Mutually Beneficial

Posted on Mon Nov 18th, 2013 @ 7:23pm by Commander Jordan Gunning & Vendenje Kamdram

Mission: Picking Up the Pieces
Location: Chief Strategic Operations Officer's Office

[ON]

Dirty boots scraped against clean carpet.

Kam eyed the Commander from across the promenade; the man was standing at a shop, carefully looking at two different items. Kam rubbed at his nose and slipped out from behind the pillar as the Commander began to move. They weaved through a throng of people; shop-keepers announced their wares at the top of their lungs, many holding them up for eyes to see. Brightly colored material and heavily spiced food mingled with the sometimes wild and outlandish ways that the shop-owners dressed. This combined with the sights and smells of the people who were there to shop; heavy perfumes, sour body odours, all blending together to overpower the senses.

Kam felt himself pull free of the people and he watched as the Commander ascended a flight of stairs to the upper level. Kam slipped up the stairs behind him.

The man made few stops along the way as they began working their way towards areas that were restricted to non-Starfleet personnel. This was, Kam thought, where things got interesting.

Two days ago he had tracked down a handful of people that had access to a complete manifest. One was the Intelligence Officer, another the Security.

A third was the Strategic Operations Officer.

They passed through dimly lit corridors as the Commander led Kam to his office. Once inside, Kam cosied up against the wall, just behind a strange plant that had been placed in a slight alcove. A few moments later and the Commander had come back out of his office and made his way down another corridor. Now we know where it is, Kam thought. All that was left was to get inside.

Starfleet security systems were not difficult to bypass, at least in theory. Often what made them good was the fact that there were so many levels to get through. A steady and patient hand could do it, but you had to be careful not to trip any security alarms as you did, otherwise the entire Station would come to life. Kam wasn't interested in seeing the inside of a brig cell so quickly.

The door hissed open and Kam couldn't help but smile as he stepped inside. He walked over to the console on the Commander's desk and flipped it open. Kam sighed. He hated reading.

Gunning suddenly realised what had been bothering him. Everyone he had passed all day had been carrying a phaser and he was yet to pick his up. Of course, there was the embarrassment of having to turn round and return to his office. He threw up his hands in mock irritation before turning on his heel and heading back to his office.

The doors slid open and Kam reached into his coat. The Bajoran-style phaser slid out of its holster and snapped up, pointing at the figure in the doorway. "Damn," Kam whispered.

"Isn't it funny how every time you find yourself unarmed around civilians, one of them always seems to want to shoot you."

The Bajoran smiled thinly. "I thought you were heading to Ops; it's real unfortunate you decided to come back. Why don't you join me inside; lock the door behind you, please and thank you." Kam motioned with the phaser.

Gunning's face contorted into a mixture of offence and intrigue. "This isn't my first rodeo, friend. In fact, unless you're planning to waterboard me, this doesn't even make the top ten of compromising situations."

The Commander made his way around the office to the couch which he had managed to requisition and slid back until he was almost reclining. "So. Presumably you want something which you're not allowed to have. Let me guess; confiscation records? You want to know where all that lovely Tranja's hidden, right?"

Kam made no comment. If the Commander wanted to share, who was he to stop him?

"It's floating gently through space somewhere. Maybe if you hurry, you can catch it." Gunning often found himself pushing his luck when he had a gun pointing at his chest. "Mind you, I'm sure this whole experience would be infinitely more enjoyable for both of us if we had a bottle."

"I'm sure," Kam replied. His mind raced through all of the possible end-game scenarios. He could kill the man and continue his search, but he'd likely get caught in the end, and lose what he was after in the process; he'd been down that road, it never worked. He could knock the man out, but the result would be the same. In either of those scenarios he was left hunting in the dark, searching for something he wasn't sure he could find. "I need manifest logs," he said. "Ship arrivals and departures." In the end he decided to let the Commander do all the work; he'd decide what to do with him after.

"Do you?" Gunning replied. "What have you lost: cargo, a target, a woman?"

"Nothing I lost," Kam replied. "Someone I am looking for." He wanted to order the man to start looking, but he waited.

Gunning took a long look at the Bajoran who continued to train his pistol on him. "Couldn't just look in the public manifests, huh? Must be someone really important that you're after. Someone who doesn't want to be found."

Kam pointed the phaser at Gunning's face. "Only kind of people worth looking for," he replied. "Ship's the Derevi. The name'll be listed as a foreign diplomat." He motioned at the computer on the desk.

"And when you find your diplomat, what then?" Gunning's curiosity was thoroughly piqued. It wasn't often that you found a Bajoran trying to hunt down a "foreign diplomat". It was worth goading further. "You're going to run your diplomat down and return their mutilated corpse to whoever it is employs you to seek the bounty?"

"She ain't no diplomat," Kam said. "And I don't mutilate the people I kill, I just kill them." He smirked. "Her name is Raela Ulsho, a Cardassian."

"Oh, well knock me down with a feather!" Gunning snorted, rising from the chair and risking a phaser bolt in the eye. "A Bajoran wants to pick off a Cardassian! What slight has she performed that would see her fall into your sights? Or is it just that you don't like Cardassians. Not many of them come out this way so you'll forgive me for thinking that maybe you're just an opportunist with a grudge."

Kam felt his mouth moving even as he thought it shouldn't. "If it'll put your delicate sensibilities at ease, I'm not looking to kill her... Not right now, anyway. She has information I need."

"I'd be happy to go on record and say that my sensibilities would have been fine had you not broken into my office. Still; at least we're getting somewhere." Gunning completed a tight circuit of the room before wheeling round on the Bajoran. "What does she know that you don't?"

Kam's eyes widened for a moment, surprised by the man. "You bold little..." He glared, ready to strike him.

He didn't.

"She knows where another Cardassian I am looking for is; him, I am going to kill," he said. "I know she is here, I just don't know where. Her arrival logs should indicate which ship she is transferring to. As soon as I get that, I'll know where she is going. As soon as I know where she is going, I'll know where to be to catch her."

Gunning felt he had his new friend just where he wanted him. "Now we reach the real beating heart of the matter." He began to circle the Bajoran, feeling his glare with every short step he took. "What's so special about that Cardassian?"

Kam blinked, and lofted the weapon once more. "Why do you care?" he asked. He had a sudden sense that he was getting played.

"Well, you see." Jordan replied, suddenly reverting to a breezier tone, "it works like this. You don't tell me anything about the Cardassian you're trying to kill and I can't run a background check on him and see if there's any reason that I might benefit from seeing his lifeless corpse float past my window. If there's no benefit to me- or to Starfleet- to see this Cardassian dead then I won't be giving you any information about your little friend."

"I've got my reasons, they aren't any business of yours," Kam spat. He was used to not being trusted, but rarely did anyone ever question him to his face, and certainly not when he was pointing a weapon at them. The brass balls on this one, he thought.

"The way I see it, you've got two options. You tell who you're looking for and the exact reasons you want to terminate him and I'll run my check to see if there's anything I can do to help your one man vendetta against the grey-skinned menace, or- and this is probably your preferred option- you shoot me now, try to hack my system and bring every blockheaded, trigger-happy security grunt down here who are so desperate for an excuse to shoot something and call it a Sojourner that you'll probably be dead before you can fire a shot."

The Commander found himself examining a potted plant left over from the previous incumbent's time in his office. "Up to you, pal."

Kam lowered the weapon again. It wasn't that he was afraid of a Security officer. He wasn't even concerned about being caught or captured; he'd been caught, he'd been captured. The weathered, aging Bajoran suddenly looked very tired, and very old. Creased lines blended into faded and aging scars, and once lustrous eyes now seemed dull, windworn and empty. "His name is Mosel," he said. Even saying the mans name caused bile to rise up in the back of his throat. "Gul Mosel. A long time ago he was a Prefect on Bajor. He was in charge of the Gallitep labor camp."

"Let me guess." Gunning replied, noting the lowering of his weapon and softening his tone accordingly. "You were in the Gallitep labor camp."

Kam shrugged. "Along with my father, mother, and... My sister." He pursed his lips. "Mosel enjoyed young Bajoran women," he said.

"There we are. Doesn't it feel good to get to the root of a problem?" Jordan didn't want to concede that he felt sympathy for the Bajoran's motives. "I should be a counselor."

The Bajoran pirate ran his thumb along the back edge of the Bajoran phaser in his hand, his thumb absently twitching from side to side. "I don't see why it matters," he said. "No reason is good enough for the Federation, but nothing is going to stop me from finding him."

"How naive." Gunning replied with a wry smile. "Let me into my computer terminal."

Kam tensed, stepping back, wary as the Commander moved towards him.

He crossed the room and sat behind his desk, activating the terminal and calling up the record for the Cardassian, Gul Mosel. "Hmm, interesting. It appears your 'Gul' Mosel doesn't represent the glorious Cardassian Empire any longer. According to our last intelligence reports on him, he's got his dirty little fingers in lots of dirty little pies. It seems like he's the king pin of some low-rent security racket."

"He's a thug," Kam spat.

"I always find it amazing how much Starfleet Intelligence tolerates shakedown crews, provided they get their thirty pieces of silver. Mosel's probably keeping them updated with the skinny on the smugglers who'll be giving them the skinny on him. That's how they conduct their business and more power to their elbow."

Gunning glanced at a flag on the record. It was out of date but there had been a meeting between Mosel and a known Vinarian syndicate gun runner called Leibniz. Leibniz's name had come up before in a wire communication intercept. He couldn't place it but it was enough for him to unleash this Bajoran on him.

Kam's eyes flicked from the screen to the back of the Commander's head. His gloved hand tightened around the weapon. He looked back at the page and tried to read what it said. After awhile he grumbled. "Well?" he asked, tilting his head. "Satisfied?"

"Depends." Gunning offered flatly. "What are you going to do to the rest of his operation?"

Kam smirked. "The same thing I'm going to do to him." He lifted up the battered weapon. "Kill it."

"You'll bring me their contact within the Sojourner organisation." Gunning said, sliding an innocuous, non-Federation PADD across the desk. "Call it a souvenir."

Kam lowered his gun and stared at the PADD. "Yeah, I don't think so," he said. "I don't fetch."

"You're not fetching." Gunning leaned forward and placed his palms face down on the desk. "We have an accord based on mutually beneficial destruction. You get the head of your Gul Mosel to hang on your wall and I get to slice The Sojourners open from the feet up."

"I think you have a warped idea of mutually beneficial," Kam said. "What you mean to say is I get the information I need, so long as I do extra work for you." He folded his arms defiantly. "What's so important about the Sojourners anyway?"

"Most things are warped in this part of the Galaxy. If we were in the Core of the Federation or even out towards the Cardassian border, you wouldn't even be on this station, let alone using it as a base." Gunning had seen his entire attitude to the role of Starfleet change over the course of a couple of months and the bombing had shaken his beliefs to their foundations. "Things are what they are and I get the impression that you have a very particular talent. As for the Sojourners; all you really have to know is that they are important."

Kam was silent for a moment, and then snorted, looking away from the Commander, shaking his head, breathing out of his nose contemptuously. "You really don't want to work with me," he murmured.

"No, you're right." Gunning confessed. "I don't. I want to be sitting on the bridge of a starship exploring strange new worlds and all that crap rather than sitting in a dark room on a station with a giant hole on the side being stared at by the whole crew because my brother's their dead Commanding Officer. As it stands, I don't have much choice but to adapt to my surroundings. If that means working with you, that means working with you."

Kam shrugged. It was clear the Commander wasn't going to be dissuaded. "Your funeral," he said. "Tell me the name of the ship the Cardassian woman is transferring to, and I'll get what you want."

Gunning checked his terminal. "Sunburst."

Kam reached out and picked up the PADD, slipping it under his shirt. He turned to walk out of the room, but stopped, looking back. "You don't even know my name," he said. "You don't know anything about me; I could have killed my way through the galaxy for all you know. You find me here, in your office, pointing a weapon," he said, holding the phaser up, "at your head with real intent behind it. Why the hell aren't a contingent of Security Officers not beating your office door down?" He nodded at the computer console. "You've no doubt figured out I don't read so good. You had plenty of opportunity to call them."

"Don't bring a gun next time," the Commander replied, "nice to meet you, Kamdram."

Kam frowned, holstering the sidearm as he walked out of the office.

[OFF]

Commander Jordan Gunning
Chief Strategic Operations Officer
Starbase 332

Vendenje Kamdram
Freighter Captain