Chapter 5: Convergence
2407
It was a lonely position. A position filled with depressing work. Horrifying work. Classified work. I saw the way the rest of the crew looked at me. It was not unexpected, and I didn’t blame them. Spending most of your time with a Major of the Tal Shiar, working on a secret project… it tends to have that effect.
I knew the work was important. I knew that I was good at it. I knew that someone had to do it, for the sake of our people. If the cost was the whispers in the halls and in the lounge; if the cost was a few strange looks; if the cost was some trouble sleeping? So be it.
It was a surprise when she approached me.
Aurelia walks into the ship’s lounge and looks around, like she does three times a day. This time, though, the place is nearly empty. In the last booth, alone in the corner by the window, sits the crew’s most recent addition. A half-finished plate of viinerine and an untouched glass of Kali-fal sit on the endtable beside her. After watching the woman for a few seconds, Aurelia makes a decision. She walks over to the replicator and emerges with an unusual plate of food.
“Are you eating with anyone, Doctor? My team has, sadly, already been through.”
“No.”
The doctor barely looks in Aurelia’s direction as she answers, otherwise just staring out through the window. There’s nothing there, in particular, that she might be looking at. Just space. Aurelia pokes at her dish, as if arranging it on the plate. It’s not something that most on this ship would eat. It’s something… colonial.
“Want company? Eating alone is so boring.”
“If you’d like.”
The quiet woman motions vaguely to the opposite bench. She definitely takes a look at Aurelia’s choice of food, but doesn’t really react to it in any meaningful way. She does actually seem a bit taken aback by the Centurion’s nearly-friendly demeanor as she slips into the booth.
“I was thinking. If I’m going to see you at every… er, handoff, I should at least know your name.”
“… Kirina.”
“I’m Aurelia.”
Kirina’s response, and the use of her given name has a hint of innocence to it, in a strange sort of way; especially considering the source. Aurelia grabs her utensil, taking a bite of the odd food that’s only likely to be recognized by someone who grew up on Ralatak. Her attention turns towards Kirina’s unfinished plate.
“I find the viinerine on this ship… lacks something.”
“It’s replicated.”
“I can’t remember the last time I had real food. Maybe… three years ago? Before the Project?”
Kirina’s gaze out into the stars is broken as she looks down at her plate. She takes note of the stated length of time, in reference to the Project. Aurelia continues to eat, responding between bites of food as the doctor finally volunteers a morsel of information.
“That’s a long time … I was on Rator, before coming here. In Rihan. It’s been… quite the transition.”
“I’ve been there. Oh, that’s right, you took over from that other doctor. The one that got promoted.”
“Sent off to some cushy Chief of Medicine job, I heard. He must’ve been good. The Major is… not easy to please.”
“I wouldn’t know. We try to stay very far from the Major, in our department. …Is that what you want?”
Kirina is brought to a faint smile at the mention of her predecessor’s promotion, but that quickly fades as Aurelia directs the conversation to her work. She looks away, staring at some indeterminate point on the ground. The Intel Officer, in contrast, seems quite interested in her responses.
“What, a promotion? This was my promotion.”
“Really? Are you enjoying it?”
“It’s… a different sort of work.”
“Well, yes, it’s been different for me, as well. I think it’s different for all of us.”
“What is it that you do?”
Aurelia seems distracted for a moment, playing with her food. Considering her response.
“Oh! Signals Intelligence. Finding Federation targets, you know, in subspace.”
“Really?”
“You know… all of those… Federation targets we’ve found over the past few months.”
Aurelia actually still seems rather cheerful, for a Romulan. Totally conversational, as if this is perfectly normal casual dinner conversation. Still talking between bites of her meal. Kirina is the perfect contrast: distant, skeptical, feigning a Vulcanesque emotionlessness.
“Federation targets? I don’t know anything about… Federation targets.”
“Well, you know. Orders.”
“Orders?”
“I mean, I was put on this ship to track Federation targets. I’m good at that. That’s why I’m here. And you know, we’ve tracked so many lately.”
“That’s… very interesting.”
“Are you all right, Kirina?”
With that, the conversation changes. Kirina snaps out of her trance-like window-staring and looks directly at the Centurion. Her quiet, dry tone becomes sharp and defensive. In response, Aurelia looks even slightly offended. Her leisurely conversational inflection changes in response as well, now cool and purposeful.
“I’m just fine. It’s been a long day.”
“I just asked. Maybe I shouldn’t have. I understand.”
A pause.
“So tell me about Rator. Has much changed since I was there last? Three years ago?”
“It’s growing all the time.”
“Well, I’d imagine so. It’s the capital, isn’t it?”
As Aurelia finishes her plate and pushes it aside, she continues to prod with the tone of a dedicated Imperial. Kirina’s responses grow slower, more measured. She chooses her words meticulously, like she’s being tested.
“It’s been the capital for ages. I was there fourteen years, before the transfer.”
“I’ve only been there on and off, myself. But every time I dock, there’s a new building or a new statue or a new plaza. I don’t know; whenever I arrive home, it’s… new streets where I thought there were none, new ways to get places. I’m sure you know.”
“Like I said. It’s growing all the time.”
“Well. I’ve… got to be getting back to my duties.”
Aurelia stands, steps out of the booth. She takes a look around the room before turning back to the doctor.
“If you ever want to talk about your day, people tell me that I’m a good listener.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Jolan tru, Aurelia.”
Kirina manages to put on a small smile, for the Centurion’s benefit. Once she’s alone, she downs the glass of lukewarm Kali-fal and goes right back to gazing out into the void.
It was a short conversation at the end of a long day. A Centurion getting curious about my work, about The Project, no doubt. It was inconsequential. I thought it meant nothing. But… she was different than the others, somehow. There was something in her eyes.
2408
I assumed I’d never see her again. I was wrong. Every day, every meal, she’d return. She’d sit, and she’d talk, and she’d eat, and she’d ask questions. I was skeptical. I thought she was a test. But besides my work on The Project, I had nothing to hide. I didn’t tell her anything that she couldn’t have found out through other means. Where I’m from, what happened to my family, my favorite food. Triviality.
Her persistence was baffling. Days became weeks. Weeks became months. It became a routine. I’d even started to look forward to it, though I’d never have admitted it at the time. And certainly not to her. I didn’t ask for a friend. I didn’t want a friend. But, at the end of the day, it was nice to be able to sit and talk about something other than the work, even if only for a few minutes.
Then everything changed.
Kirina sits alone in her usual corner booth, idly poking at a plate of food sitting on the endtable. She’s at least a few minutes into her typical late afternoon pastime of staring out into space. Before too long, as she usually does, Aurelia makes her way across the lounge floor, pausing to greet people as she goes. Whether Kirina likes it or not, she puts her plate down and slides into the booth across from her.
“Jolan tru.”
“Jolan tru, Aurelia. I was beginning to think you weren’t coming today.”
Kirina doesn’t seem at all surprised as the Centurion once again joins her, uninvited. She continues staring out into the black. As Aurelia speaks, she seems to be having some trouble with her food. Apparently the familiar smell of a traditional dish from Artaleirh was enough to catch Kirina’s attention. She pulls herself away from the window for just long enough to point at Aurelia’s plate with her own utensil.
“The pickup went a little longer than normal. It happens, you know.”
“Other way. Problems?”
Aurelia looks from Kirina’s fork to her own dish, and then – Ah! Yes. She stabs the end, twirls, and it’s off to the races, dinner-wise. This earns her a slight smirk from Kirina as the quieter woman takes a rare bite of her own food. Aurelia opens her mouth to speak again, but pauses for a moment. She’s searching for words.
“No… No problems at all. This time we found the literature, the weapons, the tracts. This time.”
“That’s unusual?”
“The target was actually a Reunificationist rebel. … After all this time.”
“It’s a shame, that despite everything that’s happened, some are still capable of fighting amongst our own.”
“I wasn’t aware you actually had opinions.”
“Everyone has opinions.”
“Not on this ship, they don’t. But you know that.”
Aurelia calmly continues to eat as Kirina becomes the one forced to take a few seconds to process what’s been said and search for words. Finally, she repeats herself. It’s simultaneously softer and more confident.
“Everyone has opinions. Is it really that unusual to find the actual evidence with the terrorists?”
“Since you asked… yes, it is quite unusual. However, I’m sure the Commanders have a good reason for their interest in these people.”
“They’re violent people. Extremists, Saboteurs, Murderers. Only the farthest beyond help.”
Kirina’s response was a recited line, if there ever was such a thing. Aurelia sets her fork down on the table. Her voice is quieter than most anyone else’s in the room, although she still looks casually cool to the passing viewer. She fixes the smaller Romulan with a gaze.
“I think I know why you sit in this booth every day, Kirina.”
“I like the view.”
“It’s the same fvadt view anywhere else on the ship. There’s a broken camera here that… never really gets fixed.”
“Hadn’t noticed. What’s your point?”
“As far as I can tell, they’re all innocent. Every single one. Oh, maybe one of them talked to an evangelist… but they’re all innocent. They are not terrorists. They’re schlubs whose only crime was to live far enough from a transciever hub that they wouldn’t be missed.”
She holds that last breath, there, before letting it out, as if she’s sure it’s the last breath she will ever take. Before she’s even finished though, Kirina shakes her head and laughs.
“That’s ridiculous. There have been hundreds! …Exactly how much Kali-fal have you had today, anyway?”
“Yes, Kirina,” Aurelia says quietly, “There have been hundreds.”
Kirina shakes her head, growing less amused by the second, as she delivers yet another recited line. This one, though, with less certainty. Like she’s waiting for Aurelia to deliver a punchline to a bad joke, or to admit that she’s pulling some sort of prank.
“Come on, that’s enough. They were violent criminals. After you pick them up, they’re given a chance to… serve the Empire. That’s all there is to it.”
“They were violent criminals? Then how did I never see any- … why was there never any civil unrest when we arrived at a colony? We never logged more than, oh, fifteen illegal weapons, all accounted for. Farmers, terraforming engineers, beggars, look --We were told that this one killed a governor’s assistant on Abraxas. He never even made it off his own colony, let alone halfway across the sector.”
Aurelia unhooks her wristcomm, switches it over and passes it across the table. On it are pictures of Tafv Anikhev, with his family, at a park on his home colony. If Aurelia picked this set of pictures at random, she really hit the jackpot. Kirina mumbles the man’s name, long before she could have seen it listed anywhere in the file. She doesn’t even get through half the pictures before looking back up, pointedly.
“Where did you get this?”
“From his house. Back then, we took all the data we could for the so-called ‘trial.’ He was one of the first. I remembered him. I thought you might, too.”
Aurelia smirks as she straightens up, snatching the wristcomm back. When she looks across the way at Kirina, it’s with a very dangerous look. Kirina, in contrast, just goes back to staring out the window. After a prolonged silence, her voice is quiet. She speaks without turning her head.
“There was no trial.”
“… I didn’t think there was. I … I never saw them being offloaded at port.”
“Quite a risk you’re taking, starting this conversation. Some might even call it sympathizing.”
Aurelia lets out a quick laugh with her riposte. She’s watching Kirina with a challenging gaze, but there’s something behind it. She’s frightened. Her grip on her wristcomm is white-knuckled as she stops just short of clipping it back on. Kirina remains perfectly still. She’s slow to respond, and barely audible.
“The others are drinking together at the bar. You are sitting here.”
“Why tell me this?”
“Are you going to tell K’haeth? Might as well call him now, if you want to go down that road. But I’m… I’m gambling that you don’t.”
“…No. No, I’m not going to call K’haeth.”
“That’s why I told you, then. Because there’s something going on. Something that is just killing you.”
Several minutes pass in silence as Kirina blankly watches the stars. Aurelia sits like nothing is wrong. She leans forward, crossing her arms in her lap, acting like she’s just listening to a story – in case anyone is watching. But nobody is; Kirina is the quiet doctor and Aurelia is an unimportant intel-lackey. They eat together quite a bit, don’t they? Nothing is out of the ordinary in the lounge today.
“It’s not your fault, you know. You and me, we were just… we were lied to.”
“You don’t understand… They’re… “
”… What’s being done back there? Those people – they aren’t in the brig, they haven’t been put out at the station, they just… disappear. What’s going on?”
Kirina laughs. It’s an odd sort of laugh. The laugh of someone actively repressing the memory of the very same thing she’s describing. She speaks quickly, professionally, as if delivering a report, at least at first.
“After they’re dropped off, we administer a paralytic and connect them to a respirator. After that, we…” another short, strange, chuckle, "I perform a series of … ‘surgical experiments.’ Most don’t survive more than a half dozen procedures. The ones that do… probably wish they hadn’t. Once we- "
It’s not long before Aurelia begins to look… yellow. Sick. She places a hand up on the table when she’s heard enough.
“… and they told you that they were criminals…”
“Ones that were scheduled for execution anyway.”
Aurelia, now, looks out the window; out into the void that Kirina seems so fond of watching.
“… Did you know, Kirina, that I was told all my life that my parents were violent terrorists? And I believed that, for a long time. A very long time. After they were taken away, dragged up to a ship like this one.”
She averts her gaze from the outside, looking back at Kirina.
“They have been telling these sick lies for fifty years.”
There is a long period of silence, broken only by a tone of despair.
“What can be done?”
“I’ve run scenarios. Many scenarios.”
Aurelia lays her hand on her wrist-comm.
“One can’t do – one can do fvadt. Two, however…”
She looks back at Kirina.
“Two can accomplish quite a bit.”