Cerulean Stars - Chapter 148

Chapter 148 - Visionary

Stardate 48568.1 - July 27, 2371 - 08:33:21

“The return of the Orb of Wisdom by Grand Nagus Zek is believed by some in the Vedek assembly to be a reminder from the Prophets that the words of the Cardassians can never be taken at face value. And as a result, new calls have begun for First Minister Li Nalas to demand the return of the remaining Orbs before entertaining any further ideas of cooperation between Bajor and the Cardassian Union.”

“Our guest today, Vedek Winn, will go into the deeper reasoning behin–”

“Computer,” Raine interjected, her left eye twitching at the image that had just appeared on the wall screen. “Mute.”

How the hell that woman had managed to claw her way back to even a small bit of relevancy was a mystery the Asari really wished she could delve into. Unfortunately any time she had tried the Vedek Assembly had shut her inquiries down hard. 

“She still gives me the creeps.” Saya muttered, staring at the muted screen for a moment before turning back to her homework.

“That's probably the untreated sociopathy.” Raine offered somewhat distractedly as turned back to the wall mirror to give her makeup a final check. “The feeling of offness tends to hit us extra hard because of how a sociopath's masking tends to interact with our instinctual ability to mirror other species body language.”

“Wait…” D'Vana interjected, glancing up from her borrowed padd with a slight frown. “Is that why talking to you and Saya always sort of feels like talking to another Orion?”

“Probably.” Raine confirmed, turning away from the mirror satisfied with the extra eyeliner and dark blue lip paint she'd decided to go with for T'Rel's return. “I've tried not to do it, but I'm pretty sure it's one of those things that takes decades of ascetic training to learn to control on any sort of conscious level.”

“She thinks it's too manipulative to use on friends and family.” Saya teasingly whispered.

“It just feels like cheating." Raine groused, fully aware that it wasn't a rational feeling on her part given it was just the way Asari worked.

D'Vana gave a small hum, tilting her head back and forth in seeming contemplation. “I don't really feel like it is. I mean, a lot of people learn how to do stuff like so they can better fit in when dealing with aliens.”

“Not me.” She hastily added in. “Or well, aunt D'Rana tried to teach me, but I was really bad at it because I always felt like I was manipulating people.” Cringing slightly, the teen ducked her head to cover the sudden embarrassed flush on her cheeks. “Which now that I say it out loud is pretty much exactly what you were worried about… So sorry?”

Raine had to hold back a laugh, knowing D’Vana would likely take it the wrong way. “Don’t worry about it.”

Starting to the door, she paused to glance over her shoulder at the two girls working at the table. “Remember, there are Klingon’s visiting, so if you’re going to sneak out while I’m gone don’t go to Quarks.” Shaking her head she let out an annoyed sigh. “The last thing we need is one of you stabbing one and having their family try and set up a marriage or swear blood vengeance."

A confused look flashed across D’Vana’s face. “That doesn’t actually happen, does it?”

“Have Saya tell you the full story of how Quark ended up getting that gaudy warship of his.” Raine quipped before continuing on out of the room only to pause at the door. “I should be back at around seventeen hundred hours, take care.”

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T’Rel had returned to the station on board a high speed Romulan transport along-side a delegation of official Romulan intelligence officers who were, on paper, there to go over several months worth of non-transmitable data about the Dominion.

In reality, those particular files had been provided directly to the Romulans months ago and they were on the station to provide cover for several test bed upgrades to the Defiant’s cloaking device that the Romulans hoped would minimize the Dominion’s ability to detect the Defiant while moving at warp.

She was currently taking a break from that however to have lunch in the Promenaud and catch up with the head engineer in charge of those particular upgrades.

“So I ended up spending several days in bed with Jadzia.” Raine finished her retelling of the most important of the various occurrences since T’Rel had headed back to Romulus.

“I suppose it happens.” T’Rel said, radiating a clear amusement at the story that was somewhat at odds with her serious expression. “Not to use mind you, but with a few exceptions we’re much more careful when it comes to potential telepathic influence.”

“So…” Raine hesitantly began, ignoring the small voice in the back of her head that was telling her to just take the win. “You’re not going to hold it against me?”

“All monogamous space faring civilizations of note have understandable exceptions built into their cultural structure for acts taken while under the influence of telepathic effects.” T’Rel pointed out in a dryly amused tone. 

“I feel like those qualifiers are doing a lot of heavy lifting.” Raine muttered, not entirely sure the Romulan woman was being honest about her feelings on the subject.

“And really,” T'Rel continued with a slight smirk. “If I had a problem with the whole situation you would have known when my sister demanded you recite the two thousand lines of supplication as part of gaining permission to utilize our cloaking device during the Defiants recent trip to Orion.”

Raine opened her mouth only to close it as a sudden suspicion hit. “You knew about me sleeping with Jadzia the day after it happened didn't you?”

“Of course.” T'Rel confirmed. “I even have a recording of you slinking out of Jadzia's quarters once the empathic effect finally wore off.”

“You're just messing with me now.” Raine accused, staring T'Rel in the eye while giving an over the top pout. “Because there is no way anyone could mistake my sore hobble after that for a slink.”

Jadzia had been an absolute Klingon in the sack, and while that level of intensity could be enjoyable in moderation, it had its consequences when mixed with an empathic driven multi-day series of marathon sessions.

“I suppose it is good to know what I may someday need to–” T’Rel trailed off, staring at something over Raine’s shoulder with an overly confused look on her face.

Glancing back to see what had caught the Romulan’s attention, Raine felt her eye begin to twitch at the sight of Miles O’Brien standing on the upper concourse staring with shocked look on his face at another Miles O’Brien who had just exited from the upper entrance of Quark’s.

“Oh for the love of…”

The Miles O'Brien on the concourse vanished before Raine could finish, and she stared at the empty spot for a moment before shaking her head. “Not a changeling, so fuck it, that can be Jadzia's problem.”

“Spontanious temporary duplication seems like something you should worry about.” T’Rel offered, frowning at the place the second O’Brien had just disappeared from.

“Normally it would be.” Raine admitted as she turned back to her lunch. “But after I forgot to send a report on an Obsidian Order agent to Sisko he made it clear that I needed to start delegating some of the things I have on my plate.”

The corner of her lip twitched. “Also it’s O’Brien, stuff like that just happens to him sometimes.”

T’Rel raised her eyebrow in clear disbelief. “Really?”

“Yup,” Raine nodded, still surprised to this day at the sheer number of unshown events the man had experienced. “Keiko told me about how Q spent years messing with Captain Picard by randomly tossing alternate universe versions of O’Brien onto the Enterprise to see how long it took Picard to notice.”

She wasn’t entirely sure Keiko hadn’t been messing with her with that one, though she did remember something about ongoing inconsistencies with O’Brien’s uniform and rank during the character's time on The Next Generation.

“There is a long running debate on Romulus about just what it is that causes Starfleet to run into so many unusual beings and circumstances.” T’Rel mused before starting in again on her chowder.

“My going theory for that is that the Humans were cursed to attract weirdness by extra dimensional wizards about eight hundred years ago as punishment for being puritanical bigots.” Raine offered, more than a little happy at finally getting to talk about the subject with someone given how almost everyone in Starfleet just got defensive when she brought up the idea that the level of weirdness they encountered was over five times the galactic norm. “Which because of the retroactive effects of all humanity’s time traveling means Earth and Humanity has been drawing weirdness to it functionally forever.”

T’Rel paused with her spoon half way to her mouth to shoot Raine a skeptical look. “Extra dimensional wizards?”

“They’re real!” Raine pouted, feeling oddly put out at being doubted. “Kirk’s Enterprise ran into them a hundred years ago.”

“Kirk claimed to run into many things.” T'Rel countered primly. “Many of which turned out to be non-existent when we attempted to follow up on them.”

“Like what?” Raine asked with a frown, not even remotely surprised that the Romulans had gotten access to and tried to follow up on at least some of Kirk's mission logs. 

“Salt vampires.” T'Rel began.

“Starfleet relocated the survivors to an empty salt rich planet in a follow up mission.”

The last Raine had heard the Darwin Genetic Research Station had begun work on stabilizing their metabolic process to a more reasonable level.

“The planet eater?” T’Rel tried.

“Was real, but Starfleet disposed of it in a black hole after it started reactivating.”

That had been more than a little depressing for Raine to learn given she'd really wanted to see it with her own eyes someday.

T'Rel narrowed her eyes. “Planet Mudd.”

“We renamed it to Galor IV.” Raine said, grinning at the memory that drudged up. “You wouldn't believe the number of ensigns that end up doing the walk of shame after their first visit layover on the world.”

It wasn't exactly a pleasure world, and Starfleet discouraged taking advantage of the Android’s hospitality in that manner. However a significant portion of the Androids themselves were very Risian in the way they gained enjoyment from seeing to the enjoyment of other beings.

“The theft of…” T'Rel cringed as if she couldn't quite believe the words she was about to say. “Spock's brain…”

Raine grimaced. “Okay, I'll admit that one continues to be a headscratcher since the inhabited planet the log claims they visited doesn't seem to exist.”

And she didn't just mean in the logs, because she'd passed through the Sigma Draconis system a number of times on various ships herself, and there were only two not three M class planets there.

“There was also the time he was seduced by Fleet Commander Charvanek.” T’Rel offered innocently.

That didn’t ring right in Raine’s memory, and she frowned. “I thought that was Spock? And what do you mean seduced? I thought he played her?”

“That is certainly what Kirk put in his logs.” T’Rel offered with a secretive smirk. “But do you really believe that Fleet Commander Charvanek didn’t know the fruitlessness of attempting to seduce a Vulcan?”

When she put it like that, Raine supposed it didn’t exactly make a lot of sense that someone as experienced as Charvanek supposedly had been at the time had gone for that particular approach. Especially given Kirk’s well earned reputation as something of an easy seduction target for attractive alien women.

“I’ll have to ask Scotty about that next time I see him.” She cocked her head slightly as that brought to mind something she had wanted to ask. “That reminds me, do you think it would be possible to dampen the chroniton output of the Defiant’s cloaking device? We had some problems with the particles getting lodged in the ship's ablative armor matrix.”

T’Rel quirked an eyebrow at her. “Uncontrollable temporal effects?”

“I take it you’ve run into the problem before?” Raine asked.

“It was a persistent problem when we first began integrating singularity reactors into our starships.” T’Rel confirmed with a nod. “The only solution we found was utilizing Chroniton transparent materials in our hull designs.” She took a moment to consider the question on a deeper level. “Though I suppose since you do not utilize singularity reactors, monthly purges of the ships armor matrix should be a workable alternative.”

“That’s pretty much what we settled on.” Raine sighed. “But Commander Sisko was kind of hoping we wouldn’t have to keep it a standard thing since that’s basically a full day of EVA work for a team of ensigns.”

Glad that wouldn’t be her problem, she offered a teasing look to T’Rel. “So what about you, have a good time lording your obvious superiority over all those junior engineers on Romulus?”

“I only had to poison one if you can believe it.” T’Rel returned before returning Raine’s teasing look with one of her own. “And you’ll be happy to know I managed to avoid being replaced by a Changeling infiltrator.”

Holding up her fork, Raine let her grin show as she gave the utensil a small shake in the Romulans general direction. “Good, because the paperwork from that would bury me for months.”

“Though I have to say,” T’Rel continued, her lip twitching slightly to show she both caught and enjoyed the joke. “Having your security chief attempt to merge with me was an interesting solution to the problem of detecting Changelings.”

Raine shrugged. “We don’t do it for everyone, but it’s the most foolproof way I could think of to guarantee someone in a high security position hadn’t been secretly replaced.”

“Assuming Changelings do not have some way of resisting a merge.” T’Rel pointed out dryly. 

“Well yeah,” Raine reluctantly agreed. “But that’s the general problem with all our potential ways to detect them at this point.”

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Author’s Notes: There really wasn’t a lot to cover in this episode since the Romulan attack on the station that drove a good portion of it was butterflied away. (The cloaked ship was an escort this time.) So instead you get a chapter of Raine and T’Rel catching up and leaving the time jumping O’Brien to be other people’s problem.