The tech established a comfortable pace, his hands moving as if of their own accord as he carefully manipulated the transfer couplings affixed to the harvester’s power cells back into place. It was the third time he had repeated this process in the past two hours, and a part of him found the irony of being bested by a piece of aging Cardassian farm equipment to be pretty damn amusing.
He grabbed the edge of the maintenance hatch and pulled his upper torso out far enough for him to call up to the Cardassian mechanic assisting him. “Okay, I’m done. Hopefully that should do it.”
Taflim poked his own head out of the cab, a wry grin creasing his features. “That’s what you said last time, Michael.”
The tech stifled a laugh that the ever-present dust turned into a bout of coughing. He wiped at his watering eyes as he replied, “Yes, well, I thought I had it last time. This thing was over-built, and I didn’t take into account the triple redundancy of your power transfer system.” He scratched at his nose before adding, “…until it almost electrocuted me.”
“Did I just hear a Federation technician compliment a Cardassian design?” Taflim pressed a hand to the scales at his neck, as if checking for fever. “Can’t be. I must have caught the Lakarian plague.”
The tech screwed up his face into an exaggerated frown. “Ha,” he deadpanned. “I say again for emphasis… ha. Now, if you don’t mind, could you please press the initiator?”
“Certainly.” Taflim disappeared back inside the harvester’s cab and pushed the button that brought the cranky old piece of farm machinery to life. It rattled and groaned for the first twenty seconds as it integrated its newly replaced parts and power couplings before settling into a comfortable rumbling rhythm.
The tech pulled himself fully out of the hatch and stifled a groan as his joints protested his resumption of vertical posture. He walked over and hauled himself up to the cab as he took a look at the machine’s diagnostic panel for himself. “Everything’s in the yellow.”
Taflim frowned, clearly perplexed by the statement. “In the… what?”
“It’s a human expression, ‘in the green.’ It means everything’s in working order. However, your people use yellow to denote systems nominal status.”
The Cardassian mechanic shook his head and chuckled, “You humans are very strange. Handy, though, that’s a plus.” After the briefest moment, Taflim’s eyes widened as he suddenly realized his gaff. He turned abruptly to the tech as the color drained from his face. “I’m so very sorry,” he said in a soft voice tinged with tremulous conviction. ”I… I wasn’t thinking. That was very rude, the kind of humor my people only tend to share with close friends and family. And after all you’ve done to help me…”
The tech smiled in return. “I wasn’t offended, Taflim. Really.” He kept his gaze fixed on the mechanic until the younger man finally raised his eyes. “You should relax a little. If we can’t joke around out here where it’s just the two of us, then when could you?”
Taflim had been working with this particular human for nearly a week and a half as the two of them struggled to resurrect a veritable fleet of agricultural harvesters that had been left to rust since before the end of the war. Nearly three years of exposure to the harsh elements and a total lack of maintenance had rendered the great majority of them inoperative. It was a task that should have warranted the services of a dozen or more technicians, yet only Taflim had been made available, so depleted were the Agricultural Ministry’s staffing levels.
Taflim had succeeded in bringing only three of the machines back online in as many months, working with no help and a paltry supply of replacement parts. His repeated requests for more help and his multiple supply requisitions had been met with patent indifference from his supervisor, who was herself trying to oversee nearly two dozen land reclamation projects and ancillary assignments in the vicinity of Lakarian City.
Then the tech had arrived. Taflim knew little about him, only that his name was Michael, that he was a civilian from a Federation aid agency, and that somehow he had been tasked to assist in recovering the precious harvesters before the end of the growing season, a deadline that was approaching quickly.
Every morning when Taflim trundled up in a cloud of dust atop on his tri-wheeled ground-crawler the tech would already be hard at work. Without fail he was accompanied by a dozen or so crates of newly replicated parts, a veritable treasure trove of repair kit that made it possible to now refurbish all the harvesters, rather than part out two-thirds of them in order to resurrect the final third.
Relieved by the technician’s good-spirited acceptance of his friendly jibe, Taflim inquired, “So, Michael, can you tell me where you manage to get your hands on all these parts? With all you’ve brought these past few days, we could almost build a harvester from scratch.”
The Federation tech merely smiled enigmatically. “Let’s just say that I have some resources available to me that allow me to go around the usual supply channels.”
Taflim gave a reluctant nod, accepting that the man wanted to maintain the anonymity of his supply chain. “Wherever they come from, and wherever you’ve come from, you have my gratitude.”
“You’re welcome, but no thanks are needed. I’m here just doing what little I can to help. My time here is… limited.”
“I’m sure your agency has many other more important projects for you to attend to,” Taflim observed.
The man bobbed his head in response. “Yes, but rarely are they as satisfying as this,” he said as he gestured to the now purring harvester.
Taflim snorted in spite of himself. “This is a high point for you?”
“Once upon a time I had the privilege of working with my hands. Now… not so much. I miss it. Sometimes more than I’d like to admit.”
It appeared Taflim was on the cusp of responding when something caught his attention. He stood and craned his neck, eyeing the horizon.
The human stood as well, blinking in the harsh light as he squinted into the distance. “What is it?”
The Cardassian emitted a resigned sigh. “Trouble,” he said. “And right on schedule, too.”
The tech gave him a curious look but reserved comment.
Taflim jumped down of the big vehicle’s front fender and trudged reluctantly over to his three-wheeled transport. The young man began to paw through the contents of one of the transport’s carryall boxes until he produced a small case.
“What’s in there?” the technician inquired innocently.
“Tribute,” the young man replied.
“You’re kidding?” The tech looked dumbfounded, almost as if he couldn’t fathom such a concept. He scanned the horizon yet again, and this time spotted a small dark spot growing with the accompanying hum of a flitter. “Who are they? Crime syndicate mobsters or some local warlord’s enforcers?”
“No, but it’s no problem. I doubt they’ll bother you,” Taflim offered hopefully. “Besides, it’s nothing, really. Just a few dozen leks that I’ve saved up to keep them happy. They’re ever so much more reasonable than the Klingons were when they were running things here.”
The tech turned to look at Taflim again, his expression hardening. “Please,” he prompted. “Who are they?”
“Why Starfleet… of course.”
***
As his flitter arced across the brown-hued foreign landscape, Lt. Commander Torson Chabs-Wret of Starfleet security had plenty of time to reflect on how much he hated Cardassia. No, that wasn’t quite accurate. To be more precise, he loathed the planet. He was subjected daily to its arid climate, its burned, crumbling cities, and its malnourished, vacant-eyed masses of disenfranchised refugees who had fled here from the Union’s far-flung colonies, where if it could be believed, conditions were even worse.
Chabs-Wret had no qualms about what the Dominion had attempted to do here. His argument was with the unaccustomed lack of efficiency demonstrated by Dominion forces. No doubt, the Jem’Hadar had been in possession of a multitude of weapons that could have completed the task, from biogenic viral agents to lethal swarms of nanites to a storm of hard radiation projected from orbital satellites. If only they could have laid waste the entire surface of this world, perhaps then Chabs-Wret could have been assigned a mission more in keeping with his status.
The war had been good for him, which only made his assignment to this desolate hell hole all the more galling. His ingenuity and valor in combat had earned him multiple commendations and a medal, but for reasons beyond logic some blighted soul up the chain-of-command had decided that time spent on Cardassia Prime helping to keep the peace would be of benefit to Chabs-Wret’s career.
So now he was defacto master of some two thousand square kilometers of sun-baked, wilted desolation on the northernmost flank of the Destrala mountains. It was an area that the Cardassians claimed they did not have personnel available to patrol. That meant that Chabs-Wret and his squad of Starfleet Marines had the pleasure of spending their days baking in the scorching sun while performing spot-checks on a handful of farming communities and commercial outposts as they tried to ferret out any insurgent operatives in the area. The joke of it was that there had been no signs of insurgent activity here in nearly a year.
The graft had not started out as outright greed, but a way in which they might make the surviving Cardassians pay for the misery Chabs-Wret and his compatriots now had to endure on their behalf. As Federation citizens, he and his men wanted for nothing, with the exception of getting off this damnable rock. The act of squeezing a little something out of people who had so little left had begun innocently enough, but soon their anger and the perverse pleasure they received from shaking down the locals conspired to turn it into a full-fledged enterprise.
Chabs-Wret carried a small, handwritten notebook that contained the identities of all those persons he and his men collected tribute from. It made him feel better to hold it, to flip through its pages as he savored both the effort that the Cardassians put into meeting his demands, and the fear that haunted them at the idea of failing to meet those burdens. He could easily accuse any of them of insurgent ties, which would result in their incarceration in any number of unpleasant facilities, some completely outside the supervision of Starfleet. Some were run by the Klingons. The very threat of that alone caused grown men to weep and clutch at Chabs-Wret’s legs, begging him for mercy, pleading for his understanding and patience. Experiences like that were, in his opinion, the only thing that made life on this burned-out wreck of a planet even marginally tolerable.
“Okay, who’s next?” Sau’Drissk, the Saurian Marine corporal asked.
Chabs-Wret wet his finger and sifted through the pages of the worn notebook. “Ah, here we go… Taflim Kosk, a maintenance technician with the Agricultural Ministry. The poor bastard’s been stuck out on the high desert for the last three months trying to fix that boneyard of old farm equipment the Central Command left behind when their Peasant Lands Project fell apart.”
“And what does he owe us today?” inquired Mostrova, a grizzled Marine private and a former sergeant whose compulsive gambling and drinking had cost him his stripes three times now.
“Twenty-five leks,” Chabs-Wret replied with a lilting chortle.
“That’s all? Even a Ferengi wouldn’t bother with such a paltry sum.”
“That’s not the point and you know it,” Chabs-Wret admonished. “It’s nearly three-quarters of what he makes in a month, dedicated public servant that he is.”
Sau’Drissk scanned the sensor window in the flitter’s flight console. “You said this is the guy working out at the flats, right? Works alone?”
“Every time we’ve been by, yeah. Why?”
“Looks like he’s got company. Human male by the looks of it.” The Saurian shot his superior a glance, but Chabs-Wret was unable to ready worry in the reptilian features.
The lieutenant commander quickly accessed all Starfleet and civilian work assignments for the district, then the surrounding districts and came away with nothing. “Whoever he is, he’s not authorized to be out here,” Chabs-Wret smirked. “This is my territory, and nobody comes into my territory without my personal go-ahead. Nobody.”
“Terrorist sympathizer?” Mostrova offered.
“Insurgent scout,” Sau’Drissk replied with a flick of his long tongue.
Chabs-Wret began to hum softly to himself as the flitter descended towards the desert floor.
***
The technician had never realized how intimidating Starfleet security and Marine personnel could be when arrayed in full ‘battle-rattle.’ The three men facing Taflim and himself wore bulky armored vests, helmets, and leggings, while carrying Marine-issue pulse-phaser rifles with an air of casual lethality.
“Good afternoon,” he called out from where he squat, replacing tools into a carrying case. “To what do we owe the pleasure?” He stood and brushed the dirt from his knees.
Taflim shot him a look of warning as he clutched the case of leks in his hands. The expression on his face was one of acceptance, as though this were the natural order of things. Perhaps for him it was. The Obsidian Order, the Central Command, then the Klingon occupation forces, all these powers were known to wield their authority with disdain for the governed, treating the population as nothing more than chattel.
But he had been born and raised in the Federation. Starfleet was supposed to stand for something. Starfleet personnel were not supposed to prey on the weak like callous street thugs. He refused to believe what he was witnessing.
“Who the hell are you?” was the challenge from their leader, issued in a manner that brooked no dispute and promised no quarter.
“I’m Michael,” he replied evenly.
“And what brings you all the way out here, Michael?”
“I’m assisting Taflim here in refurbishing these harvesters. I’m sure you’ll agree that with the harvest season so close it’s important work.”
The man in the center, a lieutenant commander by the pips displayed on his dusty collar, stepped forward and into the tech’s personal space. “This region is a restricted security zone. Hell, this whole planet is accessible to humans by special authorization only… so where did you come from?”
The tech smiled grimly as he committed himself to the task ahead. He was stepping onto a path that he was sure led to trouble, or worse. “Let me answer your question with a question of my own.” He pointed to Taflim. “Are you people exacting tribute from Cardassian citizens? I’m no expert, but I’m sure there’s got to be rules against that sort of thing.”
Private Mostrova stepped forward and began to raise his rifle, “That’s a damned lie!” he shouted. Chabs-Wret stopped him in his tracks with a raised hand.
“I don’t know who you are or how you got here, but you’re coming with us, is that clear?” The security officer uttered the statement in a dangerous growl.
“Oh, it’s perfectly clear,” the tech replied. “But you didn’t answer my question. Are you people shaking down Cardassian civilians to line your own pockets?”
“I think he’s becoming aggressive, wouldn’t you agree, Commander?” This from Sau’Drissk who had remained silent until now.
“Oh, I do believe you’re right,” Chabs-Wret concurred as his face broke into a feral grin.
The tech merely stood there. “I’m not making any aggressive movements, as Taflim can attest. I’m not even raising my voice.”
Chabs-Wret bolted forward and slammed the leading edge of his helmet into the bridge of the tech’s nose. The older man crashed to the ground, blood trickling down both sides of his face from a gash along the ridge of his nose. He coughed at the cloud of dust he had raised when striking the ground as he wiped his own blood away from his mouth. However, the act only served to smear a mix of dirt and coagulating plasma across his lower face. “That was a bit uncalled for, don’t you think?”
<con'td>
He grabbed the edge of the maintenance hatch and pulled his upper torso out far enough for him to call up to the Cardassian mechanic assisting him. “Okay, I’m done. Hopefully that should do it.”
Taflim poked his own head out of the cab, a wry grin creasing his features. “That’s what you said last time, Michael.”
The tech stifled a laugh that the ever-present dust turned into a bout of coughing. He wiped at his watering eyes as he replied, “Yes, well, I thought I had it last time. This thing was over-built, and I didn’t take into account the triple redundancy of your power transfer system.” He scratched at his nose before adding, “…until it almost electrocuted me.”
“Did I just hear a Federation technician compliment a Cardassian design?” Taflim pressed a hand to the scales at his neck, as if checking for fever. “Can’t be. I must have caught the Lakarian plague.”
The tech screwed up his face into an exaggerated frown. “Ha,” he deadpanned. “I say again for emphasis… ha. Now, if you don’t mind, could you please press the initiator?”
“Certainly.” Taflim disappeared back inside the harvester’s cab and pushed the button that brought the cranky old piece of farm machinery to life. It rattled and groaned for the first twenty seconds as it integrated its newly replaced parts and power couplings before settling into a comfortable rumbling rhythm.
The tech pulled himself fully out of the hatch and stifled a groan as his joints protested his resumption of vertical posture. He walked over and hauled himself up to the cab as he took a look at the machine’s diagnostic panel for himself. “Everything’s in the yellow.”
Taflim frowned, clearly perplexed by the statement. “In the… what?”
“It’s a human expression, ‘in the green.’ It means everything’s in working order. However, your people use yellow to denote systems nominal status.”
The Cardassian mechanic shook his head and chuckled, “You humans are very strange. Handy, though, that’s a plus.” After the briefest moment, Taflim’s eyes widened as he suddenly realized his gaff. He turned abruptly to the tech as the color drained from his face. “I’m so very sorry,” he said in a soft voice tinged with tremulous conviction. ”I… I wasn’t thinking. That was very rude, the kind of humor my people only tend to share with close friends and family. And after all you’ve done to help me…”
The tech smiled in return. “I wasn’t offended, Taflim. Really.” He kept his gaze fixed on the mechanic until the younger man finally raised his eyes. “You should relax a little. If we can’t joke around out here where it’s just the two of us, then when could you?”
Taflim had been working with this particular human for nearly a week and a half as the two of them struggled to resurrect a veritable fleet of agricultural harvesters that had been left to rust since before the end of the war. Nearly three years of exposure to the harsh elements and a total lack of maintenance had rendered the great majority of them inoperative. It was a task that should have warranted the services of a dozen or more technicians, yet only Taflim had been made available, so depleted were the Agricultural Ministry’s staffing levels.
Taflim had succeeded in bringing only three of the machines back online in as many months, working with no help and a paltry supply of replacement parts. His repeated requests for more help and his multiple supply requisitions had been met with patent indifference from his supervisor, who was herself trying to oversee nearly two dozen land reclamation projects and ancillary assignments in the vicinity of Lakarian City.
Then the tech had arrived. Taflim knew little about him, only that his name was Michael, that he was a civilian from a Federation aid agency, and that somehow he had been tasked to assist in recovering the precious harvesters before the end of the growing season, a deadline that was approaching quickly.
Every morning when Taflim trundled up in a cloud of dust atop on his tri-wheeled ground-crawler the tech would already be hard at work. Without fail he was accompanied by a dozen or so crates of newly replicated parts, a veritable treasure trove of repair kit that made it possible to now refurbish all the harvesters, rather than part out two-thirds of them in order to resurrect the final third.
Relieved by the technician’s good-spirited acceptance of his friendly jibe, Taflim inquired, “So, Michael, can you tell me where you manage to get your hands on all these parts? With all you’ve brought these past few days, we could almost build a harvester from scratch.”
The Federation tech merely smiled enigmatically. “Let’s just say that I have some resources available to me that allow me to go around the usual supply channels.”
Taflim gave a reluctant nod, accepting that the man wanted to maintain the anonymity of his supply chain. “Wherever they come from, and wherever you’ve come from, you have my gratitude.”
“You’re welcome, but no thanks are needed. I’m here just doing what little I can to help. My time here is… limited.”
“I’m sure your agency has many other more important projects for you to attend to,” Taflim observed.
The man bobbed his head in response. “Yes, but rarely are they as satisfying as this,” he said as he gestured to the now purring harvester.
Taflim snorted in spite of himself. “This is a high point for you?”
“Once upon a time I had the privilege of working with my hands. Now… not so much. I miss it. Sometimes more than I’d like to admit.”
It appeared Taflim was on the cusp of responding when something caught his attention. He stood and craned his neck, eyeing the horizon.
The human stood as well, blinking in the harsh light as he squinted into the distance. “What is it?”
The Cardassian emitted a resigned sigh. “Trouble,” he said. “And right on schedule, too.”
The tech gave him a curious look but reserved comment.
Taflim jumped down of the big vehicle’s front fender and trudged reluctantly over to his three-wheeled transport. The young man began to paw through the contents of one of the transport’s carryall boxes until he produced a small case.
“What’s in there?” the technician inquired innocently.
“Tribute,” the young man replied.
“You’re kidding?” The tech looked dumbfounded, almost as if he couldn’t fathom such a concept. He scanned the horizon yet again, and this time spotted a small dark spot growing with the accompanying hum of a flitter. “Who are they? Crime syndicate mobsters or some local warlord’s enforcers?”
“No, but it’s no problem. I doubt they’ll bother you,” Taflim offered hopefully. “Besides, it’s nothing, really. Just a few dozen leks that I’ve saved up to keep them happy. They’re ever so much more reasonable than the Klingons were when they were running things here.”
The tech turned to look at Taflim again, his expression hardening. “Please,” he prompted. “Who are they?”
“Why Starfleet… of course.”
***
As his flitter arced across the brown-hued foreign landscape, Lt. Commander Torson Chabs-Wret of Starfleet security had plenty of time to reflect on how much he hated Cardassia. No, that wasn’t quite accurate. To be more precise, he loathed the planet. He was subjected daily to its arid climate, its burned, crumbling cities, and its malnourished, vacant-eyed masses of disenfranchised refugees who had fled here from the Union’s far-flung colonies, where if it could be believed, conditions were even worse.
Chabs-Wret had no qualms about what the Dominion had attempted to do here. His argument was with the unaccustomed lack of efficiency demonstrated by Dominion forces. No doubt, the Jem’Hadar had been in possession of a multitude of weapons that could have completed the task, from biogenic viral agents to lethal swarms of nanites to a storm of hard radiation projected from orbital satellites. If only they could have laid waste the entire surface of this world, perhaps then Chabs-Wret could have been assigned a mission more in keeping with his status.
The war had been good for him, which only made his assignment to this desolate hell hole all the more galling. His ingenuity and valor in combat had earned him multiple commendations and a medal, but for reasons beyond logic some blighted soul up the chain-of-command had decided that time spent on Cardassia Prime helping to keep the peace would be of benefit to Chabs-Wret’s career.
So now he was defacto master of some two thousand square kilometers of sun-baked, wilted desolation on the northernmost flank of the Destrala mountains. It was an area that the Cardassians claimed they did not have personnel available to patrol. That meant that Chabs-Wret and his squad of Starfleet Marines had the pleasure of spending their days baking in the scorching sun while performing spot-checks on a handful of farming communities and commercial outposts as they tried to ferret out any insurgent operatives in the area. The joke of it was that there had been no signs of insurgent activity here in nearly a year.
The graft had not started out as outright greed, but a way in which they might make the surviving Cardassians pay for the misery Chabs-Wret and his compatriots now had to endure on their behalf. As Federation citizens, he and his men wanted for nothing, with the exception of getting off this damnable rock. The act of squeezing a little something out of people who had so little left had begun innocently enough, but soon their anger and the perverse pleasure they received from shaking down the locals conspired to turn it into a full-fledged enterprise.
Chabs-Wret carried a small, handwritten notebook that contained the identities of all those persons he and his men collected tribute from. It made him feel better to hold it, to flip through its pages as he savored both the effort that the Cardassians put into meeting his demands, and the fear that haunted them at the idea of failing to meet those burdens. He could easily accuse any of them of insurgent ties, which would result in their incarceration in any number of unpleasant facilities, some completely outside the supervision of Starfleet. Some were run by the Klingons. The very threat of that alone caused grown men to weep and clutch at Chabs-Wret’s legs, begging him for mercy, pleading for his understanding and patience. Experiences like that were, in his opinion, the only thing that made life on this burned-out wreck of a planet even marginally tolerable.
“Okay, who’s next?” Sau’Drissk, the Saurian Marine corporal asked.
Chabs-Wret wet his finger and sifted through the pages of the worn notebook. “Ah, here we go… Taflim Kosk, a maintenance technician with the Agricultural Ministry. The poor bastard’s been stuck out on the high desert for the last three months trying to fix that boneyard of old farm equipment the Central Command left behind when their Peasant Lands Project fell apart.”
“And what does he owe us today?” inquired Mostrova, a grizzled Marine private and a former sergeant whose compulsive gambling and drinking had cost him his stripes three times now.
“Twenty-five leks,” Chabs-Wret replied with a lilting chortle.
“That’s all? Even a Ferengi wouldn’t bother with such a paltry sum.”
“That’s not the point and you know it,” Chabs-Wret admonished. “It’s nearly three-quarters of what he makes in a month, dedicated public servant that he is.”
Sau’Drissk scanned the sensor window in the flitter’s flight console. “You said this is the guy working out at the flats, right? Works alone?”
“Every time we’ve been by, yeah. Why?”
“Looks like he’s got company. Human male by the looks of it.” The Saurian shot his superior a glance, but Chabs-Wret was unable to ready worry in the reptilian features.
The lieutenant commander quickly accessed all Starfleet and civilian work assignments for the district, then the surrounding districts and came away with nothing. “Whoever he is, he’s not authorized to be out here,” Chabs-Wret smirked. “This is my territory, and nobody comes into my territory without my personal go-ahead. Nobody.”
“Terrorist sympathizer?” Mostrova offered.
“Insurgent scout,” Sau’Drissk replied with a flick of his long tongue.
Chabs-Wret began to hum softly to himself as the flitter descended towards the desert floor.
***
The technician had never realized how intimidating Starfleet security and Marine personnel could be when arrayed in full ‘battle-rattle.’ The three men facing Taflim and himself wore bulky armored vests, helmets, and leggings, while carrying Marine-issue pulse-phaser rifles with an air of casual lethality.
“Good afternoon,” he called out from where he squat, replacing tools into a carrying case. “To what do we owe the pleasure?” He stood and brushed the dirt from his knees.
Taflim shot him a look of warning as he clutched the case of leks in his hands. The expression on his face was one of acceptance, as though this were the natural order of things. Perhaps for him it was. The Obsidian Order, the Central Command, then the Klingon occupation forces, all these powers were known to wield their authority with disdain for the governed, treating the population as nothing more than chattel.
But he had been born and raised in the Federation. Starfleet was supposed to stand for something. Starfleet personnel were not supposed to prey on the weak like callous street thugs. He refused to believe what he was witnessing.
“Who the hell are you?” was the challenge from their leader, issued in a manner that brooked no dispute and promised no quarter.
“I’m Michael,” he replied evenly.
“And what brings you all the way out here, Michael?”
“I’m assisting Taflim here in refurbishing these harvesters. I’m sure you’ll agree that with the harvest season so close it’s important work.”
The man in the center, a lieutenant commander by the pips displayed on his dusty collar, stepped forward and into the tech’s personal space. “This region is a restricted security zone. Hell, this whole planet is accessible to humans by special authorization only… so where did you come from?”
The tech smiled grimly as he committed himself to the task ahead. He was stepping onto a path that he was sure led to trouble, or worse. “Let me answer your question with a question of my own.” He pointed to Taflim. “Are you people exacting tribute from Cardassian citizens? I’m no expert, but I’m sure there’s got to be rules against that sort of thing.”
Private Mostrova stepped forward and began to raise his rifle, “That’s a damned lie!” he shouted. Chabs-Wret stopped him in his tracks with a raised hand.
“I don’t know who you are or how you got here, but you’re coming with us, is that clear?” The security officer uttered the statement in a dangerous growl.
“Oh, it’s perfectly clear,” the tech replied. “But you didn’t answer my question. Are you people shaking down Cardassian civilians to line your own pockets?”
“I think he’s becoming aggressive, wouldn’t you agree, Commander?” This from Sau’Drissk who had remained silent until now.
“Oh, I do believe you’re right,” Chabs-Wret concurred as his face broke into a feral grin.
The tech merely stood there. “I’m not making any aggressive movements, as Taflim can attest. I’m not even raising my voice.”
Chabs-Wret bolted forward and slammed the leading edge of his helmet into the bridge of the tech’s nose. The older man crashed to the ground, blood trickling down both sides of his face from a gash along the ridge of his nose. He coughed at the cloud of dust he had raised when striking the ground as he wiped his own blood away from his mouth. However, the act only served to smear a mix of dirt and coagulating plasma across his lower face. “That was a bit uncalled for, don’t you think?”
<con'td>
):
