Interlude – Gas-Light
by Colonel James Darson & Commander Isha t'Vaurek
Post Details
Darson was just putting the finishing touches on his handiwork with the welding torch when his proximity warning sensor went off, informing him that there was a person approaching the room at a high velocity. He quickly switched on the Chameleon system and hid in the corner; plastering himself comedically against the wall, waiting to see who it was that would be unlucky enough to enter the room, and to also get a glance of their reactions.
Isha did not typically come in here, she stayed out of Rh'vaurek's world with his pokey windowless office and the tiny room he called his quarters. Of course if Isha had not taken all the space with windows for her own apartments and commandeered a third of the floor area of the entire consulate for her personal use there might be an opportunity for other people to have windows but that was rather beside the point.
Now what in the Element's name was going on around here?
Isha’s amazement and confusion were well deserved. It appeared initially that the entire room had been literally turned upside down. The carpet was now on the ceiling, as was all the furniture. Everything placed on them as well was perfectly in place as it had been before. The lighting fixtures had somehow made their way to the ground facing upwards, casting weird shadows around the room. All the pictures on the wall were suspended upside down as well, and the door control was even flipped, further cementing the illusion.
It was as if reality itself had somehow been twisted, and flipped the entire quarters 180 degrees.
There must have been something on the thunb pad that courier had brought, something that since she had pressed it and accepted the delivery had been slowly working its way through her skin and into her body. It was the only logical explaination becuase Isha was quite certain that she was hallucinating. Her grip on the handle of her late Husband's vrelnec tightened, "Show yourself," she demanded with the confidence of a woman used to being obeyed.
Darson detached himself from the wall as soon as he saw that it was Isha, and she apparently knew that somebody (him specifically) was here. How this was possible, he didn’t know…but he intended to find out.
“Ms. t’Khellian,” he said softly so as not to startle her too badly seeing as she was wielding a sharp looking knife as he slunk smoothly out of the shadows in the corner, stepping over a lighting fixture as he did so. His cloak blurred his form in the odd half-light, making him look a little like a formless mass, “so nice to see you…here…in this place…actually, it is sort of odd, isn’t it?”
"Odd that you are trespassing on sovereign territory, odd that you are in Raedheol's quarters, odd that I am in my consulate, or odd that if you don't tell me what you are doing here I am going to find out just how effective that armour of yours is and run you through," Isha said pointedly ignoring the fact that everything was where it should not be.
“Oh,” he said with a sheepish tone, rubbing the back of his mask with one hand as he looked around quickly, as if surprised by the question, “What am I doing here? Well…I would think it was obvious. I’m redecorating of course. At my good old buddy’s Raedheol’s request. He said that while he was away, he was thinking of having his personal gravity reversed, so he would need to have his office reversed as well so that he could function. And of course being the amazing engineer that I am, I volunteered for the job, and he contracted me. He even paid me half in advance. So let’s just have a laugh over this funny misunderstanding, and I’ll get out of your hair, you can get back to work…what do you say?”
A moment of silence passed between them.
Neither her blade nor her gaze wavered. "I know you are not a fool Darson, so the only option is that you are a liar," Isha said, "somehow I thought that you would put a little more effort into your story. I'm going to call my head of security and you can repeat your tale to her until she is satisfied with the answer. Is that alright?"
“Yea, I don’t believe me either,” Darson said with a sigh, kicking what was formally the floor with an armored boot, “This is actually an ongoing form of Psychological torture I’m performing on Raedheol,” he begun to explain with a hint of excitement, “It’s called ‘Gas-lighting’…it dates back more than 500 years in Terran history. For weeks now I’ve been sneaking in here and manipulating small aspects of the environment…moving the desk two centimeters to the left…moving it two centimeters to the right…replacing his lighting fixtures…turning things upside down, re-upholstering the furniture, replacing his hand towels with ones of a slightly different color…the list goes on. It was all part of my grand master plan to slowly drive him insane, where he would then either transfer off the station…or commit suicide. Either way, he would then be out of mine and the station’s hair. Cool huh?”
"Petty and childish might be a more appropriate description," Isha replied. "Do you have nothing better to do with your time?"
“What?” He asked, “You mean this?” He gestured at the room that appeared to have been twisted into another dimension, “This is actually a form of revenge on my part. He planted a bomb in my quarters,” No hard evidence, but Isha didn’t need to know that, “And thus I decided that instead of bombing him back with five times the explosive power as was my original intention, I went for the classy approach. And man…look at my handiwork. I should have been a contractor. Only thing I couldn’t do anything with was the door. Would have defied the laws of physics, and I’m not good enough to do that yet. But enough about that. I’m pretty sure that you came in here looking for me…what do you want?
"Don't you dare ask me questions," Isha hissed. She was quite sure that Darson's bomber, if there was one was not Rh'vaurek, it did not fit his pattern but she was not about to tell Darson that. "And put this room back in order," she added, it made her uncomfortable just standing here. "Someone thinks we need to talk," Isha told him after a brief pause, "and I happen to agree with them. Now if you promise that you will not harm me I will put this rather beautiful piece of metal aside," he had kept his word in the past so Isha could afford some measure of trust.
Darson spread his arms out wide to show that his armored hands were empty, “My dear Isha, I can give you my word…that for the duration of this meeting, no harm will befall you. Through my actions, or that of anybody else’s. Even if somebody else comes in and tries to kill you, I’ll give my life to protect you. That is my solemn vow. Now then, you said somebody wanted you to talk to me. What is that about?”
"I would hope that my embassy is not packed with people who wish me dead, Major Darson" Isha said with a shake of her head. "Perhaps you would fetch me a chair," she suggested passing her gaze over the ceiling again.
Darson stared at her, or at least appeared to be from the general direction of his mask, “There is no pleasing you Isha, is there?” he said with a hint of exasperation that turned into annoyance, “ And who’s a Major?” he said as he began to walk towards the wall. As he put a foot up to test it he said, “I’ll have you know that I am now a venerable Lieutenant Colonel with the Starfleet Marine Corp. And there are a couple of key differences that you should be aware of. My insignia is a different color, for a example. Silver instead of bronze. And my dress uniform has different trim. Pretty important differences.”
He placed his foot firmly on the wall and with a grunt, placed the other on the wall as well. Amazingly enough, he stayed there, sticking out from the wall parallel to the floor. After a moment’s pause, he began to walk casually up the wall and onto the ceiling, where he stuck there like a psychotic gecko.
What Isha saw was an opportunity to really stick the knife into Getal. She would not interfere directly with whatever Rh'vaurek was doing despite what her mystery informant intended, but from the recording she had seen the Cardassian was clearly part of the plan so it was at him that Isha would point her finger, then maybe he would get the message that harrassing her was far from a good idea. "Fun though I am sure you are finding it to irritate my chief of staff I believe that your attentions are misdirected," she said.
“Well,” he said idly as he knelt down on the carpet in direct defiance of the law of gravity, “Perhaps you would be so kind as to tell me exactly where my attentions should be directed then? Step back please,” He produced a welding torch from his cloak and went to work on the chair with a shower of sparks.
Isha did so. She could have kicked herself for making such an error of observation, it was the little details that were terribly important, however she merely folded her arms and raised an eyebrow. "I think with all the theatrics in this room I may be forgiven for missing one small detail," she said tilting her head on one side. There was no way of telling if Darson was really peeved or just playing. "Congratulations on your promotion, Lieutenant Colonel," she said as the sparks died down. "Believe it or not, our intentions towards this place are benign. Our governments have a lot to gain right now by putting their differences aside and at least appearing to trust one another."
“Just call me Darson, my dear,” Darson said as he focused on his task, “I think we’re on good enough terms for that. And don’t worry about missing it…rank is rank. The higher the rank, the higher the superiority…but to me, it is just a means to an end. There we go,” he ended with a triumphant tone as the chair came loose from the ‘Ceiling’. He stood up and passed it down to Isha.
“Regarding that,” Darson continued still staying on the ceiling, “I do not pretend to know all the inner workings and going-on’s of your government,” a half-truth. Everybody knew that each side, despite them being at peace, had large intelligence networks still in place, and Darson had access to vast quantities of raw intelligence data, “Though I suppose that you have not been…belligerent…as of late. Unlike some other embassies I could name.”
"You will agree that through crisis after crisis I have done everything in my power to assist the station's staff," Isha asserted. "that was not through chance or expediency. My government is quite serious about establishing a more cordial relationship with yours. Of course that in itself may be viewed as a threat by other powers - if the Federation's eyes are not directed towards the Neutral Zone they may well start to focus on what is happening in the gardens of their other neighbours who for some time have escaped close scrutiny."
Darson gave a small noise of something along the lines of agreement as he began to see where she was going with this, “That is also true. And let me tell you that we of the Federation are grateful for your assistance, and under ordinary circumstances would be very receptive to establish a more cordial relationship. Although you must understand that owing to the recent spate of attacks and whatnot, we currently have a very volatile political landscape. Polls of civilians onboard the station show heightened levels of xenophobia, stress, paranoia…almost as if whatever is afflicting Commander Gabriel got into the water supply. And so we must watch everyone despite what we want. But, if we had to watch somebody in particular, who exactly did you have in mind?”
Isha placed the chair firmly on the floor, the actual floor, then sat on it and laid her late husband's sword across her knees. "Look towards Cardassia," she suggested as she digested what he had told her of recent opinion on the station.
Darson gave an uncharacteristic snort of disgust and said darkly, “Cardassia. Ignorant cretins. And that Vikar Gul Therak Getal …him and his embassy, deceiving the station’s eyes by acting like a tame cat. I know he has something planned, but I haven’t had the occasion to infiltrate his ranks yet.”
“Of course he has,” Isha agreed, “and it is the opinion of the Stelam Shiar that the simplest way to find out what it is is to go along with it, of course as it is cardassian nature to scheme and double-cross, its in the blood, I think. We have an opportunity here, Darson, unlike you I have someone on the inside and I can provide quite enough information for you to be able to move against them.”
Darson shook his head curtly, “I’m telling you my dear Isha, while I would love to go up against Therak, and crush him…firebomb his pathetic embassy until it is naught but ash…I cannot. At least, not yet. But I can promise you that I will pay very close attention to him. But…this also brings to the fore exactly why you wanted to speak with me…you said earlier that somebody thought we should speak…what did you mean by that?
Isha raised an eyebrow, “I had assumed it was someone of yours – but apparently not. There is someone in my embassy who has their own agenda. I intend to find who it is and if their agenda conflicts with my own I will have them removed.” isha paused, “at least I will not have you complaining at my door when I have this rodent flushed out,” she continued, if he was being truthful about not knowing of the mysterious informant who had told Isha that Darson was here. They informed me that you were in here,” she told him.
Darson gave a noise of displeasure, “Somebody who knew I was here? Hmmm…That is odd. I’m fairly certain that I took every precaution in getting in here…” he trailed off as he cocked his head to the side in thought, “Ah,” he said as if he had just grasped some secret, “I’ll trust you’ll look into it my dear.” He said in a voice that communicated a lack of concern…though what he was not concerned with was a mystery.
Isha sighed sharply, "Didn't I just say I would," she said frustrated as usual at his overly theatrical manner. Darson would also have to take greater precautions in the future if he planned to visit again, this area was not public property.
He suddenly fell from the ceiling, doing a flip in midair and landing quietly on the floor below. He raised up slowly and moved towards Isha. He reached her and gently grasped her hands, guiding her up from the chair. His faceless mask gazed at her and he said in an odd tone, or at the very least odder than usual. It was a tone that alluded to knowledge beyond what was present, “You know Isha…in the horrifically unlikely event that you are ever left with nowhere to go…remember that I will always be there for you.”
"When Breen melts ..." Isha replied, or perhaps when you take off that damned mask, she thought, but it was one she did not voice. "... and when Vulcan freezes, Colonel Darson," she said, dimly aware that she really should protest at him continuing to hold her hands whilst talking to her in this quasi-romantic manner. "That is when I will need you."
“Sooner than you might think,” Darson thought, but then brought himself out of that funk. Continuing what Isha had assumed to be a joke to cover for his lapse, he released her hands, knelt to the ground on one knee and pulled out a small black case from his cloak, offering it to her in the style of a Terran marriage proposal, “I trust you remember this?” he said jovially as he opened the case to reveal the silver ring with a green stone that housed a secure transmitter, used way back when he had negotiated with her for Iawaiin’s release.
Isha tilted her head to one side. She recognised it but did not recall having returned the ring to Darson. "What happened to her?" Isha asked recalling the woman who Rh'vaurek had thoroughly beaten and no doubt tortured before Isha had chosen to trade her for information. "Rh'vaurek had been looking for a double agent for such a long time ... was it her? The evidence said as much, though one cannot always trust evidence, not if it is intended to elicit particular behaviour."
Darson lowered the ring and said in a somber tone, “After the events of the Romulan attack a little while ago, she was taken into custody. I had her transferred and have dealt with her accordingly. You would do well not to dwell on such matters Isha. Nothing good can come of it. As for the double agent…I can’t confirm or deny that. Not because I don’t want to tell you, but because I really don’t have enough evidence to draw an accurate conclusion. But that information will appear in time, and when it does I will be sure to pass it along.”
"I'm sure that you will," Isha replied, unconvinced.
Darson stood up and gently took Isha’s hand and slipped the ring on it. He placed his hands on her shoulders and turned her around so that she faced the door and away from him. Still behind her he said, “I must go…I’ve overstayed my welcome. Allow me to leave you with a couple of parting words though. I predict great trials ahead Isha…for Romulans, Humans…everybody on this station. The game is afoot in a most dangerous fashion, and I implore you to use caution in the future and watch your step. Battle lines are blurring, and you may find conflict has come to rest on your doorstep.”
He released her and backed away into the shadows, “And don’t worry about the room…I’ll get it fixed. Eventually,” and with that parting promise, he vanished.
OFF
by Colonel James Darson & Commander Isha t'Vaurek
Post Details
| Title | Gas-Light | |
| Mission | Interlude | |
| Author(s) | Colonel James Darson & Commander Isha t'Vaurek | |
| Posted | Sat Jul 17, 2010 @ 7:35am | |
| Location | Romulan Embassy | |
| Timeline | Directly following "Embassy-gate" |
Isha did not typically come in here, she stayed out of Rh'vaurek's world with his pokey windowless office and the tiny room he called his quarters. Of course if Isha had not taken all the space with windows for her own apartments and commandeered a third of the floor area of the entire consulate for her personal use there might be an opportunity for other people to have windows but that was rather beside the point.
Now what in the Element's name was going on around here?
Isha’s amazement and confusion were well deserved. It appeared initially that the entire room had been literally turned upside down. The carpet was now on the ceiling, as was all the furniture. Everything placed on them as well was perfectly in place as it had been before. The lighting fixtures had somehow made their way to the ground facing upwards, casting weird shadows around the room. All the pictures on the wall were suspended upside down as well, and the door control was even flipped, further cementing the illusion.
It was as if reality itself had somehow been twisted, and flipped the entire quarters 180 degrees.
There must have been something on the thunb pad that courier had brought, something that since she had pressed it and accepted the delivery had been slowly working its way through her skin and into her body. It was the only logical explaination becuase Isha was quite certain that she was hallucinating. Her grip on the handle of her late Husband's vrelnec tightened, "Show yourself," she demanded with the confidence of a woman used to being obeyed.
Darson detached himself from the wall as soon as he saw that it was Isha, and she apparently knew that somebody (him specifically) was here. How this was possible, he didn’t know…but he intended to find out.
“Ms. t’Khellian,” he said softly so as not to startle her too badly seeing as she was wielding a sharp looking knife as he slunk smoothly out of the shadows in the corner, stepping over a lighting fixture as he did so. His cloak blurred his form in the odd half-light, making him look a little like a formless mass, “so nice to see you…here…in this place…actually, it is sort of odd, isn’t it?”
"Odd that you are trespassing on sovereign territory, odd that you are in Raedheol's quarters, odd that I am in my consulate, or odd that if you don't tell me what you are doing here I am going to find out just how effective that armour of yours is and run you through," Isha said pointedly ignoring the fact that everything was where it should not be.
“Oh,” he said with a sheepish tone, rubbing the back of his mask with one hand as he looked around quickly, as if surprised by the question, “What am I doing here? Well…I would think it was obvious. I’m redecorating of course. At my good old buddy’s Raedheol’s request. He said that while he was away, he was thinking of having his personal gravity reversed, so he would need to have his office reversed as well so that he could function. And of course being the amazing engineer that I am, I volunteered for the job, and he contracted me. He even paid me half in advance. So let’s just have a laugh over this funny misunderstanding, and I’ll get out of your hair, you can get back to work…what do you say?”
A moment of silence passed between them.
Neither her blade nor her gaze wavered. "I know you are not a fool Darson, so the only option is that you are a liar," Isha said, "somehow I thought that you would put a little more effort into your story. I'm going to call my head of security and you can repeat your tale to her until she is satisfied with the answer. Is that alright?"
“Yea, I don’t believe me either,” Darson said with a sigh, kicking what was formally the floor with an armored boot, “This is actually an ongoing form of Psychological torture I’m performing on Raedheol,” he begun to explain with a hint of excitement, “It’s called ‘Gas-lighting’…it dates back more than 500 years in Terran history. For weeks now I’ve been sneaking in here and manipulating small aspects of the environment…moving the desk two centimeters to the left…moving it two centimeters to the right…replacing his lighting fixtures…turning things upside down, re-upholstering the furniture, replacing his hand towels with ones of a slightly different color…the list goes on. It was all part of my grand master plan to slowly drive him insane, where he would then either transfer off the station…or commit suicide. Either way, he would then be out of mine and the station’s hair. Cool huh?”
"Petty and childish might be a more appropriate description," Isha replied. "Do you have nothing better to do with your time?"
“What?” He asked, “You mean this?” He gestured at the room that appeared to have been twisted into another dimension, “This is actually a form of revenge on my part. He planted a bomb in my quarters,” No hard evidence, but Isha didn’t need to know that, “And thus I decided that instead of bombing him back with five times the explosive power as was my original intention, I went for the classy approach. And man…look at my handiwork. I should have been a contractor. Only thing I couldn’t do anything with was the door. Would have defied the laws of physics, and I’m not good enough to do that yet. But enough about that. I’m pretty sure that you came in here looking for me…what do you want?
"Don't you dare ask me questions," Isha hissed. She was quite sure that Darson's bomber, if there was one was not Rh'vaurek, it did not fit his pattern but she was not about to tell Darson that. "And put this room back in order," she added, it made her uncomfortable just standing here. "Someone thinks we need to talk," Isha told him after a brief pause, "and I happen to agree with them. Now if you promise that you will not harm me I will put this rather beautiful piece of metal aside," he had kept his word in the past so Isha could afford some measure of trust.
Darson spread his arms out wide to show that his armored hands were empty, “My dear Isha, I can give you my word…that for the duration of this meeting, no harm will befall you. Through my actions, or that of anybody else’s. Even if somebody else comes in and tries to kill you, I’ll give my life to protect you. That is my solemn vow. Now then, you said somebody wanted you to talk to me. What is that about?”
"I would hope that my embassy is not packed with people who wish me dead, Major Darson" Isha said with a shake of her head. "Perhaps you would fetch me a chair," she suggested passing her gaze over the ceiling again.
Darson stared at her, or at least appeared to be from the general direction of his mask, “There is no pleasing you Isha, is there?” he said with a hint of exasperation that turned into annoyance, “ And who’s a Major?” he said as he began to walk towards the wall. As he put a foot up to test it he said, “I’ll have you know that I am now a venerable Lieutenant Colonel with the Starfleet Marine Corp. And there are a couple of key differences that you should be aware of. My insignia is a different color, for a example. Silver instead of bronze. And my dress uniform has different trim. Pretty important differences.”
He placed his foot firmly on the wall and with a grunt, placed the other on the wall as well. Amazingly enough, he stayed there, sticking out from the wall parallel to the floor. After a moment’s pause, he began to walk casually up the wall and onto the ceiling, where he stuck there like a psychotic gecko.
What Isha saw was an opportunity to really stick the knife into Getal. She would not interfere directly with whatever Rh'vaurek was doing despite what her mystery informant intended, but from the recording she had seen the Cardassian was clearly part of the plan so it was at him that Isha would point her finger, then maybe he would get the message that harrassing her was far from a good idea. "Fun though I am sure you are finding it to irritate my chief of staff I believe that your attentions are misdirected," she said.
“Well,” he said idly as he knelt down on the carpet in direct defiance of the law of gravity, “Perhaps you would be so kind as to tell me exactly where my attentions should be directed then? Step back please,” He produced a welding torch from his cloak and went to work on the chair with a shower of sparks.
Isha did so. She could have kicked herself for making such an error of observation, it was the little details that were terribly important, however she merely folded her arms and raised an eyebrow. "I think with all the theatrics in this room I may be forgiven for missing one small detail," she said tilting her head on one side. There was no way of telling if Darson was really peeved or just playing. "Congratulations on your promotion, Lieutenant Colonel," she said as the sparks died down. "Believe it or not, our intentions towards this place are benign. Our governments have a lot to gain right now by putting their differences aside and at least appearing to trust one another."
“Just call me Darson, my dear,” Darson said as he focused on his task, “I think we’re on good enough terms for that. And don’t worry about missing it…rank is rank. The higher the rank, the higher the superiority…but to me, it is just a means to an end. There we go,” he ended with a triumphant tone as the chair came loose from the ‘Ceiling’. He stood up and passed it down to Isha.
“Regarding that,” Darson continued still staying on the ceiling, “I do not pretend to know all the inner workings and going-on’s of your government,” a half-truth. Everybody knew that each side, despite them being at peace, had large intelligence networks still in place, and Darson had access to vast quantities of raw intelligence data, “Though I suppose that you have not been…belligerent…as of late. Unlike some other embassies I could name.”
"You will agree that through crisis after crisis I have done everything in my power to assist the station's staff," Isha asserted. "that was not through chance or expediency. My government is quite serious about establishing a more cordial relationship with yours. Of course that in itself may be viewed as a threat by other powers - if the Federation's eyes are not directed towards the Neutral Zone they may well start to focus on what is happening in the gardens of their other neighbours who for some time have escaped close scrutiny."
Darson gave a small noise of something along the lines of agreement as he began to see where she was going with this, “That is also true. And let me tell you that we of the Federation are grateful for your assistance, and under ordinary circumstances would be very receptive to establish a more cordial relationship. Although you must understand that owing to the recent spate of attacks and whatnot, we currently have a very volatile political landscape. Polls of civilians onboard the station show heightened levels of xenophobia, stress, paranoia…almost as if whatever is afflicting Commander Gabriel got into the water supply. And so we must watch everyone despite what we want. But, if we had to watch somebody in particular, who exactly did you have in mind?”
Isha placed the chair firmly on the floor, the actual floor, then sat on it and laid her late husband's sword across her knees. "Look towards Cardassia," she suggested as she digested what he had told her of recent opinion on the station.
Darson gave an uncharacteristic snort of disgust and said darkly, “Cardassia. Ignorant cretins. And that Vikar Gul Therak Getal …him and his embassy, deceiving the station’s eyes by acting like a tame cat. I know he has something planned, but I haven’t had the occasion to infiltrate his ranks yet.”
“Of course he has,” Isha agreed, “and it is the opinion of the Stelam Shiar that the simplest way to find out what it is is to go along with it, of course as it is cardassian nature to scheme and double-cross, its in the blood, I think. We have an opportunity here, Darson, unlike you I have someone on the inside and I can provide quite enough information for you to be able to move against them.”
Darson shook his head curtly, “I’m telling you my dear Isha, while I would love to go up against Therak, and crush him…firebomb his pathetic embassy until it is naught but ash…I cannot. At least, not yet. But I can promise you that I will pay very close attention to him. But…this also brings to the fore exactly why you wanted to speak with me…you said earlier that somebody thought we should speak…what did you mean by that?
Isha raised an eyebrow, “I had assumed it was someone of yours – but apparently not. There is someone in my embassy who has their own agenda. I intend to find who it is and if their agenda conflicts with my own I will have them removed.” isha paused, “at least I will not have you complaining at my door when I have this rodent flushed out,” she continued, if he was being truthful about not knowing of the mysterious informant who had told Isha that Darson was here. They informed me that you were in here,” she told him.
Darson gave a noise of displeasure, “Somebody who knew I was here? Hmmm…That is odd. I’m fairly certain that I took every precaution in getting in here…” he trailed off as he cocked his head to the side in thought, “Ah,” he said as if he had just grasped some secret, “I’ll trust you’ll look into it my dear.” He said in a voice that communicated a lack of concern…though what he was not concerned with was a mystery.
Isha sighed sharply, "Didn't I just say I would," she said frustrated as usual at his overly theatrical manner. Darson would also have to take greater precautions in the future if he planned to visit again, this area was not public property.
He suddenly fell from the ceiling, doing a flip in midair and landing quietly on the floor below. He raised up slowly and moved towards Isha. He reached her and gently grasped her hands, guiding her up from the chair. His faceless mask gazed at her and he said in an odd tone, or at the very least odder than usual. It was a tone that alluded to knowledge beyond what was present, “You know Isha…in the horrifically unlikely event that you are ever left with nowhere to go…remember that I will always be there for you.”
"When Breen melts ..." Isha replied, or perhaps when you take off that damned mask, she thought, but it was one she did not voice. "... and when Vulcan freezes, Colonel Darson," she said, dimly aware that she really should protest at him continuing to hold her hands whilst talking to her in this quasi-romantic manner. "That is when I will need you."
“Sooner than you might think,” Darson thought, but then brought himself out of that funk. Continuing what Isha had assumed to be a joke to cover for his lapse, he released her hands, knelt to the ground on one knee and pulled out a small black case from his cloak, offering it to her in the style of a Terran marriage proposal, “I trust you remember this?” he said jovially as he opened the case to reveal the silver ring with a green stone that housed a secure transmitter, used way back when he had negotiated with her for Iawaiin’s release.
Isha tilted her head to one side. She recognised it but did not recall having returned the ring to Darson. "What happened to her?" Isha asked recalling the woman who Rh'vaurek had thoroughly beaten and no doubt tortured before Isha had chosen to trade her for information. "Rh'vaurek had been looking for a double agent for such a long time ... was it her? The evidence said as much, though one cannot always trust evidence, not if it is intended to elicit particular behaviour."
Darson lowered the ring and said in a somber tone, “After the events of the Romulan attack a little while ago, she was taken into custody. I had her transferred and have dealt with her accordingly. You would do well not to dwell on such matters Isha. Nothing good can come of it. As for the double agent…I can’t confirm or deny that. Not because I don’t want to tell you, but because I really don’t have enough evidence to draw an accurate conclusion. But that information will appear in time, and when it does I will be sure to pass it along.”
"I'm sure that you will," Isha replied, unconvinced.
Darson stood up and gently took Isha’s hand and slipped the ring on it. He placed his hands on her shoulders and turned her around so that she faced the door and away from him. Still behind her he said, “I must go…I’ve overstayed my welcome. Allow me to leave you with a couple of parting words though. I predict great trials ahead Isha…for Romulans, Humans…everybody on this station. The game is afoot in a most dangerous fashion, and I implore you to use caution in the future and watch your step. Battle lines are blurring, and you may find conflict has come to rest on your doorstep.”
He released her and backed away into the shadows, “And don’t worry about the room…I’ll get it fixed. Eventually,” and with that parting promise, he vanished.
OFF