Backroom Dealings

Posted on Wed Feb 2nd, 2022 @ 7:27pm by Commodore Jacob Kane & Lieutenant Commander P’rel M.D & [DECEASED] Gil Silnan Tolbarr

Mission: With Gleaming Eyes
Location: USS Athena
Timeline: MD-03 0900
2871 words - 5.7 OF Standard Post Measure

Kane approached the curious pair of Lt P'rel and her Cardassian 'aide' Tolbarr in silence. He wasn't always sure which version of his Intelligence Officer he was going to be speaking to: the logical, rational one, or the spiky and unhelpful one. There wasn't much difference between the two, in some ways.

"Lieutenant." He spoke softly, making sure the door to their Intelligence operations lab was secure before continuing. "I trust you know that I've had at least two meetings now with the leader of the Cardassian garrison down on the surface." He glanced at Tolbarr, whom he imagined would be paying attention. "Gul Dara. Does the name mean anything to you?"

Silnan looked sideways to his Vulcan mentor, he would doubtlessly eventually be recalled to Cardassia but no such orders had yet been received. It seemed, at least for now, that both Captain Kane and the Cardassian Military were content to leave the present state of affairs unchallenged, unacknowledged even, though for what ultimate purpose the young man couldn’t quite fathom. Customarily, he stopped into a long nod of deference as the Captain took up a position across the workstation from the both.

“Captain”, P’rel acknowledged, as Kane stood before them both. She opened up the file she had been working on and placed it on the main screen behind her, she turned and stepped slightly aside so that Kane could see. It wasn’t much, only a partial biographic of Dara, plenty of blanks and much supposition. “I should preface this report with the axiom....” she gestured to the screen “...that we don’t have much”.

Silnan, aware he might be obscuring the screen a little, also stepped aside. “Captain Kane, the name indeed is familiar to me, though only vaguely and in passing”. He pointed to a stardate set about a year ago; “Gul Dara was one of several signatories to the project I was working on at the institute on Cardassia IV. I’m afraid that in itself is of little significance, as the project was administered and counter signed by a number of military officials”.

“What is significant Captain...” inserted P’rel, “...is that almost immediately prior to that document being circulated all the key signatories and stakeholders of the project seem to have been reassigned to obscure posts or simply disappeared. Our present task...” she again opened a difference screen, a list of predominantly Cardassian names to be sure, but also an eclectic mix of other alien names prefixed by Klingon, Romulan and Starfleet ranks, all approximately Captains, and their respective equivalents, or higher. “...is completing a location search of all the names on this list.” She turned around again, to face Kane, and awaited his response and orders.

"So we really don't know all that much?" Kane wondered, a little surprised. Normally P'rel would have lorded knowledge over everyone in the room, but this time she wasn't. "This project. Since it appears to be a connecting factor, what did it entail?"

Isolating a section of the screen which showed a mass of information, and expanding it to prominence, the Vulcan nodded to the information as if Kane needed some kind of instruction to look at the screen. "Between what intelligence already has, developments in the sector and of course Mr Tolbar's input...it appears to have been the examination of an unknown biological sample, which we now know was the pilgrims." She scrolled through, stopping at more relevant information, "specifically how it could be used and it what form; that research then took several paths in different organisations such as narcotics, medical, weaponisation, and...cloning". The file noticeably ended there; "after that we know nothing, even Starfleet intelligence have absolutely zero leads or operations on the matter, which is odd in itself..."

"Cloning..." Kane rubbed his beard with a little grimace. "It could be connected to some of the other things we've seen recently. But we're talking about the Dominion-ruled era of Cardassian history, and cloning of Vorta was almost certainly common back then." He mused on that for a moment, considering the likelihood of the connections being something else. "Do you think if I end up asking Gul Dara about any of this I'm likely to end up with a knife in my back?"

Observing the interaction, and noting that his Vulcan mentor was holding something back from the Captain, Silnan interjected after his terminal alerted him to a search result. "Pardon me Captain" he said with typical polite deference as he gestured both the Starfleet officers to attend his screen; "cloning was a normal operation during the war, certainly, but it wouldn't explain why current operations are ongoing..." as he gestured to the screen, a personnel manifest scrolled past with a seemingly random handful of names flashing orange, a refined assortment of the names on the project list; Klingon, Cardassian, Starfleet. "All of these officers have travelled within the sector containing Rondac within the past twelve months."

"That wouldn't in itself be particularly unusual..." the Vulcan responded, trying to control the conversation away from where Silnan was heading. "These sectors are busy; militarily and diplomatically, senior officers in the region are not an usual occurrence...though alongside everything else - wait, roll back -" P'rel interrupted herself, a name, she recognised it. A Starfleet Captain - "Munro...USS Pico..." the surprise doubtless visible across her face, she turned to Kane; did he know something? Munro and Kane were old friends, and her suspicions had lingered on the former at the time, though the latter had assured her in dismissing them. Was Kane throwing them off...?

"That's not all" Silnan inserted, observing the almost imperceptible sense of threat rising in the Vulcan; "prior to taking command of the Pico, Captain Munro spent some time serving as an adjutant to Admiral Johnathan White..." his voice trailed off, his mind building scenarios of possible outcomes.

"Admiral White..." began P'rel, taking one step back from Kane - "the flag officer who ordered us here in the first place..."

Kane considered this new connection thoughtfully. "The Admiral is a Starfleet liaison to the Cardassians. Seeing his name on orders in this sector wouldn't be unusual." He looked at P'rel pointedly. "Captain Munro was a personal friend of mine. A good man. If you're insinuating some huge conspiracy within Starfleet hierarchy..." he let that question linger, waiting to see whether she would back it up or not.

Locking eyes with Kane with equal pointedness as to how he was with her, she cooly responded; "Facts are facts, Captain, what you call insinuation one might also call analysis and hypothesising..." she remained with her eyes locked firmly on his, aware of the tension rising between them like a lava geyser on Vulcan's forge.

"Perhaps...", interjected Silnan, who by now was feeling most awkward and in need of defusing the situation, "...a medium of consideration is necessary here....true enough there are some concerning objective facts..." he began, inserting the conversational subtext to P'rel that he was on her side and to lend credence to her voice. "...and there are some alarming coincidences and unusual occurrences which are only open to ambiguous interpretation..." he added, to lend some credibility to Captain Kane's position. "...Possibly, we may find the truth somewhere in the middle ground...?". He looked to the pair of officers facing off, eyeballs locked as if they were highly focused tractor beams, and begrudgingly had to note that his interjection seemed to have made no difference as the two remained locked in a silent stare for several seconds, which seemed like several hours. Enough time anyway, for Silnan to realise he didn't actually know for sure if Kane was totally human; perhaps there was some distant Betazoid, or some such similar, and that P'rel and Kane weren't actually locked in a silent battle of awkward defiance but were in fact telepathically having a raging and loud argument. Silence had bothered him since being a small child, probably from his time spent alone in the solitude of a collapsed building before his mentor rescued him in the days following the war; he always had to have some kind of music on in the background, or the bustle of a work environment. The silence here was awful as he watched to see who would proverbially blink first.

"I realise that working in your line of work makes you naturally suspicious and prone to seeing secrets everywhere," Kane noted, looking at P'rel, "But at some point there needs to be trust. Starfleet - the Federation - works on the basis of trusting others. Unity over individuality. Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations." He picked out the Vulcan expression deliberately. Not as an insult, but rather to ensure he was being inclusive of her own species' proclivities. He took a breath. "I can't act based solely on a hypothesis. Not yet."

P'rel placed both hands behind her back, she had to accept that Kane wouldn't do anything on the basis of a theory, but she was also hitting a wall in terms of being able to gather more information. His response had nonetheless irritated her, though she cooly responded "my line of work started off as biomedical sciences, Captain; it was Starfleet who taught me to be suspicious and see secrets everywhere". It wasn't strictly true, she had worked in internal security prior to joining Starfleet; but the organisation had certainly shown her a new frontier in secrets, lies and mass deceptions. Starfleet worked on the basis of trust for sure, but a blind almost religious trust, deifying the organisation as if it were incapable of wrongdoing.

Interjecting again, Silnan offered "perhaps the Lieutenant and I could pull on some of these threads further, Captain? What exactly would you need from us to be able to act?"

Kane paused, refraining from taking shots back at the Vulcan and instead considering Tolbarr's question.

"Direct evidence of involvement?" he pondered. A thought formed in his head. "I'm meeting with Gul Dara again later today. She seems to trust me, at least enough to keep extending invitations." He glanced at P'rel. "It's not unlikely I could have an opportunity to access some of her more personal files. If I were to gain that access for a few minutes, would that be enough for you to extract more direct proof?"

Considering the request a moment, P’rel steepled her fingers and placed their tips on her chin. “Gul Dara is a progressive, likely the reason she’s been out here…eschewing traditional Cardassian ideologies and methodologies…” she looked to Silnan…

“…surveillance being as traditional as it comes for my people…” he offered, sensing where his mentor was going.

“Don’t look for files Captain. Concepts such as personal, privacy, individual encryption….have little meaning even in the modern Cardassin society. If there is something going on with Dara away from the military command or the government, she wouldn’t put it in a digital file…” the Vulcan trailed off, considering ways a Gul might otherwise store private information on a backwater planet. A backwater planet….” Sir, when you were with her, did you notice anything out of place? Perhaps a Metis ornament, or even a liquid of some kind? Something not Cardassian in her own working area?”.

"Nothing immediately apparent. Though I didn't see all of it," he acknowledged. He'd only seen her in her office and in her living quarters; though that had been just the lounge portion of the living space and not the rest of it. "Unless it was in her bedroom..." he immediately looked at the two of them. Indeed, P'rel's expression didn't change, though Silnan quickly looked away at something on a screen nearby. "If you're about to suggest I seduce Gul Dara to gain access to her private files..."

P’rel slowly turned her head to see her awkward Cardassian protege pretending to be busy in some file or other, the monotone keystrokes from his work told her that he was simply tapping the same button over and over again. When Kane had mentioned seducing the Gul, there was a brief flash of something through her stomach - was it jealousy? Pushing the thought aside responded in a dispassionate voice, “if you wish, Captain, let’s call that Plan B. However on the planet, living space for Cardassian officers is limited and largely provided by military prefab units; it is standard for officers to have a bathroom adjacent to the bedroom as opposed to the main living space.” Picking up a PADD from a spare stack nearby she keyed in a small list of emetics and counter agents, and then handed the device to Kane. “Requisition these from medical, the combination is appropriate to provide the outward impression of an impending violent gastronomical release, with sufficient counter agents to prevent it from actually happening. It will be unpleasant but you will not vomit. I suggest you make use of the time to search her bedroom, if the need arises. The PADD instructs the medical officer to issue the medication in a dermal patch, you need only rub it vigorously to activate the dispersal nodes in the patch.” She took the PADD off of him to add a second medication, just in case it was needed.

She spoke as she typed, “once activated symptoms will only take seconds to appear, and get progressively worse for several minutes, the effects should dissipate entirely within roughly an hour”. She held the PADD out to him, having completed the requisition order for the second medication she had thought of. “I have made an addition to the list, in case you require assistance you in executing Plan B. I suggest to avoid offending the Gul, you don’t get the dermal patches mixed up…”.

She understood human males to be particularly offended and bristled by even the slightest hint of their having anything less run the greatest sexual prowess in the galaxy, and she took great delight in taking the opportunity to gently antagonise the Captain. In her peripheral vision, she could see Silnan sink so low behind his console screen that barely the top of his head was visible.

Kane blinked, not entirely sure how to take P'rel's offer. She was, after all, the one with the intelligence training. Ignoring her remarks about his ability to 'perform', he instead took the PADD with a nod. "Having the options is...good, I suppose," he noted. "If there's evidence there, I'll endeavour to bring it back with me. Let's make sure it's worthwhile."

“Indeed” replied the Vulcan, a little disappointed that Kane hadn’t taken the bait and traded barbs with her. “A final thing before you depart Captain...” she began, handing him a second PADD from the stack on her working area. “Starfleet Intelligence has identified a number of warships heading here, so it seems. They appear to be routine patrols, just normal vessel operations on assigned routes, however there is a concerning departure from the pattern... She moved to her console to open the same file that was on the PADD she had just given to Kane. Three patrols, of which all are the standard contemporary Galor class in operation- however one has been replaced at star dock with a Hutet Class battleship flanked by a wing of Hideki Class support fighters.” She moved onto the next page. “More concerning is that each of these patrols would pass through this system over the course of weeks, however analysis has revealed that their speeds have been changed to configure them all to rendezvous here at the same time, in approximately 30 hours.” She closed the screen. “This is clearly a deliberately hidden manoeuvre, a subtle adjustment to speeds and an otherwise observance of patrol patterns. They’re not heading directly here, but a sizeable force will be here. It was only covert intelligence scans which alerted intelligence to this oddity.”

"I guess our timetable has moved up," he noted, eying the reports and drawing very similar conclusions. Tactically, they would be at an extreme disadvantage if the patrols did decide to cause trouble. In spite of the current peace between Cardassia and the Federation, there were definitely elements that still held animosity. "Don't worry, I'm sure we'll be long gone by then." He turned and started for the door.

As Kane was about the step over the threshold she called back to him. “Captain”. Her hand found Silnan’s shoulder, so he knew he words were not meant as a slight to him. In truth she knew that he wouldn’t have thought that, but even so.

"Yes?"

“Gul Dara. As productive as your relationship with her may be, she is still a Cardassian senior officer. She may be progressive enough to not stab you in the back for raising concerns with her, but that doesn’t mean she won’t stab you in the front instead.” She paused for a moment. “Just be careful”.

He wondered, just for a second, whether that was actual concern for him in her voice. It would be a departure, for sure. Or perhaps her concern was merely for the inevitable mess it would cause should something happen.

"I will."