“So, what’s all this about?” Orelia asked as she stepped into the briefing room, bringing up the rear of the last batch to arrive. “Got some clever plan to upset Starfleet even more?”

“Geez, what more could we do? We’re already stretching ourselves, aren’t we?” T’Ael asked as she sat down opposite her brother at the table. “You finished reading those user manuals like I asked?”

With his arms folded on the table and his head resting on them, R’tin’s response was somewhat muffled. “Yeah yeah. It’s a Federation new colony fusion reactor. It’s the next best thing to set it down, fuel it up and turn it on.”

“I’d hope it’s a bit more complex than that,” Gaeda commented from his spot at Sidda’s left. “I remember taking a day or three to set those beasts up.”

“Easy doesn’t mean quick,” R’tin quipped. “But we’ll be ready. Set up power, the long-range comms and the two industrial replicators. They’ll be mostly self-sufficient within a week of us arriving. Doing what Starfleet should have done when they took out those Rebirthers.”

“Not so self-sufficient that they still don’t need us,” Sidda said with a smirk. “Na’roq is keen to get her fingers into new and developing markets. But no, this meeting isn’t any clever plan to upset Starfleet.” She drew in a deep breath, rolled her shoulders, and rocked her head from side to side. All delaying actions, buying her time. “No, this meeting is about me actually.”

Sidda glanced around the table, looking at the faces arrayed around her. Gaeda on her left, Orelia on her right. R’tin and T’Ael sat opposite each other, her two chief engineers that kept the Vondem Rose operating despite the lack of a proper KDF repair yard and the increasingly blended tech throughout the ship. Orelia and Orin, her two cousins, after a fashion, and in the case of the former an unofficial bodyguard sent by her grandmother. Tavol, the Vulcan science officer who had left Starfleet a handful of years ago in protest of the then-in-vogue isolationist policies. Though on the Rose he wasn’t so much a science officer as a ‘weird shit explainer’. The last person, who had dragged herself up from a deck below and the other end of the ship was Bones, her ship’s doctor and another former Starfleet officer. Bones had opted to set herself down at the end of the table, directly opposite Sidda.

“You’re in some sort of trouble huh?” Bones asked over the lip of her coffee cup. She was somewhere between crotchety and ancient in age, having seen everything, done everything. Her reasons for staying on the Rose were her own, but Sidda suspected had something to do increasingly with her Klingon chef, Kevak.

“Blackmail from beyond the grave,” Sidda answered. Now she had spoken, there was no point in staying silent. “T’Rev has arranged for some rather unpleasant information to be released unless I do something. His way of exacting revenge on someone who has pissed him off by siccing me on them as well as putting me in danger since I did hand him over to Starfleet to throw in jail.”

“Bastard,” Orelia cursed.

“What’s the dirt?” Gaeda asked after shooting a look at Orelia.

“I’d rather not say,” Sidda answered. “It’s not important if it doesn’t get released,” she clarified after seeing the looks of her crew. “We do what he wants, we make noise that we have, and his surviving lieutenants make the information disappear.”

“You trust they will?” Bones leaned forward, setting her cup down. “And don’t tell me you can trust him because he was a Vulcan. He was cracked.”

“He was indeed mentally impaired,” Tavol said with classic Vulcan calm and directness. “But the doctor’s concerns I feel are more merited when asked about who will be executing his orders in regards to the information.”

“I have no idea who that would be,” Sidda answered. “But whoever they are, they have hired Manfred to ensure I do what T’Rev wants. Or kill the target should I fail. I either do what he wants, the information disappears and nothing happens, or in two months, the information is released and Manfred catches up with us. Well, me specifically. If he doesn’t take a shot beforehand, that is.”

“Wait, who’s Manfred?” R’tin asked, finally looking up for the first time. His eyes were sunken, dark green bags under them. Clear signs he’d been burning the candle at both ends and possibly in the middle as well.

“Paid fucking psychopath,” Orelia and Gaeda both said at the same time. Gaeda with a nod of his head ceded the floor to Orelia. “Mercenary with absolutely no qualms about taking jobs. Worse is he has a reputation for succeeding no matter the odds. Want to assassinate the head of a Klingon house? Hire Manfred. Want someone to go with you on a raid against the Borg? Hire Manfred. Want to picnic on a Gorn breeding world? Hire Manfred.”

“Yeah right,” R’tin replied, rolled his eyes and then set his head back down. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“Careful what you wish for,” Gaeda replied. “I’ve met him once.” That got everyone’s attention. “I couldn’t leave the room fast enough.”

“Same,” Sidda said. “If I never run into him again it’ll be too soon.”

“Great,” Orelia dragged out. “Just great. All right then, what does a dead pirate bastard want you to do then?”

“Kill an absolute bastard of a man who likely pissed him off and most certainly has pissed me off.” The look on Sidda’s face was enough to tell her crew the last bit was the truth. “We’re looking for and going to kill a man named Brett Gavalore. And if I get my choice in the matter, we’re going to make it hurt.”

“Sounds personal, Boss. You good to take the lead on this?” Gaeda asked.

“I’m still deciding if I’m going to shoot him, stab him, or stuff him into a torpedo and fire him into a star,” Sidda answered. There was no humour in that statement. “T’Rev didn’t provide any details but I bet he knew more. And I bet he’s provided that to Manfred already.”

“So we’re starting on the back foot and possibly set up to fail. Fun. When do we start?” Gaeda continued.

“We continue to Meltex II and do what we originally planned. Ardot is doing some digging to find any information about Gavalore he can and will get back to us. Until then we do what we were going to do and we keep an eye out for dead-eyed crazy human killers.”

“Shouldn’t be hard to do at Meltex,” T’Ael said. “No traffic in and out aside from us and half-assed Starfleeters. We should see anyone new so we’re good there.”

“We do have some long-duration probes aboard,” Tavol added. “Perhaps with some modifications to fit them with extended solar panels, we could also deploy them around the Meltex system to act as a limited system-wide sensor platform. While the Vondem Rose’s sensors are sufficient for observing light years around, once we depart we won’t have visibility. The probes could report if someone is perhaps following us.”

“Not a bad idea T,” T’Ael said. “What do you think R’tin?” Her his part R’tin merely gave a thumbs up.

“Likely Manfred is moving on T’Rev’s target and is going to wait for you there,” Orelia said to Sidda. “But we’ll keep an eye out, right Orin?”

The largest man at the table, a giant of an Orion, merely nodded his head in the affirmative.

“Right, well, it’s a few days to Meltex, so let’s get ourselves ready for what we’ll be getting up to there.” Sidda sat back in her chair, trying to pass off as relaxed. “And R’tin, go get some sleep, will you? The rest of you, piss off.”

“Right, you heard the lady, back to work,” Gaeda said as he stood, then started to shoo everyone along. Only two people remained seated – Orelia and Bones. And as the last left the room, Gaeda stopped in the door, before stepping aside to let a newcomer enter.

Jenu Trid looked like someone had given her a light working over, with a black eye, light bruising on her right cheek and rips and tears in her clothing that would correspond with an alleyway fight. She walked straight in, a limp as she moved, holding out a datarod to Sidda as she crossed the briefing room. “For you,” the Bajoran woman said. Blood could be seen in her mouth, but not so much as to paint everything red.

“Who the fuck did this?” Sidda growled, the voice of someone ready to commit violence on those who touched her crew.

“Couple of goons who wanted me to deliver this,” Trid answered, waving the rod around to emphasise it. “They told me Higgins wanted you to have it.”

Sidda’s hand stopped halfway to accepting the rod and her eyes locked on Trid. “Higgins?” she asked, answered with a nod. With that she snatched the rod, getting to her feet and made straight for the large screen in the briefing room and the multi-inputs directly underneath it. 

Bones had risen, approaching Trid, grabbing the younger woman’s chin, and turning her head side to side as she looked the wounds over. “Nothing serious. Roughed you up to make sure you actually brought the rod, eh?”

“Yes ma’am,” Trid answered. “Insisted I get it to the boss straight away.”

“Uh huh,” Bones followed up. “Right, come with me. We’ll fix you up.” Tossing a glance to Sidda, who merely waved over her shoulder, Bones led Trid out of the briefing room. “I need to speak with you young lady,” Bones tossed over her shoulder at Sidda before the door closed.

“Who’s Higgins?” Gaeda asked after Bones and Trid had left, the door sealing behind them. He and Orelia had both come to join Sidda at the monitor, waiting for the data to finish decompressing and decrypting.

“Information broker,” Sidda answered. “And a sonofabitch.”

Orelia harrumphed. “I’ve learned who all the brokers on Kyban are. Never heard of him.”

“Lucky you,” Sidda replied curtly. “Trust me, you don’t want to. Man ruins everything he touches. He’s got this zeal to him that…lets him do what he does in the name of something greater than him.”

Just then the information decrypt finished and began to display on the screen, window after window blooming into life. Screeds of technical information, testimonials, and a dozen video windows of gruesome scenes of carnage popped into existence. And then right on top of it all blossomed a single document – a Starfleet Intelligence dossier.

There was a picture of an Andorian woman, middle-aged, wearing the bright blue of Starfleet Medical from the mid-2380s. It was then joined by another picture, the same woman with just over a decade of extra wear on her and most certainly not in a Starfleet uniform anymore.

Doctor T’Halla Shreln.

“Fuck off,” Sidda cursed.

“Boss?” Gaeda asked.

“Fuck right off,” Sidda continued, stalking away from the monitor, starting to pace in the space between the long table and the monitor. “I saw her die. I saw Gavalore kill her.” She was pointing at the monitor vigorously as she spoke.

“Who is this T’Halla?” Orelia asked.

“She was a good friend,” Sidda answered.

“You sure about that?” Orelia asked as she highlighted a piece of text and expanded it to be easily readable from across the room. “Suspected responsible for the lethal outbreak on Corbel IV. Blackmarket trader in biomimetic gel. Wanted by the Federation and the Free State for multiple acts of terrorism. Goddesses, even the Klingons have a death warrant out for her. Last seen six months ago.”

Orelia then brought up a short video of a docking port somewhere in the galaxy. It looked like any ten-penny pirate holdout, carved into a cave or asteroid somewhere in the vast void. It showed Shreln clearly in view, standing over a kneeling man, his hands up in surrender, then shooting him in cold blood before boarding a shuttle with a handful of goons in her wake.

“I saw her die,” Sidda repeated. “That’s no T’Halla. She couldn’t do that.”

“You know,” Gaeda said, trying to inject some levity into his tone, “seems folks around you don’t stay as dead as you say, boss.”

“Fucking Higgins. He found out I’m asking about Gavalore and drops this on me. This…this…collection of lies.” Sidda stalked over and pulled the datarod from the console. “T’Halla wouldn’t do any of this. Gavalore killed her in cold blood. I know what I saw.”

“Maybe,” Gaeda said. “But, well, did you see the body boss?”