Cerulean Stars - Chapter 117

Chapter 117

Stardate -298333.8 - August 31, 2024 - 19:54:02

The party had eventually petered out, after which Raine had dragged Jadzia back to her suite so they could work on their other project. Which of course had turned into introducing the Trill to Guinan mere moments after walking through the suite’s door.

“So this is your friend.” Guinan asked as she looked over Jadzia with a critical eye.

“Jadzia Dax.” The trill introduced herself, offering the El-Aurien woman a friendly smile. 

Guinan glanced between Raine and Jadzia for a moment before one of her eyebrows arched. “You two planning on hooking up? Cause if so we're going to have to set some noise level rules.”

Jadzia’s lips twitched slightly, and she grabbed Raine’s arm in a hug. “Don’t worry, we both know how to keep it down.”

Guinan studied Jadzia for a moment before grinning wryly and shaking her head in bemusement. ”You’re one of those kinds of friends then.”

Ignoring the noticeable feeling of Jadzia’s breasts on her arm, Raine considered letting the Trill have the win for a moment before deciding she’d already gotten enough of those at the party.

“Oh absolutely.” She returned with a grin. “Though the bigger problem there is that she prefers boring men while I gravitate towards dangerous women.”

The elbow in her side was both completely expected and totally worth it. Unfortunately however the smirk on Guinan's face at their byplay was anything but reassuring.

You know.” Guinan began. “I'm not surprised with the age difference. But don't worry Blue, I'm sure you'll understand once you get a couple centuries under your belt like the rest of us.”

Several questions found their way to the fore of Raine's mind at that, because she hadn't mentioned how limb Asari lived, or the fact that Jadzia Dax was technically a lot older than she looked.

Frowning slightly, Jadzia turned an odd look on the El-Aurien “How did you know I'm older than her?”

“You carry yourself like an old man.” Guinan returned with a slight smile. “And I know those spots.”

Which was telling in a number of ways given Raine knew that Trill was still about 20 years away from their own first contact.

“Anyways.” Guinan continued, giving an idle wave as she turned to the bedroom. “Have fun building your time machine or whatever, just don't involve me, cause chronitons give me a headache like you wouldn't believe.”

With those final words the El-Aurien departed, leaving the pair of them to stare at the now closed door for a moment before Jadzia finally released arm with a pout.

“I feel judged.” The Trill muttered.

“She's had a hard couple of years.” Raine explained, taking a moment to kick off her high heels before walking over to the fridge and pulling out a bottle of root beer. “There was apparently some giant thing with other time travelers and Q, which, well, it's Q, so you know how that goes.”

“Only what I've read in reports.” Jadzia admitted as she pulled off her own shoes and looked around the room. “So where's that phaser of yours? Because if I'm going to jury rig a high capacity data unit the subspace transceiver array and safety interlock would go a long way.” 

Popping off the bottle cap Raine took a long drink before motioning over to the closet. “In the safe. Didn’t want to risk someone coming in and stealing it.”

“You’re remarkably at home here.” Jadzia mused, eyeing the Asari oddly for a moment before shaking her head and heading over to plop down onto the couch.

That was more true than the Trill likely suspected, but thankfully Raine had a ready to go explanation for it from the heavily edited history she’d given various Federation interviewers. 

“The Asari Republic was culturally very similar to Earth during this time period.” She offered with a shrug. "A bit better in some places, a bit worse in others, but bump the technology up by about two hundred years and this city could just as easily be found on someplace like Illium as it is Earth.”

“And Illium would be?” Jadzia probed in a tone of thinly disguised interest.

“Regional commerce hub.” Raine explained, deciding she might as well throw the Trill a bone after three years of not mentioning much of anything about her fabricated backstory. “My family stopped there for business a couple times. Nice enough place so long as you have money, just don’t sign anything without having a lawyer on hand to read over it first.”

Setting the now empty rootbeer bottle down on the island, Raine grabbed the remote and flipped on the TV before walking over to the closet where the suite’s safe sat. Bending down, she quickly entered Saya’s six digit stardate of birth into the keypad before pulling out her type 1 phaser from where it was hidden under her balled up uniform.

“I still can’t believe you brought a hidden phaser to Earth.” Jadzia muttered as Raine handed the weapon over to her.

Crossing her arms, Raine let out an annoyed huff. “If Starfleet didn’t want security officers to bring along hidden weapons they could have just made it against regulations for us to do so instead of requiring we fill out a bunch of paperwork and get authorization from our commanding officers first.”

She was of course fully aware that the general expectation behind the whole thing was that the security officer’s commanding officer would never actually allow it outside of required circumstances. But like the unspoken realities of buffer time, there was always a certain give and take available between commanding officers who wanted to be out doing things and security officers who wanted to keep them safe.

Jadzia eyed her skeptically for a moment before shaking her head and letting out a sigh. “And does Benjamin know he authorized you to do that?”

“Of course.” Raine returned smugly. “It was part of the swap for not constantly nagging him about security regulations every time he wants to beam down for an away mission.”

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Stardate -298333.7 - August 31, 2024 - 20:46:45

The transport resolved itself with only an odd slightly stretched feeling to suggest it had been anything other than normal. And Nerys took a moment to look around the dimly lit alleyway they had materialized in before letting out a sigh of relief.

“Looks like we’re clear.” She told O’Brien.

Nodding, the Chief pulled his tricorder out of the satchel he’d stowed it in and began to point it around the area. 

“If this is around the area of where Commander Sisko and the others materialized, there should be a residual electrostatic charge I should be able to pick up.” He explained upon seeing her skeptical look.

“All right.” Nerys said, not seeing any reason to argue with the man as she reached up and tapped her combadge. “Kira to Sisko.”

Her communicator gave an unable to connect chirp.

“Kira to Brooks.” She tried again.

“Brooks here.” The recognizable voice of Starfleet’s chief of security responded. “And you have no idea how happy I am to hear your voice, Major.”

Given Raine had apparently been willing to spend 350 years waiting to meet them again, Nerys probably had a better idea about just how happy then the Asari suspected. But they could save talking about that for when they were all safely back on the Defiant.

“Are Sisko, Dax, and Bashir with you?” 

“Dax is.” Raine’s voice confirmed. “Sisko and Bashir are still missing though.”

That was both better than Nerys had hoped, and worse than she had feared as it meant they were actually going to have to hunt down the missing pair.

“Jadzia wants me to ask where you are?” Raine’s voice returned after a moment.

Nerys glanced around, spotting an obvious glowing sign with a rather tacky crustacean on it a few meters away. “An alleyway next to some place called the Crustacean .”

The communicator went quiet for a moment before Raine’s voice returned. “Okay, the net says that’s by the intersection of Pook and California. Can you wait for Jadzia to take a car down to pick you up? Or are people giving you the side eye like they’re about to call the police?”

Exchanging a quick look with O’Brien, Nerys pointed at his combadge. “The transporter’s set to automatically retrieve us in about two minutes. So we’re going to need to deactivate our combadges to avoid being transported back.”

“All right.” Raine confirmed. “Will you need us to do so too?”

O’Brien nodded.

“O’Brien says yes.” Nerys told her, eyeing the neon crab again before shaking her head.

“Got it.” Raine said. “Jadzia should be there in about thirty minutes, so keep your heads down. Brooks out.”

Quickly double tapping her communicator to deactivate the device, Nerys exchanged a glance with O’Brien before shooting the man a slightly uncomfortable grin. “I guess we wait.”

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Author’s Notes: Shorter chapter this time, but it needed a transition to get to the point of the two groups meeting up.