Chapter 171 - Returning Quagmires
Stardate 48691.9 - September 10, 2371 - 13:02:38
“Welcome back,” Kira offered as they filed out of the Defiant.
“It’s good to be back,” Sisko returned with a nod before offering a wry grin to the Major. “It sounds like you missed us?”“I missed you handling the paperwork,” Kira returned with a grin of her own before turning serious. “I’m sorry we couldn’t get a warning to you about the fleet, they took out the communications relay on the way past. And by the time we were able to replace it, orders had come down to minimize any communications with ships in the Gamma Quadrant.”
“We expected it was something like that,” Sisko admitted only to sigh. “I’ll start going through the backlog tomorrow.”
Kira turned to Raine as Sisko hiked up his pack and began to walk towards the turbolift. “Brooks, could I talk to you for a minute?”
“Sure,” Raine agreed, stepping to the side to join the Bajoran woman so she wouldn't get in the way of anyone else. “So what did you want to talk about?” She offered the Major a cheeky grin. “Gul Dukat stop by while we were gone and you need some help covering up the evidence of his untimely demise?”
Kira shook her head and chuckled. “I wish.” Her look turned serious. “It's about your… guest.”
“D'Vana?” Raine blinked. “Did something happen?”
Wincing slightly, Kira motioned for Raine to follow her and then headed a bit down the corridor.
Raising an eye-ridge, Raine followed, eager to hear whatever it was that Kira felt the need to keep marginally secret.
“All right,” Kira began once they were about a dozen mergers away from the airlock. “So…”
She took a breath, clearly building herself up to something. “A little after you left D'Vana came to my quarters and asked if I would help her kidnap herself.”
Raine blinked, her mind taking several moments to process that as it was just so far outside of what she had been expecting that it was throwing her for something of a loop. “I'm sorry… What!?”
“Her family was having problems on Orion,” Kira began to explain. “And she needed to get back to help in a way that wouldn't make things worse. But she didn't want to cause any real trouble for us, so she hoped I would be willing to play along with a pretend kidnapping.”
That sounded very much like the sort of semi-convoluted plan that Raine herself would try to pull, and for a moment she felt an inordinate surge of pride at the fact that D'Vana had seemingly taken her lessons on appearing to play to the game without actually doing so to heart.
“And you did?” She asked, having a hard time believing the overly uptight woman would be willing to help with something like that.
“...Why is that so hard to believe?” Kira asked with a scowl, sounding oddly offended at the question. “
“Well,” Raine winced. “You're not usually the type to go along with things like that.”
Deciding to try and move the subject along, she focused back on the main question. “So what exactly did D'Vana ask you to help with?”
“Honestly?” Kira frowned slightly. “Not much, she just wanted me to stand next to the airlock and pretend to take a bribe when she got onto the transport.”
Raine considered that for a second. “Pretend to take a bribe as in pretending to accept a bribe or pretend to take a bribe as in accepting some form of currency for something that it wasn't actually illegal for you to do?”
“The latter,” Kira said, the corner of her lips quirking slightly. “I donated it to the Bajoran war orphan fund if you're wondering.”
“However,” she continued, her look turning somewhat sour. “There was apparently a good bit more to her plan then she told me. Because the next morning security received a message from your daughter about three Orions breaking into your quarters to kidnap D'Vana.”
Raine twitched, the sudden urge to fly the Defiant back to Orion so she could punish her niece briefly coming over her.
“Checking the security logs,” Kira went on. “We were able to confirm that there had been no unauthorized access to your quarters. With the only oddity being the fact that D'Vana's entry code had been used to open the door a little before oh three hundred.”
“Which should have been when they were both in bed asleep,” Raine grumbled.
She stared down at Kira, holding the Bajoran woman's gaze until she fidgeted a small bit. “Do you know if Saya was in on it?”
“She claimed she didn’t know anything about her cousin's plan when Keiko talked to her,” Kira offered. “But Keiko seemed to believe she wasn’t being entirely truthful about the whole thing.”
“Then she probably wasn’t,” Raine agreed, more than a little thankful her daughter had never been particularly good at lying. “I assume security already removed D’Vana’s access codes from the system?”
“And went over your quarters with a fine toothed comb looking for anything the Orion’s might have planted," Kira confirmed. “The search came up clean.” She grimaced. “With the exception of a small bit of vandalism that maintenance has promised to get around to removing when they have the time.”
The Major let that sit for a moment before shooting Raine an odd look. “Do I want to know why you have enough weapons to arm a small resistance cell under your bed?”
“They’re a combination of gifts from Saya’s father I’m saving for when she’s old enough to handle them and cool looking alien weapons I’ve picked up over the years,” Raine confessed. “Those are actually just the safer one’s, I have a couple more crates in secure storage.”
Kira stared, clearly unsure of what to say to that. “You collect alien weapons?”
“The cool looking one’s,” Raine grinned, taking a moment to transfer her dufflebag to her other shoulder. “Thanks for the warning, I’ll talk with Saya about it and file a report if I learn anything applicable.”
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Setting her duffle bag down on the kitchen counter, Raine turned to the lounger her daughter was huddled up on. “Well? Where do you want to start first? The neon green Orion graffiti? The empty stand where my gold plated replica of the Enterprise used to sit? Or the fact that you failed your organic chemistry exam?”
“Organic chemistry sucks,” Saya grumbled, not looking up from the padd she was practically hiding behind. “And I think the Orions stole your Enterprise, cause it was there when I went to bed but missing when I got up.”
“The Orions that you had nothing to do with?” Raine asked with a leading tone.
“D'Vana didn't tell me anything about what she was planning,” Saya groused. “The only reason I found out anything was cause she left a goodbye message.”
Narrowing her eyes slightly, Raine stalked over to the lounger and studied her daughter's face, taking note of the way she was chewing slightly on her bottom lip and avoiding looking Raine in the eyes. “You're lying.”
“...No?” Saya tried, managing to hold out under Raine’s accusing stare for several seconds before letting her shoulders slump. “All right, sort of, the Orion’s woke me up when they came to “kidnap” she made air quotes. “D’Vana. But then D’Vana begged me not to hold back from reporting it until morning cause she was afraid that would have screwed everything up.”
“And?” Raine pressed, getting the distinct sense from Saya’s slight fidgeting that there was more to the story than that.
“...They kind of wanted to kidnap me again,” Saya hesitantly admitted.
Raine twitched.
“I wasn’t going to let them!” Saya hastily continued. “I was going to try and throw them into the ceiling, or the wall, but then D’Vana threatened to flay them, and that seemed to be enough to make them give up on the idea.”
“And you still went along with things and didn’t report the situation till morning?” Raine said judgingly.
“It was important to her!” Saya whined. “And I made sure not to go back to sleep!”
“What you should have done was immediately call security,” Raine lectured. “Because them getting into our quarters at all means security was compromised in some manner. And for all you knew a drunk Klingon might stumble in next and you’d be stuck having to deal with that mess.”
“D’Vana used her access code to let them in!” Saya protested. “There wasn’t any risk of anything like that happening!"
“Oh?” Raine raised an eye-ridge in challenge to that. “So D’Vana told you she let them in?”
“Well…” Saya winced. “No…”
“Then you wouldn’t have known it until security came by and reviewed the logs,” Raine pointed out sternly. “So I’m going to add reviewing civilian security procedures to the supplementary work you’re going to have to do to shore up your problems with organic chemistry.”
She gestured to herself. “Now come on, give mom a hug.”
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Stardate 48692.1 - September 10, 2371 - 14:47:45
“You knew about the Tal Shiar attack,” T’Rul accused her sister the moment their quarters security system registered everything as clear.
Taking a moment to close the padd she was reading, T’Rel rose off the couch and raised a single eyebrow at her. “Of course, my delay in returning was directly connected to it after all.”
T'Rul narrowed her eyes as a flash of anger shot through her. “And you did not warn me!? I was nearly killed by the Jem'Hadar because I believed it was the Zhat Vash once more attempting to draw us into a war we were ill prepared for!”
“I am perched on a ledge between the eyes of the Imperial Family and Tal Shiar as it is,” T'Rel scowled. “If there had been even the smallest hint that I had warned anybody about the attack, the only thing you would have found in these quarters upon your return is my dead body.”
She had of course known about the latter, but the former took T'Rul aback. “The Imperial Family!?”
“What did you do!?” She hissed, her mind whirling as she tried to think of anything that could have called that level of attention onto them.
“What do you think?” T'Rel scowled. “You of all people should know I did not start a relationship with Raine just because she was pleasing to look at. And the Imperial Family is just as interested in discovering why her people attacked Gacrux as the Tal Shiar.” Her scowl deepened. “Possibly more even given the secret facility the Imperial Family apparently had on the world.”
Matching the rather unique gravimetric signature of the Asari species psychokinetic powers to the attack on Gacrux had been a complete stroke of luck on T'Rul's part, and discovering the Asari was a xenophile on the hunt for a relationship even more so, as it had given them an opening to discover why, as they had believed at the time, the Federation had deployed her to secretly attack one of their worlds.
While clearing Raine of any connection to the attack had taken mere weeks, it had become clear as they did so that the “experimental transporter” explanation for the Asari's original appearance on Earth was nothing more than a thin cover story for what was heavily suspected to be some sort of personnel exchange with a newly discovered species the Federation was set on keeping hidden due to their potential use as a hidden blade against their enemies.
“Fine,” T'Rul sighed before striding over to the chair across from her sister and lowering herself into it. “You should know that we managed to recover a black recorder from the flagship of the Tal Shiar fleet. I managed to disguise most of the actual data under a layer of inane personnel monitoring. However they had Garak assisting me in the decoding, and I believe he managed to see through it and may have managed to make a full copy of the data.”
“It can't be helped,” T'Rel scowled, sitting back down on the couch. “The protégé of Enabran Tain… If the Tal Shiar had known, I am sure they would have let that particular sleeping Set'leth lie instead of pushing him back into activity with a doomed to fail assassination attempt.”
“Assuming it was actually the Tal Shiar sending out the orders around this mission,” T’Rul cautiously offered. “As all signs currently point to an infiltration of either our top level people, or the Cardassian’s.”
“Something that will be investigated by the Empire at a higher level than either of us is privy to,” T’Rel warned before her look softened slightly. “Now tell me, what was this about you nearly being killed by the Jem’Hadar?”
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Author’s Notes: Yeah, I doubt anyone here is surprised that there was more to T’Rel deciding to get into a relationship with Raine than just wanting to try out sex with a hot blue alien babe.