Darkened Stars - Chapter 28

Darkened Stars - Chapter 28

Stardate 29443.9 - June 11, 2352 - 11:13:03

“You can’t be serious.” Rain said as she stared down the Vulcan woman standing on the other side of her desk.

“Completely.” T’Lyn returned simply. “While Lara does indeed possess a rather eclectic collection of skills, they mostly seem to revolve around things she’s picked up to assist her escort activities. Citrine and Nirel however have all the skills you would expect from a pair with their upbringing.”

Rain sighed, well aware of that particular problem with the pair. “I know, and I stand by my previous statement that if anyone actually wants to have sex for currency that’s their choice. But the idea of having a direct hand in that makes me feel dirty.”

Not the least because it left her feeling uncomfortably close to Gemma, and she’d run away from that for some very good reasons.

“Are you aware of what benefits a madame brings to women who sell themselves?” T'Lyn inquired, arching a single eyebrow as she stared judgmentally at Rain.

“I spent my first few years on Terra apprenticing to a Ferengi who was an enforcer for one.” Rain deadpanned, getting the distinct sense of just where T'Lyn was going with this.

“Then you should be well aware of what protections being associated with a madame of note provides.” T'Lyn pointed out in a smug tone.

“Theoretically at least.” Rain admitted, though that was more from the internet of her old life then it was from observing Gemma at work.

T'Lyn cocked her head slightly as she continued to stare at Rain with the judgemental look in her eyes. “So then you would rather deny anyone on this ship who wishes to practice that profession those protections then feel uncomfortable providing them?”

And now Rain felt like an absolute heel.

“They haven't even said they wanted to.” She tried to dodge. “And I don't care what logic you use, I draw a hard line at forcing people who work for me into prostitution.”

“A respectable line to have.” T'Lyn stated as she offered forward the padd she had been holding. “However I would not have brought the issue up if it didn't involve a request that was already made.”

Rain frowned at that, grabbing the padd and reading through the several pages of text within before looking back up at the Vulcan woman with a frown.

“Lara wrote up a full business proposal?”

“I was as surprised as you.” T'Lyn admitted. “Given your willingness to provide them free room and board in exchange for a minor amount of busy work I had thought they would be satisfied with the extraordinarily large upgrade from their previous circumstances.”

“Lara likely pushed Citrine and Nirel into it.” Rain returned as she went over everything on the padd again, moderately impressed at the detail Lara had gone into despite her general distaste for the idea. “Though the fact that there's a note on the advertising bio she put together for Citrine mentioning that she's only willing to take non-human clients at least tells me Lara probably didn't do it purposefully.”

Really, for all she looked and sounded like the former evil empress of the Terran Empire, Lara herself reminded Rain of nothing so much as a smarter and slightly less evil version of Harmony Kendall.

“An odd reading of the situation.” T'Lyn put forward, sounding very much like she had her doubts about it.

“They're not really complex people.” Rain confessed, feeling slightly bad about saying it out loud like that. “Lara just wants to be someone, and she fully believes the best way to do that is by using her body. Citrine meanwhile probably thinks if she can't prove herself useful I'll toss her out, which I'll admit is probably my fault for going so hard when I freed everybody.”

She had tried to correct the record with the Citrine and explain that she had just been having a really bad couple of days at the time. But the other woman had enough personal issues that the Asari suspected her words hadn't exactly hit home.

“And Nirel?” T'Lyn prompted with a slight hint of interest in her voice.

“Is moderately depressed and beaten down enough that it probably felt like the only option to her.”

The most you could do in cases like that, at least according to Leck, was try and slowly build them back up. Which Rain had been trying to do by offering up learning options to anyone interested. Unfortunately the only option the half-Cardassian woman had been willing to try was cooking, and well, her depression had hit back after the first burnt grilled cheese sandwich.

“I see.” T’Lyn said as she studied Rain for a moment. “The proposal is sound in the way it utilizes our presences as a temporary point of service, however it would somewhat curtail our ability to leave a location on short notice.”

“Which shouldn’t be a problem since we’re not smugglers or pirates.” Rain shot back as she gave the vulcan woman a heavy lidded stare.

T’Lyn once more raised a single eyebrow at her.

“The Tholian princess doesn’t count as smuggling.” Rain returned as she crossed her arms under her breasts and let out a small huff.

 T’Lyn continued to stare.

“And the locked chest in my quarters is not full of pirate booty.” Rain added in, visibly pouting now.

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Stardate 29460.1 - June 17, 2352 - 09:31:06

The planet Trill did in fact have purple oceans, a unique enough planetary feature given everything Rain had been able to look up about the various M Class planets in their small slice of the galaxy, that the Asari had to wonder why the place wasn’t more popular as a tourist destination.

“No shipyards, a single orbital station that looks Terran Empire in provenance, minimal space traffic, and enough orbital defense satellites that I suspect even the Klingons would think twice about trying to raid the world.” Salora listed out, sounding more than a little impressed at the last.

“I thought you said they were generally welcoming to visitors?” Rain asked T’Lyn, shooting the Vulcan woman a questioning look since those things combined together all but screamed a group who didn’t want others to bother them.

“They have not fired on us yet.” T’Lyn returned dryly.

“Orbital control is ordering us to dock at the station..” Strelka put forward. “And warning that if we try to land on the planet we’ll be fired upon by the planetary defense grid.”

“Station it is.” Rain said, idly wondering if it was just a perfunctory inspection type issue or if they just banned outsiders from the surface for some reason.

“Any luck getting in touch with Sorren’s contact?” She asked the half-klingon as Salora began maneuvering their ship to one of the station's docking arms.

They'd first tried contacting the man when they were a day out, with the only response being a leave a message message, which she had of course done. But she had still hoped to have something a bit more concrete on the delivery front then the ‘they will find you’ Sorren had left her with.

“No.” Strelka said.

“I still do not like our lack of knowledge about that container's contents.” T”Lyn put forward in somewhat muted annoyance as she worked at her consol.

“The key to being a successful courier is never looking inside what it is you’re transporting.” Rain told her, years of running odd jobs around New Chicago having made it very clear that doing otherwise was a good way to get people trying to kill you for knowing too much.

“The key to being an alive courier you mean.” Keiko offered with a smirk.

“Same thing.” Rain returned with an amused shake of her head.

“I’ve issued the adverts to the proper locations on the stations data net.” T’Lyn offered after a moment.

The lack of an engineer or doctor was still the functional equivalent of a ticking time bomb for them, and Trill was a neutral enough location that Rain didn't worry nearly as much about putting up recruiting notices there as she had with Risa.

Given the prime universe version of the planet had technically been run by an ancient conspiracy willing to mind wipe people to keep their deep dark secret, it was even possible that the mirror universe version of Trill was the good one. Which Rain tried to think too hard on, as the last time she had, she had creeped everyone out by randomly giggling.

And of course there was Lara’s whole thing, which, still made Rain feel distinctly uncomfortable, but she had come to accept as something that was probably not that harmful to their prospects given the universe of Firefly had utilized a similar system to at least workable effect.

The Emerald Falcon suddenly shuddered as its docking port connected to that of the station, and Rain saw Salora’s shoulders visibly relax when nothing untoward followed it. 

“I’m happy to say I’ve successfully docked us at the station without so much as scratching the paint.” The half-Cardassian put forward in a tone that suggested she hadn’t been entirely sure about her ability to do it till now.

“You had a ninety eight percent success rate on the simulations last I checked.” Rain put forward, well aware how important confidence was when it came to things like that. “That’s twelve percent higher than the Orion’s who were running things before. So don’t sell your accomplishments short, you did a good job.”

“Captain Rain?” Strelka suddenly put forward, sounding more than a little confused about whatever the issue was. “We just got a message from someone claiming to be Sorren’s contact, and he’s apparently waiting for you outside the docking port to receive the package.”

There were several possibilities with that given he hadn’t replied to any of her messages till now, but Rain was going to lean towards someone with an overblown sense of paranoia as the most likely.

“Tell him I’ll be out in a few minutes.” Rain ordered as she pulled herself out of the captain's chair and took a moment to just stretch. “Keiko, go get Korak, I want you two to flank me and look intimidating just in case this is someone trying something less than cute.”

The Japanese woman gave a nod before heading to the lift, leaving Rain to look down at her comfortable tank top and pants and let out a sigh as she headed to her ready room to change into her much less comfortable Klingon armor.

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Author’s Notes: The irony of using things she’s seen on TV and in Fiction as a source of good ideas, is that by Mirror Universe standards that still puts her generally ahead of the game.

No chapter of Cerulean Stars today sadly, I had things all mapped out, and was about to sit down to put pen to paper, and then realized I had skipped over the time frame that Civil Defense would have been in.