LtCmdr T'Lea - The Gain Of Time, Part 2
doggybunbun
((OOC: Last time on USS Juneau… LtCmdr T'Lea - The Gain Of Time, Part 1 (google.com) ))
((Lightside Station – The Hollows, Continued…))
Medic 2: Hey, you can’t leave! What ab—ack ::cough:: What about the fight?
He stopped and watched her continue on. She was headed out of the Hollows. Now that he knew that she wasn’t coming back he suddenly became very brave and forcefully barked after her.
Medic 2: The Syndicate won’t stand for this! They’ll come for you! You owe them a fight!
Gone. Just like that, The Raging Romulan was gone.
((Shortly Later))
((USS Juneau – Science Lab 3))
There was a great deal of effort that went into preparing for a fight, both mentally and physically. It took training, discipline, sacrifice, strength and endurance, and for T’Lea it also required isolation.
This was the first time she’d been back on board the Juneau in several days. She’d not seen any of her crewmates or friends thus far, nor did she want to. She knew Indobri would remove her from duty, and then alert the Captain to the situation, or T’Lea would give up the fight and make at least one of the Doctor’s dreams come true. And that was something she could not let happen with anyone, not when she still had time to execute her plan. So she avoided, evaded, and hid-out in a rented suite on Lightside station.
The past week had been spent alone, exercising her demons in the Blood Bowl and recovering from the fights with the help of modern, albeit slightly suspect, medical aid. Aside from her well-earned injuries she was in peak form. While she’d never been out-of-shape, her recent activities had turned her body into a female fortress, carved out of solid lean muscle. The fights had not only strengthened her physically, but the inner-battle had helped to fortify her mental prowess, which made it easier to resist, and suppress the raging hormonal assault on her Vulcan sensibility. Honestly, if this was not a lost cause she was certain that she could reach the apex status of physical and mental conditioning for a Romulan-Vulcan hybrid. She could become the best of both worlds instead of the way she’d always felt – that she belonged to neither.
But that didn’t matter.
If things went according to plan no one would ever know what she’d been up to in the Hollows. Hopefully, all her hard work was about to pay off.
She may not have been rupturing someone’s kidney, or bashing her knee into someone’s nose at this very moment, but she was definitely wrestling with patience. The crystal was undergoing a forensic soil analysis to determine where it had originated from. And the data chip was being translated by the computer. Both were taking far too long for T’Lea’s short temper, but neither was taking longer than normal.
BEEP!
There it was on screen, the soil report. She would have ran to the console had she not been hovering over it already. Sediment on the crystal had been determined to be unique due to chemical alterations made by outside influences. That coincided with the color compound of the soil, which had undergone a leeching process through contact with foreign metals. Peds were also detected in the structure of the soil, which meant cementing agents were there as well.
Now that she had a detailed analysis of the soil, T’Lea could try to match it to a planet, and she had just the group of rocks in mind to start with. She plugged in the collection of scans acquired from the cargo company on Lightside station, the very same company she had bought the shipping lane maps from, which had also correlated to the Cardassian star chart. It turned out that the cargo company had done extensive surveys of those planets when they were looking for valuable mineral deposits. With that information in play, along with the star chart she and R’Kala had unscrambled she was certain there would be a connection.
All these clues were pointing her somewhere. Of that she was certain.
While the computer ran that new set of search parameters, the encryption on the data chip revealed its hidden gem. A message.
T’Lea popped the chip into the computer for playback. The image of a Bajoran woman appeared on screen. She was pleasant in appearance, but had a certain edge that said, “not to be frelled with”. Most freighter captains had that aura. It came with the job.
Valar Enar: If you’re as smart as they say you are you will be able to confirm the location of the crystal and know that I am not lying. Go to Phorth alone. Once there enter the outpost and activate the crystal. Wait for Dal Selta. If anyone is with you she will not come. If a ship is detected in the vicinity she will not come.
The message ended at the exact same moment the computer found a match for the sediment on the Iconian crystal.
T’Lea: Phorth.
The muscles in her jaw tensed but missed a smile. This was it. This was the moment she had been preparing for.
She grabbed the crystal and the data chip and left.
TBC in PART 3
Lieutenant Commander T’Lea
First Officer
USS Juneau
Author ID I238301T10