"Spies R us" © 2002 Kara Anne Kalel.
Please see chapter 1 for copyright and disclaimer notices.
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Once back on board, I summarized the situation. "Someone back home has sold us out, and our cover is blown. However, we still have a mission, and cargo to deliver. Obviously, the pre-arranged schedule is no longer valid." I looked at my crew, and said, "As of now, all our ID is worthless. We'll get out of here, and stop somewhere to make modifications to the ship. After that, we'll have to get several new sets of ID." I turned to them. "Five, you and Fek'leh will have to adjust our sensor output and power signature to come close to this new ID." I tossed it to the Tellarite. "Doctor, you'll have to come up with some disguises for us. K'Chel and I will be revising the schedule, and coming up with some way to still meet our deliveries."
Birta said, "May I suggest a few cousins of mine? If you've got the latinum, they can get just about anything."
I grinned. "The Federation may have gone to a cashless economy, but that doesn't mean that we don't have a few spare bars of latinum aboard. I think I can come up with some. Why don't you work with K'Chel about that?"
K'Chel asked, "What about you?"
"Me?" I grinned, and said, "I'm going to risk my neck, and go send an emergency message to Admiral Moore. She needs to know her security is compromised."
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I didn't wind up going alone. I went to a public comm facility, and sent an innocuous message. I knew that using a single use GalNet account would raise some alarms in her office. More would be raised when the message was decrypted. On the way back, Birta stopped into a Ferengi-run shop. K'Chel and I waited outside until Birta came out with a happy smile. We made it back to the ship, and as quietly as possible, lifted off.
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Once we were in space, I entered a normal space lane, then called Birta to the bridge. I asked, "Doctor, what did you get? Our objective was to simply go and get a message sent."
She said, "ID for everyone. We'll have Five suitably alter these to fit the plastic surgery I'll do, and if we can sneak aboard a comm relay station, we can get them entered in the appropriate databases. I've also stored poor Ri'hanna in a stasis tube, in case we need a spare body. I've got some ideas for having our ship disappear, but it will require us to generate some debris … "
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Three months after leaving Station Orleans, we had managed to exchange the Borg package with a courier, bypassed several meetings, and gotten fired on by what I could only assume to be an overly enthusiastic bounty hunter. Since he never communicated beyond the single message, "Die, scum!", I didn't know for certain. We left him drifting, alive, but with his ship's warp engines destroyed.
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We still hadn't found a comm relay station we could sneak aboard. We had drifted into in a large asteroid field near one, cloaked from their observation, while K'Chel and Fek'leh worked outside in pressure suits, installing a modification to our sensor suite. Five monitored, occasionally calling corrections to them, and keeping an eye on an old Miranda class Starfleet ship that had come to visit the station. They had just finished outside, and were moving to re-enter the lock, while the Miranda moved away.
Two old Constitution class ships decloaked, one firing on the station's relay antennae, while the other blasted the Miranda. I watched as her shields were quickly beaten down, weapons and engines were disabled, and life pods started to spill from her beaten flanks.
"I'd bet they're slavers. See the transporter traces?" Birta said from the sensor station. "Under Ferengi salvage law, once the crew leave the ship, the first Ferengi ship that discovers them can claim the ship and cargo."
"Not that slavers, or pirates for that matter, would care about the finer points of law." I said. "Where did they get the ships?" I asked.
"With enough latinum in the right places, you can get anything you want." Birta shrugged. "The Constitution class ships were well designed, sturdy, and there were a lot of them built over their service life. You could steal them from Starfleet's storage areas without a problem. It's not like they're high-security areas. A couple of shipyards can repair or reinstall weapons, drives or whatever."
"What I don't understand is the economics of the slavers." I mused. "Individual slaves aren't worth enough to justify the cost of refitting those ships."
"You have wholesalers for slaves, and the slavers can sell the target ship and contents to others." Birta motioned to the display. "It would take a while to amortize the cost of weapon and engine refits, but those ships outgun their targets, which are mostly smaller ships and unarmed liners. You also don't have to provide quarters for the potential slaves. Strip and bind them, and lock them in a hold. One of those Constitution ships can hold a thousand or so slaves like that. After a few years, you've amortized the cost of the refit, and after that, it's mostly profit."
"We must assist them." Five stated flatly from the engineering station.
"How? They outgun us." Birta asked.
"They do not outgun a scout-class cube. We can simulate one easily with our modified sensor system. We also have a Borg power plant and tractor assembly."
I thought about it, while watching the Ferengi. "Do we have a tracking device that we can use on those bastards?"
Five replied, "We do."
"Good. Program it for six hours delay. Once we get our people back on board, we simulate a cube, and see if we can drive them off. If we can, we can also sneak aboard the station, and plant our message traffic in the outbound queue." I leaned forward, and stared at the screen.
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"WE ARE THE BORG. YOUR BIOLOGICAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL DISTINCTIVENESS WILL BE ADDED TO OUR OWN."
"RESISTANCE IS FUTILE."
I looked at a small screen that displayed what we were broadcasting. The Borg had never seen the need for stealth, so we simply barged in, tractor negligently flicking out to seize a ship. One Ferengi ship fired a wild shot in our direction, then fled. With a wrench, the other managed to pull loose, but not before we shot the stealthed tracking torpedo into it. It followed the other into warp.
"They have no courage. They did not stand and fight." K'Chel snorted from the helm.
"We didn't want them to." I turned to Five, and said, "Any survivors?"
"Scanning." she said. "None on the station. Three weak life signs in one pod, none on the ship."
I nodded, and touched the com for Engineering. "Fek'leh. Beam those pod survivors to Birta, and then offload our debris. We want it to look like we were captured here." I looked at K'Chel. "You have the con. I have another job to do."
K'Chel nodded, and asked, "What?"
I smiled tightly, and said, "I'm going to give Ri'hanna a resting place in the debris field. Maybe her body can throw our enemies off the trail."
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I restrained my impatience until Birta could call me to Sickbay.
"Captain." She never became formal unless she had bad news.
"Doctor. Report, please."
"Of the three survivors, only one will recover. He's lost his left eye, but is otherwise stable. I can install a prosthetic if he wishes. Of the other two, one died before I could operate. I've put her body in stasis. The other has head trauma that a starbase could fix, but I can't. All I can do is stabilize her, and put her in stasis." She sighed, and nodded toward the small bay. "He's been asking to speak to the Captain."
I patted her shoulder, and moved to the small (and only) recovery bay. I touched the hatch control, and the door opened into the dimly lit room. "You wanted to see me?"
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"Captain?" a hoarse male voice asked from the large form on the bed.
I nodded, then realized that he probably couldn't see me. "Yes, I'm the captain of this ship. What can I do for you?" I moved to take his hand.
"Captain, the Borg … the ships that hijacked us … "
"Don't worry about the Borg. What about the ships? What can you tell me?"
"Slavers, Captain. A Ferengi named Malok, son of Chudak. They were going to sell us, said we were 'salvage'." He coughed, then turned to get a better look at me. "Alina?"
I shifted to see him better. "Jason?"
# 11 Reunion
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