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Interregnum 02-03 S2 / Re: Day 03 [ 1330hrs ] Back Channel Operations
Last post by Ellen Fitz -The anchorage got uglier every year, and Ghovek had been coming here for nineteen of them.
Halkar had built it out of a gutted ore tender back when the Triangle still had ore worth tending, welded three docking rings onto the spine, and died owing money to four species. The rings were still there. Only two of them turned. The third had frozen at a list some decades ago and now housed whoever could tolerate walking on a deck that insisted, gently and permanently, that it was a wall. The hull plating had been patched in every alloy known to commerce and a few that were arguably not alloys at all, so the whole structure came up on the viewscreen looking like something assembled by committee, which it had been, and badly, which it also had been.
He liked it. But we wasn't going to say so.
The approach lane was thick. A Klingon merchantman sat athwart the beacon line venting drive plasma at everyone behind it, no house transponder, which meant a house that preferred not to be named. Two Ferengi shuttles pinned an Orion crew hauler between them, negotiating either a cargo transfer or a hostage situation. A Boslic freighter with her name painted over twice. A surplus Romulan tender with the raptor scoured off the bow, though the paint underneath remembered it well enough that Ghovek could still read the wingspan from four hundred kilometers out. Yridians on the outer moorings, always, sitting there doing nothing and charging for it.
Traffic control demanded a berth fee, a docking fee, a fee for the tug he had explicitly refused, and Ghovek paid all three while telling the woman at the other end exactly what he thought of her mother's business practices. She sounded pleased. Everyone did decent trade here as long as the insults were sincere.
He put the Folly on her mooring clamps himself, because he didn't trust anyone else with her and had told them so at length, then went aft to where his passengers were pretending they hadn't been listening to all of it.
He stood in the hatchway and made them turn around.
"Station clock says 1345. I break moorings at 2015. Not 2020. Not 2016." He held up a thick finger before anyone could open a mouth. "There's a Klingon convoy coming through the far side of the well at 2035 and I intend to be behind it, not in it, and the window doesn't wait on you or your credits or whatever arrangement you think you've got with me. You're not aboard at 2015, I undock with your empty seats, and you can explain to your people why you're buying passage home off an Yridian." He began past them, grunting as he went. "Bring your goods with you or don't bring them at all. I'm not sending crew down that ring to fetch crates for you. And if station security walks anything of yours back up my ramp, you'll be walking with it, and off it."
He turned to go, then didn't.
"There's a hot-cell dealer on the second ring sells relay stock that's ninety percent Cardassian scrap wrapped in Federation casing. Bald. Sweats. Calls himself Onnek." He shrugged with his whole upper body. "Buy from him if you like. I've made my money either way."
[ Lt. Cmdr. Cross | Docking Ring Two, Halkar Anchorage ]
Cross let the hatch cycle shut behind them before he started, so nothing he said went out into the ring.
The air here ran four degrees warmer than the freighter and carried the scrubber failure common to old stations, that flat mineral taste at the back of the throat. Somewhere below them a gantry crew was working with hand tools instead of tractor units. Cheaper. Slower. Loud enough to talk under, which suited him.
"Three groups." He didn't raise his voice. They came in closer to hear him, which was the point. "Engineering procurement takes the second ring with Ops. Medical and Science procurement, third ring, and mind the deck angle before you commit your weight to it. I'll be on the first ring with the broker."
He turned his hand over. The prosthetic caught the overheads and threw the light back at nobody in particular.
"Your list is already on your personal devices. Each of you has the portion your department would recognize on sight, because I'd rather you spend your time judging quality than working out what a bioneural gel pack is supposed to look like when it hasn't been sitting in a cargo hold at forty degrees for two years. If something on your list looks wrong to you, it is wrong. Walk away. We are not so short that we need to be cheated politely."
Fingers went to ears without his asking. Good.
"Subdermals. One tap opens the channel, two closes it, and I want them open from the moment you clear this hatch. Open means every one of you hears every other one of you, so the channel is not for conversation. Contacts, locations, problems. Nothing about the ship, nothing about where we came from, and nobody says a rank out loud where a stranger can hear it. If you need to piss without me listening to you, two taps, and two taps to come back."
He put his own hand out and turned it over, wrist up, and tapped the soft place below the heel of it.
"Left wrist. Distress beacon, subdermal, and it doesn't care whether your channel's open or closed. Press it and every one of us knows, and every one of us knows where you are. It is not a last resort. It's the first thing you do when a situation stops being a negotiation, before you draw, before you talk your way out, before you decide you can manage it alone. I would very much rather cross a docking ring for nothing than find out afterward that you were being polite about it."
He held his hand out flat, and one of his security officers passed him a weapon, and he raised it so the whole group could see the emitter ring.
"Civilian grade. Purchased, not issued, which means the detents are worn on some of these. Thumb the selector to the first stop. The ring reads amber. If you see red, you are one setting past where you need to be, and you will check it by eye every time you draw, not by feel, not by memory." He set the selector, showed them the amber, and handed it back. "Check your partner's as well. Now, before we split."
He waited while they did it.
"Understand what failure looks like on this run. It is not an empty cargo pallet. It's a body." He let them sit with that while the gantry crew hammered away underneath. "There is no enemy on this station. There are people who will overcharge us, people who will lie to us, and people who would very much like to know who we are, and none of that makes them our enemy. If someone decides to become one, you subdue, and you leave. You do not hold ground. There's no ground here worth holding, and every one of you is more expensive to replace than anything on your list."
He glanced up the ring toward the first-level concourse, where the traffic was already thickening.
"We break moorings at 2015. The captain means it, and I don't intend to test him on it. Be aboard by 2005 with whatever you've got in hand." His attention came back down to them. "Questions."
Haven't decided who, but I figured we could have some NPCs with us as well to use.
