Ten: Mudd sticks

Days spent at the spaceport sped by at warp speed. The busy back and forth of shuttles was a far cry from being in space, when hours could go by without much of interest passing through her earpiece. She got to know cargo jockeys through their take-off and landing spiel. It surprised her how many beings could ask for a date with a woman they'd never met. Many of the freighter pilots were regulars who met up in the Spaceport truck-stop. They liked fried food, and plenty of it.

Greasy as her meal looked, she had to eat. The search for salad was frequently fruitless, as was the search for fruit, so Uhura had a chocolate milkshake and fries. "Can we join you, Ma'am?" A dragging of chairs indicated the question was rhetorical, and she lifted her eyes to see three men taking the remaining seats around her table. Cupcake, the largest man, was in security, and joined at the hip with his friend Riley, a cargo jockey. They were accompanied by the transporter chief, Kyle.

"What in heaven's name are you eating, Riley?" She took the edge of the young pilot's plate and rotated it to get a better view of the meal. It looked a lot like barbecue wings, but the skin was green.

"It's Elasian water-fowl, tastes like..."

"I know, I know, chicken." Uhura waved a hand in dismissal.

"Uh? No, I was going to say Troyian water-fowl." Uhura and Kyle laughed, and Cupcake gave Riley a playful punch on the arm.

"Busy day today," Kyle flipped his communicator and scanned it."Can't stay too long." Of the three, he was the most serious, always polite and professional. Both he and Cupcake were ex-Starfleet but Cupcake was definitely the more rambunctious of the two. Uhura never asked why Cupcake had left the service, but there were rumours of some kind of altercation. Ex-Starfleet were common at the spaceport; Uhura's cover was tailor-made. Despite his mannerly exterior, Kyle wore a mischievous streak a mile wide and leaned back on his chair to be closer to his target of the day; Cyrano, the truck-stop short order cook was bussing a nearby table, a jowly, jovial man with a murky past. "Hey, we got a shipment of tribbles in today, on the transporter."

Cyrano froze mid-wipe, and silverware clanged to the floor. Uhura heard every transmission, they'd had no such thing. "Kyle, don't be so cruel. Cyrano, he's just trying to get a rise out of you. Ignore him, sweetie." One of Uhura's laser looks was directed at the transporter chief. "Leave the guy alone. He's doing his community service, isn't he?"

Lunch went by in a flash, it always did with the boys to entertain her. Apart from the camaraderie, another bonus of working at the spaceport was the number of unclaimed shipments. Sulu was chief of the NGPD fraud squad. If a shipment was the result of some racket, NGPD were instructed to destroy the goods. In actuality, handing the shipments out to the spaceport staff seemed as good a way of disposing of them as any.

Back at her station, a new message beeped at her, a voice mail from Sulu 'The Fence', who always contacted Uhura in advance if he thought there was good stuff to be got. He would scout out the containers and make sure she was first in line, even offering his opinion if the shipment was clothing. It was sad that confiscated shipments of good fashions were rare, but food was not; fraudsters seemed to go in for luxury food items.

Pressing the earpiece in tight, she listened. "Afternoon Uhura, just thought you'd want to know, there's a stasis container of genuine Jelly Doughnuts from New York City, Terra that appears to have no paperwork, can you keep an eye on it for me? Serial number is 15-20-0617." Unbidden, a smile crept over her face at the message. 'No paperwork' was code for stolen and being disposed of. The fake serial number was the time, day and calendar week the container was to be opened and the contents distributed to waiting gannets.

.

.

On a day off from the spaceport, Uhura sat opposite Chekov at the Enterprise as he hacked through database records for every possible company on New Glasgow, looking for connections between the missing individuals. Doughnut wrappers littered his desk. Oh to be seventeen again, thought Uhura. After a month at the spaceport, her clothes had gotten tighter, and the wolf-whistles louder.

On the scuffed couch sat Spock, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, dotting a Padd in rapid movements with his stylus, its tip a blur. Minutes passed in quiet labour, until Spock broke Nyota's concentration. "One of my ancestors once said, 'When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.'"

"What have you got, Mister Spock?" Chekov's brow rose in a gesture of curiosity, and he leaned away from his monitor.

"Doctor McCoy took tissue samples from Miss Crest." The surname jarred without its forename, did Crimson's publicist, or whoever named her, not think of that? "Her actual age is forty-six."

"Wow! Forty-six? She is old enough to be my mama also!" Chekov rested his cheek on his fist and smiled with one side of his mouth.

"Mister Chekov, your precociously high IQ must tell you, that your conversely low age makes this a possibility for approximately 43.4 percent of the adult human population of this planet."

Ignoring the SpockStat (as McCoy had nicknamed them) Chekov asked, "What is unusual about her age though? We already know she has got the re-surfacing."

"Indeed her recorded birth-date is as we expected, however the age of the muscle tissue samples is between nineteen and twenty-one Terran years."

A colleague hadn't turned up for a shift the evening before, and Uhura worked five extra hours, so she wasn't firing on all thrusters. "So you're saying what? A de-ageing process, or the woman isn't Crimson?"

"I have said nothing, Miss Uhura."

"Well, do you have a hunch?" asked Chekov, "A guess?"

"My guess, Mister Chekov, would be valueless. I suggest we refrain from guessing and find some facts. If you will excuse me, I have an appointment with Jim. Carry on."

"Wait, what about the DNA? Did you test it?" Chekov resembled Porthos, looking for a crumb from his master.

Spock gave an audible sigh and turned round from his path to the exit. Uhura wanted to scream at him for being so rude to Chekov. "Of course, all matched up with her birth records."

"But those records could be tampered with."

"As I have already said, Mister Chekov, let us find some facts."

Uhura had never felt so much like sticking her tongue out at the Vulcan's retreating back, but a lapse in professionalism like that was no example for the Kid and so she clamped her jaw closed. Probably her recent avoidance of Spock hadn't helped his mood, but she needed time to think without his distracting presence. She was stuck, unable to move forward after the encounter on JT's terrace. With modern medical advances, humans could easily live well into their second century and, perhaps in years to come, she might be more accepting of cosmetic surgery. During disturbed nights, Uhura realised she needed a stronger sign from Spock, and felt shame that his declarations thus far were not enough. For them to be together, she needed Spock to be certain it was what he wanted.

Chekov was looking at her with concern, so she turned her thoughts back to the case, her voice false and bright, "So, what we have so far is: McCoy thinks Crimson Crest is unbalanced after her recent re-surfacing, he and Spock think her muscle tissue is younger than it should be, the Captain has prowled round MediKhan on a 'hunch' and found nothing, and we now have seventeen missing beings pinned up on our board."

The Russian stretched one arm behind his head, rolled a doughnut wrapper one-handed into a ball, and finger-flicked it into the waste-basket. "I am so tired of this, I look at power companies, gym membership, grocery delivery, clothing stores, every single thing, and there is no pattern, nothing they have in common, nothing. How are you getting on with the Herald's comm-tapping?"

Uhura's bottom lip stuck out and she puffed out a breath. "It's weird. Looks like they've got into the comm messages of the first few missing individuals, and their next-of-kin, but then the whole thing seemed to stop. Nothing since then."

"That is odd. And who owns the Herald Enquirer?"

It was a rhetorical question, and they both chimed, "KhanCorp."

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking, young Chekov?" Uhura tapped her chin in imitation of McCoy's customary contemplation pose.

"I think so, but I do not like it." The boy steeled himself, "We must talk to Harry Mudd." Squirming in his seat, Chekov lowered his head and looked up at Uhura, his lips in a downward curve.

"Will you get those puppy-eyes off of me! It's not a job for a boy anyway. This is a job for a woman." She affected a slight purr at the last word.

"Oh," answered Chekov, all innocence, "so we will be sending Christine?"

Uhura threw her pack of gaspers at him, but it clipped Chekov's monitor and shot onto the floor behind his chair. A furry bolt of clacketty claws and panting streaked over the wood and seconds later, Porthos sat to attention by Uhura's leg, holding the pack in his mouth, tail wagging in a beagle version of 'again!'

"Chekov, I do think this dog needs to go for a walk to...?"

Mudd's schedule was as predictable as the New Glasgow rain. Checking his mental clock, Chekov ran through the journalist's day. "Nineteen forty-two hours. He will be at Finnegan's, eating."

"Well, that's fine. I haven't eaten yet either. Come on Porthos, walkies!"

Finnegan's was the very cliché of a smoky, Irish dive. Words in Gaelic decorated the windows and Uhura wondered why their translations were thread, needles, chalk. It was a bar, not a nineteenth century tailors supplies. Maybe Finnegan wasn't Irish at all, but he should have at least read an Irish dictionary. All was forgiven though, as it was one of only a few bars on the planet that allowed dogs, although, as a woman, Uhura had to endure Finnegan's blarney.

"Oh my, I recognise that wee dog, so I do. Isn't that Scotty's dog?" He knew full well it was Porthos, thought Uhura. "How has a lovely girl like you come to be with him now?"

"I'm a new communications officer at the port, I'm taking him for a walk." She winked at Finnegan. "Well, that's what the engineer thinks."

"What can I get you, darlin'?" He polished glasses using a fine Irish linen cloth in green and white plaid.

"I'll have a Bushmills, straight up, double." For many years, Uhura harboured a secret talent that came in very useful in many situations. She could drink a Klingon under the table, although the prune juice they insisted on mixing with their alcohol gave her horrible reflux.

After ordering a steak and onion sandwich, and a quarter-pint of Guinness in a bowl, which Finnegan assured her was Porthos' usual, she sprang open her compact and used the mirror to scan the patrons behind her. A description of Mudd was issued by Chekov, who painted him as 'a tall fat man with a moustache who looks as if he is dressed from the trunk of a travelling theatre company'. It was an apt portrait. Mudd sat alone at a small table wearing a suit that was garish in the grey light of New Glasgow, a lime shirt and a purple brocade tie.

How would she approach him? Hey Mudd, someone put the thumbscrews on your comm-tap racket? No, that sounded like McCoy, plus how on earth would she explain how she knew that? Baiting him would be better. She pulled out a picture of an Orion girl, another tool given to her by McCoy along with her cigarettes; a forgery, a faked image. If you just want to get a conversation going, he'd told her, whip this picture out and ask if anyone has seen her, then steer the conversation round to the person you are really talking about, say she was last seen with them.

"Have you seen this girl?" Uhura brandished the picture at Finnegan who, to his credit, took it from her and gave it proper scrutiny.

"Oh isn't she a pretty one. I'm awful fond of that Orion dancing. I don't know her though. Why are you lookin' for her?" Finnegan leaned down close, his eyes zipping from side to side. "Is she some moll having an affair with your husband?"

"I'm not married." Gorn, she'd fallen straight into the bar-owner's trap, admitting she was single.

"Pity, I like a good cat-fight. Gives me a grand excuse to recycle the dirty water from the mop-bucket." Finnegan roared with laughter at his own joke.

"My dear lady." A shadow loomed over Uhura's space on the bar. "Am I to understand you are searching for a," The voice lowered in volume, what was with all the theatrical whispering in this bar? "missing person?"

She spun on her stool. "Who's asking?"

"Harcourt Fenton Mudd, at your service." Sausage fingers brandished a holo-card, which she pinched between neat manicured nails.

A cursory glance confirmed the identity of the flamboyant figure and she responded to his query. "I didn't say she was missing, I only asked if anyone had seen her."

"Would you care to join me, my dear? Perhaps I can assist you in tracking your friend, ask a few people I know."

Here was a man not built or upholstered for undercover work and yet, he seemed to get stories. Perhaps people felt sorry for him. He had the bluster of a grifter, but it seemed everyone saw through him, which made him a tragic figure. This too was probably an act; a double-bluff. "Why Mister Mudd, it would be a pleasure." With a wiggle of her hips, Uhura slid from her stool, plate in one hand, drink in the other, and joined Mudd at his table.

Several whiskeys later, she pretended to let slip her interest in gossip, that she'd heard rumours the staff at the Herald Enquirer tried to listen to messages on missing individuals' comms, making sure she touched Mudd's arm often.

"Cerrrrrtainly not!" Mudd boomed, "We have ethics, you know." A pudgy finger tapped his temple as he winked, and he gave a small hiccup. "Besides, the boss told us not to."

"What, your editor on the Herald?"

"No-no-no dear lady, the mayor. Oh," his features sank into basset-hound disappointment. "I don't think I was supposed to say that."

"Say what?" Uhura affected intoxication.

"What? What did I say?" Mudd was slurring now.

"I think it was 'let's have a cocktail' wasn't it?"

"Splendid! Yesh, a cocktail!" He rubbed his hands together in glee, then fell back in his seat, snoring with his mouth open.

Harcourt Fenton Mudd was Uhura's new best bud.

It was after ten when she got back to the agency, only to be greeted by Spock, his arms folded. "You are late, and on an unauthorised mission. You went alone at a time when individuals are going missing."

"We're autonomous here. I don't need your permission," she swallowed, "sir." Porthos slunk beneath Chekov's desk and hid.

"Nevertheless, I will see you in my apartment now, please be good enough to follow me up."

~~intermission~~