Darkened Stars - Chapter 24

Darkened Stars - Chapter 24

Stardate 29397.7 - May 25, 2352 - 13:23:48

Reading through the information on the padd T’Lyn had just handed her as she lay on the bed, Rain felt her eye ridge twitch in annoyance at the extensive documentation the Vulcan woman had just handed her.

“Why?” She asked as she turned a perplexed look to T'Lyn before shaking her head slightly as a better question occurred to the Asari. “How did you have the time?”

T'Lyn gave her a nonplussed gaze. “While Jarat's stamina is quite impressive, we still require frequent breaks that allow for ample time for other pursuits.”

“That's not what I meant!” Rain exclaimed in exasperation as she tried desperately to not flash back to the times she had seen the Vulcan woman naked. “There's got to be a hundred and fifty pages here!”

“One hundred and sixty two.” T'Lyn corrected as Rain reached what looked to be a number of spreadsheets. “Given your non-existent experience captaining a starship, I felt it necessary to be thorough so as to head off a number of potential problems that I could see approaching.”

“Comparative warp factor antimatter usage weighed against time saved by increased travel speeds?” Rain read out loud as she got to a page with enough numbers on it that if she were in an anime she expected she would have gone swirly eyed.

“I confess, those portions required Jarat's deft hand with numbers as my training had yet to reach the point of covering more than the basics of navigation, maintenance, small craft utilization, emergency care, and cargo management.” 

Rain held back her immediate urge to sarcastically point out how that probably made T'Lyn the most qualified person on the ship. Since, from the tone of the T’Lyn’s voice, reminding the Asari of that may very well have been the entire point of the Vulcan listing things out in the manner she had.

“So you’re saying Jarat helped you write this up?” She asked as that at least explained how T’Lyn had put together something so large.

“Yes.” T’Lyn confirmed as she gave Rain a bemused stare. “Though I feel like your focus on the size of the document is distracting from the reality of the information contained within.”

“Birth control!?” Rain asked with an almost physical cringe as she skimmed through a part that involved suggested medical supplies.

T’Lyn raised an eyebrow expectantly at her. “While I can not speak for others, given the current stardate my birth control injection will be wearing off in twenty three days. And I neither wish to abstain, nor risk becoming a mother.”

Slapping the hand not holding the padd to her face, Rain let out an exasperated groan, because pregnancy was an ongoing risk she hadn’t even remotely considered on top of everything else she was currently worrying about.

“And you can't just go down to the corner pharmacy for that, why?

“You have never had a birth control injection before, have you?” T'Lyn inquired in a suspicious tone as she looked at Rain in a way that left the Asari feeling distinctly uncomfortable.

“Yesterday was the first time I've seen a doctor, period.” Rain admitted, having dodged that particular pitfall by dint of literally no authority figure in her mirror universe life caring about such things.

“Forgive me for asking this.” T'Lyn began as she gave Rain a look the Asari couldn't quite place. “But what is your age?”

“Undetermined.” Rain answered truthfully, as she'd refused anything more than the base genetic comparison needed to figure out what drugs would be safe to use on her species out of the fear that someone might discover something that would make her a target.

Not that it was particularly likely with the Risians given she was a six out of ten in the attractiveness scale at most by their standards, but it was better to be safe than sorry with such things.

“Why?”

T'Lyn shuffled uncomfortably for a moment as her eyes flicked across the bedroom's pirate themed furnishings before settling on the set of recently returned Klingon armor that drunk her had left at a professional they'd found to be refit. 

“Even for female Klingon's the rate of forced sexual encounters is known to be quite high. Though the long term survival of those responsible much less so. And pregnancy resulting from such can be… Unfortunate, given the way abortifacients often need to be calibrated specifically for the mother and offsprings genetics.”

The Vulcan woman grimaced. “That is, when a species can use them at all. Something which is not assured given for some like the Bajorans and Rigelians, such an attempt often ends up with the mother dying due to internal complications.”

The horrified look on Rain’s face wasn’t even slightly feigned. Oh, she had known that Bajoran pregnancies worked distinctly different from human one’s from a mechanical perspective since that had been covered in Deep Space Nine. But she had never really considered what that would logically mean for Bajoran woman dealing with unwanted pregnancies. Though she supposed that explained why there had been so many ‘unwanted by both’ Cardassian half-breed’s around.

Nor had she ever considered the possibility in general that there might be some species who had evolved in ways that made such things difficult for the mother to survive. Unfortunately, that led her to directly thinking about how little she knew about Asari pregnancies, a topic her brain had been studiously avoiding since she’d been turned into one.

“Unwanted pregnancy isn’t really a risk with my species.” She offered feebly, wishing as she did that she could be anywhere but stuck in this particular conversation. “We don’t really reproduce by… Not to say we don’t have…”

She trailed off with a blush as she realized what she was about to say before shaking her head and continuing. “Anyways, this is a lot to go through. Can’t you, I don’t know, summarize it down to a few pages of important bullet points or something?”

“That would defeat the point.” T’Lyn returned simply as she stared judgingly at Rain.

“No it wouldn’t.” Rain countered, absolutely sure the Vulcan was wrong about this. “The very reason captain’s have a crew is so they don’t have to deal with every little detail of running the ship.”

“Yes.” T’Lyn agreed in a somewhat amused tone. “However, you do not have a crew. You have a ship, passengers, and a single oddly loyal assassin who would likely stab me if I brought this to her to deal with.”

“She wouldn’t…” Rain began, only to stop herself and let out a sigh, as Keiko had in fact threatened to do exactly that if people kept coming to her with their problems. “Okay, she might, but it’s more likely she’d just hand the padd off to me.”

“Which would just result in the same result with added risk.” T’Lyn pointed out smugly.

Glancing down at the padd in her hands for a moment, Rain turned a suspicious look back to the Vulcan woman who, as often was the case, seemed to be perfectly content to silently wait for the Asari to say more.

“Is this whole thing some giant passive aggressive way to complain about the fact I have yet to actually write up an employment contract?”

She’d been putting that off for a number of reasons, the largest being that she had wanted to get a better idea of just what kind of skills the former slaves actually had so she would know what to actually offer them. 

Asking Keiko to be her first officer had seemed moderately promising, though the woman had ended up turning down the position after trying it on for size the past few days and finding she absolutely despised being expected to solve all the little problems that cropped up. 

Salora and Strelka had been relatively easy with slotting them into conn and communication respectively. Positions they both seemed to be enjoying the experience of, so that was a bonus. Jarat had been somewhat harder given how generally non-confrontational the man was, but after today she was leaning heavily towards offering him the position of quartermaster. 

The human Jack, so named apparently because of the dataport on his neck, had been a low level netrunner from New Sydney, a job she was desperately hoping the man would be interested in resuming under her employment given how useful that sort of thing could actually be in pretty much all possible future endeavors she might decide to do.

Unfortunately the rest, with the exception of T’Lyn, seemed to fall into the same two general categories. Citrine, Lara, and the half-Cardassian Nirel, whose only skills seemed to revolve around selling themselves. And Karlos and Korak, whose only skills seem to revolve around acting as dumb muscle.

She wasn’t writing off either of those things of course, because she was rapidly settling into the idea that she was going to be living a Firefly and not Star Trek kind of life for the foreseeable future. But she also wasn’t exactly thrilled with the idea of basically becoming an interstellar pimp for the three girls in question given her earlier experience with Gemma.

As to T’Lyn herself, well, the phrase ‘hard work should be rewarded’ was currently rattling around rather loudly in the Asari’s brain.

“Because if so, it's been successful.” She finally continued as she tossed the padd to the foot of the bed near where the Vulcan woman was standing. “So would you want the job of First Officer?”

The look of patient disinterest on T’Lyn’s face rapidly transitioned into one of surprised confusion as Rain’s offer seemed to catch her completely off guard.

“But… That… I was sure you were offering that position to Keiko?” She inquired with a cautious look over her shoulder to the room's door as if the Japanese woman in question might have been secretly listening in ready to strike the entire time.

“She turned it down this morning.” Rain explained as she gave the other woman an amused smirk. “All but jumped to accept the position of head of security once I explained it though.”

Which the Asari supposed really did fit what she knew about Keiko a lot better than the position of first officer. 

“I will have to see the contract.” T'Lyn put forward after considering the offer silent for nearly a full minute. “But I would not be against accepting such a position.”

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Stardate 29400.2 - May 26, 2352 - 11:21:24

“And you're sure it's her?” Keiko asked as she stared at the cloaked figure on one of the numerous displays filling the small room that Jack had taken as his own.

“You said to look for a woman made of red crystal.” Jack offered as he watched her with a cautious look. “Wasn't really that hard to break into their local surveillance network given most of the network security here looks like it hasn't seen an update since the Empire bit it. And from there I just had to set up a program to look for a moving humanoid form with the right type of refractive index.”

He motioned to the covered figure on screen. “Program flagged her coming out of one of the abandoned buildings in the city's old industrial sector about twenty minutes ago.”

“I don't see any crystal.” Keiko said as she squinted at the form.

“Probably cause she's not an idiot” Jack snarked, only to flinch as Keiko turned an annoyed glare on him. “She's covered up and using something to try and dull her skin, but whatever it is it isn't holding up well. Flaked off enough in places to trip my program, at which point all I needed to do was this.”

The video abruptly changed to show a naked woman who might as well have been carved out of red crystal.

“Didn't think it would be that easy if I'm being honest, but the girl radiates really high in certain spectrum's her outfit doesn't cover.”

Keiko grinned at that, fingering the katana at her side as she took a moment to study the crystal woman.

“Raine was right about her being a big thing too.” Jack continued. “Cause I've had to redirect at least a dozen searches from other parties since she stepped out.”

“Good work.” Keiko said as she clapped the man on the shoulder. “Keep at it while I go tell Raine the good news.”

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Author's Notes: Rain's first real moral quandary is finally upon her. Will she try and save the Tholian princess, or leave her to her horrible fate. Tune in next week to find out.