter 125 - Kidnapped Part 1

Stardate 48512.8 - July 7, 2371 - 04:07:40

“Honestly, I'd go for it.” Raine told Morn as the transporter finished returning them to one of the civilian access transporter platforms on Deep Space Nine's promenade.

The Lurian opened his mouth to speak and Raine held up a hand to forestall him from rehashing the argument again. “I know, you're a trader and she's at least pirate adjacent. But that doesn't mean she's a bad person.”

“And no, I'm not just saying that because I'm Starfleet and we're contractually required to be optimists.” She joked, stepping down from the transporter platform before glancing back over her shoulder to stare Morn in the eye. “I'm saying it because I know for a fact there are a bunch of Orions out there who are just normal everyday people doing normal everyday jobs like say, dancing.”

Morn closed his mouth as a contemplative look crept across his features.

“And if that's not enough.” Raine continued, pitching her voice suggestively. “Consider for a moment that she's a hot, flexible, redheaded Orion woman with enough stamina to dance for hours on end who's clearly into you. So even if it does turn out she's part of some long term plot, you will have a lot of fun getting to the point she springs it on you.”

With that she walked away, leaving the still quietly contemplating Lurian to ruminate on her words while she made the thankfully short trek back to her quarters.

As fun as the party had been, five hours of dealing with Grand Nagus Zek had left her feeling the distinct need for a hot shower to wash the gritty feeling of aerosolized beetle-snuff off her skin. After which she was probably going to pass out for the rest of the rest of the morning, because a nine hour party on top of an eight hour duty shift was pushing it even for her.

Arriving at the door, she tapped her access code into the wall panel and then strode through when it opened. Only to let out an immediate groan of annoyance upon seeing all the left to lay dishes.

“If I've told her once I've told her a thousand times.” Raine grumbled, kicking off her shoes before starting to gather up the various plates and glasses left scattered around the room. “Put your dishes back in the replicator when you're done with them.”

Grabbing the last of the dishes, a pair of half filled glasses of rootbeer from the coffee table, she hit the reclamation button on the replicator and then glanced over at the closed door of her daughter's bedroom.

“I bet Sisko doesn’t have to put up with this sort of thing.” She muttered to herself before turning away and heading to her room.

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Stardate 48512.98 - July 7, 2371 - 05:42:17

Someone shaking her arms slowly dragged Saya back to a groggy consciousness long enough for her to grumble something unkind and roll away from the annoyance so she could continue sleeping in peace.

“Saya!” Jake's voice hissed at her in a near whisper. “You need to get up! I think we might be in trouble!”

There was something about his words that felt important, but Saya couldn't find the energy to care given how warm and comfortable her bed was.

“Why do you always have to be like this?” Jake muttered in annoyance, and for a moment the only sound filling the room was a relaxing low level hum that nearly lulled back to sleep.

Something cold and wet splashed onto Saya causing a surge of adrenaline that had her shooting up only to smack her head on something hard and unyielding. “Gah!”

Rubbing her forehead, she opened her eyes to see whatever it was that was blocking her bed only to blink dumbly at the green metal bunk above her head. “What the heck!?”

“I think your dad kidnapped us.” Jake offered.

“No kidding.” Saya muttered in annoyance as the memory of Jake passing out and her Dad’s horrible attempt at reassurance came back to her. “I can’t believe she actually drugged us…”

“I can.” Jake grumbled under his breath.

“What do you mean by that!?” Saya demanded, carefully maneuvering herself around the bunk bed so she could properly glare at him.

“She’s a pirate.” Jake threw his arms up in clear exasperation. “Theft, kidnapping, murder, it's kind of what they do.”

“Not all of them.” Saya snapped defensively. “All dad does is scare rich tourists around Risa out of their money as part of various vacation packages.”

“She's kidnapping us right now!” Jake practically yelled.

Saya hopped off the bunk and poked the taller boy in the chest with her finger. “Kidnapping doesn't count, mom says it's a normal Orion cultural tradition.”

And everyone knew you weren't supposed to judge other species for their cultural weirdness. At least, unless that cultural weirdness made the species try to kill you. In which case according to her mom she was free to punch them in the face and explain how objecting to that kind of stupidity was part of her people's culture.

“Oh, come on.” Jake scoffed. “You can't really expect me to believe that?”

“It’s true!” Saya angrily retorted. “Mom used to read me stories about Warrior Queen Meda, and there was this really great one about how she broke with tradition and unkidnapped herself after her fiancé proved too incapable to do it himself.”

“Fine, whatever.” Jake sulked in a tone that Saya knew meant she had won. “Can you read Orion? Because everything here’s in it, and the computer won’t respond to voice commands.”

“Orion, Klingon, Romulan, Ferengi, and Bajoran.” Saya bragged proudly as she walked over to the control panel next to the door.

“Ferengi?” Jake repeated skeptically.

Saya shrugged. “Mom thinks it’s important to know for trade reasons.” She frowned at the panel. “All this says is security lockout.”

“I could have figured that out myself.” Jake groused before waving at the door. “Can't you, I don't know, psychic the door open?”

“Sure.” Saya lied, since the most she could currently do was slightly warp steel and nobody built their doors out of that. “If you want me to risk blowing out the hull. Or breaching an EPS conduit and flooding the room with plasma.”

Her mom had spent years hammering into her head the many many things that could go wrong from biotic field overextension on a starship or spacestation. And as much as she got the sense the older Asari had been exaggerating for effect, Saya really didn’t want to test her luck on some unknown ship if she could help it.

“What about you?” She countered with a frown. “I know you’ve been taking extra engineering lessons with O’Brien. So can’t you override the lock or something?”

Jake rolled his eyes. “I stopped that months ago. And all he showed me how to do was basic station maintenance work."

Saya scowled at him. “Why would you stop? Do you know what a recommendation from someone like Chief O'Brien would do for your chances of getting into Starfleet Academy?”

“Well, maybe I don’t want to go to Starfleet Academy.” Jake shot back. “Did you ever think of that, Saya?”

She hadn’t, mostly because all the alternatives involved being a boring normal person and that was pretty much the opposite of the Jake who less than a year ago had wanted to run off and rescue his dad from the Jem’Hadar.

“But Starfleet’s the best! You get to fly around the galaxy exploring anomalies and having crazy adventures.”

“Or get killed by the Borg.” Jake retorted angrily, only to let out an annoyed sigh and run a hand over his head. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

“It’s all right.” Saya offered softly, knowing his mom’s death was still a sore point.

Letting out a sigh of her own, she walked back to the bunkbed before plopping down on the far end away from the wet spot. “I guess all we can do is wait for Dad to show up and explain why she kidnapped us.”

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Stardate 48513.05 - July 7, 2371 - 06:19:04

Raine groggily reached around for her beeping communicator in its usual place on the nightstand before the memory of where she had left it caught up to her.

“Dammit.” She muttered, rolling over to the edge of the bed before leaning down to grab her dress from where she had kicked it off.

Holding the communicator, she glared balefully at the device for a moment before pinching it. “Brooks here.”

“Brooks?” Sisko's voice echoed out, the man sounding nearly as tired as she currently felt. “Did Jake stay over there last night?”

“N–” Raine began, only to pause as her brain started firing on more than its most minimal levels of power. “Maybe, give me a minute to check.”

Pulling her communicator off the dress, she dragged herself fully out of bed before heading towards the door, making sure to grab and don her robe so she wouldn't give the teen a show if it turned out he actually had spent the night.

Striding through the living room, she tapped the control next to the door to Saya's bedroom only to stare in numb surprise at the empty and completely made bed that confronted her.

Glancing over at the clock, the bluish white 06:20 confirmed that it was far too early in the morning for Saya to be up and about if she didn't otherwise have to.

“Jake's not here.” She finally replied as a small worry began to build. “And neither is Saya.”

Nearly a full second of silence followed her words before Sisko's voice returned. “Nog?”

“He was helping Quark with the grand opening.” Raine said, turning around and heading back to her room. “Give me a couple minutes and I'll check the security logs.”

Settling into the chair of her small desk, she opened up the small computer interface and input her passcode to connect it to the station's security network.

As part of the still ongoing security upgrades she had ordered the removal of pretty much all visual sensors from Starfleet living quarters. A painful loss, but it had been a choice between that and trusting they had found every Cardassian backdoor on the station. And well, she absolutely didn't.

Of course, there was still a lot of information to be found if you know where to look, and she absolutely did.

“Okay, looks like the last time the door to my quarters opened was at twenty one hundred hours thirty two minutes.”

Using that as a determining point she brought up the video feed from the corridor outside, only for her small worry to explode into mild panic when all the indicated timestamp showed was an empty corridor. She clamped that panic down as small suspicion formed, and she backtracked from that point on the video, noting that the corridor remained empty for nearly two hours before the last recorded point of exit.

“Someone looped the visual security feed in my area.” She reported over the still open line as she switched to the audio records. “Audio too.”

“I’ll contact Odo.” Sisko said.

“Now hold on.” Raine interrupted, digging into the older tertiary Cardassian systems. “Let me try the voice command logs.”

While Starfleet regulations required that particular sub-system auto-delete anything it picked up when a voice command was registered. The Cardassian’s had not held that same concern for user privacy, and it would have required rebuilding the entire voice command system from scratch to get rid of that particular feature.

So instead O’Brien had re-routed the files to a location that had to be manually erased during each weekly maintenance cycle.

It took less than a minute to access that file location and pull up the voice command logs from her quarters, at which point it was once again just a matter of tracking down the right timestamp.

“Yup.” She confirmed. “Looks like whoever it was didn’t think to take care of those.”

With that she activated the playback on the most recent log prior to her return this morning.

“Computer.” Jake’s voice issued out. “Two rootbeers and…”

“Can your replicator do anything Orion?” An older female voice that made Raine twitch in recognition called out.

“Only Ijube juice.” Saya’s voice answered.

“Blech.” The older voice exclaimed in disgust. “Just get me ice-water then.”

“An ice-water.” Jake finished as the log ended.

“Who was that with them?” Sisko asked.

“I can’t be entirely sure with just a voice log.” Raine admitted with a grimace as her mind raced to try and answer the question of just why that particular Orion might have been there. “But it sounded like Saya’s dad, Jellaa Tendi.”

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Author’s Notes: While not at Odo’s level, Raine actually is moderately good at the investigative portion of her job.