“Nothing you can offer me will get me to talk.” Orlani Tal sat against the far wall of her brig cell, staring down Commander Rowan Hale, who stood just outside the thick transparent barrier. It had taken eight hours from her talk with Yaaya Deepre to seek him. He did not find her opening impressive.
He remained impassive as he strapped his annoyance to the depths. “I can’t offer you any kind of plea deal, or release. JAG won’t be playing games with your case.” He stopped and stared directly into her eyes. “What I can offer you is time.” He cocked his head to the side, a quiet smile slipping through .
“Time,” she repeated. “How can you offer me time? You’re just a commander on an old Nebula-class. Older the most, and a history that’d scare the life out of me if you still had the crew from the Dominion War onboard. Now it’s just a relic.”
Hale shrugged, indifferent to her attacks. “Maybe. But I have a Commodore. And a Sector Judge Advocate who has a habit of making everyone’s job just a little harder. And he’s been working on digging up all your case files since he heard we picked you up.” He stepped closer to the barrier, his tone shifting from nonchalant to firm and a quiet menace mixed in for good measure. “He is a master at paperwork, motions, and everything else that JAG excels at with the chaos of bureaucracy. Station Security would secure you on Montana Station for the duration of his JAG work. It would take time to sort out all the charges, who has a claim on what, and how we sort it all out. Time, Orlani.”
The woman had gone still, and she blinked as if seeing him for the first time. “And if I don’t accept your offer?”
Hale repeated his indifferent shrug, this time more for show, but he didn’t care. “They will immediately transfer you and place you in Starfleet Security custody. Where you go from there, and what happens to you is not my concern.” He smiled, the menace barely hidden. “But it will be yours.” A moment passed, and her eyes didn’t leave his. Her breathing remained even, but her face flushed red.
“You don’t play fair, Commander Hale.”
“Neither do you. Fifty years of it, and twenty of it in service to yourself and the highest bidder. If I wasn’t playing fair, you’d be dead by now and floating through space as a silent witness. This is me playing fair.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Is that true? Or are you just trying to scare me?”
A third indifferent shrug. “I’ll guess we’ll never know.” He stepped back, hands drifting to his sides. “What’s the call I’m going to make? Time? Or a rush order to whatever’s waiting for you?
Tal sighed, a look of resignation filling her face. “Time. And yeah. I’ll tell you what I know. You are not going to like it, fair warning.”
Hale replied, “I don’t like much of what’s out here in the rimward, so it can get in line.” He gave a nod to the security officer and left.
He needed to make some calls.
