Their cover story is simple enough, and one they've used before on several occasions.
Traan II is a staging post on the run out from Earth to Vega Colony. It's a thriving world, with a sizable population and enough natural resources to sustain itself in very fair comfort as well as attracting a considerable amount of trade from passing ships. It has sophisticated repair yards too, and sees regular business servicing and upgrading those same ships. All in all, it's a place that has worked hard for its good reputation and has always shown itself anxious to maintain good relations with all of its various neighbours – Starfleet in particular. If the dream of some kind of 'Federation of Planets' ever does get off the drawing boards, Traan will almost certainly be among the first to apply to join, and the prospect of establishing a close and potentially even exclusive relationship with a planet with those mineral riches is not one that Starfleet can or will ignore.
The freighter in which the team travels actually does contain a quantity of trade goods. Now and again, when their cover requires it, they're perfectly willing and able to use them, usually turning a profit when they do so. However, it will be nothing at all out of the ordinary for the ship to develop some small technical fault – a recurring one that would exhaust their stock of spares and necessitate a visit to the yards at Traan. They've called there before and done legitimate business, so their credentials are already established (even though these naturally carry no indication that they are aligned in any way to Starfleet; they're registered there as a small independent company trading out of Vega).
The orbital station's repair facilities are doing the usual brisk trade as the freighter approaches, and Traffic Control signal them to a vacant docking berth on one of the arms. As they approach it, Jag is occupying the co-pilot's seat. He notes uneasily that an NX-class is coupled up; Enterprise is far behind, so it has to be Columbia, presumably calling in on some official business in passing. The growing menace of the Romulans has led to the NX-02 being held closer to Earth than her older sister.
"Homesick?" asks Stripes, obviously seeing the direction of his gaze.
Jag shrugs.
"How is she to fly?"
"Don't know. I never tried. Got a decent rudder-man – Travis Mayweather."
The pilot nods, interpreting the praise without difficulty for what it is. "Got a good reputation." He brings the York drifting gently around the tail-end of Columbia's left nacelle, so close that if they were on water the other vessel would have bobbed on the bow-wave. The sunlight gleams on the sleek duranium hull, though the warp coils lining it are quiescent, their luminous blueness slumbering.
It's strange to get an outsider's look like this, thinks Jag, his gaze roaming over the saucer. Some of the improvements on Enterprise's design are pretty obvious: the extra armaments, for one, plainly thought necessary in view of the increasing tensions on the edge of what's beginning to feel suspiciously like a front line. He eyes them a little wistfully; he's always thought his own ship was pitifully poorly equipped for self-defence, even when she'd been refitted to face the Expanse, but the recently-appointed Lieutenant Kiona Thayer will have less to worry about on that score. Maybe Columbia's older sister will be brought home presently to be fitted with something similar. The days of peaceful exploration are already beginning to feel as though they are part of a mindset with a limited life-span.
The thought of Enterprise being refitted and her armaments upgraded without his personal supervision costs him a surprisingly deep pang, which he resolutely stifles. Nothing to do with me any more. Even if the shipwrights at Jupiter Station and the technicians at Starfleet R&D didn't know their business – which they most assuredly do – then he's left some damned good deputies behind, who can be guaranteed to have everything done just as he'd want it.
Stripes guides York to the allocated docking bay at the yards. The freighter ghosts into place, halting with the barest tremor through the hull as her bow contacts the forward buffer. Alongside, the technicians will already be getting the transportation tube positioned, manoeuvring it to seal around the ship's airlock so that repair personnel and matériel can be brought on board and any of the crew who care to can 'stretch their legs' on the station or – time and funds permitting – travel down to Traan itself.
Funds won't be a problem. That fictitious company on Vega has already provided the necessary, thanks to the strictly unofficial end of Starfleet's accounts that have the Section's stamp on it. Traan's repair crews are anxious to oblige such a prompt and unquestioning payer, and the planet's hospitality is at their disposal.
"Might be best to stay out of the centre of town, though," says the garrulous individual who brought them their drinks at the bar on the station and has evidently appointed himself their adviser. "It's ... it's not the best place right now, especially at night. There are troublemakers, just every now and then ... wouldn't want you to get involved accidentally."
"We're always careful," responds Leo. "But thanks for the advice." He hands over payment, complete with a generous tip, and is rewarded by even more advice, this time about what hotels offer the best service.
Jag sits a little way back from the table, trying to control his left foot, which is displaying a tendency to tap rapidly on the floor. The bar is large and spotlessly clean, brightly-lit and comfortably furnished. It provides a startling contrast to the last bar he was in.
His foot is tapping again. He stops it.
A small group of personnel in Starfleet uniforms are occupying a table over at the other side. Their faces are bright and open, heartbreakingly young. To go by their average age, they aren't that long out of the Academy; some sort of crew rotation for Columbia, perhaps. At least they won't have to sit there and keep a straight face while their captain makes 'gazelle' speeches.
His drink's palatable enough, which is lucky, as he needs something to snigger silently into at the memory. Across the table, Spots sends him a sharply inquiring look. He pretends not to see it.
Stripes is still working at a crossword – presumably a different one, as he's addicted to them. Tail, looking over his shoulder, supplies an answer he's been struggling to find, and he digs her in the ribs with his elbow. She's wearing a dark blue catsuit that would suit T'Pol, and looks surprisingly good in it.
The waiter obviously think so too. It takes him nearly forty-five seconds to register that someone is watching him who doesn't approve of his admiration and requires him to take it away while he can still walk upright on his own two legs. Once he's grasped that fact he goes away rather quickly, having presumably remembered urgent business elsewhere.
On a personal level, Jag doesn't care if Tail shags everything on the station including the resident rodents. But she's part of the team, whether he likes her or not, and the team's safety is his priority. Nobody touches the team. His hand has drifted as though by accident to his thigh, where a slit inside an innocuous pocket gives him instant access to the slender knife underneath it. He's hardly likely to use it anywhere so visible, or for such a reason, but the feeling of the hilt under his fingers lends an edge to his smile that even an alien will be hard pressed to misunderstand.
Spots smiles tolerantly, doubtless noting that the hand drifts away again. His moustache has got longer since the old days, and one of these days he'll appear with his long hair braided into plaits; then all that will be required will be a horned helmet. He has an odd sense of humour sometimes, and nobody would be entirely surprised if the helmet too put in an appearance, though presumably he wouldn't wear it on ops – unlike Stripes's woolly hat, which is mandatory wear at all times, possibly even in bed. His eyes are a paler shade of blue than Trip's, the North Sea as opposed to the Gulf of Mexico.
Leo looks inscrutable. "He was being informative."
"He was being nosy. They're the first people who'll be interrogated afterwards. Who were after all the information they could get? Whereas we..." A fluid shrug. "Anyway, we already know where we're staying. I checked out their security certificate."
Tail is undoubtedly aware of what is going on, otherwise she'd have looked up by now. She's paying far too much attention to that crossword puzzle, though she's usually keener on Sudoku. She's undoubtedly checked out the hotel too, if she's anything like good enough, or if she hasn't she should have done.
It occurs to Jag at that moment that it's hardly surprising Tail hates him. He's playing Hayes to her Reed: the interloper, the old hand, the professional, brought in to sit in judgement on the amateur playing at soldiers. The irony is almost enough to make him laugh, and strangely enough it would have been a genuine laugh at that. So perhaps it's just as well that he swallows it.
There is a regular shuttle service down to the surface of the planet.
It's hard to imagine, looking down through the portholes of the comfortable shuttle, that anything on that unruffled-looking world down there can possibly constitute enough of a threat to justify Starfleet sending in a team of professional assassins. It's a pleasant-looking planet, somewhat larger than Earth though with a considerably greater ratio of land to water, and its people the Sashwe are generally good-natured and hospitable. They are humanoid in appearance, though their dappled skins have an iridescent sheen and their necks boast vestigial gill-slits that flap open when they're disturbed or upset. Their pronounced eye-sockets with overarching brows and small, curved noses give them an appearance of perpetual owlish incredulity, so that one rather expects them to hoot rather than speak in the actually rather pleasant fluting voices they possess.
The only real disadvantage, Jag decides, watching the retreating figure of the flight attendant who'd brought the passengers their in-flight drinks, is that their genders aren't as well defined as those of humans. He thinks this one is female but isn't certain. He lies back in his chair, contemplating the problem, his eyes half-shut. That's one major plus for being Jag rather than Malcolm Reed: he can think about sex all the time – at least when he isn't thinking about causing explosions of a different sort. Maybe all the years of keeping his hormones bolted down are getting their revenge, because those three days of shore leave are beginning to seem very long ago, and he's ready to go again. Oh, yes. Very ready. Maybe in between checking out the opportunities for disposing of their target he'll find opportunities for target practice of a different kind.
The mission is naturally his first priority, though. He's already familiar with the target: a politician named Bheval, the leader of a relatively minor xenophobic party whom the establishment is beginning to find irksome. Among other 'crimes', he distrusts Starfleet and is hostile to the idea of entering into any kind of exclusive agreement with them. Unfortunately for the establishment, he's a powerful and persuasive speaker, and has already contrived to put together quite a case for Traan to stay independent, reserving the wealth of its mineral deposits for whichever bidder can pay most handsomely.
Maybe if war wasn't on the horizon, Starfleet would feel less threatened. But among those minerals is dilithium, on which so many of its vessels depend, including Enterprise herself of course. If war comes, any source of dilithium will become incalculably more important from a strategic point of view – as well as a resource that needs to be secured for their own use, it's one that will have to be denied to the enemy (assuming of course that Romulan ships are also powered by dilithium, which is one among thousands of unknowns as yet).
These strategic considerations are about to prove singularly unfortunate for Isahd Bheval.
Almost as unfortunate is the fact that the Sashwe are insuperably handicapped by their own intrinsic good nature. By the appalling standards set during Human history, Bheval is nothing but an amateur. He's an isolationist, but certainly not a particularly malicious one; as Stripes has jocularly put it during one of their briefings, he's more likely to send his defeated political enemies to a holiday camp than to a death camp.
He and his party are trying – and learning fast. So fast, indeed, that Intelligence suggests they have unwelcome assistance from other interested parties; though if any other hostile species are acting in an advisory capacity, they're keeping themselves well hidden. But not fast enough. Not nearly fast enough to anticipate an assassination order from a world so far distant, or to have the expertise in place to prevent it.
Yes. Unfortunate.
And fatal.
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