Do You Really Want to Hurt Me

Posted on Tue Jan 9th, 2018 @ 6:04pm by Captain Mrazak & Lieutenant Commander BaoJun Qiao

2,150 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: S1E1: Bynars Be Bygones
Location: Jenolan Dyson Sphere Initiative
Timeline: MD 2; 2300

BaoJun rolled his shoulders, working out a bit of soreness in them. He'd spent most of the day stuffed into a box, for lack of a better word, with the xenolinguist. The Builders, enigmatic bastards that they were, had decided to record their history in the form of 360 degree tapestries and lines inside obelisks. The information was, admittedly, interesting, but it hadn't really moved their investigations forward. Plus, for 'security reasons,' networks weren't used inside the sphere itself, so they'd been reduced to attempting to translate/interpret things manually. It was slower and inefficient, and they'd lost track of the time. That meant replicators for dinner quickly, and then quarters to get in as much sleep as possible before continuing the next day. It had become a bit of a routine, really, and despite enjoying every minute of it, because hello, Dyson Sphere, he couldn't help the occasional moments of secretly wishing something would happen.

Lieutenant Qiao's quarters could be described as a bit of a hodgepodge of things. There were a fair number of books from across known space either haphazardly lying on the table, or stuffed into one of the bookshelves depending on whether he'd been reading it lately. The walls and a few surfaces were variously adorned with items from various cultures -- mostly scrolls or tapestries, but the occasional heftier artifact. By contrast, the furniture was the distinctly utilitarian default replicator pattern.

Seated with legs crossed at a chair in the corner, Mrazak turned his attention away from the decor and furnishings of BaoJun's quarters and to the man himself. He was certainly an interesting specimen.

"Greetings, Lieutenant Qiao. Do you mind sitting down? We have much to discuss."

Bao's autopilot was interrupted as he registered the intruder and then the words. Of course, he didn't sit down. Instead he slid quickly into the Gong JianBu, holding himself ready, and silently hoping to the Jade Emperor the other was unarmed. He entertained the thought of calling security, but dismissed it as soon as his AI attempted it and failed. Of course things wouldn't be that simple. "I think I must decline," he finally responded. "The only men who should be in my quarters at this time of night are those I invited for copulating. Seeing as I do not recall ever meeting you, much less extending that invitation, how about we start with who you are and what you're doing here? Unless you intend violence, in which case please skip directly to it."

Mrazak rolled his eyes and chuckled at the wuxia display. "Oh, my." He stood up and presented an empty cup. "Do you mind if I refill my tea? I did expect you a bit sooner." Without waiting for permission or even acknowledgement, Mrazak hurried to the replicator, talking loudly over his shoulder all the while.

"As your brainpan companion has no doubt already confirmed to you, we are completely alone and safe -- for now. As exciting a proposition as copulation might be for you at the moment, though--" He reached the replicator and called out, "Tea! Same as before," and retrieved it as he continued. "--I come with an enticing offer of more than 5 minutes of excitement, one which promises to push boundaries and unravel the darkest secrets of this universe and any other." Mrazak arched both eyebrows over a mischievous grin. "Want to hear more?"

"I don't suppose I have much of a choice in the matter...." the Lagashi muttered, watching the man move. He picked up the pointed ears and the eyebrows, but the man had laughed and now appeared to be smiling. Those observations did not go together. He told his internal voice of confusion to shut up -- time and place and this was certainly neither. "After ruling out murder, rape, and burglary, you have me at a disadvantage," he finally said. "So, by all means, proposition away, Commander whomsoever-you-may-be."

"Commander Mrazak Tow'Lasha, at your service." The Vulcan Without Logic raised his teacup in a toast to himself and sipped. "Of course that name isn't going to get you far. Last known posting was a remote outpost known for its communications glitches. As far as anyone who matters can tell, I am not really here and never was." He resumed his seat in the corner chair with a sigh. "At any rate, my team is faced with a wonderful catastrophe that... that is, a spectacular opportunity to..." Mrazak trailed off in a stammer, then jumped out of his chair. "You know, I truly had this wonderful pitch prepared for you, but it involved us facing one another like so--" Mrazak set his tea down in order to lean toward the other chair catty-cornered from his own, arms extended to indicate Bao's ideal seating position, "--with a grand eye-to-eye gesture where I would entice you with a cagey mystique too strong to resist!"

He collapsed back into the chair in a heap of mock fatigue. "Alas, here we are on the raggedy edge of nascent frustration and a mounting threat of violence. Forgive me for cutting to the chase: I am in dire need of your services." He fixed Bao with a sudden, hard stare. "And I have come to call on them."

Sighing the Lagashi relaxed the fighting stance. If he wasn't going to attack the guy, he might as well give it up. Grumbling he gestured to the replicator. "Just a moment. If you can't evict him, might as well join him," he said quickly replicating a shot of baijiu and his own cup of tea as he tried to puzzle out what was happening. He downed the shot quickly before moving towards the indicated seat and sitting on it. "I should ask on whose authority you plan on calling on anything, but let's skip to the what kind of services could you possibly be in need of that I would supply? I try to make dead cultures talk, and if that's what you needed you would hardly show up unannounced in a supposedly secure facility in the middle of the night nor imply that you are some sort of special agent. How about the executive summary version? Perhaps with a bit more Kolinahr and less....I'm drawing a blank on psychotic Vulcan figures but you get the idea anyway...." he trailed off.

Mrazak very nearly pouted. Fortunately he was quick to grin again. "I currently administrate Starfleet's clandestine operations in acquiring and occulting Theta-level scientific discoveries. Only flag officers are made aware of that classification level, and then only as a general order to cooperate with discreet immediacy. My team's current mission concerns a cybernetic culture with an obscure language that, despite my vast intellect, I humbly admit is beyond me and every other member of my team. You and your--" Mrazak tapped his temple, "--special friend may spell the difference between success and failure. It is not every day that I find an available Lagashi in Starfleet, after all."

The taller man tipped his head sideways as he considered. Cybernetic culture speaking an opaque language. That narrowed things down. There weren't many cybernetic cultures in the Federation to begin with, and most of them, his own included, at least had the capacity to speak in a relatively common tongue. "Bynars," he said after a moment, considering planets within reasonable travel times of the Sphere. "Yes, with Sunny's help I can understand Binary," he clarified. "Although, I was under the impression that most Bynars could speak English, albeit in a manner described as 'creepy,'" he added, curiosity piqued. "Assuming for a moment that you're not insane, I haven't had a psychotic break, and this is all somehow going to be papered over, consider me interested, pending an explanation of what I'm getting myself into."

Mrazak steepled his fingers over the bridge of his nose. "About that..." He sniffed loudly. "So our visit to Bynaus is not exactly going to be on the record, which means their solar defense system is going to be a trick. Although Bynars are capable of English and Federation Standard, their programming language is altogether different. I'm in need of real-time response just to navigate the gravitational anomalies and irregular solar winds just get to the Bynar homeworld without their permission, and that is not something I am prepared to hand over to an unshackled AI."

He looked around him, swept in arms as if to hug the entire facility. "That you're familiar with Dyson Spheres is an added bonus, seeing as how those clever, clever Bynars have constructed one--a binary one, of course!--around their sole remaining sun and the black hole singularity that remains of its pair."

With a deep slurp to finish his tea, Mrazak set the cup down, patted his lap. "I'm afraid that is the end of the read-in for this matter until you're formally inducted into the team. Pack your effects and we'll get you set up on the ship nearby."

BaoJun stared at the Vulcan for several moments. His internal critic was yelling "insanity" at him, in its loudest, most shrill, most like his mothers' voices. After a moment he managed to recover himself. "So, if I follow, whatever this problem is, you are not acting with the knowledge or approval of the Bynar government, and you want me to help you break in by undermining their planetary defenses and helping navigate through the, shall we say, minefield that is their system." He trailed off for a moment. "你流口水的婊子和猴子的笨兒子！“ he burst out after a moment. He collected his wits momentarily. "To top it off, you want me to leave now?! 太空所有的星球塞盡我的屁股. Why do I get the feeling if I say no, you're just going to beam me out of here regardless?"

"Because you are not an idiot," Mrazak quipped. "Our mandate is one of secrecy. Though our alert was generated by an official within the Bynar government, we must nevertheless operate with discretion. Shadowy government rules supersede conventional ones, so we do have permission to do what we do. We just color outside the lines. I can show you the orders if you like, but they're back the way I came."

"Five minutes," came the somewhat forlorn response. Truthfully, although it sucked, Bao had to admit that he'd probably enjoy this. He liked field work. He liked things that were perhaps just a little reckless and ill-advised. And he might not know what counted as a theta level item, but if they were that secretive, they were bound to be funny. "I suppose you'll somehow arrange for the ridiculous number of things that I have no hope of packing at the moment to be dealt with. Preferably with the care and attention they deserve as legitimate cultural relics?" he asked moving about, throwing his personal field gear into a bag: modified tricorder and PADD, high-resolution imager, honest-to-god old-fashioned hand tools, and a few other odds and ends. "And I'm holding you responsible if I end up getting court-martial for this. The Jade Emperor knows the Pentad doesn't need the bad press in the Federation."

"Jade Emperor," Mrazak muttered under his breath as though sampling the words. His face turned quizzical, which he shook away with a shudder. "As for your belongings, we will simply beam the full contents of your quarters into the Vault--it's empty at the moment--and you can sort everything from there." He checked his chronometer. "Four and a half minutes now, yes?"

BaoJun cursed internally as he immediately started thinking again. "In that case, probably only two," he said, as he grabbed another bag and moved out of sight into the bathroom. He knew he didn't have long, as he grabbed one thing out of the bag and set it in the 'shower' area before tapping a few buttons on it. Afterwards he began grabbed a few things he absolutely wanted on hand outright, added them to the bag, and moved back into the main area. "Right, I think that's everything I want immediately. Anything else can be sorted out later or I can replicate it."

"Excelsior!" Rather than tap his commbadge, Mrazak folded his hands in front and simply waited. "Comms are blocked, so I gave my ship a timeframe wherein to fix a transporter lock on everything and everyone in this room. I, hm, did not expect this to go so quickly, so I regret that we will simply have to wait the remaining two minutes."

"Of course they are," he muttered while Sunny very unhelpfully suggested various mostly anatomically impossible actions across his entopics. "It wouldn't do to have me alert security to your abduction. I suppose now we wait."

"I hope your AI plays well with others," Mrazak quipped just before transport.

Blue swirls surrounded them, converting their bodies into a white subspace scramble of energy that the Phantom's transporter lock slurped up in its instantaneous matter stream.

RSS Feed