Chapter Text
VIII. Story Time
The Past
Jamie Blackthorne, known as Croft since his Academy days, puts his empty beer mug down on the table. The shotglass sits next to it, empty after he he dropped the Aldebaran whisky into the beer.
He makes a face. Whisky from Aldebaran doesn’t make a good boilermaker. He wonders if his digestion will pay for it later.
Probably, says the voice in his mind. A voice present for the last month. Since the owner of the voice and the presence in his brain had choked out her last on a shithole planetoid in supposedly neutral space. A Klingon dagger in her pulmonary artery; green froth on her lips. A green liquid that had transferred to his face, when the fingers had spread into the mindmeld positions.
The same on another beloved’s face from the other hand in the same position.
He looks up as a shadow comes over his table. A very tall shadow. He wonders if he can get up and move to a bar that wouldn’t let someone of the tall man’s class in.
Jameston McCall stares down at him, his blue eyes hard. Without invitation, he slides in across from Croft.
“You going to drink yourself to death?” he asks.
“Or screw myself to death,” he says.
“I don’t think either T'Varilyn or Chandra would want that for you,” he observes, his voice softening, if not his visage.
“Not my problem. One’s dead and the other probably wouldn’t piss on me if I was on fire.”
McCall says something. “You haven’t reported in,” he says. “Technically you’re a deserter.”
“Then arrest me,” he replies.
McCall’s mouth twitches. “It’s tempting. But in spite of your colossal case of ‘poor, pitiful, me,’ you still have some use in the universe.”
“When you figure out what it is, feel free to share it with me.”
“I got a job for you. Do it well, and I’ll keep giving them to you. It’ll help if everybody thinks you’ve disappeared.”
“So I guess I’ll stay a deserter?” Croft asks finally.
McCall grins. “Yeah. I think so. We’ll find you a place other than Starfleet.” The grin widens. “How do you feel about the marines?”
Jamie comes back to the present. Emma lies against him, her body warm as her fingers move through his chest hair. He is conscious of her breasts lying against his arm. Her heartbeat is regular as she listens to him recount this story
IX. Most Wanted
The woman known as C watches as a medic attends to the young Federation Security Special Agent. Greer Josephs lies on her belly on the stretcher, while the medic works to staunch the blood from the knife wound.
She turns as McCall walks up.
“How is she?”
The second medic looks up from where she runs a tricorder over Greer’s back. “We need to get her to a trauma center. I think her kidney got nicked. We get her to the medcenter, she should be okay.”
A tall ornithoid woman walks up. “I’m Yer. Chief Inspector from Counterintelligence Team One. What the hell are you doing here?” the Betelgeusian asks.
McCall turns to her. C grins as the blue eyes flash. She waits for the storm.
“I’m doing your fucking job,” he says. “Trying to track a Romulan sleeper agent who you couldn’t seem to fucking figure out was on our planet. When you’re the ones that supposedly vet even Starfleet Intelligence.”
C watches as the woman colors; the obsidian flush clearly a product of anger.
“It was my officer who discovered the infiltrator. We will take care of this.”
“No, actually you won’t,” Jameson says.
Yer starts toward him, but thinks better of it at a look that C gives her. McCall stares at her; both of them are of a height.
She turns back to C, but directs her words to McCall. “You have no authority. This is a civilian matter.”
McCall shakes his head. “Nope. Our little spy is a Starfleet officer. Starfleet will investigate.”
“By rights, if that is the case, it should be investigated by Starfleet Security. Intelligence has no authority to investigate on a Federation world.” She turns to C. “Neither do your funny people.”
Storev turns as a minion comes over. She leans in, then nods. “Looks like it may be a moot point. SFPD found a body with Romulan blood all over it.
“Is it her?”
“No,” says Yer. “A Klingon male. Massive blood loss. Down a ways on the Embarcadero.”
There is a groan as Greer Josephs attempts to rise. C smirks as McCall averts his eyes when she succeeds. “I guess I could’ve stabbed her harder,” she manages.
C moves over and places hand on the bare shoulder, easing her back down to the stretcher. The medic touches a hypospray to her throat.
McCall looks at Yer.
“How far to where he was found on the Embarcadero?”
“About a kilometer or so,” she replies, checking her PADD.
C watches as Greer, now sleeping, is loaded into a medical transport. “I guess I need to let Issa know.” She grins at Yer. “After all, it was an agent of the Dai’has’set who actually discovered she was a Romulan.”
The woman’s face grows cloudy as C and McCall turn away to follow an SFPD uniform to the new scene.
X. A Clue, If You Can Keep It
Emma deactivates the intercom. She turns to Croft as she starts the sonics in the shower. He starts to massage the cleaning catalyst into the skin of her arms as the vibration lightly scours her skin. She keeps her breathing even as he makes sure that her front is clean.
She repays him by focusing on one particular part of him for cleanliness.
“So I saw you reading your PADD,” he says idly as he starts to run the cloth over her back.
She closes her eyes at the touch of his skin. “Yeah. It wasn’t just the buoy,” she says. “We’re still working on getting a sense of the data.”
“And the wreckage?”
“Consistent with a Klingon light cruiser of some sort. Something old.” She opens her eyes to see him taking this in.
“Anything Federation?”
“Yeah. A lot of wreckage and residual radiation from a photon torpedo. Not enough for an entire Goddess-worth. As well as a strange warp signature.”
“What do you mean strange?” he asks.
She exhales, gritting her teeth as his hand drops down below her back. She endures the gentle touch for a moment, then reaches up and turns the sonics off. She rolls her eyes at his apparent disappointment. Both of them exit the shower. She reaches over to a table and takes a pair of clean underwear. She pulls the garment up.
He doesn’t bother with clothes as he stands there, his arms crossed, waiting on her answer.
She lifts up the PADD, consciously bringing her eyes way from him. “The energy output ratios are wrong. I had my engineer look at them. He transmitted them to someone else who might be able to read them better. But near as he can tell, it looks as if Aerfen, or someone might’ve been thrown into warp, rather than entered it.”
He knits his brows together. “How could that happen? My engineering courses at the Academy didn’t really cover something like that.” He looks down and to his right, then brings his eyes back up to hers. Another familiar gesture from the past. She keeps her expression even, but waits for what comes next.
“Guess I should’ve paid more attention,” he finishes.
Very mild, for him, as bullshit goes. Although still self-deprecating, she thinks.
She looks back down at the PADD, hiding her smile. “According to my engineer, this would be an uncontrolled entry into hyperspace. And there’s no guarantee of survival.”
Emma sees him visibly slump. “So they could be anywhere,” he says. “Or they could be nothing but subatomic particles spread all over the galaxy.”
She nods, but adds, “Maybe. But this particular entry leaves a distinctive trail. If you know where and how to look.”
He stands straighter. “Does your engineer know how and where?”
“He thinks so,” she says.
“Then I need to borrow him. You need to stay here, for any prying sensors. I’ll take the ship I came in and find them.”
Emma feels her heart twist. She and others had learned that when he set his mind to something, there was no taking him off of his path.
He and one other.
She moves over to him, then lifts her hands to his face. She kisses him, before turning to pull the rest of her uniform on.
XI. A Pirate’s Life for Me
Croft sits down in a corner of the CIC and opens up the computer console. His eyes move over the screen. He opens a second screen, tapping in a certain code that he had lifted from his boss’s boss’s office.
When he had gained access to the Admiralty and infiltrated McCall’s complex.
At McCall’s own request.
Croft shakes that memory away. He gazes at the second screen, as the data streams. He stops the stream when he sees something. He looks around, then pulls an earpiece to his ear. He moves the cursor to click on the link.
A young woman’s face comes on the screen. He feels a smile come over his face as he recognizes the freckled features from the description that he’d heard about, as well as her official holocapture from the Academy. She takes a deep breath. He realizes that her forehead is bleeding and her eyes don’t seem to be as focused as he would think as she opens her mouth.
“Captain’s log,” she says. She closes her eyes. “I have no fucking idea what stardate it is. We’ve completed the transfer. We’ll continue to update as we can.” She closes her eyes and leans back. He realizes that she is being supported by a large, young Andorian male with a broken antenna. He shakes his head, then closes the pickup.
Croft is silent. He turns to the other screen. Haveka comes down and looks at it. “We’ve got a rough course, or at least a direction, from the remnants of the subspace echo of being shoved ass-end frontwards into a warp bubble.”
Emma comes into the compartment. He looks at her. “So we know where to go?”
“Generally. We’ve got it narrowed down to a parsec,” she replies. She says nothing, but just gazes at him.
“And?” he asks, his eyes locking with hers.
She doesn’t look away, but shakes her head. “We can’t follow them,” she says.
“And why the hell not?” he says, standing. He feels his feet lock to the deck. Croft sees that Emma notices and lifts one side of her mouth slightly.
“Because it’s in Klingon space. On the other side of the Triangle.”
“So what? Looks like to me they were attacked by Klingons.”
“We don’t know that,” she replies. “That BofP had no markings. We can’t seem to find an origin of the non-Fed debris.”
“That’s enough for me,” he says. “I’ve been months in Romulan space. Not a credit’s worth of difference between one and the other.”
“But I don’t think you went in there wearing a goddamned neon sign that says, “Starfleet scout ship. Won’t somebody please end me?”
“You’d be surprised,” he retorts. He stops, then lets a slow smile come over his face. He points at the viewscreen.
She sighs as she sees the flaming Klingon skull. “Shit,” she says.
An hour later Croft watches as the woman known as Targsbane gestures to her helmsman. He feels the powerful rumble of the dart mothership’s warp engines building. Much more powerful warp engines than a ship of this size usually has, he thinks.
“So you’ve shared all the data with us to find your lost little lamb?” Targsbane says dryly. Croft glances at Ael'a. The young Romulan officer gazes at him impassively.
“As much as I can, Bane,” he says.
She smiles. “I like that,” she replies. “No one’s ever dared call me that before.”
The warp drive engages. “We’re tracking that residue field that you gave us. Anything else?”
He pulls out the PADD and opens a screen. As he starts to scroll through the data, his eyes catch something over on the side of the small screen.
A glowing word that pulses with green light, with so many possibilities, in any instance. He isn’t sure what it means for Decker Sinclair and her crew.
NEW.
He moves over to that side of the screen, calling that bit of data to the forefront. His eyes widen. He spreads his thumb and forefinger, magnifying it even more. He releases the breath he had been holding as he reads and tries to absorb the data.
He feels Ael'a’s eyes on him. He turns and looks at her and Targsbane. “They’re somehow updating the log buoy,” he says.
Ae’la’s eyes widen. “What? How?”
“I dunno,” he says. “But this log entry is dated an hour ago.”
“Is there position data?” Targsbane asks.
He punches a couple of tabs on the screen, but doesn’t get the result he wants. “I’m a little rusty,” he says.
Ael'a and Bane exchange a smirk. “It’s a good thing that you have a nice ass, bud,” Bane says. She gets up and takes the PADD from him, handing it to a mousy-looking young Orion man with screens over his eyes.
“Hey,” he exclaims. “I got other skills.” That retort sounds lame, even to him.
“Ain’t what I heard from the captain of that scow you were on.”
He rolls his eyes. “I know for a fact she doesn’t kiss and tell. At least not with strangers.” Croft realizes that Bane had just handed the PADD to someone who is probably a hacker, from the 21st century term.
“Hey,” he exclaims. “Don’t be paging through everything.”
“Why?” the young man idly says. “Did you film you and Captain Hotpants?”
“Why?” Croft reflexively echoes. “You want some pointers?”
“Apparently you need some,” he replies without missing a beat, handing him the PADD.
Croft grins when he sees what the young man had produced. “Here you go, Captain,” he says, handing it to Bane, after clearing it of all but that product.
She look at the numbers and letters on the screen. “That’s not far from here. Just in the edge of Klingon space. She hands it to Ael'a, who nods. “Kh’rodos. It’s a gas giant.”
Bane relays the coordinates to the helm. Croft feels the shift in course. He takes a deep breath, wondering what they will find.
He gets his answer in about fifteen minutes. His heart sinks.
The little black triangular shape, with a crimson phoenix on its dorsal and ventral side. His heart sinks as his eyes fall a large rent traveling through the middle of the ship. Just forward of the bridge.
Aerfen appears to be missing an entire section on the ventral aspect, amidships.
He finds that he can’t speak.
A loud alarm sounds. Bane rises and moves over to the helm console.
“Targets,” the helmsman says calmly.
The speakers activate. A gruff voice intones. “Unknown vessel. You have just entered space claimed by the Klingon Free Systems. Prepare yourself for a slow and painful death.”