Smooth Criminals
Posted on Tue May 20th, 2025 @ 12:47am by Captain Mrazak & Commander Sayuri Onaga & Lieutenant Commander BaoJun Qiao & Ensign Rozreell Purr & Ferrofax & Lieutenant Commander Leonora Wolf MD & Staff Warrant Officer Conchobar Breathnacht
4,046 words; about a 20 minute read
Mission:
S1E6: Where Skies End
Location: Fiddler's Green
Timeline: MD 9
The spiraling walkways leading to the private harborages of Fiddler's Green bore none of the chaotic energy of the commercial concourse they had just left. Gone were the hawkers of alien street food and the pungent haze of ambient narcotics. Gone were the transients and drifters trading favors and information. What remained was quiet, a kind of echoing silence that came from the wealthiest residents who could afford the luxury of not being seen or heard.
By comparison, it was eerily sterile for a criminal haven.
Sayuri led the field team in a clipped stride, her violet eyes sweeping left and right, watching for hidden eyes in dark corners or private surveillance rigs tucked away behind falsified shrine niches or inert cargo crates. Her longcoat billowed faintly in her wake as the team followed close behind. They were moving toward a harborage which had once been hers.
The row of harborages loomed ahead like a dark crown built from cargo containers and welded ambition. It was a district of fortresses nestled into the outskirts of Fiddler's Green’s sprawl of private dock modules. The glow of industrial lighting flickered overhead, casting long, sickly shadows across the ferrocrete ground. Once leased to Sayuri and her crew, it now was under lock, key, and Max Dedeker’s boot.
They were close enough now to see the jagged red talon symbol freshly sprayed over the exterior bulkhead. a sloppy but unmistakable warning of the the Talon Gang. Reman muscle-for-hire, loyal to coin and cruelty in equal measure, as they had seen when they exacted tribute from the Mutual of Pharos on the space station overhead. There were at least a dozen of the Reman mercs, poorly concealed around the perimeter in what might've passed for stealth in a Romulan warzone.
Sayuri clocked four posted on the rooftops, another three near the cargo bay's access ramps, and a pair pacing the entrance to the docking lift. There would be more inside. Probably sleeping on her old bunk.
Through the open loading bay doors they could see a vast chamber: the docking bay where the Chimaera's Alpha section resting in eerie stillness, held firmly in place by mag-anchors. Cargo containers sat like forgotten tombstones in neat but unassuming rows. There were no lights beyond the emergency running strips that pulsed dimly along the floor. The gantries were lifeless. The loading cranes retracted. The security turrets, if they were even still operational, were mercifully dormant.
"This was your base?" Mrazak asked. He peered around the corner of a stacked fuel drum and let out a sharp breath through his nose.
"It was mine," Sayuri replied, her voice even. "Until it wasn't."
Mrazak was unimpressed. "I can see the forcefield flickering from here. This doesn't look as simple as bluffing or spoofing security locks with your Lagashi tricks."
"No shit," Sayuri muttered, one hand flexing as the cybernetic seams in her palm glowed faintly. She had already had her muse, Koi, pinging the harborage's old security net. The access ports were still Federation in design, but Max's goons had patched in some serious countermeasures. A failed override attempt would alert every gang in the district. "Despite the open doors, that forcefield isn't going anywhere. The loading bay is locked tighter than a Vulcan's chastity belt."
Furrowing his brow, Mrazak bit his tongue. He refused to give her the benefit of a response to her insult, instead choosing to poke holes in her plan. "So we're expected." He let out a groan and said with deep sarcasm, "That's just great."
The second Lagashi continued to observe. He was only half paying attention to Sayuri and Mrazak. The Ranjen had intimated he would arrange for something to occur to assist them. He suspected they merely needed to wait. Movement caught from the corner of his eye seemed to reinforce that when he saw the Irish shuttle pilot they had encountered previously move onto the dock himself with several cargo containers, and, it appeared, a bit of an escort of his own. He glanced at Mrazak, "Perhaps we should be silent and see what comes of the distraction," he said, motioning over.
Leah nodded, catching a glimpse of Con and his escort.
Across the way, Con was hiding, hopefully effectively, his nervousness. Supply runs to the Alpha module on behalf of Dedeker were not uncommon for him, but those were usually well-scheduled in advance, not on the spur of the moment as favours to nutjob Bajorans. Not that the Remans had any idea what he ever delivered or why, anyway. That was definitely information they did NOT need to know. Although, for that matter, he still was not sure how the Ranjen came about his information, which, on reflection was probably safer. Did not really matter anyway. Hopefully the Remans were still intimidated enough by Dedeker not to ask questions. Hopefully anyway. He pressed forward looking for whichever Reman was 'in charge' of the motley group. There did seem rather more of them than usual.
Turkuz stepped out from the shadows like a nightmare made flesh, tall and broad-shouldered, with craggy Reman skin that looked carved directly from the cobalt mines of his pedigree. His eyes glowed faintly in the low light, twin slits of radioactive suspicion. A disruptor pistol hummed to life in his hand as he levelled it at Con's face with a warning snarl.
"Identify yourself, botwar," Turkuz hissed, his voice more static than sound.
The reaction was immediate — a half-dozen more disruptors snapped up from the shadows. Shapes emerged from behind cargo pallets, gangways, and the stacked remains of what might’ve once been an atmospheric scrubber. Their weapons whined to full power, casting sickly green halos across the ferrocrete under their boots. There was a brief, horrible pause, the kind that precedes most eulogies.
"Really, Turkuz, must we do this every time? You know who I am, Breathnacht, supply runner of Max's God only knows what," groused the Irishman, holding his hands up. "I have this week's delivery for whatever it is Max has me delivering shit to you for. I know it's early, an' all but the craic is there's been folk snoopin about lately, includin' ole copperhead, an' me an' the lads here's paid to not have people snoopin'. So can we skip ahead to the bit where we go inside, drop off the boxes, an' maybe I even managed to find somethin' a little special for your and your boys while I was out as a token of appreciation for not usin' those and apologies for that whole agony booth incident."
Turkuz bared his jagged teeth in a sneer that could pass for a smile on a better day or a worse face.
"Yes," he said slowly, the disruptor in his clawed hand still trained on Con’s chest, "you've got the tongue of a man who's cheated death enough times to think he can bluff it." The other Talons tightened their formation, surrounding Con like a closing trap. "Scan him."
One of the Remans—smaller, cloaked in a tatty recon cowl came forward with a flashing optic rig. He held a device that hummed low and steady as it passed over Con's body, outlining him in flickering green before it pinged with a soft chirp.
"No weapons. No transmitters. Two hip flasks, unknown contents. One data chit. Three bone fractures healed within the past standard month." The Reman's voice was cold and gravelly. "Human. Terrified. Not lying."
Turkuz gave a grunt, unconvinced but unwilling to waste time. He nodded at another Talon—this one broad-chested, a split tusk jutting from his lower jaw—to move in and begin the pat down. The large Reman's claws worked with rough gestures, brusquely but thoroughly frisking Con for any signs of trickery. When all they turned up were bruised ribs and the aforementioned flasks, the Talon gave a grunt of his own and stepped back.
Only then did Turkuz finally lower his disruptor. "Fine. Go on, Breathnacht. You know the way. But if I find a single false box in this batch..." He let the threat trail off, gesturing to a patch of scorched ferrocrete where a small crater marked a previous example.
From their hidden vantage point, Sayuri peered through her optic implant. One quick zoom and she saw the side profile of the man being held at gunpoint. His cocksure smirk and overall smug disposition gave him away even from a distance. "Kemonaa!" she groaned. "That’s Con."
"Is that supposed to mean something to me?" Mrazak groused.
"He used to be my fixer back when the Chimaera was still spaceworthy," Sayuri said, rubbing the bridge of her nose. "Can't fight his way out of a paper bag and thinks he could charm a Klingon, but he's good in a pinch." Her expression soured. "The Ranjen sent him. Of course he did. That smug old bastard has a shrewd and twisted sense of humor."
Mrazak murmured, "Your friend is going to be vaporized in about ten seconds."
"Unlikely." Sayuri turned to the others. "If Con is our distraction, then he's going to get them drop the field, whether to trade or just to drag him in and shoot him, but that's our window. We move fast, we slip past the outer ring, and I jack us into the auxuliary conduit through the south bulkhead."
Leah nodded and glanced over at the young Trill that had been fairly quiet with them ever since her pretty good distraction method. She extended her hand and placed it on Roz's shoulder and squeezed gently.. As the woman's eyes met hers, Leah raised a quiet eyebrow, a silent 'are you alright?'
"Oh I'm fine." Rozreell waved a hand through the air, "I'm just exercising the wise practice of only speaking when spoken to, I'm just following the leads as we go."
Meanwhile, Mrazak had already slunk off to the far left, his silhouette nearly vanishing against the angular shadows cast by industrial scaffolding and old cargo haulers. While the rest of the team coordinated their run, Mrazak moved like he had something to prove. Sayuri watched him go and sighed through her nose, deadpan and deeply annoyed.
"Of course he's going that way," she muttered, her optic implant tracking his route with an exasperated blink. She pointed two fingers to her own glowing eyes, then toward the loading platform. "Watch the Remans. They're ready to twitch."
And then, as if on cue, the shimmer of the harborage's outer forcefield flickered—a low crackle through the air like dry static. Con was through. A chorus of guttural Reman voices barked orders as boots hit metal.
"Now," Sayuri hissed.
She moved like liquid shadow, slinking low through the crisscross of stacked crates and rusting freight pylons. The loading bay was massive, built for cargo haulers the size of runabouts, and every meter of open ground they crossed was one more chance for a Reman to spot them. But with Con’s dramatic entrance pulling all eyes toward the central concourse, their window was open if fleeting.
From the far flank, Mrazak crept along the maintenance conduits like a disgruntled gremlin, pausing only to sneer at a leaking steam valve before ducking under a rafter.
Leah slunk around the crates with ease, the movements and the adrenaline of avoiding getting caught waking up her muscle memory. Oh how she midded being a field grunt these days. As quickly as that thought came, it went. She had to come to a stop for a moment, waiting with baited breath before the guard finally passed along far enough away for her to dart to her destination, behind the field. She made it behind the shield and made for the others as she located them.
Bao had taken a few calculated risks using Sunny to calculate sight lines and make predictive guesses about where the Remans would be looking. We would have preferred more certainly, but, sadly, at his size, even cargo containers did not really give him much to work with for hiding, and he was a research scientist, damnit, not a ninja. Still it had worked out and he made it through to the designated point. He also noted the Irishman seemed to have disappeared, but from the yelling and commotion, it seemed the Remans had not vaporised him. Something to keep track of.
While the rest of the team darted across catwalks and crates like shadows on borrowed time, Mrazak moved with practiced purpose—only occasionally glancing over his shoulder to make sure no one was dumb enough to follow him.
Someone was.
Bolk.
The Bajoran scientist lumbered along behind him, clearly struggling under the awkward weight of Ferrofax's subspace transponder mounted to his back. He was breathing hard, his steps clunky and desperate. The transponder, while vital, was not exactly subtle. It cast a faint shimmer across Bolk's profile with every awkward lurch forward.
Mrazak cursed under his breath. That Bajoran was going to give him away!
They were nearly to the auxiliary conduit when a sharp whine sliced through the air.
Bolk didn't scream. He didn't even have time. One moment he was moving, the next his right leg was simply... gone. Vaporized just above the knee in a flash of green energy. The scientist collapsed with a strangled grunt, smacking the ferrocrete with a wet thud. The smell of burnt flesh hit a moment later.
"Fusion!" Mrazak hissed, eyes darting up to spot the Reman sniper who had fired the shot. He moved to duck back—but froze. A cold presence pressed into his temple.
A disruptor muzzle.
Mrazak quickly raised his hands. “I surrender. Mercy. Definitely the merciful type,” he said, sarcasm threading through the panic in his tone like exposed wiring.
"You move, you die," rasped a Talon behind him.
From the flickering forcefield at the edge of the harborage, Sayuri Onaga crouched low, her fingers hovering over the exposed auxiliary panel. Her wireless network connection was nearly through and then she would have full access. Just a few more seconds and—
"Onaga!" The bark came loud and sharp, amplified by Reman rage and carried on the stale air of the loading zone. "Come out, little rat," Turkuz growled. "Come greet your crew before I paint the walls with their blood."
Sayuri froze mid-command, her violet eyes flaring.
Mrazak groaned as he was marched out into the open, pushed roughly to stand beside Turkuz who had all but ignored Con by this point. Mrazak's expression was cold, his jaw set, posture eerily calm despite the disruptor aimed squarely at his heart.
Turkuz grinned like a wolf. "What’s this, Vulcan?" he sneered. "No begging? Not even a quip?"
"Every man dies," he said flatly. "Not every man lives. You will get nothing from me."
The Reman snorted. "Poetry! Ach!"
Without a hint of remorse, Turkuz raised his weapon toward the twitching, half-conscious body of Bolk and fired. The shot cracked like thunder. Bolk's body seized and then stilled. Smoke rose from the remains of scientist.
Turkuz turned back to the dark beyond the crates. "Your move, Onaga!" he called again. "Come out, or the Vulcan's next."
Sayuri's hands hovered just above the panel. Her jaw clenched. The team was in position. But now the clock had started ticking.
"Mission first..." Leah's voice filtered through the team in a whisper. "they don't know our numbers. Let's distract them long enough for Onaga to do her job. We distract, Skipper grabs Ferrofax and we do this. We go on three.
"One!"
"Two!"
"Three!" Leah had found herself a relatively covered position and fired at Turkuz, to give Mrazak the chance to kill Turkuz and take the transponder.
From nearby, the tell-tale hum of several phasers powering up was heard as the, supposedly offline, defense turrets powered on and turned on the Remans at almost the same moment Leah opened fire. It took perhaps another second for a certain Irishman's voice to be heard calling out. "You just had to look in the crates, didn't you, Turkuz. Well, too late for you now," he said. "The rest of you, hurry the fuck up. While I have wanted to do that for ages, almost as much as I want to shoot you, Onaga, that trick is good only once, and the next round of reinforcements is more likely to consider blowing us all to pieces with portable torpedoes to be proportionate violence, so move."
The harborage had lit up like the inside of a forge.
Leah's opening shot struck Turkuz square in the shoulder, knocking him sideways with a hiss of rage and pain. He staggered but didn't fall—until the defense turrets came to life. Twin arrays swiveled with a mechanical whine and, before the Remans could react, opened fire in synchronized pulses of concentrated phaser energy.
The first blast caught one Talon square in the chest, vaporizing him mid-turn. Another Reman leapt for cover only to be reduced to smoldering limbs by a double-tap that stitched across his back. The air filled with the stink of scorched armor and burning flesh, green disruptor bolts firing wildly in return but finding only steel and shadow.
Turkuz turned to flee—only to find Mrazak standing upright and armed. The Vulcan's weapon was trained squarely on him, no tremble in his hands, no hesitation in his stance.
"You were wrong," Mrazak said coolly.
Turkuz sneered. "About what?"
"Poetry."
The phaser pulse hit Turkuz dead center. His body crumpled and twitched, collapsing to the ferrocrete with a final, lifeless grunt.
As the last of the Talons were cut down in a storm of turret fire, the smell of ionized air hung thick and heavy, punctuated by the fading whine of dying weapons. Silence fell just as hard and swift as the turret fire which contrasted rather starkly.
Sayuri stood from behind the auxiliary panel, smoke smudging her cheek, her eyes already on the Alpha section's exterior hatch. "We don't have time for a full purge," she said, urgency slicing through her usual aloof tone. "I'll rig the warp core to go active and reroute the ejection system. Less than a minute after that, this place turns into slag." She looked at the rest of the team, her expression deadly serious. "If you want to live to tell the tale, get to the transporters. Sr’asi is waiting with the shuttle at the port. We need someone to hit the transporter as soon as I trigger the overload.”
Mrazak nodded grimly, already moving to retrieve Ferrofax's transponder from Bolk's burned remains. "Do it," he said. "I'm not burning up in an M/AM reaction today."
As he spoke, though, Sayuri was already dead to the world around her. Her glowing lavender eyes were already glazed over as her consciousness was lost to the virtual space of the digital datasphere which connected the harborage and the Chimaera together.
Behind her, the others ran—toward the transporter alcove, toward survival. Together they would bring hell down on everything Max Dedeker had built.
Authorizations began overriding the system. The core thrummed with latent energy as it awakened from hibernation. Sayuri piggybacked off the digital sentients besides her own Muse. Data streams pulsed from her occipital implant into the system, feeding the other two coordinates into the warp matrix. From a locked server aboard the orbital station above and a buried relay hidden within the Locker on the far moon, the other cores stirred as well.
"Three cores. One purpose," she whispered, sealing in the final command string. “Goodbye, old girl.”
On the bridge of the Alpha section, Mrazak carried Ferrofax's heavy subspace transponder and linked it to the Chimaera. "End of the line," he said, leaving it at the console. "Upload yourself to the local network... or whatever it is you actually do."
Leah, Bao, and Roz were already filing in. Con, somehow unscathed, stood in the back, fussing with a burn on his sleeve.
Mrazak said without breaking stride, "Start the beam-out protocol."
On cue, the transporter alcove lit up. The hum of energized coils filled the harborage chamber as Sayuri’s voice echoed in their comms. =/\="Warp cores armed and synchronized. Ready for detonation in one minute."
Sr’asi's voice immediately followed. =/\="Impulse engines primed. Get your asses aboard now!"=/\=
The team shimmered out of existence in staggered pairs. They rematerialized on the shuttle’s compact transport pad. Sr’asi was already strapped into the cockpit, clawed hands dancing across the console as the shuttle banked hard away from the moon’s surface. "Hold on," he growled. "This is going to get shitty!"
Behind them, the Chimaera's Alpha section lit up like the end of the world.
The warp core exploded in a brilliant fusion bloom, fire and debris ripping through the harborage like it had never been there at all. From orbit, the orbital station overhead ruptured as the Chimaera's Beta section was ejected into space in an emergency protocol. That second detonation filled the viewport, sending shockwaves through the surrounding ring structures and causing every ship in its perimeter to flee or spiral out of control.
A third marker blinked on the sensor readout. The Locker, a distant moon on the other side of the gas giant Avalon where Max kept his ghost fleet, registered the last of the detonation sequence from the Chimaera's Gamma section. A faint pulse on the gas giant's horizon was the only visual confirmation they had.
Three moons. Three strikes. One message: Max Dedeker's empire was bleeding.
"Oh gosh, Bolk! Why did you go and have to do something stupid like that?" Roz was momentarily stunned by the Bajoran's demise, "He was an asshole but not that big of an asshole."
"Memory Theta is bigger than all of us," Mrazak said. "We died the minute we took on this mission, and we only come back to life with the objective is met. Nobody forget that."
"How could they when there is a fancy anonymous star put up on the wall of Starfleet Headquarters?" Ferrofax cut in.
Sayuri, still jacked into the local datasphere through her implant, let her head fall back against the cabin wall as a stream of encrypted telemetry poured across her vision. Her lips curled into a slow, humorless smile.
"I've got it," she said, softly. "The Archon suppression signal,” she replied, her voice distant as her interface streamed deeper. “It originates from beneath the hab dome. Central paradise. Max’s heart.”
She pulled free from the feed, blinking as her vision returned to biological sight. Her violet eyes narrowed. "That's where we go next."
From the cockpit, Sr'asi gave a sardonic snort. "Of course it is."
As the shattered remnants of the harborage vanished behind them and the glowing scars of destruction marked Avalon's orbit, the team steeled themselves for what came next. They weren’t finished yet. They were just getting started.
Leah took a moment to just breathe and regain her senses, before the inner medic kicked in. "Everyone sound off, anyone injured?"
"Fine," Purr replied as she continued to collect herself. "You guys sure know how to make an exit."
"That's one way of putting it," grumbled the Irishman from the back. He pushed forward just a little. "Tomcat, if you approach from here," he said, indicating a spot adjacent to the signal source, "There's an unshielded spot to beam into next to what passes for an engineering workshop around here," he said. He glowered slightly, "And no, we are not talking about how I know that right now."
"I know exactly how you know that," Sayuri snapped. "Traitor. Everyone knows you're doing runs for Max. Probably gave him the file I told you to take to the Rish for safekeeping too. Your word to the Ranjen is the only reason I don't space you right now."
"As much as I'd love to watch two Starfleet deserters fight to the death, I'm afraid it will have to wait." Mrazak ended his statement with an imperious tone that brooked no further nonsense. "Tomcat," he said, taking Con's nickname for Sr'asi as his given name, "take us in!"
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