Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek or its related properties. All such rights belong to CBS/Paramount.
This is the fifth instalment of the Special Investigations Division. More is on the way.
Brin Macen followed Lisea Danan through the busy warrens of the Special Projects Yards. The SPYards were Starfleet Intelligence's private playground secreted within the sprawling Utopia Planetia complexes. If hiding in plain sight was the ultimate disguise, then the SPYards were well hidden by the massive shipbuilding projects surrounding them. Despite the laconic facade surrounding the facility, it was one of the most secure locations in the entirety of Sector 001.
Macen and his teammates had access to the SPYards owing to their affiliation with Starfleet Intelligence's elite Special Investigations Division and present due to their current lack of a ship. That lack was due to a brutal recent encounter with the enigmatic Section 31. That encounter had resulted in the destruction of the team's ship and the ship's crew and commander. Tom Riker's loss was still being felt and no one doubted that his ghost would linger for some time.
Macen found his pursuit of Danan both intriguing and annoying. At one time, he'd pursued her for far more than the explanation he currently sought. Their relationship had disintegrated in the aftermath of Macen's infiltration of the Maquis and the subsequent Dominion War. The harsh realities of both struggles had taught him harsher methods of dealing with obstacles and she'd recoiled from the person he'd become.
Danan, who'd only recently rejoined the team after an absence of some months, had reacted poorly to Macen's decisions regarding the Section 31 crew that had attempted to capture the team and had destroyed their ship with all surviving hands aboard. Macen had arranged for the Section 31 ship's destruction and had goaded her captain into triggering his vessel's own demise. Both the swiftness of Macen's decisions and their brutality had appalled Danan. Although unopposed to justified applications of force, she'd disagreed with his reasoning surrounding his justification of the lethal methods he'd employed
Luckily, the SPYards had previously begun laying a new hull for the team. It had begun its shakedown trials when the team arrived on Earth. The group had quickly been pressed into service and had just completed the new vessel's final shakedown cruise. Throughout the two-week mission, Danan had avoided Macen in any context outside of duty. When the ship had docked back at the SPYards facility, Macen had inquired as to her behaviour. Her present flight through the construction facility had been her only answer thus far.
"Slow down Lees!" Macen demanded from behind her, "I can follow you all day long if I have to. I just want to ask you some questions."
"You don't want the answers." She shouted back over her shoulder.
"Maybe not." He yelled back, "But I still need to hear them."
She stopped and whirled to face him, "You really want to know? I think you're a soulless, murdering son of a bitch, that's what!"
That took him aback, "I knew our encounter with Titor and his crew had upset you but I never suspected this."
"You never gave them a chance!" she yelled again, "Boom! That was your instant decision."
"My standing orders are plain." Macen replied through gritted teeth, "I cannot allow the dissemination of the temporal drive or any components of it to any parties or persons whatsoever."
"Your orders?" Danan snorted, "It was your damned crusade! Most of those crewmen were oblivious as to what Titor was working on. They didn't have to die."
"I think you'd see things a little differently if it was your biology that provided the pivotal piece of a particular technology. Let's see what you'd do if someone altered the genetics of the Trill symbionts and turned them into weapons."
"Someone already has." Danan said in a low voice, "Or had you forgotten?"
Macen shook his head. Truth was, he had forgotten about Bajor's recent encounter with the mysterious parasites and the revelation of their link with Trill's vermiforms. It was a secret kept from the bulk of Trill civilisation and its revelation threatened to unhinge the entire society. Even unintentionally, it was a cruel topic to bring up.
"Sorry." Macen said sincerely.
"It was just so damned abrupt." Danan silently accepted the apology, "Why did they have to die?"
"We didn't have the manpower to take or secure the ship." Macen sighed as he responded, "We had to eliminate all traces of the banned tech and prevent anyone aboard from replicating it later on. I chose the solution I did because it was the nicest fit to the problem."
"The nicest or the easiest?" Danan pressed.
"Both." He replied with conviction, "Our team is thrust out into hazardous situations that require solutions that lay beyond the normal Starfleet paradigm. That's the job we were selected for and why we're given extra leeway when it comes to the methods at our disposal. It's also why we're contractors and not serving line officers. Starfleet demands plausible deniability."
"I know the technical details." Danan retorted, "I just want to know how you can live with your decision."
"Because I have to." Macen snapped testily, "My command decisions are my own. No one has to live with their consequences but me. I did what I thought was best and I still think that. That isn't going to change."
"I see." Danan replied though pursed lips, "your time with the Maquis changed you. The war just made the changes more pronounced."
"Admirals Drake and Nechayev seem to approve of the changes." Macen rebutted.
"Nechayev would approve of anything that furthered her goals." Danan replied sadly, "Drake is still trying to prove herself and her new command, and like it or not, you're her best operative."
"That isn't likely to change anytime soon." Macen concurred.
"Maybe it should." Danan opined.
He shook his head, "Not going to happen. I don't know what else to do with myself."
"Too bad." Danan snapped.
"So are you leaving gain?" Macen wondered.
Danan released a heavy sigh, "No. I don't know what else to do with myself as well. Besides, maybe I can temper your judgement by sticking around."
"I don't need a conscience." Macen warned.
"Too bad. You're getting one as well as one helluva sciences specialist." Danan quipped.
"Oh joy." Macen rolled his eyes.
"Isn't honesty a wonderful thing?" she flashed a cheeky smile.
"I'll let you know." Macen replied glumly.
Macen stretched as he made his way towards the kitchen of his home on Barrinor. He'd stayed up all night again working on his latest analysis. He'd had the last three days off since the team concluded their last assignment. He'd caught up on his research while returning to Barrinor aboard the Solstice.
The Solstice was the Special Investigations Team's latest gift from the Starfleet. The Solstice had replaced their destroyed Ju'day-class raider with a built from the keel up Blackbird-class scout. Macen had commanded a stock decommissioned Blackbird during the Maquis rebellion and found it a superb craft. This one was anything but stock.
The Solstice sported five Type X phaser strips to replace the original's outdated phaser banks. She also possessed atmospheric manoeuvring capability, a boon over the standard design. The Solstice sported enhanced sensors and shields. Her three torpedo launchers could support quantum torpedoes, though her inventory typically lacked them. Finally, a Class 4 Klingon cloaking device rounded off the list of goodies. All of this, and Dracas was still making personalised tweaks.
He entered the kitchen to find T'Kir brewing a pot of coffee. She wore a baggy sweater over loose shorts. She'd been here the last three days as well. Since profession their mutual love, T'Kir and Macen had started a regular program of mental exercises to bolster her mental shields.
His own abilities to sense time/space fluxes had begun to taper off. At first this change was frightening. Kort had been at a loss to explain it until he ran a microcellular scan. The same radiation damage that had negated the life prolonging alterations to his body also seemed to be adversely affecting his preternatural abilities. That same radiation had also halved his natural life span. Where he had once faced another five centuries of life, he could only reasonably expect a little over two more centuries.
His ability to sense confluxes of time and space were now reduced to the little more than the same intuitive "hunches" normal to his people. He'd survived centuries at this level. His senses had only risen as a result of his exposure to the Nexus. It was vaguely disappointing to lose the extra sensitivity, but at the same time it had started to become a liability as the "power" grew in strength, and more and more out of his control.
T'Kir herself was facing a similar situation. After spending the last decade dealing with a telepathic ability too strong to shield out unwanted thoughts, her abilities were declining in strength. Part of that was due to the herbal remedies she'd been using to partially suppress her runaway faculty. Now though, when she took the herbs it tapered her telepathic sensitivity to manageable levels.
He wondered when the last time she'd seen her own home. She'd taken over one of the room's in his house and had moved the bulk of her things in. It was an ironic situation. Before their recent confessions, when they'd lived together on the same ship for weeks and months on end, they'd never avoided each other but had never spent nearly this amount of time with each other either. Of course, he had been involved with Lisea Danan at the time and T'Kir had enjoyed her flings.
T'Kir was bleary eyed and grumpy. Macen had been amused to discover this was often the case in the morning. To be fair, he hated mornings himself. He smelled rhohhian eggs cooking and bread toasting through the coffee scent.
"You read my mind." He said as he approached the coffeepot, his eyes locked on the frying pan.
"Piss off." She replied, waving her free hand at him, "This is my breakfast. Make your own."
Macen thought about reminding her that this was his house not hers, but opted not to. It would have had sounded hollow. He'd promised her that wherever he was, she was always welcome to join him. Trying to welch out of cooking breakfast wasn't a good enough reason to go back on that vow.
"I see you were up all night again." She observed with wry amusement, "What are you working on now?"
"An analysis on potential repercussions of prolonged alliances with the Cardassian Union and the Romulan Star Empire." He answered nonchalantly as he began to rummage around the cryo unit for food.
When she'd met Macen, she'd immediately known he was intelligent. It had surprised her to learn that he was a respected social scientist and analyst outside of Starfleet as well as within its ranks. His ideas were often controversial, and often proven correct. She'd laughed when she'd learned that he'd written several papers while fighting for the Maquis.
His analyses had captured the soul of the struggle and quantified it in terms the average Federation citizen could understand. Although official policies had never changed as a result, the de facto change had been to ignore the Maquis and allow them to drive the Cardassians out while the Cardies dealt with the Klingons and rebuilding from their losses. The Maquis had been on the verge of victory when the Dominion had allied themselves with the Union and everything changed.
Scholars still spoke of Macen's paper as the defining analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the movement. His papers on the Cardassians, the Borg, and various other topics had been equally acclaimed. He'd received a lot of pressure to pursue academia as a career. Most of that pressure had come from Lisea Danan.
Although Macen's Trill lover had joined the Maquis with him, she lost her revolutionary zeal after their defeat at the hands of the Jem'hadar. While he went away to lead covert raids against the Dominion, she'd been reassigned to a research facility. She'd reunited with Macen briefly to help him on a mission but had resigned from Starfleet upon returning from it. Shortly thereafter, she'd revealed Macen's longstanding attraction to T'Kir even as the Vulcan struggled to come to grips with having fallen in love with him.
Now, six months later, both of them had come to terms with their mutual attraction during their mission on 492 IV, also known as Magna Roma. Their love had subsequently blossomed. It'd had more than its fair share of bumps along the way. That was the case when both parties were survivors of emotional and psychological trauma. But they found strength in one another's company and that made the difference.
Another factor was that T'Kir's telepathy and Macen's abilities had melded to
forge an unusually strong telepathic rapport between them. No matter how foul a mood was outwardly projected, the underlying affection and love was never in doubt. It was advantage many couples would have envied. .
She sipped her coffee and watched him go to work on preparing his breakfast. He stood just over six-foot. His head was crowned with reddish-blond hair. He wore a moustache and goatee. She'd never seen him without it, although he'd shown her a holo of him with a full beard taken almost over seventy years ago when he'd first joined Starfleet. His face was ovular, dominated by high cheekbones, full lips, and an indistinct nose.
She caught her own reflection in a nearby window. Her raven hair seemed permanently windblown. She'd grown it out and it still acted as though it had a life of its own. She consoled herself with the fact that her green blood gave her an olive complexion that Earth's Mediterranean natives would die for. She was finally accepting who she was rather than trying to flee her heritage.
She wondered what he though of her oval face with its puffy lips, high cheekbones, rounded nose, and large blue eyes. She realised it was a silly question. She was suddenly grateful she'd never asked Macen it. The way he sometimes looked at her was answer enough. He accepted her eclectic behaviours.
Besides, she mused, his face is almost the same shape as mine. She'd read somewhere that people were unknowingly drawn to people of similar build. It was a subconscious reflex at validating their appearance. In her years with the Maquis and since, she'd been amazed at the how many people looked alike despite species.
The last six months had captivated, and irritated, T'Kir unlike any time before. The time spent with Macen reinforced her conviction that they were made for one another. It wasn't that the time was idyllic, when they disagreed it was cataclysmic. T'Kir had come to realise that her willingness to go head to head with Macen was one of the great draws she had for him.
She watched with amusement as he cooked some eggs in a rather unorthodox manner, "Y'know you're doing it funny don't you?"
"I know what I'm doing." He protested, "Leave me alone."
"Fine." She threw her hands in the air, "Do want you want."
"Thanks." He muttered.
A comm panel started beeping. Macen swore and abandoned the eggs. T'Kir slid into place and finished the job while Macen went into the adjoining study to answer the incessant summons. When he returned, his face was twisted in a strange expression.
"Brin?" she asked suddenly concerned, "What's wrong?"
"Hmm?" it was like he was waking up, "Oh, Dracas says he can't manufacture the parts he needs for the final adjustments on the ship. He has a line on a shipyard that has them and has placed an order."
"So?" she asked slightly irritably, wondering why that deserved Macen's attention.
"Apparently they won't ship the parts, so we have to go get them." Macen explained, "It's supposed to be a fairly nice planet."
"So?" she asked again, starting to lose her patience.
"So how d'you feel like going on vacation for a few days?" he asked.
She pumped her fist in the air, "Yes!" She ran out of the room to start packing.
"I take it you like the idea." Macen commented with a pleased smirk.
The comm badge chirped again. Macen stared at it incredulously. T'Kir stormed into the room. Her face was livid.
"Don't you dare answer that!"
His face twisted up in an expression of baffled irritation, "I have to."
"No, y'don't."
"Yes, I do."
"No. You. Don't." she said more assertively, "We're finally going on a vacation. The first one I've ever had and I'm not about to let anyone spoil it."
"It won't spoil it."
"Yes, it will. Just watch."
Macen rolled his eyes as he activated his comm badge, "Macen here."
"It's about damn time!" Admiral Amanda Drake's voice came across; "We've got a situation. You need to report to Argos immediately."
"Told you." T'Kir accused sullenly.
"Got it. Out." He deactivated the comm, "We'll check it out and get underway."
"Right." She said scornfully.
"Just get dressed." He urged