S02 E08: Chronicles of T'Avaya: Estranged
S02 E08: Chronicles of T'Avaya: Estranged
[This adventure was inspired by the Mission Brief
“Estranged” in “Political Actions” by Stephen Near.]
Mission
log. Stardate 45133.4. Agent T’Avaya reporting. Starfleet Intelligence has now
assigned me to be the leader of a special civilian task force team, dubbed
“Shadow Centurions”. The other members of the team are Agent Miadere Loris of
the Interstellar Commerce Protectorate and Agent Cassandra Chand of Section 31.
My work with them on previous intelligence missions has been satisfactory.
Their respective intelligence organizations have agreed to the joint venture.
Our current assignment is to pick up Admiral Dennis
Cahill and take him to the edge of the Romulan Neutral Zone. I was told that
the admiral will give us further orders once we reach our destination.
“Picking
up anomalous readings,” said Cassandra, a genetically enhanced human. “What
kind of anomalous readings?” Admiral Cahill asked pointedly. The admiral seemed
constantly annoyed with all three women. Miadere, a Deltan/Orion hybrid, had
been ordered by T’Avaya not to use her natural pheromones on him, at least to
the extent that she could control her pheromones; pheromones would fog his
mind, and they needed him to be fully present. T’Avaya checked the sensor
readings and, trying to deflect Cahill’s attention away from Cassandra, said,
“Tachyon emissions suggest cloaked Romulan warbirds. Emissions coming from
different coordinates. They are all on the Romulan side of the Neutral Zone.”
“Can
you extend the sensor range?” the admiral asked.
“This
ship has enhanced sensors, and they are already at maximum range,” the Vulcan,
T’Avaya, answered.
“Divert
power from shields and weapons.”
“That
would not be wise,” T’Avaya told the admiral. “We may need them if the warbirds
decloak.”
“I’m
in command here. You will do as I say.”
T’Avaya
had been butting heads with the admiral since they picked him up at Starbase
51. He had been testing her Vulcan patience constantly. But she had dealt with
difficult humans before. “This is my ship,” she said. “Starfleet Intelligence
has given me strict orders to keep her intact. Though you have not told us our
mission, I am confident that we will not be able to complete it without a ship.
Unless you intend to get us all captured or killed, the logical course of
action is to keep scanning and leave the sensors as they are.”
The
admiral harumphed and folded his arms. He glared at the Vulcan and then glared
at the forward viewscreen. He decided he would just have to let this one go,
but he didn’t have to be happy about it. T’Avaya ordered Cassandra to keep
weapons at the ready. Then the Vulcan checked the readings on the engines. They
were ready for warp speed if they needed to make a quick getaway. The Shavokh
was a Danube class ship. Even though T’Avaya had used her engineering skills to
install an extensive refit, it was too small to be a match against a Romulan
warbird.
“I’m
picking up an incoming signal,” Cass said. “It’s coming from the other side of
the Neutral Zone.”
“Is
it the Romulans trying to hail us?” Admiral Cahill asked urgently.
Cass
was listening to the message and said, “It’s a distress signal.”
“On
speakers,” ordered T’Avaya.
“This
is Commander Tolaib. Our fusion … leaking …overload. We request immediate
assistance befo…. Repeat. We require immedi--.”
“Cass,”
T’Avaya said to her helmsman, “Can you pinpoint the source of that
transmission?”
“Negative,
Commander,” Cassandra replied. (T’Avaya was usually called “Commander” by her
two teammates.) “I know it is from Romulan space beyond the Neutral Zone. It’s
too far away to get an exact location.”
“I
checked the Starfleet Intelligence database,” said Miadere, “for a Commander
Tolaib. He was last known to command a D’deridex class ship, the IRW Hobelak.
Admiral
Cahill stood up from his chair behind Cassandra and said, “We have to help
them. It’s our mission.” Tav looked at Cahill. “Starfleet knew we would
encounter a ship in distress?”
“Starfleet
knew the Romulans were up to something in this area.”
Tav
told Cass to scan for the tachyon emissions again. If there were cloaked ships
in the area, surely those ships would pick up the distress call and answer it. Cass
said sensors still picked up the tachyon emissions, but they were faint and
scattered. They did not seem to be moving. Furthermore, Cass pointed out,
tachyons themselves were not proof of cloaked warbirds. T’Avaya knew that, but
she also knew it could be a trap.
Admiral
Cahill insisted again that they answer the distress call and that it was their
mission from Starfleet Intelligence to cross the Neutral Zone into Romulan
space. T’Avaya had to trust the admiral. She ordered Cass to slowly enter the
Neutral Zone. Mia kept monitoring the area for signs of other ships or subspace
communications.
Once
they entered the Neutral Zone, they cautiously made their way into Romulan
space. T’Avaya had been expecting this when she was ordered to go to the border
of the Neutral Zone. Ever since Starfleet Intelligence had deemed her a Romulan
“specialist”, they would be sending her and her team on more missions involving
Romulans. There were many who believed that because Romulans were an offshoot
of Vulcans, that Vulcans understood Romulans better than any other race.
T’Avaya, as a Vulcan, knew that to be untrue for many Vulcans. The two races had split many centuries ago.
The Vulcans had adopted cold logic as their way of life. How could they
possibly have an upper hand in understanding Romulans, a race that embraced
emotions, subterfuge, and paranoia as a way of life? But T’Avaya had been on
other missions involving Romulans, including visiting the Romulan homeworld, so
she did have a general feel for their mindset. She felt she was more the
exception than the rule concerning how much Vulcans understood Romulans.
Indeed, she had posed as a Romulan for past missions, having been trained by SI
to not carry such dispassion in her facial expressions. It was not something
she relished, but it was something she could see value in recognizing. She was
from a family that believed in sharing close emotional bonds with relatives,
seeing that as a worthy and appropriate display of emotions.
They
received a repeat of the same distress call. As they remained on a course for
the source, they came upon a Romulan outpost station. Judging by the advanced
sensors and communications relays, it was a listening outpost. T’Avaya, an
engineer who specialized in communications technology, determined that it was
designed to pick up stray residual signals from ships that came close to the
border and from Starfleet outposts along the Neutral Zone. The Romulan outpost
would be able to gather intelligence such as number and type of ships that sent
subspace signals in the area and frequency of ships traveling in the area.
Their
Starfleet Intelligence ship, the Shavokh, stayed at the edge of the outpost’s
sensor range. Mia reported that the outpost did indeed have a reactor that was
degrading to eventual detonation, as the distress call had indicated. They had another twenty minutes before the
outpost would explode. Sensors detected ten people on the station. The Shavokh
was just large enough to carry them. They hailed the outpost. They saw the
Romulan commander, Tolaib, onscreen. T’Avaya offered to beam his people aboard.
Tolaib agreed. T’Avaya had the Romulans beamed directly to the cargo bay and
erected a forcefield around them. The transporter buffer would have detected
any weapons, but these Romulans did not attempt to carry weapons. They seemed
to be scientists and engineers, instead of soldiers.
Then,
the Shavokh headed away from the station. They were just out of visual range
when sensors detected the outpost’s explosion. T’Avaya and Cahill went to the
cargo bay to speak to the Romulans. Commander Tolaib greeted T’Avaya and
thanked her for saving them. Admiral Cahill, forgoing any formalities, asked
Tolaib what the outpost was doing so close to the Neutral Zone. Tolaib said
they had been ordered to study the tachyon emissions that were in the area.
T’Avaya mentioned
they had detected tachyon emissions, but the emissions seemed to dissipate as
they got closer to the outpost. Tolaib said the emissions were still in the
outpost’s sensor range. T’Avaya asked Tolaib about the degrading reactor.
Tolaib said that it was an accident caused by a faulty coil in the relay
system. T’Avaya then asked Tolaib why he was commanding a scientific outpost
when Starfleet (she did not mention SI) data said he was in command of a
warbird. He claimed that he had asked to command the outpost for personal
reasons. She asked if any of his crew needed medical attention. He said there
was one who had a head injury and was beamed to another part of the ship for
medical care. T’Avaya knew Miadere was seeing to that one injured Romulan.
Cahill
started looking among the Romulans. T’Avaya noticed he seemed intent on
studying their faces. T’Avaya knew the admiral must have some hidden agenda
from SI that she had not been made aware of. He must not have seen what he
wanted. He asked one of the Romulans if there were any more from their outpost.
They said all had been beamed aboard. The Romulans were told that the Shavokh
was a merchant ship (though they did not tell the Romulans the ship’s name)
that had rescued the admiral when he was on a lone runabout coming from a
conference on Starbase 135 when his ship was caught in an ion storm. They were
taking him to Starbase 51 when they picked up his distress call. That would
explain, from the Romulans’ perspective, why the ship had one Starfleet admiral
and three civilians.
/**********/
In
Miadere’s cabin, she tended to Rokim, the injured Romulan. Mia was a
biochemist; not exactly a medical doctor, but she knew some first aid. She had
worked with Romulans before as an intelligence agent for the Interstellar
Commerce Protectorate. She knew they were shifty and couldn’t be trusted. And
they didn’t trust anyone else either, not even each other. She knew enough
Romulan physiology to provide medical care, but this patient was not Romulan.
“You’re human,” she said to Rokim. “What was your first clue?” he said to her,
deadpan. She tried again. “Why are you disguised as a Romulan?” she asked. His
“disguise” as she had called it, wasn’t very good. He was clearly bleeding red
blood from his head, and at least some of the others must have seen it. He
didn’t answer her. He smiled and touched her face gently. She was, of course,
accustomed to this reaction from men; even at times like this when she wasn’t
even using her pheromones.
“Is
there a reason, Romulan, that you are still here and not behind a forcefield
with your friends?” Rokim and Miadere turned around and saw Admiral Cahill.
Looking smug as ever, Miadere thought. Rokim looked at the human with disgust. When
Cahill saw Rokim’s face, his expression turned to that of recognition and
sadness. “So you WERE on that outpost,” Cahill said. Cahill asked Miadere to
let him speak to Rokim alone. Miadere left. However those two knew each other,
Mia thought, she would find out later. Obviously this had something to do with
Cahill’s orders from SI.
/**********/
The
private quarters on the Shavokh were barely large enough for one person. But
T’Avaya felt that her quarters were the best place to speak to the admiral in
private. “How did your son come to be disguised as a Romulan and serve on a
Romulan outpost?” she asked the admiral. Cahill looked down at his feet and
back up at the Vulcan’s eyes. He wanted to pace, but there was hardly enough
room for the two of them to just stand there.
He leaned against
a desk that was built into the wall. He had just told her that the “Romulan”
named Rokim was really his son. Now he would tell T’Avaya the story of how his
son, Devon Cahill, was at a psychology symposium on Helga V and was duped by a
Tal Shiar agent into stealing an experimental psychotropic drug. Devon had been
targeted because they knew he was the son of an admiral, and they knew he could
convince one of his father’s friends to send a case of the drug to Hydra Rion
II. T’Avaya listened as the admiral
described his son as an innocent psychology student who couldn’t have known he
was doing anything wrong. The Tal Shiar agent had been disguised as a human
female who remained friends with Devon and later convinced him to leave the
Federation and join the Romulan Star Empire. Devon had gotten surgical implants
on his ears and changed his name to Rokim in order to assimilate, but most
Romulans knew he was born human. Devon had not been the first human to join the
cause of the Romulans, and no doubt, he wouldn’t be the last.
The admiral
looked down again and rubbed his forehead. “Devon claims,” he said sadly, “that
the Romulans gave him a true purpose in life. They’ve brainwashed him. I know
they have.” T’Avaya had sympathy for Cahill. She knew he was devastated. She
paused so that he could have some time to grieve. But they did have a mission.
“Admiral, I am
sorry for your emotional pain. I know it must be excruciating. Family is
important to me as well. However, we are still on a mission. Why has Starfleet
Intelligence ordered us here?” Cahill tried to regain his composure. He stared
blankly at the wall and said, “Starfleet Intelligence knew about the listening
post. It was there to spy on us. But not only that, there were scientist on the
outpost doing experiments involving creating fake sensor readings for cloaking
technology. That’s why we detected all the tachyon emissions. They were to give
us false leads for cloaked ships. We were to shut the outpost down. By any
means necessary.”
“Then we have
accomplished our mission. The outpost has been destroyed, though not by us.”
Cahill shook his head and said, “There’s another concern now. Devon said he
thinks the Tal Shiar had an agent on the outpost and that the agent is after
me. He thinks he had been assigned to that outpost because they knew I would
come looking for him.”
“Does he have any
evidence?”
“For one thing,
he was assigned to monitor the outpost’s internal diagnostic systems when most
of his work for the Romulans had been in psychochemistry research. And he was
asked more than once if he knew my whereabouts. Which he didn’t, by the way.”
Cahill also said that a military commander, namely Tolaib, had been put in
charge of the outpost because the research was very important to the Romulan
fleet. The admiral was a target of the Tal Shiar because he had intercepted the
drug shipment to Hydra Rion II and knew its true whereabouts.
Their
conversation was interrupted by Miadere from outside the door telling Tav that a
warbird had just decloaked. They left the cabin and went to the forward control
area.
On the
viewscreen, T’Avaya saw the warbird moving so that it was directly in front of
the Shavokh. She ordered Cassandra to hail them. A Romulan appeared on the
forward viewscreen.
“I am Commander Luvok.
Your presence in our space is a violation of treaty. AND we have scanned your
ship and know that you have several of our citizens aboard. You will stand down
and prepare to be boarded. We will retake our citizens and place your crew
under arrest and tow your ship back to the empire.”
Before T’Avaya
could protest, Admiral Cahill spoke. “That’s a negative. These Romulans were
rescued from an illegal listening outpost. We are taking them back to
Federation space where they will stand trial.”
While the Romulan
commander barked his reply at Cahill, Cassandra pulled Tav to the side and
whispered to her that a coded message was just sent from the Shavokh to the
warbird. T’Avaya looked up the sensor logs on an aft console. The message had
been sent from the cargo bay. The encryption code was one she had not seen
before. She suspected it was a Tal Shiar code. Cahill had mentioned a possible
Tal Shiar agent had been on the outpost. That agent could now be on the
Shavokh.
As T’Avaya tried
to decrypt the code, she got a call from Miadere in the cargo bay. She had gone
down there to check on the Romulans. Miadere told T’Avaya that Rokim wanted to
come to the command center and speak to the warbird commander. The Vulcan told
Miadere to escort him up.
Rokim looked at
Commander Luvok on the viewscreen. Then, Rokim reached into his sleeve and
pulled out a data rod. “This,” he said, “is the research data the outpost was
working on. I was able to download it right before I was rescued by these kind
Federation people.”
“So the data
wasn’t destroyed?” Luvok could not betray his surprise.
“I will give it
to you, if,” Rokim smiled, “you take me and my team back to Romulus and let
these puny Feddies leave unharmed.”
Luvok stated
firmly, “We must have the human male.”
“No. The deal is
you let all the Feddies go.”
Another Romulan
on the warbird spoke something privately into the commander’s ear. Whatever the
Romulan Uhlan said to the commander, the commander suddenly changed his mind.
“I will do as you ask,” he said plainly. “Prepare your comrades to be beamed
over.” He closed the communication channel. And that was that.
Admiral Cahill
looked at his son. “Well,” he said, “it seems you make a good Romulan after all.
I don’t know if I should be flattered or insulted.” His son smiled at him.
T’Avaya
interrupted them to ask what exactly was on the data rod. Rokim/Devon said it
was the outpost science and engineering research on creating fake emissions to
fool Starfleet sensors into thinking there was a cloaked warbird. Assuming he
was telling the truth, T’Avaya thought, she would let the data rod go without
question. Cloaking technology and Starfleet technology were always changing.
Both sides had many break throughs in the last three centuries. In the end, the
data rod would be no great loss. She and Miadere led Cahill and Rokim back to
the cargo bay. They lowered the force field and let Luvok know that Rokim and
the Romulans were ready for beam out. Cahill at least expected to get to hug
his son and tell him goodbye, but he did
not get the chance.
Mission log.
Supplemental. Agent T’Avaya reporting. I was not able to decrypt the message
that was mysteriously sent from my ship to the warbird. I have transmitted the
message to Starfleet Intelligence for further analysis.
We are back in Federation space and on the way
to Starbase 51 to drop off Admiral Cahill. The admiral had hoped that his son
would come back to the Federation, but now he sees that that is unlikely. Devon
is not the first Federation defector to the Romulan Star Empire. Thus proving
that there is enough diversity in the galaxy for individuals to find what suits
them, and that not everyone is born to follow in their parents’ footsteps. Now
that the mission has been completed, Cahill has become less argumentative and
more depressed. I have decided that for now, it is best to leave him be. Humans
need time to work through such traumas. I know that he will never be able to
completely put this behind him. But time will make the pain less severe.
-by the
Honorable Kavura
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