Darkened Stars - Chapter 30

Darkened Stars - Chapter 30

Stardate 29460.4 - June 17, 2352 - 12:09:12

The station supervisor was an older trill woman with short greying hair who, upon noticing Rain being escorted into her office, stood up from her desk and put on a scowl worthy of a Klingon mother-in-law who had just been told her son had married a flower gardener.

“So…” Rain put forward somewhat awkwardly after a moment of silence passed.

“Sit down Captain Falling Waters.” The Supervisor said as she pointed to the empty chair in front of her desk, and Rain felt her eyes ridge twitch slightly at the name.

“It's Rain.” She groused as she walked over and took a seat.

“I truly do not care.” The supervisor snapped, glaring down at Rain for a moment before sitting back down.

“I am Supervisor Brea, and you will tell me what you're still doing on my station.”

The look on Rain's face at the question was pure bemused confusion, because of all the potential questions, that one in particular hadn't even been on her list.

“Shopping to pass the time while my second officer see's what she can get for our cargo.” Rain said simply, after all, it wasn't like that was a secret or anything. “Also seeing if we get any bites on our recruitment notice.”

Brea narrowed her eyes at Rain, and the Asari fidgeted under her stare for a moment before the Trill spoke. “Do you really expect me to believe that?”

“Yes?” Rain said honestly. “I filed the papers, paid the fees, and we're literally using the stations com system as a relay point to do it all since that was one of the requirements for even accessing the planetary networks in the first place.”

She even had Lara keeping an eye on Jack to make sure the man wouldn't get bored and try to hack into the station's systems or something.

Brea slapped a hand down onto the surface of her desk. “Do you really expect me to believe that when you're working with the Commission?”

A sinking feeling of apprehension settled over Rain upon hearing the name, because she knew of only one Trill organization with that name, even if she'd never expected to encounter it in the mirror universe.

“I'm not working with anybody.” Rain protested, desperately hoping none of the scenarios her brain was now putting together turned out to be even remotely accurate. “I delivered a package to repay a favor to someone on Risa, that's it.”

“And yet you're still here.” Brea put forward in a tone that was more accusation than statement.

“Yes.” Rain said slowly. “Because we took on extra cargo to recoup costs and have a number of things we're hoping to get here that we couldn't on Risa.”

Like replicators, translation matrices, and crew.

“And I don't believe you.” Brea returned as her glare somehow intensified.

“Ask what's his name.” Rain said as she wracked her brain for the man's name. “Viral.”

“It was Vrilon.” Brea corrected in a deadpan that suggested she didn't particularly believe Rain's inability to remember his name. “And he's already returned to Trill with the stasis unit.”

The groan Rain let out wasn't even remotely feigned, as that was exactly the kind of information she hadn't wanted to hear.

“Why would you tell me that?” She whined. 

Brea scoffed. “Your continued attempts to pretend you know nothing does you no favors here.”

“Who's pretending!?” Rain snapped, beginning to feel like they were having two completely different conversations. “I don’t know anything! I don’t want to know anything! I literally have no interest in Trill outside of the already stated things!”

And a small interest in seeing what Jadzia had looked like as a kid, but that was immaterial to their current conversation.

“And yet you have already arranged a meeting with Verad Kalan.” Brea said, spitting out the name as if it had a particularly foul taste to it.

“Who?” Rain asked in confusion as she tried to figure out what about that name sounded so familiar to her, not exactly an easy task given how bad she tended to be with remembering names of people she’d only heard about once or twice.

Glaring at her, Brea began drumming her nails on the desk in a clear sign of impatience. “Playing dumb at this point isn’t doing you any favors Captain Falling Waters.”

“It’s not playing!” Rain returned in exasperation. “I literally have no idea who that might be. And the only one authorized to make appointments other than me is my second officer.”

Because she had taken one look at the general state of the station and vetoed trying out the prostitution thing here.

“But if she did so it was either because someone wanted to purchase our cargo of exotic seafood or was interested in filling the open position of medical officer or chief engineer.”

Two weeks of cramming had taught the Asari that when you could ignore most transport fees, being legitimate had the potential to be insanely profitable. So she had been very clear that they weren’t going to be doing crime unless crime came to them first. Though that did remind her that she should probably see if she could use the station's subspace communication array to pay her house tithe for her former plundering so as to avoid any trouble on that end.

“A rather thin excuse given Doctor Kalan’s known ties to the Commission.” Brea stated, crossing her arms and leaning back in her chair in a way that suggested this interrogation was likely to continue for some time unless she got whatever answer it was she actually wanted.

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Stardate 29460.8 - June 17, 2352 - 15:40:01

“Do I wish to know?” T'Lyn asked as Rain stepped off the lift with a look of near perpetual annoyance plastered on her face.

“Overly paranoid station supervisor.” The Asari confessed as she walked over to flop into the overly comfortable captain's chair, letting out a groan of pure relief the moment she did.

Three hours of Brea dancing around anything concrete as she tried to get Rain to admit to things she didn’t know had rapidly soured the Asari on doing anything more than sitting on her ship till they could sell their cargo and leave. 

“It was likely related to the purge.” T'Lyn offered in such an incidental tone that Rain almost missed the connotations of the statement.

“The what?” Rain growled out as she pulled herself back up into a sitting position to turn a glare at the Vulcan woman standing by one of the rear stations.

“The purge.” T’Lyn returned simply as she raised a single eyebrow at Rain. “Apparently during the tail end of the Empire one of Emperor Spock’s concubines was sent out to tour the Empire’s more distant holdings. An assassination attempt occurred on Trill during this, and Emperor Spock took such offense that he ordered a complete extermination of planets political leadership.”

Rain opened her mouth to complain about how that would have been good to know before they docked, only to close it and take a calming breath instead, as T’Lyn was absolutely not the type to hold such information back if she had actually known about it.

The truly annoying part though was that something about that story actually sounded vaguely familiar to her, which suggested either she’d read it somewhere while browsing history articles and forgot, or it had been a plot point in one or more bits of Star Trek’s expanded media.

On top of it all, when added together with the bit’s of context she had unfortunately gotten from Brea, she would be willing to bet several thousand darsek that ‘the purge’ had actually involved an extermination of most, if not all, of Trill’s symbionts. 

“Oh fuck me.”

They had just delivered a stasis unit to what was almost surely the remnants of Trill’s symbiosis commission, and while the Asari would love to think what had been inside was anything but a symbiote, she really couldn’t think of anything else it might have been.

“I don’t suppose you’ve already sold the cargo?” She asked T’Lyn hopefully.

“Yes.” The Vulcan woman admitted with a proud smile. “However it will be several days before the buyer can prepare the fifty five hundred kilograms of Itronok scales for the trade.”

“Itronok scales?” Rain inquired in confusion.

“Trill planetary currency is not accepted on the general exchange.” T’Lyn returned with an apologetic incline of her head. “And most of their people do not possess a general supply of Klingon or Cardassian currency. However the Itronok scales should sell for at least thirty percent more than what we would have gotten for the seafood on most planets in the quadrant due to their unique photorefractive properties.”

“Also.” She continued with a smile. “We have an interview with a Doctor Kalan tomorrow who seemed highly interested in taking the position of ship's medical officer.”

Letting her head flop back onto the chair, Rain groaned as she seriously considered whether it would be more or less trouble to just turn tail and head somewhere else.

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Author’s Notes: Important people don’t secretly ship harmless things a hundred lightyears Rain, you really should have expected something would happen.