Chapter 89
Stardate 48328.2 - April 30, 2371 - 19:01:00
"So on a scale of one to ten how much trouble are we looking at?" Dax asked Sisko as he stepped off the turbolift.
"Still up in the air." He admitted as he walked past her station on his way to his office. "But Kira's being temporarily relieved of duty till we can sort things out, and Brooks is going to be handling the psych watch on Ensign Sito."
Dax visibly cringed at that. "Better her than me, but I'll spread out their Ops duties till we can get everything sorted."
"Thanks old man." Sisko told her as he passed through the doors into his office, waiting a moment for the doors to close behind him before addressing the computer.
"Computer, open a priority yellow communications channel to Captain Picard on the Enterprise D, authorization code Sisko-2-7-1-Red."
Taking a seat behind his desk, he pulled up the week's duty roster and began making the necessary alterations to it as he waited for Picard to authorize the other end of the connection.
He wasn't expecting a particularly prompt response of course, as priority yellow was the equivalent of saying important but not immediately so. But he was still surprised when, after only about ten minutes, the screen redirected to a video of the man sitting with a clear view behind him of the Enterprise's ready room.
Picard gave a slight incline of his head. "Commander Sisko, it's a surprise to hear from you after all this time, did something happen?"
"Yes." Sisko confirmed with a smile. "But it's good news for once. We seemed to have happened across your missing officer."
"My missing…" Picard began, furrowing his brow slightly in thought before his eyes went wide in realization. "Ensign Sito?"
He'd had his issues with Picard since the events of
Wolf 359, but the naked hope on the man's face at the thought of an officer everyone else had written off as dead being alive, showed clearly why he was still one of the most respected captains in starfleet.
"She escaped a Cardassian detainment center in the Amaleth system with the help of the Cardassians dissident movement." Sisko confirmed with a nod. "We intercepted their ship being chased by a pair of Galor class cruisers a couple hundred million kilometers outside the Bajoran system's
Denorios belt."
"Then she's all right." Picard muttered as an almost intangible weight seemed to lift off the man's shoulders.
Sisko grimaced at that, having heard more than enough from various Bajorans over the past few years to have an idea of just what kind of tortures the young woman had likely gone through under the Cardassian government's tender mercies.
"As much as can be expected given she was imprisoned by the Cardassian Union for a year. Lieutenant Commander Brooks is currently on psych watch and will be handling her full debrief once she's ready for it."
Captain Picard looked slightly to his left, and Sisko could see the telltale flicking back and forth of the man's eyes that suggested he was rapidly reading through something. No doubt Brooks personnel file given the circumstances, not the most flattering of reads given the way she tended to swing between overly aggressive and overly diplomatic, but she was remarkably solid when it came to any officers working under her.
"Admiral Brooks daughter." Picard finally said as he focused back on Sisko. "Is she anything like her mother?"
"Surprisingly, yes." Sisko admitted with a small smile, having been more than a little surprised at just how alike the pair were the first time he'd actually seen them together outside of any official function.
"Then Ensign Sito should be in good hands." Picard said with a nod. "Have you contacted Starfleet Command about this yet?"
"No." Sisko confessed with a mild grimace. "There's an additional factor that's going to make that call a bit more involved. So I thought I'd give you the good news first before spending the rest of my day explaining how my second in command may be a Cardassian infiltrator."
A grimace momentarily twisted Picard's lips before morphing into a pitying smile of understanding that suggested the man had experienced a number of similar circumstances in his time. "Ah, one of those days."
"I won't keep you then, Commander. Thank you, and have a good day. Picard out."
Sisko leaned back in his chair as the screen returned to his earlier work, and he took a moment to drum his fingers on the armrest of his chair as he just stared at the display in hopes that something relatively easy might come up that would let him put off having to report about this issue.
"Computer." He finally said. "Open a priority red communications channel to Admiral Nechayev."
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The door to Jaxa's temporary quarters closed behind Raine as she left the now sleeping Bajoran woman to her hopefully restful dreams. Letting out a tired sigh at still having more to do, she walked to the next room down and tapped the button that would alert the occupant inside that someone was outside waiting.
The offer of having quarters on the Defiant had been extended to all of Deep Space Nine's currently serving Starfleet officers at Raine's suggestion. A grand total of two of the station's officers had ended up deciding to do so.
The one she had positioned Jaxa next to was an Andorian ensign by the name of Zara Shaltra who normally worked gamma shift and had taken the offer because she preferred Federation environmental controls to Cardassian ones more than she preferred the added leg room of having a small apartment.
"Commander." Zara exclaimed, her antennae twitching in mild surprise as the door finished opening and a brisk chill of cooled air a good ten degrees below normal standards briefly slapped the Asari across the face. "I, ah, did you need something?"
"Sorry to spring this on you." Raine began with the apologetic tilt of her head that was the best approximation she could do of that particular Andorian body language cue. "But I'm going to be assigning you to the night shift buddy detail for your new temporary neighbor."
"Ma'am?" Zara inquired in a confused tone.
"I assume you're aware of the Defiant's recent outing?" Raine asked, continuing after Zara gave a nod of affirmation. "It involved the recovery of an officer from a short term undercover assignment that went really bad."
That was putting things mildly of course, and if she didn't know captain Picard felt absolutely horrible about what had happened to Jaxa she'd probably be sending the man a guilt inducing formal complaint about it.
"How bad is bad?" Zara asked in a commendable showing of concern.
"She was a Bajoran officer pretending to be a Bajoran terrorist who ended up being held in a Cardassian military prison for a year." Raine explained, leaving anything more unsaid since it would just be conjecture at this point.
"So worst case scenario bad." Zara muttered as her antenna practically flattened themself into her slightly tousled hair. "Is there anything I'll need to watch out for?"
"Mostly the standard things." Raine admitted. "With the sole exception that you'll need to keep an eye out for any potential Obsidian Order agents."
"And don't be afraid to talk her up if you see her wandering around the halls." She added in to head off the small chance Zara might take her assignment as a suggestion to do otherwise. "Q knows that woman could use a friend who's not a senior officer, and I doubt she'd get that from mister 'likes his quiet' on the other side of the ship."
"Just during gamma shift?" Zara questioned with a slightly furrowed brow.
"Possibly a few hours into alpha shift." Raine confessed, knowing she couldn't drop everything she was juggling for this no matter how much she might want to. "And of course you're free to associate with her during off duty hours if you want."
"Understood, ma'am." Zara returned as her antenna resumed their normal positioning.
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"Do I want to know?" Saya asked as Raine dragged herself in through the door of their shared quarters.
"Another Kira Nerys showed up." Raine admitted as she pulled off her boots and breathed a sigh of relief.
Saya turned away from her padd with a look of interest in her eyes. "Time Traveler, Dimensional Duplicate, Clone, or Changeling?"
"Surprisingly, none of the above." Raine returned with a grin before walking over to their replicator. "Hot fudge and caramel sundae, extra chocolate, extra caramel sauce."
Her daughter's look of interest rapidly transitioned into a frown. "Okay… Who died? Because you only have that when you've had a shit day and want to feel better about things."
Carrying her dessert over to the couch, Raine set it on the coffee table plopping onto the cushion with a tired exhale, because yes, listening to Jaxa unload just a small bit of her trauma had been that bad.
"Nobody." She offered vaguely as she stuffed a spoonful of the dessert into her mouth and just savored the sweetness of the dessert for a moment.
"So somebody eventually." Saya followed, looking at her with a single raised eyeridge that suggested she had seen right through the vagueness to Raine's scheming.
"Everybody eventually." Raine dodged as she took another bite, though hopefully she could figure out some way to off Dukat relatively soon, since with this he had reached the point of being one of the few people she suspected nobody on the Station would care much about if he happened to have an accident.
And that was actually saying something given Odo's rather firm position on the scales of justice.
"Okay, fine, don't tell me." Saya groused as she crossed her arms and pouted. "But if we have to go on the run and become outlaws I wanna hide out with dad."
"I've taken you on holotours of her ship type." Raine returned, shaking her empty spoon at Saya for extra emphasis. "No holodecks, small crew quarters, limited network connectivity, you'd be bored and crawling up the walls within a week. Just like you were when we took the Defiant back to the station."
"I wasn't that bad!" Saya complained, though the purple flush of embarrassment on her cheeks suggested she knew the truth.
Raine took another bite of her sunday before glancing back over to her daughter with an impish grin.
"Lieutenant Commander." She began in her best impression of T'Rul's cadence. "I believe your daughter has taken it upon herself to try and stalk my security officers."
"That's because they were up to something!" Saya exclaimed in annoyance. "Jake said he saw them lurking around the EPS mains with scanners."
"That's because they were taking plasma frequency readings to better calibrate the cloak." Raine explained with a roll of her eyes, having told her daughter about that multiple times at this point.
Seeing her daughter open her mouth to say more, Raine decided to beat her to the punch. "And T'Rel was secretly following me around because that's just one of the ways Romulans flirt with people."
The idea was that if you couldn't notice you kept 'accidentally' running into someone, you probably weren't worth their time anyways.
"Still don't like that you're going out with her." Saya muttered as her pout seemed to intensify. "Cause there's no way she isn't a spy."
"Yes." Raine admitted with a grin, never really having thought otherwise given the circumstances. "But that just makes things more fun. You'll understand when you're older."
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Author's Notes: Shorter chapter today, but things worked out as needing a transitional chapter at this point to set up a couple other things for the future.
