Dinner with the Prosecution (Part 2)

Posted on 11/15/2020 @ 11:15am by Captain Cian D'Anvers
Edited on on 11/20/2020 @ 5:17pm

Mission: S3E1: Time of Change
Location: The Earle, Earth
Timeline: Day 79 at 1615

Before

"Would you care for an appetizer, ma'am," the waitress asked. She was slender with a mop of curly red hair pulled up into the semblance of a neat bun, artfully arranged so that tendrils escaped confinement and framed her heart-shaped face. At the age of nineteen, she'd been working long enough to know that you did what you could to increase the amount of the check.

Alex knew that the waitress was doing her job but she wanted to hear Cian's story. She retained her calm and said, "How about the risotto croquettes?"

The waitress made a note on her pad and turned toward Cian. "And you, Sir?"

"That will be fine," he said as he took another sip of water and set the glass down in almost exactly the same place.

She turned back toward Alex and asked, "would you like the wine now or with dinner?"

... And Now

I think I'm going to need two drinks soon. Pleasantly, however, Alex said, "Now would be fine. Thank you." She smiled over at Cian and waited for the waitress to leave.

Amused, Cian watched her bounce away as he said, "My old captain had a yeoman like that. Never just the one question with him. Always what seemed like a hundred." He chuckled softly. "Want to stuff him in a cargo hold for a month but you just couldn't, you know?"

First, a smirk crossed Alex's face. The smirk turned to a smile, which then turned into amused laughter. Her bronze hair fell forward and then swished back as she bent her head forward and back. Pulling herself together, she replied with a smile on her face and in her voice, "Thank you for saying that. I thought it was just me. I know that is part of her job but I would have thought she could take some liberties. Use her own judgment, right?"

"Its called initiative. Not sure the concept even exists in the restaurant industry," Cian mused. He quieted almost immediately as the waitress returned with a large tray. She set out glasses, plates, silverware, and napkins then placed the appetizer in the center of the table. She left and was back before Cian could draw breath to speak to open the wine bottle and pour them both a glass before setting the bottle down. "Enjoy," she said as she hurried off to a larger group that had just come in, her face wreathed in smiles, to welcome the group. "Though I'm by no means an expert. My first job was Starfleet."

"I've not been out of it myself," Alex admitted, scooping two risotto pieces onto a smaller plate and placing it before her. "I worked to be the best at what I do and really have not spent much time doing much else, career wise. I'm not sure what more I have to do unless I want a desk job. I think I would be bored though. Can't imagine leaving the courtroom." She shrugged lightly and then smiled. "How about you? Planning on heading to admiralty some day?" With that, she put her fork in a piece of risotto and placed it in her mouth while waiting for an answer.

"Now there's question," Cian said as he moved one of the pieces onto his own plate and cut it neatly into pieces while he thought about his answer. "After having fought with them so many times over the years, I think it would feel a bit like going over to the enemy." He flashed a grin and then forked up a bite of the appetizer. "Mmm. You know that's not bad. Not bad at all."

Beaming at Cian's approval of the food, she replied simply, "I am glad that you are enjoying it." Alex did not give him much time to think about it when she returned to the original topic, "Going over to the enemy? Interesting analogy since said enemy gives you orders on what to do," Alex observed taking another forkful of the appetizer. She paused while she chewed her food and swallowed. She did not chew slowly or daintily but like a woman who knew how to get to the essence of something. "Not that I have a say, but would not the going into admiralty give you the opportunity to change the things you don't like?"

"Think of it this way," Cian said. "You're good at your job and that draws the attention of your superiors who want to reward your good work. So, they promote you into a different job. You're no longer doing the things you were good at and maybe you get good at this new job but then again, maybe your don't. Still, there's no going back, is there?" He paused a moment to finish off his share of the appetizer and take a sip of wine before continuing. "I haven't disagreed on matters of policy, more in the way that some like to throw their weight around? I think that's the idiom. So no, not ready to move up into the admiralty. I like the job I'm doing. I like being out there. There is nothing like waking up in the morning to a view you've never seen before ... that no one has ever seen before."

"I can only imagine what that must be like," Alex replied somewhat dreamily, taking a sip of her wine. "But, not much of a need for lawyers in space...." She chuckled lightly at herself. "So, do you have a wife? Kids?"

"No," Cian said. "I was married but died." He paused for a sip of wine and then added, his head cocked slightly to one side. "How about you? Husband? Children?"

I'm surprised he did not hear me earlier when I said that kids may or may not be in my future. Is he distracted? Perhaps. It could be the funeral. "Neither," she responded shaking her head. She reached to grab another appetizer to put on her plate. "So, what was your wife like? How'd she pass, presumably so young?"

He pushed the plate forward and settled back with his glass of wine. "Sorry. I spent the afternoon with the Boudreaux family. They asked me to be pall bearer at what, I discovered, is called a jazz funeral. Henri was a good man and he didn't deserve to die the way he did. I kept feeling as though I should apologize to them all." He sighed and mentally pushed away the memories as well as the nagging feeling that he was being interrogated. More like its just been ages since I did anything in a remotely social setting.

"Leonie and I were ... friends. My first friend after I was brought to Earth and placed with a family. She wanted to be a doctor, travel the stars. For the longest while it was like I was always behind. Trying to understand the culture, the language, the idioms." He shook his head slightly, muttering a soft groan, and then flashed a wry smile. "They're still hard. The idioms. Okay, where was I? I finally caught up to her vision though I didn't have the temperament to be a doctor. We married too young and didn't realize that we were better off as friends. Still, she helped me through some difficult times and I owed her. She didn't want to attend Starfleet Academy so she traveled with me and served in a civilian capacity. Worked well enough, I suppose. She was fierce, in her own way. A complete pacifist but not someone you'd want to cross. Very open-minded. I liked that about her a lot. She didn't have an answer for everything; she listened and thought about things first. She was a little older than me and that bugged her. My people don't show their age the way humans do. She was a good friend. My first."

"I apologize but I did not research your history. I was not aware that you were not human. Can you tell me about your species?" Alex took another sip of her wine, finding herself very interested in Cian's story.

"I'm Syndari and that's a long story but I'll try to give you the essentials," he said though going back into that time was not easy, not even all these years later. "My home world, Syndar Prime was already in decline by the time I came around. Its a caste system with me at the bottom. I was born and branded a serf and left to die when they all departed in the ships."

"So how did you get off, get in Starfleet, and work your way up to be a Captain?" Alex asked with a tone of curiosity and awe.

"They left most of the serfs behind when they fled," Cian said quietly. "On a dying world. There was sickness. I had to bury my parents. In the end, I get rescued and brought to Earth at the age of eleven. All of a sudden, I wasn't property any more. I had a lot to learn. I was fostered and went to the Academy. Worked hard, studied harder. Caught up."

Just by listening, Alex knew there was a lot that Cian left out. Perhaps one day she might learn those things but this was a first meeting. There was no need to dwell on them now. "So, you're determined, then? An admirable quality." She relaxed into the cushions a little. Was it the wine or just being comfortable with Cian? Alex did not consider it for the moment, taking another sip of the wine, leaving behind a little lipstick on the glass. "Why don't you tell me about your last mission? What were you doing out there?"

With typical bad-timing, the waitress arrived to clear the dishes and serve their meal. Cian waited until she'd departed again before he continued. They were, after all, getting to the heart of the matter. "It starts with Skunil. The colonists there wanted to settle on a frontier world, beyond the borders of Federation space. It had been surveyed and found suitable, even tagged with a Pergium deposit, that becomes significant later. No one had heard from them but that's what colonists do, isn't it? Anyway, we were sent to check in on them."

Alex stared at the waitress who arrived with the food. She must have gotten the hint because she barely uttered, "Enjoy your meal" before she scooted away. She gave an apologetic half-smile at Cian before he paused to start his story. "I don't know that not hearing from colonists is something that is normally done but I am not one. How long had contact been broken that required a check up?"

"Several months," Cian said. "Its mutually beneficial, the reporting in part. They can ask for help if they need it and the Federation keeps track of new worlds that may or may not become part of the Federation. How that all works out is a bit beyond my pay grade especially now that the Sheliak are involved."

Alex nodded attentively. "Go on," she encouraged, not taking notice of her food at this time.

"We went and discovered they were gone. Most of the men had been murdered; we found a mass grave in the center of the settlement. The rest were gone. So, we started investigating." He sighed quietly. "The colonists had decided they wanted to be independent of the Federation, I guess. They hired some people to teach them what they needed to know to mine the Pergium themselves and well, it didn't go well."

"What exactly happened?" Alex asked, encouraging the story to continue to be told.

"There were some problems and the colonists decided to break the agreement. Needless to say, that didn't go over well. And as it turned out, they had a base on the moon orbiting Skunil. They weren't going anywhere. We discovered a Pergium trail leaving orbit and a second warp signature that we believed might have the remaining colonists, more than 400 of them. The Pergium led to a meeting with the Sheliak. Lieutenant Syndel was aboard as was the Master Chief, Henri Boudreaux. They were captured and brought to the auction house."

Cian stopped long enough to take a forkful of his meal and a ship of wine before continuing. "The auction house was run by an Orion matriarch named Tilaa and was used as way of selling off whatever they ... appropriated. Lieutenant Syndel was among the colonists who were being readied for sale. She and the Master Chief had been separated upon arrival. Our team found them and with that proof, the Crazy Horse and the Santiago moved in. Took several days to process everything. Tilaa is unaccounted for but we have Gilar, the one who orchestrated the murders on Skunil."

"The Chief was murdered by some sort of poison gas and according to their records he was too old to sell but there were those that would pay for his corpse. So the body was kept to be auctioned. The away team stunned the two guards in the vicinity. Syndel, after seeing the body, deliberately switched her phaser to kill and shot one of the unconscious guards."

Nodding her head, Alex understood. So, there was a motive. Revenge. "I see. What was Syndel like before this mission? What were your personal experiences with her?"

Cian thought for a moment. Really, he'd thought about this a lot during the trip back. "I hadn't dealt with her enough other than the routine to understand how she could have done what she did. My experience of her was that she was competent. Her actions on that station ... I really didn't see it coming, Alex. Who reacts that way?"

"Not anyone that belongs in a civilized society," Alex replied, her jaw tightening. She looked at her foot and decided that she would cut into it. She firmly stabbed her fork into the pastry and made a sharp, decisive cut. Her voice lightened, full of sympathy. "I'm sorry that you had to experience that on your ship." She put the bite into her mouth, chewed it thoughtfully and then swallowed. After taking a drink of water, she asked, "You do understand that this is not your failure, right?"

(to be continued)

Captain Cian D'Anvers
Commanding Officer
USS Crazy Horse

and

Lieutenant Commander Alex Rahmer
JAG - Attorney for the Prosecution