Darkened Stars Chapter 4

Darkened Stars Chapter 4

Stardate 25421.8 - June 3, 2348 - 09:05:00

Rain hadn't expected to run into someone like Leck on Mirror Earth, though she supposed she should have given mirror's reflected all people equally.

And she honestly didn't know if this Leck was the same one she remembered from Deep Space Nine, what with the near thirty year difference between now and then. So it was completely possible he was just some random Ferengi with the same name, which had to happen pretty often with a race that only used single names for everything.

Questions like that aside, she was eminently glad she had, because without Leck's advice she was absolutely sure she would have been ripped off or worse, and it didn't hurt that the man had been willing to put her up for the night so long as she was willing to work.

She had suspicions about why he was doing that last of course, though the thought of a Ferengi with a white knight complex was enough to leave her questioning her own sanity, even if it did make an odd amount of sense with what she remembered about the mirror universe versions of Quark and Brunt.

In the end the question of whether to take Leck up on the offer or not hadn't really been much of a question, mainly because the twenty eight hundred Lek she had gotten for the phaser pistols would have been gone in about a week if she had stayed at one of the few places around she wouldn't be at risk of someone breaking in in the middle of the night and trying to slap a slave collar on her.

Which given her circumstances would almost surely end in… She gave a sudden full body twitch. Nope nope nope, she wasn't going to think about that.

“You good kid?” Leck asked, giving her a side eye. “Because if you don't think you can do it, I can just pay one of Jarlux's runners the twenty Lek like usual.”

“No, I can do it.” Rain reassured him, and she'd be damned if she couldn't given how simple it was. “Go to the location, drop off the expended fuel cell, pick up the full fuel cell, return with the full fuel cell, and shoot anybody who tries to take it from me.”

“Except if it's a Cardassian or Klingon.” Leck added in. “Then you tell em it's for Brooks place, and unless they're new they'll let you go on your way.”

Rain gave a nod, knowing the only way this could be more obvious a test of some kind was if Leck had literally told her it was a test. However she supposed someone who was the actual age she looked to be, probably would have gone along with it without question.

And that was assuming the whole thing wasn't a trap of course, but if that was the case she hopefully wouldn't feel too much guilt about doing what needed to be done to save her own ass.

So with a smile and nod she hefted her fuel cell filled rucksack over her shoulder and walked out of the Glimmering Reach bordellos service entrance, giving a silent prayer of thanks as she did that her generally excellent sense of direction had survived intact.

Walking down the streets of New Chicago's blue light district, which she had been bemused to learn was the mirror universe version of a red light district, she was once more inundated by angry glares from various passing Terran's.

Thankfully, glaring seemed to be all they were willing to do so far, though she was skeptical whether that would last once she passed into the city's brown district where she was supposed to exchange the fuel cells.

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New Chicago, at least the Alliance occupied Terran version of it, reminded Rain an unfortunate amount of Cyberpunks Night City. Only instead of corpos being the assholes in charge that everyone generally disliked, it was non-humans.

But making her way through the city's brown district, Rain honestly didn't know how to feel about that. Because she'd experienced first hand what Terran's would try and do to her if they thought they could get away with it. And meanwhile in the past hour of travel she'd had three different Cardassians come up and ask her if there was anything they could help her with.

Something which honestly had helped since their directions had probably cut a good half hour of searching from her trip.

“Alliance distribution center gamma three.” She muttered to herself as she confirmed the building's name via the multilingual sign next to the door before making her way inside.

The following fifteen minutes were an instructional example of the effectiveness of the Cardassian organizational system, because forteen of those had been spent waiting in line for her turn, at which point all it had taken was providing the depleted fuel cell and replacement receipt before a new one was handed to her and she was on her way back to the blue sector.

Annoyingly the two mile walk back to the bordello was a good bit longer and more difficult than the walk there had been given she was carrying an additional twenty pounds of compressed deuterium on her back. 

But given the entire Earth was blanketed by transporter scramblers, the extensive subway tunnels were fully under control of various Terran groups, and what few taxi like vehicles were available had prices high enough to use that it would cost nearly three times what paying a runner would have, Rain wasn't really in a position to do otherwise.

She was just past the checkpoint at the sector border when the feeling that something was off began to hit her, looking around to try and figure out what, she was left blinking in surprise at the sudden realization that there were in fact non-human kids other than her around.

Non-humans kids who had apparently all decided to give her the stink eye for some reason…

Right, okay, she wasn't sure what was up with that, but she had read enough stories to know that kind of attention from kids was never a good thing, so she picked up her pace as much as possible.

“Hey!” A voice called out from behind her before she could get farther than a couple meters, and a quick glance over her shoulder showed a half-klingon boy who couldn't have been older than fifteen running after her.

Coming to a stop, Rain turned to give the boy what she hoped was a disarming smile as he came to a stop in front of her. “Something wrong?”

“I don't know you.” He said in an aggressive tone as he attempted to loom over Rain in a way that might have been effective if she was actually the age she looked.

“Okay?” Rain put forward, doing her best to radiate honest confusion.

“That means you're new here and don't know how things work” He went on as Rain caught sight of two more youths coming up behind her in her peripheral vision.

“I do.” Rain disagreed, still keeping up the act while trying her hardest not to laugh at the pure cliché of this encounter. “So if I can just–”

One of the boys that had walked up behind Rain, a half Cardassian by the looks of things, put a hand on her shoulder, and it took an inordinate amount of effort not to go for the weapon at her side at the sudden physical contact.

“Don't worry blue.” The boy behind her tried to reassure her in a friendlier tone. “We're part of Jarlux's crew, and we just wanna make sure you don't end up on the wrong side of a Terran.”

Okay then, Rain mused to herself as she began to relax slightly, not an intimidation, a gang recruitment pitch of some kind. Which was an oddly novel experience given she'd been thoroughly middle-class suburbs in her original life.

“Thanks.” She returned with a smile, stepping to the side and shifting her shoulder out from under the boy's hand as she did since the physical contact was starting to make her feel uncomfortable. “But I'm fine.”

“For now.” He told her with what she suspected was a faux frown of concern. “But we saw you coming out of the Glimmering Reach earlier, and you really don't wanna get involved with them.”

“What do you mean?” Raine asked innocently, internally cursing as the sudden thought hit her that she might have unintentionally picked a side in a gang war.

“It's run by a Terran.” The half Klingon boy spat venomously. “They’ll use you up and then toss you away.”

“And it’s even worse for…” The Cardassian boy began only to trail off as he glanced over Rain with an uncertain look on his face. “Er… You are a girl right?”

“Yes.” Rain answered tiredly, knowing it wasn’t worth the trouble of trying to explain the technicalities of her species to gang kids.

“Then yea.” He continued with a nod. “It’ll be a lot worse for you there, cause they’ll make you do stuff you really don’t wanna do once you get a little older. So you’d be a lot better off joining up with Jarlux, cause he takes care of us.”

Rain's likely fate being 'whore’ if she stuck around in the long term hadn't exactly been hard to figure out, even without Brooks all but directly stating it. But she doubted her fate would be much different if she threw her lot in with Jarlux given what she'd read about happening to women in street gangs.

“Leck's been nice.” Rain offered in a childish tone, mentally rolling her eyes at having to do it like that. 

“Yea, Leck's a good guy.” The Cardassian boy agreed with a nod that was joined in on by the other two. “But Brooks has got him trapped trying to keep the other girls there safe.”

Now that Rain had not known, but she supposed it made sense, after all, what better way to manipulate a white knight then by appealing to their desire to protect others.

Which wasn't exactly that far off from what she had been planning on doing with the man to try and secure her own safety. And now she felt dirty about even considering it.

“It'll be alright.” Rain told them as she shot the trio a smile. “If anyone tries anything bad I can shoot em with my phaser.”

The three exchanged looks, and it was clear they wanted to push more, but the mention of the weapon on her hip seemed to have somewhat taken the wind out of their sails. Not the least Rain suspected because, at least as far as she could see, they seemed to be lacking on the weapon front themselves.

“Offer'll always be open.” The half Cardassian boy finally said, turning around and motioning for the other two to follow.

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“You made good time.” Leck offered to Rain as the Asari walked back into the Glimmering Reach. 

“No trouble?” He continued in an almost suspicious tone as she pulled off the rucksack and set it down on a nearby bench.

“I was stopped by some guys who worked for Jarlux.” Rain confessed, figuring it was likely he would find out if she didn't given it had happened in broad daylight. “

“Figured they would.” Leck said as she pulled the fuel cell out of her bag and handed it over to him. “They try and get you to join up?”

“Yes.” Rain admitted in surprise as Leck walked over and began the task of installing the fuel cell into the Glimmering Reach's microfusion generator and initializing the device's startup sequence. “But don't worry, I brushed them off.”

Leck stopped what he was doing to give her an almost sad look. “Really hope you didn't burn any bridges kid. Cause Jarlux's crew is gonna be your best bet to avoid a future working on your back.”

“Trust me when I say that's not an option I'll accept.” Rain returned with an unconscious shiver at the thought, really hoping this sudden candor on the subject meant the Ferengi had decided she was at least a bit older than she looked.

“That's the thing though.” He offered to her with a sad shake of his head. “Without an Alliance ID you don't have other options. And the cost to get one of those for an unknown is either several weeks in an Obsidian Order cell, or a fifty thousand Lek bribe to the right people.”

Which he didn't need to tell Rain was more than she could be reasonably expected to make unless she pulled a winning ticket in the space lottery, or turned to a life of crime.

Of course, he didn't know she had a number of options most others didn't, or that those options were the whole reason why her current plan involved biding her time and secretly practicing her space wizard powers while learning everything Leck would be willing to teach her.

“Don't worry.” She tried to reassure the Ferengi with a smile. “I didn't burn any bridges, and they made a point of saying the offer would continue to be open.”

“That's something at least.” Leck muttered with a disappointed sigh as he went back to bringing the generator online so the place's replicators would actually be able to work for their night time visitors.

“So now what?” Rain asked hopefully, having gotten used to a constant string of things to do to keep her mind away from things she would very much rather not think about.

“Now you go to the roof and scrub the carbon ash off the solar panels.” Leck said as he motioned to a thick wired brush and bucket. “After that if you've still got time you can clean off the rooftop holo-emitters, they've been flickering a bit and it's getting on Brooks’s nerves.”

Saluting cheekily, Rain grabbed the bucket and brush before heading over to the ladder that would take her to the roof. Once more really glad that her fear of heights seemed to have disappeared alongside her species change, because being in Star Trek with that, even Mirror Universe Star Trek, would have sucked on multiple levels.