Disclaimer: I do not own star trek although the characters in this story are mine. I am not of course, making any money from this story. I am writing it for fun.
Shivering in the cold, crisp winter air, Mara turned and took one last look at the gardens. Even now, covered in a thick layer of snow, the academy grounds possessed a beauty that was undeniable. She had always liked the academy, but this time she would be only too glad to leave.
It was with a surge of anger that she thought back to her previous visit to the academy. It had been summer then, the air redolent with the sweet scent of roses and honeysuckle, the cloudless sky a deep azure blue and above all, it had been warm. She had been called to a secret meeting with Admiral Moore and asked to go undercover, to infiltrate a gang of pirates.
Unshed tears stung her eyes as she recalled the meeting. It was so unfair! Admiral Moore had been full of promises, assuring her that when the mission was over she would be reinstated back into Starfleet and given back her rightful place as first officer of the Hyperion. She had worked so hard to attain the rank of Commander and just like that, it had been taken from her.
Apparently Admiral Moore had retired under somewhat dubious circumstances and his successor saw no need to honour the departing admiral's promises. Oh, they'd been happy enough to reinstate her back into Starfleet but on their terms – she could return as an ensign or not at all. She did briefly consider telling them exactly where they could shove their offer, but what was there for her outside Starfleet? A job on a freighter maybe? Or apply to the Klingon Defence Force? No, she was 35 years old, it was too late for her to start again elsewhere. So in the end she had swallowed her anger and agreed. And here she was, on her way to pick up a transport ship to take her to the starbase where she would meet her new ship. Assistant Science officer of the USS Audacious. It wasn't fair, she thought again.
The cold weather was making her scars ache and unconsciously she rubbed them. The wounds from the beating the pirate captain had given her had still not fully healed and at times, like now, they bothered her.
Reaching her destination, she went inside the building and joined the queue for the transporter. There was going to be a long wait – at this time of year nobody wanted to walk anywhere. She could see people glancing at her uniform, the single remaining rank pip clearly marking her demotion and fall from grace. Defiantly she stared back, daring them to comment, and thankfully nobody did.
Standing in the queue, Mara found her mind drifting back to the mission she had just completed… remembering…
Mara stood on the lower deck of the transport, watching the slaves as they were loaded onto the ship. They were a mixed bunch - sleek Orion women, well accustomed to slavery and too valuable to be ill treated, mixing with prisoners taken from a Federation colony world. She felt pity for them. There was nothing she could do to help this bunch; it was already too late. But maybe, her infiltration of the gang would help to save others.
It had been surprisingly easy to make contact with the slavers, almost painfully so. The whole thing had been her sister's idea – Kehlan, captain of a Federation Starship, the sister she had never known she had. How was it possible, she wondered, that they had each grown up never knowing of the other's existence? Kehlan had grown up in House Gensa, the Klingon state orphanage and had joined the Defence Force. During the Dominion war she had been transferred to the USS Endeavour and had eventually become its captain. For Mara, life had been very different, growing up on Earth and joining Starfleet Academy. She hadn't even met a real Klingon until the second year there and she still did not speak the language fluently. It had taken her a long time to come to terms with her Klingon heritage and the subsequent fights had led to several reprimands from the academy instructors. It was those fights that made her current cover so plausible. Staging a very public fight with her captain had been easy, frighteningly so. And when they had court-martialled her and thrown her out of Starfleet with a dishonourable discharge, even though she had known it was a sham, she still felt unclean.
She had been sitting in a bar, the sort of sleazy bar she would never normally have considered entering alone, drowning her sorrows when Morath had approached her, thinking that a disgraced, half-breed female like herself would be easy prey. Well, she had shown him otherwise. She might not have the Klingon training that her sister had, but she was far from helpless. At his indecent proposition, she gave a vicious growl, copied straight from her sister, and slammed the slaver against the wall, her knife going straight to his throat.
He had given a harsh laugh as he pushed her hand away. "So you are Klingon after all" he said speculatively. "I might just have a use for you."
It hadn't taken her long to convince him that she could indeed be of use to him and that same night, she had gone on board his ship as the newest member of his crew.
The most dangerous part of her mission was still to come though. Now she had to find a way to make contact with the Endeavour and start getting information back to Starfleet. Endeavour would not be far away, she knew. The Starship was one of the very few Federation vessels to have a cloaking device – completely against the Treaty of Algeron, but left over from the ship's service with the Klingon fleet during the war. Looking around her to make sure she was unobserved, she carefully activated the tiny transmitter embedded in her tooth and began to send her first message…