Finding Vaosh
Posted on Sat Oct 30th, 2021 @ 9:00pm by Lieutenant Timmoz
Edited on on Fri Nov 5th, 2021 @ 11:03pm
Mission:
The Place of Skulls
Location: Kaphrene Depot; Interstellar Trade Alliance
Timeline: Mission Day 35 at 0300
[Kaphrene Depot]
[Interstellar Trade Alliance]
[Infirmary Orange Zone]
[Following Lucky to be Alive]
Timmoz glanced at the Berellian and away, and back again. He grunted. "I came to track someone down..."
The Berellian leaned close and rested on his two-fingered, two-thumbed hand. He rolled them under his chinless jowl, unbothered by the rigid spines there, "Go on.."
"I was looking for my childhood Dalat," Timmoz rumbled. His muscles were aching, stretched thin and stiff as while he moved, with pangs of pain, to put his arm behind his head. He rolled his bushy hair over it, the desire to nuzzle into a groggy sleep was thick in his brain, sludgy. But this giant humanoid-shapes horned toad, as wise as he looked, was going to deny him that until he said more. At least, that was how Timmoz was reading it. "The one you have in your Morgue. I imagine." Timmoz added bitterly, yet he smirked his Cluros smile nonetheless with a smile that looked like poison should drip from his double sets of canines.
The Berellian's grunt had a musical whine quality, like the lowest keening of a pan flute, "You told the Customs Officer you were here for work. But go on."
Timmoz smiled more cat with feathers in his mouth this time. "I did. How often do you tell neutral authorities you're seeking a known data thief and forger who worked for the Syndic?" Timmoz gestured his hand in a wave off, "Not that he or the Syndic have done anything to Kaphrene Depot. The closest the Syndic gets to a presence out here is Farius Prime and the Navo Jetsam."
"As criminals go, we have more problems with the Markalian Grazim." The Berellian Doctor grunted and leaned on his palm again like he was patiently listening to a child's lies. "The Flaxian Hands of Shadow." He blinked two sets of eyelids- the first clear, the second leathery, You knew the Farian. How?"
Timmoz blinked, "Vaosh Keeta was my Dalat."
The Berellian pan-fluted an exhaleagain, "Forgive this, but I don't speak Orionese. What is Dalat?"
"Teacher," Timmoz answered but he scowled with storminess to his eyebrows. They flexed and then relaxed. "No. Master to my apprenticing. Teacher isn't the right word to describe him. Orions don't sit in classrooms and learn like the V'draysh." He smiled into a cheek, sensing the highly educated Doctor's chafing at such an assertion.
The Berellian lyrically sub-vocalized, purr-like in an urgency. "Keep going. Your connection to the deceased now?"
Lime fingers twitched as if palming an invisible, spherical keyboard. With a suspicious glance back at a pair of Trunkhead children playing a ball game, Timmoz turned attention back to his dealings. He pulled from his vest pocket a thin, dull gray cord and promptly eased a socket-like end into the dataport hidden in the hair behind his ear. He breathed out- Timmoz didn't miss the strange warble of heat and cold that was the neural interface. It brought back unpleasant memories, feelings of stress as Orion thugs hovered about him, pregnant for him to succeed or fail.
His eyes glazed as if bored and distant- greens, ambers and blues in Orion script appeared. His fingers twitched and moved. He licked his lips with a darting of dusky green-gray flesh. A vertically aligned script built on a conch-spiral backbone began to light, shift, turn red, and scroll upward. It was made up of short, linear dashes and circles in Kanji-like stacks. Timmoz's fingers twitched faster.
He searched ship manifests, hotel accommodations, purchases. Finally, a name flashed with a face- an immensely obese Farian with a strange, lopsided smile. Timmoz's face fell.
Marked as DECEASED
Timmoz stretched stiffly again, trying to take the tense pressure off his reknitted guts. "We hadn't spoken since I left Botchok, for reasons. But I'd heard he'd left my Kaheedi's services recently. So I started tracking him down. I owed him. My Caju owed him. I knew his partner was sick... she's a Kobliad."
The Berellian's tawny, wide-set gaze studied the Orion laying half-prone before him. "A pity, and a tragedy. Like the Valakians." The Berellian's attention turned to a tan-clad aide who approached with a transparent circle. The Berellian studied the data on it, tapped at some of the controls and handed it back. "Unfortunately deuridium cannot be replicated and the greatest supply of it is on the other side of the Bajoran wormhole. The Dominion is not interested in trading it."
"Which is what probably led Vaosh here," Timmoz murmured, "Trying to buy it from the Interstellar Trade Alliance since the V'Draysh hoard it."
"But the Trade Alliance has a waiting list." The Berellian rolled his massive, leathery hand. Timmoz stared at it, wondering how such delicate work as medicine could be done with two thumbs and such thick fingers. But then, Timmoz had only known a few Doctors: t'Nai came most presently to mind.
Timmoz bobbed his head. "I'm sure he knew that. So he went looking for sources that could get him up the list. Or get it outright."
Another fluted sigh pushed heavily from the Berellian, "That is illegal." Timmoz agreed with a smirk and a bob of his head. The Berellian scowled across his elephantine-textured, tan mouth. "You are implying I have a criminal in my Morgue."
Timmoz shrugged his shoulder, "People do bad things for good reasons." Behind his own eyes, a Runabout torpedo sat on a small transporter pad while Timmoz's fingers shifted over the coordinates controls. His eyes set on the target: the control tower of the Vidiian complex's shield and communications center. He shivered with the dissonant energies of guilt, murder, redemption, revenge. But most of all revenge- the first flush and rush of sweet, deserved revenge.
The Orion shot a look at the Doctor. "So I went and tracked down who he'd been meeting with while he was here..."
Vaosh. Timmoz's mouth opened and then, thick with a bilious-tasting swallow, closed. He stared at the word over and over. Deceased. Deceased. All those situations. All those tight spots. Gatherer colonies in the Hromi and Azure nebulas. Klingon radicals. V'draysh law enforcement. Nausicaan pirates. The big Farian had somehow made it through every time- with wits, sometimes a phaser, and sometimes charm. If this was right, he'd died ignominiously on some chunk of ice with a ring around it. At the ass-end of space as far as the Syndicate was concerned.
Timmoz's searching eyes went back to his visit of Farius- his first stop to find Vaosh. It had led here. And he tumbled again, over, into what an obscure end it was for one of the quadrant's most talented data slicers. His gaze dropped. The data before him drifted before a ping startled him. Intrusion countermeasures were trying to track him down. The Alliance's computer systems knew someone was in and didn't have that level of clearance. Timmoz pulled the plug. It came with a surge of nausea that tensed his stomach and crawled unpleasantly, vicerally into his intestines. His fingers and toes prickled like pins and needles, and alternatively shifted cold and warm.
He chewed back at a wave of nausea as his vision darkened, sparkled with streaks of light and then righted. Timmoz pushed away, shaky hands pocketing the cord again. He regained his senses a few walking sectors away. He bought a nutrient bar and a strange slushy drink that tasted like pork. It was strangely nourishing but he could tell his senses were still muddled. He figured it probably did, genuinely, taste meaty, but less intensely than his tastebuds fired.
By evening, Timmoz had visited eight bars and asked after Vaosh with the bartenders and hosts. The eighth was a lucky find- Vaosh had come in, had met with a Markalian and a set of Miradorn twins, and apparently a man of undetermined species. "Did they buy anything?" Timmoz asked the four-limbed Terellian.
"A couple of Ennani Ales."
Timmoz struggled with the tickling desire for revenge and the vague, uneasy revulsion of the flavor of Ennan VI's idea of alcohol. Humans couldn't seem to get enough of the stuff. Timmoz would have guzzled too-young Kanar before he touched that stuff again. "Thank you," he smiled pleasantly at the Terellian. "I like this place. I'll come back on my next trip through," he said easily, almost purred. Timmoz had no intention of ever setting foot on Kaphrene Depot again.
Especially if he had to do, what he wanted to do. What his insides told him he needed to do. He was Orion.
"The Markalian and the Miradorns?" The Berellian Doctor said. "The ones that rearranged your innards."
Done belatedly and stiffly, Timmoz nodded his head with an annoyed prickle across his cheeks. The Berellian didn't need to pour acid into the open wound of his failure.
"Where are they now?" Timmoz said with more edge than he'd intended.
"In a holding cell," the Doctor said. He pushed away. His heft on his stool carried him with a squeak toward a console. He turned and began to tap heavily at it. "And they will stay there until the Quorum investigates your friend's murder." He glanced at the Orion, "I do not know a great deal about Orions. But I know you enjoy your revenge. So let me suggest this, child. Do not try it here. We do justice in a civilized way. We do not carry out personal vendettas."
Timmoz blinked with tense exhaustion. He gave the Doctor a sour look. "Tell that to his Kobliad partner," he said. Timmoz shifted to try and take the pressure off from the tension he felt in his back and side. He closed his eyes and tried to take a breath that didn't hurt. He felt a hypospray touch his neck.
"Try and rest, child," the voice said next to his ear. A wave of exhaustion and heaviness fell over the Orion and he felt himself ooze into darkness.
A Post By:
Lieutenant Timmoz
Drift and On Leave
