From: Jerome McKee (parakeety_at_hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Jul 09 2007 - 08:42:49 PDT
"KNIVES AND POLITICS"
(Continued from "Rumours of War")
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Location: ANDARA
Stardate: [2.7]0709.1645
Scene: Somewhere within the High Fane
A flash of light. A feeling of coldness, right down to the soul. If he had
one, that was. Enfron the Vorta materialised in a sparkling white pillar of
light, his senses coming back to him as his constituent cells were
reassembled at the atomic level by the transporter. He took a moment to
centre himself, before looking around.
He was standing in a stone-grey bare vault several floors beneath the High
Fane. Made for Andarans, the ceiling was at least six feet above his head,
making the room seem much bigger to him than it would to an Andaran. There
was nothing in the room save the transporter pad he was standing on. A
soulless metal door was in the wall opposite him, and standing at the
transporter control console was Blithis, his Andaran contact.
"You are the one Rixx sent?" asked the Andaran in a nervous, reedy voice.
She looked around continually, as if she was afraid of being discovered. "I
was hoping for your boss himself."
"Out of the question." Enfron stepped down from the transporter pad. "You
know why I'm here?"
"I am informed that you are to reimburse me for the faulty item. But why use
the transporter, and how did you gain access to one? We had thought that all
the transporters aboard GATEWAY were monitored by Starfleet." Blithis kept
her voice quiet.
Enfron sighed inwardly. The worst thing about dealing with cowards was that
they questioned everything. "Not all of them," he said evenly. "Site-to-site
transporting is not as dangerous as it used to be. In this case, it is the
perfect means to avoid the Starfleet no-fly zone. No doubt those fools think
that they have all their angles covered, but it is not so."
"And you will return the same way?"
"Eventually. Before I go, I need to find out what the Starfleet away team is
up to." Enfron's brow creased in an approximation of a Vorta frown. "You're
the last remaining conspirator, as well as being the Culture Minister. Why
do you want to kill your own Prime Minister anyway?"
Blithis rubbed her temples. It was evident that she was under quite some
stress. "I can't go into details."
"You and your fellows contacted my boss several weeks ago about getting your
hands on a plasma detonator. We moved the thing down to ANDARA while the
station was in chaos following the wormhole's closure. But the assassination
attempt was a failure - Jarhid survived, and now the net is closing in on
your little cabal." Enfron produced the snub-nosed blaster from his belt and
pointed it at the Andaran. "You must understand, we cannot allow any trace
to lead back to Mister Rixx."
Blithis looked aghast. "I know that things have gone wrong, but you cannot
kill me! You have no idea what's going on!"
Enfron cocked his head. "What do you mean?" He activated the blaster. "We
sold you the device in good faith. Are you telling me that you were being
duplicitous?"
"No!" exclaimed Blithis. "I mean that we are not working alone. My other
allies will - "
"What other allies?" sneered Enfron. "Tell me, or I'll fry you."
"I can't!" wailed the Andaran. She slumped against the wall. "It's a
disaster! It was supposed to be perfect - Jarhid dies, I am elevated to
Prime Minister! We had to move quickly following the collapse of the
wormhole, you see? This could be our only chance to take the space station,
to eliminate the alien presence in our quadrant!"
"Who are you talking about?" asked Enfron. He set his jaw. "You mean to tell
me that an external force is backing your attempt to take over the Andaran
government? If that happens, GATEWAY would be politically isolated, yes? But
the only power in the quadrant who could gain anything by that would be the
- "
The very air near Enfron moved like lightning, scything towards him like a
snake. The Vorta gasped, turning frantically on his heel, finger closing on
the blaster's trigger -
The attacking figure materialised for the kill, the blade in its hand
shearing through Enfron's neck like a razor, cleaving the arm holding the
blaster in two. Both arm and blaster clattered to the cold stone ground,
followed an instant later by the luckless Vorta's head, an expression of
panic frozen forever on his death-mask. A gout of magenta Vorta blood
sprayed high into the air, painting the ceiling above in a murderous frieze,
before the corpse collapsed in a heap, like a puppet with its strings cut.
Blithis wailed in fear as the fully-visible newcomer spat on Enfron's dead
face. "So die all traitors." The Andaran cowered as it turned towards her -
fearfully, she ran her eye over its heavily-muscled gray scaly skin,
protected by light plasteel armour, up over the steel-taut neck with its
tube implant. It idly wiped its blade on the Vorta's cooling corpse. "Leave
this dead thing here. There are no more Enfron clones - I have erased it
from existence."
"Yes!" nodded Blithis frantically. "What is required of me?"
Despite it being a foot shorter than her, the Jem'Hadar First One looked at
Blithis like she was an insect. "Maintain your nerve. Accomplishing our
objective one way or the other is inevitable now."
Blithis looked at the floor as the Jem'Hadar reactivated its personal
cloaking device. "It shall be as you command."
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Scene: Prime Minister's Office, several floors above
Time Index: Only a few minutes later, funnily enough
Prime Minister Jarhid was also rubbing his temples to alleviate his stress.
His brain felt like it was entering meltdown - idly, he remembered the
elation he felt less than a month ago as the election results began to come
into the High Fane from the provinces. His many years as a legislator had
stood him in good stead against the other ministerial candidates, and his
lightning whistle-stop tour of the planet's major population centres in the
final days of campaigning had been the thing that finally won him the
victory. He had been so full of idealism, promising steady leadership in his
inaugueral address - but then the wormhole had closed, and someone had tried
to kill him.
There was a saying, often thought of as a curse, amongst the people who
lived on the far-western Eradon coast - may you live in interesting times -
that seemed to be apt. These were certainly interesting times on ANDARA, and
with the world's population on edge as news of the assassination attempt
broke, his grip on the situation seemed to be sliding away.
Could ANDARA's alliance with GATEWAY be maintained? With the wormhole
closed, there was no more Federation in the Gamma Quadrant, no more
Starfleet to guarantee ANDARA's protection. It was true that the Federation
had not put a fleet into the Gamma Quadrant since the the days of the
Dominion War, but the possibility that they could was always there, and it
was that possibility that kept the Dominion's eyes firmly turned away from
the conquest of ANDARA. Why they had not tried to invade the fertile planet
at some point in the past few centuries escaped him, but that fact remained
that they had not. Since the civil war less than a decade ago, in which the
New Order had tried to overthrow the Founders, the Dominion had emerged
stronger than ever before, its grip on the Gamma Quadrant no longer checked
by dissent in its own ranks. GATEWAY was a single space station - well armed
and crewed by well-trained Starfleet personnel, perhaps, but could it really
withstand a determined Dominion attack? The very idea of the Jem'Hadar
returning to war sent a shiver through his spine.
There was only one possible political avenue of maneuver that he could see.
He must keep relations with the GATEWAY and the Dominion cordial yet
distant, and endeavour to play both off against each other in the hope that
they would continue to overlook ANDARA as a possible ally, and continue to
engage in political power-playing amongst themselves. That way, he could
keep GATEWAY bound to the alliance treaty and committed to protecting ANDARA
from the Dominion, while the Dominion would be more and more eager to remove
that alliance so that it could politically isolate the GATEWAY from all
other regional powers.
ANDARA must endure. With no military, and no defences, she *needed* outside
protection. It was true that the Federation represented a more favourable
sort of protection, and under their generous auspices Jarhid knew that
ANDARA would be able to preserve its own identity, but the Federation was
gone now - all that was left of it was a space fortress of idealistic exiles
who still could not see that their way of life was about to be swallowed up
by the realities of life in the awful shadow of the Dominion.
He pressed his desktop communicator, opening a channel to his secretary.
"Send in our guests."
He swallowed hard as the door opened, admitting Ambassador Vertec and her
aides.
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NRPG: The plot thickens....
Jerome McKee
the Soul of Captain Michael Turlogh Kane
Commanding Officer
GS-2
the Soul of Lieutenant Solomon Arn
Senior ACT Instructor
Starfleet Academy
"He speaks an infinite deal of nothing!"
- Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice", Act 1, Scene 1.113
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