Special Projects: Behind The Scenes

[Sjet]

Svetlana Nemarov spent a few moments longer looking out of the picture window at the view. From the office’s high vantage point she could see the Eiffel Tower, the Seine River with its bank hugging war memorial. And directly across that same river she could see the office of the President of the United Federation of Planets. She held out her hand, placing her thumb over the gently upward curving form of that building, blocking it out entirely.

With just a single digit Svetlana had statically improved the intelligence of the entire Federation.

She turned and regard her office, a humble working persons cube where serious work was completed. There was no Ego Wall of holograms and memorabilia of her shaking hands with politicians and celebrities, there were no ostentatious displays of status and wealth. One wall was home to a hourly updated map of Federation space, whilst the other wall festooned with shelves and racks of electronic media and hard copy binders. If any one walked in they might think Miss Nemarov, a middle aged white haired native of New Stalingrad who had spent the last twenty years buried in the administration of a galactic superpower, was the department head for time keeping or cartographic trademarks.

In reality, next to the Commander in Chief of Starfleet, she was the forth most influential soul in the Federation. But that befitted the Director of Starfleet Special Projects. Or as she was known at the office club, the Anti Matter Bitch.

She glanced at her desk again as the incoming call light flickered in time with the droning buzz. From the displays caller ID and priority flag it wasn’t life threatening, but people who called her directly did so knowing her time was better spent doing useful things so they'd better be bleeding out. She reached out and tapped the screen, turning back to the wall to ceiling window as it suddenly darkened. Then with a flash of colour and then another room materialised on the other side of the glass, as though somehow it had been built there in a last few seconds. It was a hotel suite, all soft corners and fine upholstery done up in deep reds and threaded gold. From the one window visible to her in the other room, the peach coloured landscape of a desert world rolled beyond.

The Mariner Valley Hilton, Mars.

Hiro Tamada stepped in from a side door of the room beyond her window, the offices communication suites doing a admirable job of projecting the holographic display correctly. In the short, barrel chested mans hands he carried a call of something amber with a large ball of ice in it.

“I hope you don’t mind?” he said, holding up the drink “But I didn’t know how long I’d be left waiting.”

“I don’t mind if you picke your fucking liver on my dime.” Svetlana said in English only lightly brushed with her Russian ancestry. She pointed a hand back at her screen and its blinking priority flag “You call me from Mars with a urgent message, and I find you raiding the wet bar.”

“After the day I have had, trust me this is needed.” Hiro said, sipping from the scotch and smiling boradly in that way that let him learn dirty secrets. Back in the day Hiro, then Commander Tamada Starfleet inteligence, had gone by the nickname of The Spouge. This was mostly down to his lead lined liver, and the fact people just liked talking to a drinking buddy with a easy smile. Sailors in port after deployment, rebels returning to home from a raid, and lovers in the glow of their affairs all seemed more than willing to unburden themselves before the short man from Tokyo. A man who was her second in command at Special Projects.

“So…how is the Bobble Head?” Svetlana said, knowing there was going to be some give and take in this conversation before anything important happened. Mentally she took the time to count how many trouble spots were in or around the Federation as of that morning, and stopped counting when she ran out of individual bones to count them against. On the windows holographic display Hiro winced.

“I wish you wouldn’t call him that.” he said, putting the glass down on a heavy wooden desk that looked hand made. These days hand made was just another word for ludicrous expense and decadence: look at me, I have more money than common sense and can afford to purchase someones time to make something shiny.

“What? Call him a fucking Bobble Head?” Svetlana brushed the comment aside “I call him that to his face and he just laughs at me like I'm a god damn Risian comic.”

“Thats because the Vice President of the Federation thinks you're joking.” Hiro said flatly.

“Thus why he’s a Bobble Head. People like him, he speaks idiot fluently: that means 80% of the Federation understands the shit coming out of his mouth better than English. And he keeps peoples attention away from every political crisis we’ve had in this election cycle. Even if we’d had the bastard vat grown and engineered to be the perfect empty minded figurehead on the 2376 election ticket, we'd have never gotten close.” she shrugged “He was a perfect find in a field full of shit.”

“You…have such a way with words.” Hrio said, the subspace com channel removing any lag from Earth to Mars so that his smile was instantly visible “How did such a delicate flower become Starfleets bagman?”

“Bagwoman you sexist prick.” she said without heat, crossing her arms over her chest and narrowing her own eyes “So…this is the part where I ask you how your doing? How is Earth's retarded sister planet?”

“Mars is still Mars.” Hiro shrugged, gesturing to the hotel room “It looks pretty on the surface, but its still the waste paper bin of the Solar System. It didn’t help that Earth used it as a dissident colony during its pre-warp days, sending every political rabble rouser and religious zealot that wanted off the bus. Throw in the fact its cheaper to mine asteroids for raw materials for ship building than ferrying them up the gravity well from Mars to Utopia Plaitia. Even transporters don’t quite make up the short fall. So Mars gets used as a useful anchorage for the largest ship yard in the Federation, whilst the actual planet is a seething mix of failed city states and slums.”

“That explains why the Bobble Head is there.” Sventlana nodded to herself “He’s walking among 'his' people?”

“And giving his security detail a standing fit. Have you ever seen a Starfleet Marine have a seizure whilst wearing full combat rigging? Its a fun sight, and something to see once in a life time. Its like watching a blender try to blend itself. The Marines can’t quite figure out if they are protecting him from the masses or being set upon by a siege of pamphlets and religious fuzzy wuzzies.” Hiro frowned “Not to mention some kids from the Hebe Dome stole my wallet.”

“And thats why your calling me? About your goddamn wallet?”

“No. I received a note from our source inside The Shoal. He’s found the away team Santra sent out to the Bazaar.” Hrio said, before adding gravely “He promises to send me a full report once his phaser burns are healed.”

What Svetlana said after that was not fit to be repeated.

“At least its a known quantity.” Hiro said in a measured tone “This is just people fighting people. Its our bread and butter.”

“So was the Romulan Earth War.” Svetlana groused, before gesturing to the shelves of binders “I have literally a metric ton of material, both political and strategic, on the Federation response to renewed hostilities from The Dominion. I have reams of data from Starfleet’s Design Board concerning the next generation of Borg Buster technologies rolling out of Antares and Utopia. Not to mention a standing invitation to the commissioning ceremony for the new Summit class super carriers launching next month. And do you know what I have concerning The Shoal? I have a three page binder in my top desk draw next to a bottle of real Scottish whisky. The first line of that binders contents reads as follows: Step One, find God.”

“I didn’t take you for the religious type.”

“Your fucking right. But what The Shoal has already shown us scared the crap out of me. Missing colonies, strange disruptions in space time that don’t even fit our my outrageous experimental models. Strange ship sightings, and thats if the poor bastards are able to send off a warning. There’s a reason the 6th and 2nd Fleets are stationed so close to that area of space. Sure we can claim one is guarding the wormhole at Bajor, and the other is keeping the peace around the Cardassin Union…but thats only because out right invading the Shoal and burning it from the stars would be beyond even the Bobble Heads ability to talk our way out of.” Svetlana sighed “But its on the second page of that binder as item two.”

“Do I want to know whats on page three?” Hiro asked.

“The same thing we used last time, and look how that fucked things up. Its why that bitch Ryler is in the Shoal, she has experience with the device and its operation. Worst comes to worse the weapon can be shipped out to the Starbase 42 and she can do what she did last time. Only this time get it fucking right.” now she was angry, fumming, and need to vent something of a her spleen at her subordinate “So when you get reports from your assets in The Shoal and you play it off as no big deal, don’t. Don’t joke about what goes on in that shit hole. We reactivated that Starbase under the banner of bringing the glorious light of the Federation to one of its darkest corners. They're a fucking canary in a coal shaft, and they’ll be the first one the Shoal Builder’s roll over when they come back.”

“You mean…if they come back, surely? There was only one, and even the Starfleet ships involved in the operation had no idea what they were facing. We’re the only ones.”

“No. No you don’t poke the devil in the eye and expect him to be a good sport about it. They’ll be back. Thats why we sent Santra: he’s a monster, what better antidote for fighting them? You should have seen him strutting about the collected wreckage of that Borg Cube from the Battle Sector 001. Fucker had a hard on three meters long. He gets off on it the sick bastard.” she shrugged, as though in her line of work that sort of enthusiasm for genocide and horror was common place “He’s a sociopath, plain and simple. The other officers are their to keep up the illusion we’re taking the Shoal seriously as a socio-political entity. Santra’s there to play with the petri dish, try and coax something terrifyingly useful out of it. He I can trust because I know a sharks motivations, but that idiot Sjet? P’Trell and the others?”

She stepped up to the window, tapping the glass firmly with one finger.

“Do not underestimate their ability to fuck shit up. The Shoal is a disaster, and we sent only the idiots who didn’t know better than to stay out.” she thinned her lips, and nodded to her self “Have your contact’s communication protocols sent to my office. I want him to talking to me now, directly. No offence Hiro but you know me, I don’t trust any one else to deal with The Shoal.”

“Someone else might screw it up?” he said tiredly, but in good humour.

“Fucking right. Now go, enjoy the wet bar and keep an eye on the Bobble Head for me? Getting shivved by a Martian Rust Rat would be bad copy in the morning news feeds.” she then waved a hand, the gesture picked up by her terminal and the display vanished to bathe her in the sunlight of a Parisian afternoon. She spent an few minutes looking out at the idealised city space, the old and new buildings meshing beautifully together into a seamless whole.

This, she thought, was a world worth fighting for. Worth killing for.

Damn she wished tobacco hadn’t gone extinct on Earth.