Night shift on Vigrid Station had already begun when the spy who was not Sovek entered the bar. Nothing about him was memorable, not his face nor his voice nor even his clothes, and that was, in and of itself, a memorable thing. He passed a cred-stick into the meaty green hands of the hulking Orion innkeeper and received a single gesture in return. The two locked eyes for the briefest of moments, one making a silent threat of dark revenge should his business be thwarted this night, and the other assuring him that the night's business would be good. They parted, each to his own devices, each to his own intrigues.
Not a word had passed between them.
Packed to the durasteel rafters with weary Boomers, visiting Tellarite cargo haulers, and other ne'er-do-wells, the bar was a raucous place, especially for so early in the artificial evening. Tucked unobtrusively in the Green Sector of Thor's Cradle, it had no name, no official owner, and would not turn up on even the most detailed search of station schematics. Unless one knew where it was, it could not be found.
And that was exactly as it was meant to be.
Known by most as the Orion Quarter, Green Sector was the center of all things illegal on Vigrid Station and was the most popular sector of the station for visitors and station-dwellers alike. Whether it was prostitution or drugs, information or prohibited arms, anything and everything was for sale in the Quarter; rumor even whispered of a slave market concealed somewhere within, but few had the courage to investigate. The Administrator of Thor's Cradle refused to admit that three-quarters of the Boomer problems with the Orion Syndicate could be traced here, refused to acknowledge the goings-on in the Quarter or even its existence, and for good reason.
The kickbacks were too good.
Since the beginning of the Earth-Romulan War, though, an unofficial truce had existed between the ECA and the Syndicate, an undeclared cease-fire that would end the moment the war did. Both sides in this truce understood this; but, until that time, business was good between the two, and Boomers unconcerned with ECA and Terran regulations expended hard-earned capital to equip their cargo ships with weapons and defensive suites that only the Orions could provide.
The war had been hard on those that dared to venture into this bar, and with rumors of an alliance with Starfleet looming on the horizon, those that could afford it came here to piss away their fortunes.
Or earn them, as the circumstances warranted. A tall human, broad in chest and face, wearing what appeared to have once been a Starfleet field jacket, loudly boasted of his unlikely exploits along the Romulan border, completely oblivious to the fact that the Orion whore he entertained was robbing him blind with her talented hands. Another human, this one wearing what could only be a Klingon longcoat, frowned hard at the louder man, never noticing the cutpurse at his side. For many, tonight would be a good night.
Crossing the floor without attracting notice, the spy who was not Sovek found his table and mentally smiled. It was exactly as he had requested it, situated with a wall to his back and a view of the bar floor. Dark shadows draped the table, allowing him to remain mostly unobserved as he did the observing. An exit to the corridor beyond was nearby, available for a rapid escape if it became necessary. Yes. It was perfect. He slid into the darkness and set his back to the wall, gesturing briefly for an alcoholic beverage as he readied himself for a long wait. The bartender brought the drink - an Orion beer - and, as he set it down, let his eyes drift to the left. With the slightest of nods, the spy indicated his understanding and accepted the beer, waiting until the bartender was long gone before allowing his own eyes, seemingly of their own accord, to slide to where the bartender had indicated.
A nondescript human wearing equally unremarkable clothes sat quietly in another dark booth. Like the spy himself, nothing about this human drew attention, and it was this very fact that attracted notice for those properly trained. Once identified, other small things stood out. A full mug of Andorian ale was at hand and, no matter how many times the human lifted it, it never emptied. His eyes were never still. He ignored the green-skinned whores around him with the casual indifference of a eunuch. Their eyes met across the bar and the spy who was not Sovek knew he faced his contact.
An hour passed before the contact rose from his table. With exceptional ease, he faked a slightly drunken man and staggered toward the spy on unsteady feet, seemingly intent on the nearby restroom. Twice he nearly fell, drawing the amusement and scorn of those in the bar. Four steps away from the spy, the human did fall, spilling dozens of coins onto the floor in his "drunken" stupor and immediately causing a small riot as bar denizens – always strapped for money – scrambled to seize the loose credits.
Not all of the coins were the same, however. One bounced and rolled directly to the spy's boot, drawn by the magnetic attractors in the boot sole. In the mad dash to get the free money that clattered across the floor, no one noticed.
And that was as it should be.
His business concluded, the spy who was not Sovek rose and departed the bar, allowing the chaos of the near riot to conceal his quiet departure through the side exit. He gave no additional thought to his contact, could not find it within himself to care what the man's fate was. Pausing long enough to pull the coin free from his boot and pocket it, he quickly strode toward the nearest tram.
He spent another hour on a seemingly haphazard trip through the station itself in an attempt to shake or identify any potential pursuers. A brief stop in a public refresher gave him the privacy he required to extract the information from the modified coin, information that turned out to be remarkably cryptic instructions from his mysterious benefactors. Sow chaos, they had instructed him previously, and he had spent over five Standard months doing exactly that. Armed with trade routes and flight paths that he had stolen for them, Romulan assault groups had wrought havoc on the Earth Cargo Authority, showing up at the worst possible moment to inflict maximum carnage and destruction. Thousands had died by his actions.
Such thoughts ... aroused him.
When he had learned of the planned conference between the ECA and Starfleet, the spy had passed on the information as quickly as possible before relocating to Vigrid Station and implementing his own intrigues. The explosive in the executive conference room would have been a coup, would have caused so much chaos that the humans would not have been able to recover. It was disappointing that Archer had escaped death but, in retrospect, the spy wasn't particularly surprised that Perkins had failed: the human had demonstrated a complete lack of efficiency of late. He should have eliminated Perkins weeks ago.
Inserting the modified coin into an equally modified reader that fit into his palm, the spy quickly input his access code. A field of letters crawled across the small screen and he quirked an eyebrow in momentary surprise as he studied them: Prepare the way, they ordered, and he took it to mean that the Romulans were coming. Ejecting the coin, he stared at it with a grim smile that barely touched his eyes. The plan would have to be accelerated.
From the refresher, he made his way quickly to Corridor GS-A, stopping only once to dispose of the coin in a public waste receptacle that instantly reduced it to its component parts for future Station use. He should not have found that amusing, but he did.
A rarely used section of the docking ring, GS-A was now little more than a number of short-term storage warehouses, each equipped with an outer docking port that would allow a transport craft to offload its cargo and move on with a minimum of delay. Perkins had recommended the warehouse as a base of operations, noting that Boomer smugglers used them quite often. At the time, it had seemed a logical decision.
Now, the spy wasn't so sure.
The two aliens said nothing to him as he entered Warehouse GS-A-19C, barely reacted beyond giving him a single glance, and continued their tasks in silence. He gave them an equal amount of thought as he studied their progress: another five of the explosive vests had been fashioned in his absence and the two aliens - Red and Green as he thought of them due to their differing eye pigmentation - appeared to be nearing completion on two more. They had come with strong recommendations from Perkins, and the spy had experienced no difficulty with them aside from their disgustingly barbaric eating habits. A frown touched his face then; they were another potential link between him and the unlamented human, a link he would have to sever in the very near future. Leaving them to their tasks, he crossed to another section of the warehouse, fighting the smile that threatened to blossom upon his face.
Two humans were strapped in a pair of large chairs, awaiting his Touch. Neither of them would be missed by the community at large, as they were either derelicts pulled from the lower decks or temporary workers fully expected to disappear without warning. Both were already heavily sedated, and they stared at his approach without comprehension or fear in their eyes; the drugs had become necessary to keep them from struggling, and the spy who was not Sovek had discovered it was easier to reprogram them this way. Seven others were already in place throughout the station, each awaiting the appropriate command word or sequence of events that would trigger the sleeper personality.
A grunt from one of the aliens – Green, he thought – demanded his attention, and he frowned at the alarm that flashed. He recognized the nature of the alert at once.
The warehouse was being scanned.