The Zelda Alegari Chronicles, Part 4

Posted on Sat 30th May, 2020 @ 6:33pm by Commander Paul Graves PsyD & Lieutenant Damion Ildaran & Captain Andrus Grax
Edited on on Sat 6th Jun, 2020 @ 6:14pm

1,318 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: Resolution
Location: Intelligence Department, Interview Room 1
Timeline: MD-3, 0930

(Previously)

"I sincerely hope Dobbs is not involved," Graves said from where he was seated at the table. He looked a bit pale.

Grax arched an eyebrow, but did not not turn to face the counselor.

---

Part Three | Part Five

Out of Dr. Addams' 'line-up,' Destiny had noticed Dr. Holly Day and hesitated uncertainly over the holo-image of Dobbs. Damion tapped on his PADD and brought up an image of a pale Andorian seated at a table in Orchids & Jazz. "What about this bloke, Destiny. Have you ever seen him before?"

The woman searched the face carefully, but finally shrugged and looked into his eyes. She winked at him. "I can't be sure, sugar pie. All Andorians look alike to me."

Ischemia tried to choke back a snicker, and mostly succeeded. Although these were serious proceedings, and her client's future was in the balance, she couldn't help liking the Destiny personality. She seemed brighter than Zelda, though that could easily be simply that she was ... livelier. What more would it take to bring out Tanith, and then finally Morrigan, the one they truly needed to question?

As she waited for the interrogation to continue, the lawyer wondered whether Zelda would want reintegration. Or was it Morrigan who would make that decision? What would Zelda be like if all four parts of her personality reintegrated into one person? While she had a superb imagination, that integration was one thing she couldn't quite conceive.

"Have you met a lot of pale Andorians?" Damion asked.

"Pale? They all look the same to me. Those little bug things wiggling around on top of their heads. Kinda cute, really," Destiny said, "but they can't compare to you, honey bunch. You'll always be my favorite. Tell, you what, let's go to lunch again, get to know each other better, what do say?" She tried to look her enticing best.

"Ach, mo seun,(1) 'tis all business today." Damion fixed his gaze on Destiny. "You remember the ring that frightened you. We want to find the people who made it. We want to stop them from making another one or hurting anyone else ever again. You can help us put that blaggard away forever. Will you help us?"

Taking that as a cue, Chlamydia set aside her thoughts about miscreant scientists and tapped her PADD, bringing up a wireframe hologram of the ring in situ, barbs growing into the bone beneath. "Anything you can tell us may be helpful, no matter how insignificant it may seem."

Dropping her flirty attitude, the woman looked at the ring, seeing, for the first time, exactly what had been embedded in her finger. She shook her head, "Destiny doesn't know anything, and I don't know much, but I'll tell you the little I'm aware of, and you're welcome to ask more questions."

Tanith organized her thoughts. "You asked about the place where we were before coming to SB109. From what I've put together, we were given some kind of hallucinogenic drug before stepping off the craft that brought us." She brought her eyes up to the doctor, and said accusingly. "You particularly think my sisters should know more than they know. They don't. So quit badgering them. Here's what I know.

"We were on some kind of freighter for the trip, not fancy, not Starfleet. Not even a family-run cargo service," she frowned. "No two people looked alike or acted like relatives. It was a coarse crew with no manners and less intelligence," she dismissed them.

"Fortunately, we didn't see them often. I don't know the speed, as I was never where I could have learned that, but there were no stops until we reached the destination. We spent our time in a small room with bunkbeds - 4 of them, though there was only a couple with us, a man and a woman. The woman never went out of the room, and seldom spoke to us. The man took us here and there on walks every day, but I doubt we saw the whole ship. In fact, I know we didn't. Mostly, we walked corridors and passed people who appeared to have some place to be. They didn't speak to us, either." Tanith paused for a drink of water.

"And no, doctor, the holos were not people we saw on that ship. Eventually, we docked with whatever the station was. I saw no name identifiers in the corridors, though they did seem ... cobbled together, not smooth as the corridors on this station." She closed her eyes to better visualize the memory. One corridor had part of a name designation, but it disappeared into a seam in the metal. It said S. Cair and that's all that was readable. The r is really a guess because it was partly under the seam." Was that enough for them? Tanith wondered.

"That's a help, Tanith, thank you," Damion said. "It sounds much like a place we've heard rumors of--one that's cobbled together from several ships. Is there any possibility that the R could have been an N?"

The woman shrugged. "There are always possibilities. It could have been an m ... but I think it was an r. There was something about the formation of the letter that made me think r." She glanced at her barrister. "Is there any chance we can check for ships with any or all of those possibilities? Maybe there would be something that would make the clue more definitive."

Ischemia nodded, "I'm sure a database search will show something. I can put someone on it and we can get an answer in a few minutes, but perhaps our interrogators have a better plan." She glanced over at her sister who was being uncharacteristically quiet. As had been the case most of their growing up years, she couldn't read a thing from Chlamydia's face. It sometimes annoyed her that she could tell what many aliens were thinking, but couldn't often read her own sister.

Looking back at the intelligence officer, she asked, "How would you like to handle that, Lt. Ildaron?"

Damion shrugged. "It's easy enough for me to check a ship database here. I'll stick with the R first, since your client is the one who saw the name and knows best what it looked like. If the two of you want to run your own check, go ahead, certainly."

Ischemia nodded, "Go ahead, then. We'll wait to see what you find, unless Dr. Addams has any objection?" She glanced at her sister again.

Damion tapped and slid his fingertips over his PADD, seeing no real reason to hear Dr. Addams' preference. After a few moments his eyebrows lifted. "You were right, Tanith. I show a listing for a USS Cairo that disappeared back during the Dominion War." He pronounced it the way a Gaelic person might who had never heard the word before, as "Care-o." A pause. "That was an Excelsior-class Starfleet ship. Definitely not some little runabout. Quite the bit of salvage, it must've been."

The other side of the wall, Grax pointed at Damion's PADD on the monitor. "Mirror that," he said to Fisher, who was already running his fingers over the master system display. "I want to see what he's seeing."

A moment later, the image of the interview room shrank so that it only occupied half the screen, and, on the other side, was the listing containing the Cairo. Grax scanned it briefly before turning back to Fisher. "I want everything you can find on that ship," he said, and then, without waiting for an acknowledgement, immediately focused back on the image of the interview room.

(1) my charmer

 

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