by Travis Anderson
Romaine and Knight transported down to New Seattle together. Romaine was slightly curious as to why they had beamed into Izar’s capitol rather than directly to the Advanced Tactical Training Center. Knight merely assured her everything would become clear.
An air car approached and landed near their location. The driver’s gull wing door popped open. “You Knight and Romaine?”
“You already know we are,” Knight glibly replied.
The man smiled, “Too true. Hop in the back. It’s unlocked.”
The two Starfleet officers boarded the car. When the doors were locked, the driver queried traffic control and got permission to enter the traffic grid. The car lifted and climbed into the sky.
They stayed with the local traffic for a time and then the car vectored off and headed towards a wooded area outside of the city. Of course, Izar was also heavily forested. The primary landmass had a water way similar to the Puget Sound on Earth. Given its resemblance to the Terran analog and the heavy forestation that also surrounded both of the natural features on both Izar and Earth, the capitol was placed along the banks of the Anacortes Sound and named New Seattle.
They approached the rather secluded Advanced Tactical Training Center from the air and Romaine got a good look at portions of it. It reminded her of Quantico in Virginian Earth. The Federation Bureau of Investigation trained there. This was almost a duplicate of that base.
Romaine was surprised when they didn’t land. “Where are we going?”
Knight grinned, “There’s advanced tactical training and then there’s specialized advanced tactical training. You need the latter, so we’re proceeding to our facilities adjacent to the main center.”
“Great,” Romaine grumbled.
Romaine learned that her training would be divided into two segments. The first was the physical segment. She would be undergoing endurance training, hand to hand combat instruction, and weapons practice. She’d done all of the above at Starfleet Academy, but those were years long gone. Where once she’d scored fairly highly at these disciplines, now she was more comfortable behind a desk.
Her days became a grueling ordeal of running and forced marches. Afterwards, with only five minutes of rest, she would begin her hand to hand training. When she finished a three-hour stretch at that, she went to the range and practiced marksmanship. Moving targets and live opponents were pitted against her for several hours.
Her nights were subsequently spent in contact with her research team. Garth was delighted that she’d be able to check in for an hour each evening. She didn’t say much about her experiences because Knight had warned her that she was under observation every moment of every day. Her transmission would be terminated if she broached the subject of her current activities.
One interesting aspect of her training was that of vehicular operations. This was an area she easily excelled at. Having an engineer as a father, he’d indulged in owning several air cars, racers, and flyers. So Romaine was well versed in how to operate them. What she learned now was how to break into them and steal them. She graduated from that portion of her training when she finally adopted disabling the positioning beacon as a matter of rote.
Romaine wasn’t panting as hard in the ring after her morning runs and marches at the end of her two weeks as she had at the beginning. She still only got a five minute break to hydrate before she stepped into the sparring ring. This time, she faced Commander Hodges.
Hodges was the most experienced instructor she’d sat under. Hodges was a twenty-year veteran of Starfleet’s Special Operations Command. She learned early on not to make any inquiries into his professional life…or his personal one at that.
Her task was simple. In order to complete her course, she had to land a solid blow on Hodge. That challenge had begun a week ago, and so far she utterly failed at every attempt. She knew today was her last attempt, regardless of Hodge’s threats, but she wanted to honestly win her freedom.
Hodge and Romaine circled one another. He threw the first punch, which Romaine blocked as she reset her position and replied with a knee strike aimed at Hodge’s groin. He taught her early on that there was no distinction between “clean” and “dirty” fighting in the world outside of sports arenas. It was simply life or death.
They exchanged blows and blocks for around two minutes when Romaine shifted to Hodge’s left. He threw a backhand that she caught with her left hand. She employed her right into a chop straight into Hodge’s nose. He looked stunned.
Romaine released his arm and grinned. Hodge suddenly spun on his heels and drove his right fist into her left eye. Romaine was knocked off of her feet. She quickly gathered herself and came up onto her feet in a ready fighting stance.
“Never drop your guard, Romaine,” Hodge’s advised, “You should have gone for my throat rather than my nose. A dead enemy can’t tag you when you get sloppy. Just for that, I’m calling the Infirmary and instructing them to make you wear that bruise for a few days.”
“No,” Knight suddenly interjected as she approached the ring, “you’re not.”
“I outrank you, so the order stands,” Hodge growled.
“And I’m the mission commander,” Knight firmly replied. “Her fellow officers at Memory Alpha are unaware of her current location or that she’s agreed to cooperate with us. Operational security dictates that they stay unaware. A visible black eye will elicit questions we can’t afford to waste time on.”
Hodge looked like he’d swallowed something sour. He turned to Romaine. “Well? What the hell are youwaiting for? Report to the Infirmary and get that eye treated.”
Romaine climbed out of the ring and headed out of the facility. Knight called after her, “Mira, I’m dropping by your quarters tonight. I have some equipment to show you.”
Romaine turned around and nodded to Knight. She then exited the training center and went seek treatment for her eye. It was really starting to ache.
Knight joined Romaine as the archivist was sitting down to a meal. She’d been fairly isolated since her arrival. Knight had explained that Romaine wasn’t a professional operative and the service didn’t want the professional trainees and applicants identifying her as one of them. If they were eventually captured, they could give Romaine up and therefore place her life in peril from enemy operatives.
“Does that really happen?” Romaine dryly asked.
“The Klingons are surgically altering their agents to look like human beings. Look at Arne Darvin on station K-7 and Anna Sandesjo on Starbase 47. Sandesjo was a trusted Federation diplomatic attaché while really being a Klingon Imperial Intelligence agent born under the name Lurqal,” Knight cited. “It happens. Trust me, it happens more often than you’d be comfortable knowing.”
“Okay, I’ll drop it then,” Romaine assured her.
Knight entered Romaine’s dining nook with a Starfleet-issue duffel bag. Romaine could tell it was fully laden. Knight grinned.
“Mind if I join you?” she asked.
“Suit yourself,” Romaine replied indifferently. The truth was, she was glad for the company. The room was equipped with its own synthesizer food slot, so she didn’t really need to exit her room at any time. Romaine had thought about trying to open the door to see if there were guards assigned to keeping her inside, but held back. She thought the truth would be more depressing than the suspicion.
Knight sat down and they ate their meals in hospitable, if not overly friendly, silence. Romaine finished first but held off from interrupting Knight’s meal. She could’ve sworn Knight malingered over her last few bites just to torment her.
Knight broke into a fit of laughter when she finished dabbing her mouth with her napkin. “My God! You’re a warp core breach in progress right now.”
“Not to be rude, but why are you here?” Romaine burst out at long last. “You look like you’ve lugged in enough equipment to build a starship.”
Knight grinned, “Not quite, but you will be constructing a basic component of one.”
“What?” Romaine yelped. “Get my father here instead. He’s the engineer in the family.”
“You actually have a high mechanical aptitude, so don’t balk now,” Knight said with some amusement.
Knight rose and cleared their plates. Recycling the scraps into the synthesizer’s protein sequencer, she replaced the trays and dishes into the cubicle that dispensed them. They’d be sanitized and reused during the next meal.
“You may want to get some caffeine into you,” Knight advised. “This is the beginning of a week-long endurance test. I’m going to show you the technical aspects of tradecraft. We only have this last week to get you prepped and ready, so I’m not going to waste a minute of the day.”
“Ooo-kay,” Romaine said with some apprehension. She dutifully complied with the caffeine order. She opted for breakfast tea despite the late hour. It would dump a heavier dose of caffeine into her than a comparable cup of coffee.
Knight placed a suitcase style computer console on the table. “Open this and see what’s inside.”
Romaine complied but all she found was a fairly standard Starfleet issue portable computer. “I give. What’s special about it?”
“Look below the ten key pad. There’s an indentation in the case. Place your right thumb on it and see what happens,” Knight instructed.
Romaine was rather surprised when the touch screen keyboard unlocked and she was able to detach it from the case. Inside was a small crystalline data core. Hardly the size a model of this type usually boasted. It was just enough to grant the computer an air of legitimacy.
There was also a distinct power cell. And there was a Type II phaser. The data core and the power cell were recessed beneath the swept back rear of the phaser. Its grip formed a barrier between the computer parts and both a spare power pack for the phaser and a small cylindrical device that seemed to have a radial dish atop like the old style deflector arrays of the Constitution-, and as she’d recently learned, Archer-class starships.
“You’ve got to be joking,” Romaine almost stammered. “It’ll be detected.”
Knight pooh-pahhed the idea. “It reads as the computer’s power cell. Even Starfleet can’t detect it. It’s a proven platform that’s been used dozens of times. We do know what we’re doing, after all.”
“But I don’t,” Romaine admitted bleakly.
“That’s why I’m here,” Knight assured. “Now, why haven’t you asked about the case’s other stowaway?”
“I assumed it’s a transmitter of some sorts. Probably a distress beacon,” Romaine ventured.
“Good guess,” Knight replied. “Completely wrong, but it’s a good guess. We’re sending you into hostile territory. There won’t be a Federation starship inside of Romulan territory, so a beacon would be pretty useless. Unless, of course, you wanted the Romulans to pinpoint your exact location.”
“I guess I didn’t think it through,” Romaine said glumly.
“And that’s going to stop. Always remember the primary rule,” Knight counseled her.
“The Prime Directive?” Romaine offered.
Knight bopped her upside the head. “No! The primary rule is ‘nothing is ever what it appears to be.’”
“Okay, I think I can attest to that,” Romaine admitted. “So what is this doohickey?”
“A universal lock pick,” Knight said affectionately. “No door or ignition will be able to keep you out with this baby.”
“That’s why I had the vehicular training,” Romaine realized.
“If you need to make a fast break for it, commandeer a vehicle and head for these coordinates,” Knight said as she handed over a data slate.
“Why?” Romaine asked.
“Because that’s where you’ll meet your emergency contact and they’ll extract you out of the Star Empire,” Knight explained.
“Wait a minute!” Romaine protested. “If you have someone on Romulus, why am I doing this?”
“Because our asset doesn’t have access to this kind of data. You will. It’s simple math, really,” Knight divulged.
“I so hate you right now,” Romaine grumped.
Knight chuckled, “Wait until the week is out. Then you’ll really loathe me.”
“I’m not even going to take that bet,” Romaine grumbled.
“All right, back to work.” Knight dumped a bag of components onto the table. “Next, you’re going to learn how to assemble a subspace transceiver using commonly found components.”
“Is it too early to start loathing you already?” Romaine wondered.
“Much, much too early,” Knight confided.
“Figures,” Romaine bleakly remarked.
The week went by in a flurry of moments. Some moments dragged on endlessly and others warped out faster than Romaine could track. Knight had Romaine keeping up and improving her conditioning.
Romaine started the day with breakfast followed by a five kilometer run. She then got some downtime before returning to the sparring ring. Her regular opponent now was a Lt. Arender sha’Drenhilla. The Andorian was from one of the “male” sexes from his planet. Aren, as he was called, was fast and sneaky. He played a lively game with Romaine and they exchanged unchecked blows. Romaine was learning all the names of the base’s medical staff.
Target practice rounded the tactical portion of her morning and led to lunch. Between the mid-day meal and dinner, Romaine learned the technical aspects of her task. The data slate she’d been given was equipped with a subspace transceiver and a universal translator. It was with this tool that she would tap into the Romulan data nets.
As the week closed and Romaine and Knight were waiting at the transporter pads, Romaine finally asked the question that had been nagging at her. “Why aren’t you going on this mission?”
“You never asked,” Knight brightly grinned. Seeing Romaine’s dissatisfaction with that answer, Knight staved off any further inquiries. “I’ll tell you once we’re ensconced in our quarters aboard the Longbow.”
“I guess that will have to do,” Romaine said with a sense of resignation.
*****
Romaine passed the somewhat familiar faces of the Longbow’s crew in the corridors and in the sections that they worked. Only certain rooms had closing doors. Engineering and the transporter room were two areas with no doors and open access. The ladder well leading to the bridge had no obstacles either.
Sickbay and crew quarters were the only private portions of the ship. Knight made friendly greetings to the crew as she herded Romaine toward their shared room. It was obvious to Romaine that Knight was comfortable with these people. Just out of curiosity, Romaine had looked up the Longbow, her assignment, and her crew during her limited down time.
The crew all had vanilla dossiers like Knights. They gave a lot of information away, but what was more telling was what they didn’t say. Another revealing feature was that the bulk of the crew had been with the ship since it was commissioned. Most of the crew had accepted temporary demotions and were acting in the place of their former grade, and sometimes two grades below, their current rank. That kind of loyalty, to ship and crew, was rare.
The Longbow was currently TDY. That was it. No mention of what department, planet, or starbase the ship was temporarily detached to. Just TDY.
So Romaine was eagerly waiting for Knight to begin her explanation. Fortunately, she didn’t have to wait long. Otherwise, she might have burst open as Knight had estimated already.
“I can’t go because the Romulans would get suspicious over a last minute change,” Knight offered at first.
“But things happen…” Romaine started to argue.
“Not to Romulans,” Knight drolly put in. “The Romulans chose you. They chose the entire team. Why do you think T’Ling was suddenly swept into the picture? That wasn’t Starfleet’s choice.”
“But how can they…?” Romaine trailed off as dread clenched her gut.
“The Romulans have been active inside of the Federation’s borders for close to a hundred and twenty years now,” Knight revealed.
“But that proceeds the Earth-Romulan War!” Romaine burst out.
Knight dryly appraised her. Romaine gathered herself together. “It’s all right. I’m calm now.”
“That’s good because you’re stuck with going. No one gets out. If they can’t go, it had better be because of a medical emergency or an act of God they couldn’t avoid,” Knight summed up. “And no one gets replaced. If you lose a member for any reason, the remaining team members go on without them.”
Romaine asked the one question she hadn’t dared voice until now. “What if they get what they want out of us and simply arrest us for no reason?”
“Then you pray the Romulans do indeed take prisoners,” Knight replied.
Romaine found the advice to be cold comfort.
*****
The trip back to Memory Alpha took just over a day. Knight saw Romaine to the Longbow’s transporter room where she once again performed the duties of managing the transport to the surface. “This time, you’ll be glad to learn we’re leaving at the proper site. We aroused enough suspicion with your last disappearance.”
“Just how did you explain away my supposedly impossible transport?” Romaine wondered.
Knight smirked, “The transporter logs and the tram schedule dutifully show you used both to reach the surface and beyond.”
“Falsifying records is illegal,” Romaine said sternly.
Knight shrugged. “So’s spying. You get used to it.”
Romaine was less than happy with that answer and it plainly showed. Knight redirected the conversation. “You’re as prepared as anyone can hope to be. I’ll be in touch when this is over to retrieve the data you’ve acquired.”
“And if I’m captured or worse?”
“You’ll get a nice little plaque on the walls of Starfleet Intelligence headquarters on Earth.” Knight’s answer was less than thrilling and she noted it, “Mira, we’re not going to start a war over the fate of one woman. No matter how much we’d feel compelled to.”
Romaine suddenly realized that Knight was personally invested in Romaine’s fate. It wasn’t like Standish and her girlfriend. There was no romance in this. But there was a healthy dose of camaraderie and that feeling Romaine had at the beginning of kinship. Apparently Knight felt it too.
“All right.” Romaine accepted her fate, whatever it was going to be, “I’m ready.”
Knight smiled encouragingly. “Yes, I think you are.”
Feedback
Please send feedback and other correspondence regarding this story to Brin_Macen at yahoo dot com.
Romaine passed the somewhat familiar faces of the Longbow’s crew in the corridors and in the sections that they worked. Only certain rooms had closing doors. Engineering and the transporter room were two areas with no doors and open access. The ladder well leading to the bridge had no obstacles either.
Sickbay and crew quarters were the only private portions of the ship. Knight made friendly greetings to the crew as she herded Romaine toward their shared room. It was obvious to Romaine that Knight was comfortable with these people. Just out of curiosity, Romaine had looked up the Longbow, her assignment, and her crew during her limited down time.
The crew all had vanilla dossiers like Knights. They gave a lot of information away, but what was more telling was what they didn’t say. Another revealing feature was that the bulk of the crew had been with the ship since it was commissioned. Most of the crew had accepted temporary demotions and were acting in the place of their former grade, and sometimes two grades below, their current rank. That kind of loyalty, to ship and crew, was rare.
The Longbow was currently TDY. That was it. No mention of what department, planet, or starbase the ship was temporarily detached to. Just TDY.
So Romaine was eagerly waiting for Knight to begin her explanation. Fortunately, she didn’t have to wait long. Otherwise, she might have burst open as Knight had estimated already.
“I can’t go because the Romulans would get suspicious over a last minute change,” Knight offered at first.
“But things happen…” Romaine started to argue.
“Not to Romulans,” Knight drolly put in. “The Romulans chose you. They chose the entire team. Why do you think T’Ling was suddenly swept into the picture? That wasn’t Starfleet’s choice.”
“But how can they…?” Romaine trailed off as dread clenched her gut.
“The Romulans have been active inside of the Federation’s borders for close to a hundred and twenty years now,” Knight revealed.
“But that proceeds the Earth-Romulan War!” Romaine burst out.
Knight dryly appraised her. Romaine gathered herself together. “It’s all right. I’m calm now.”
“That’s good because you’re stuck with going. No one gets out. If they can’t go, it had better be because of a medical emergency or an act of God they couldn’t avoid,” Knight summed up. “And no one gets replaced. If you lose a member for any reason, the remaining team members go on without them.”
Romaine asked the one question she hadn’t dared voice until now. “What if they get what they want out of us and simply arrest us for no reason?”
“Then you pray the Romulans do indeed take prisoners,” Knight replied.
Romaine found the advice to be cold comfort.
The trip back to Memory Alpha took just over a day. Knight saw Romaine to the Longbow’s transporter room where she once again performed the duties of managing the transport to the surface. “This time, you’ll be glad to learn we’re leaving at the proper site. We aroused enough suspicion with your last disappearance.”
“Just how did you explain away my supposedly impossible transport?” Romaine wondered.
Knight smirked, “The transporter logs and the tram schedule dutifully show you used both to reach the surface and beyond.”
“Falsifying records is illegal,” Romaine said sternly.
Knight shrugged. “So’s spying. You get used to it.”
Romaine was less than happy with that answer and it plainly showed. Knight redirected the conversation. “You’re as prepared as anyone can hope to be. I’ll be in touch when this is over to retrieve the data you’ve acquired.”
“And if I’m captured or worse?”
“You’ll get a nice little plaque on the walls of Starfleet Intelligence headquarters on Earth.” Knight’s answer was less than thrilling and she noted it, “Mira, we’re not going to start a war over the fate of one woman. No matter how much we’d feel compelled to.”
Romaine suddenly realized that Knight was personally invested in Romaine’s fate. It wasn’t like Standish and her girlfriend. There was no romance in this. But there was a healthy dose of camaraderie and that feeling Romaine had at the beginning of kinship. Apparently Knight felt it too.
“All right.” Romaine accepted her fate, whatever it was going to be, “I’m ready.”
Knight smiled encouragingly. “Yes, I think you are.”
Feedback
Please send feedback and other correspondence regarding this story to Brin_Macen at yahoo dot com.