[B-Plot] When The Bough Breaks, Part III
Posted on Fri Aug 25th, 2023 @ 6:59pm by Taran Willeg & Rear Admiral Yoshi Minawara & Isabella Cerin
Mission:
Shakedown Shake-Up
1754 words - 3.5 OF Standard Post Measure
SS Qeylis pos’nahlet
B'rel-class Bird of Prey
Vicinity of the McAllister Nebula
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The young boy was shoved into spartan, unfamiliar confines.
As he turned to look back at the dark amazon towering over him, the Klingon woman spoke curtly. “Bathe,” she commanded, as the boy’s eyes panned to look back over the alien interior.
This was a Klingon... bathroom?
“These should fit you,” he heard his mother speak, finding her hand motioning to a pile of what looked like leather and metal.
“When you have finished, find me,” Jeg’ah uttered flatly. A hand reached out, taking hold of the boy’s face and turning it so that he looked up as she added, “Do not make me find you.”
With that, the woman turned and left.
As she moved through the ship, people moved to clear a path, until a pair of heavy doors parted to reveal the bridge.
Her voice echoed as she barked, “qaStaH nuq?”
A warrior at the weapon station raised his eyes to meet hers. “A Federation ship has dropped out of warp and is conducting scans on the far side of the anomaly. They do not appear to have detected us.”
“maj,” Jeg’ah growled in approval.
The helmsman turned to regard her. “There are several warp signatures in the adjacent systems,” the Klingon stated. “We are hunted.”
“Humans make poor warriors,” the woman noted flatly, adding, “And even more incompetent predators.”
Her silence lingered, as she held the helmsman’s gaze, as though inviting him to challenge her. When he turned back to his station, she gave another look around the bridge before commanding, “Inform me if there is a change in the Starfleet vessel.”
Exiting the bridge, the woman passed to the communal hall that ran amidships. Grabbing a plate, she slapped a serving of rokeg blood pie and then seized a handful of gagh to accompany it.
Setting the plate aside, she had picked up a flagon of bloodwine for herself and a mug of water when the small boy stumbled out.
Taran fidgeted, obviously uncomfortable as he tugged at the leather tunic that adorned his small frame. He had the face of a Klingon. But the body of a Betazoid.
Still, it was an improvement. "There now. You look like a little warrior," Jeg’ah uttered.
"And you can dress a targ in armor, but it still can't hold a bat'leth," a warrior blurt out, sending a round of laughter echoing through the ship.
A look from Jeg’ah silenced them.
“Come,” the woman commanded, taking her place at the head of the table and motioning for him to take a seat. With a nod to the plate she had prepared, she said only, “Eat.”
Wordless, the child was hesitant as he approached the table. On edge. Frightened, yet even more afraid of what might happen were he not to obey.
The food before him was like something from a nightmare. As he gazed down at it, he felt the blood start to drain from his face.
A gruff laugh was punctuated by a grizzled Klingon barking, "Perhaps he would prefer a hunk of dead meat and a mug of root beer."
Jeg’ah raised her eyes, quelling the laughter before it could begin. Turning her attention down to the boy, the woman said flatly, “I’m afraid we do not have luxury of Federation replicators.” And, in case her meaning was not clear, the woman added, “You will eat what you are given.”
The boy’s eyes were wide as he stared at the plate, then up at Jeg’ah, then back to the plate.
While Taran grappled with the gastronomic dilemma, the woman remarked, “When you have finished, I have a task for you.”
Taran’s head came back up, but instead of being wide with terror, now his eyes narrowed with a newfound understanding.
She wanted something from him.
The answer was only too apparent. “Who’s Druxom Jahn?” the boy blurted aloud.
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ESQUIMALT STATION
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“The ship’s called the Qeylis pos’nahlet.”
Haggard, Caedan Willeg seemed rattled by the news, but recovered quickly. Almost reassured when they had played back the sequence of events and he saw the bird-of-prey that had appeared in the scant minutes in which the kidnapping had taken place.
Glancing up for the pool table, the Betazoid explained, “Roughly translated, it’s Kahless’ left..." the man began, before trailing off as his eyes scanned the room. Everyone here was professional, so he didn’t want to be crude. “...gonad,” he supplied finally, settling on that as a less offensive term than what Jeg’ah might have otherwise intended.
Or, very explicitly intended.
With that in mind, the Betazoid man gave a slight nod of his head as he added, “Which, probably tells you everything you need to know about Jeg’ah.”
“That’s the captain?” Davisson asked, speaking up from across the table.
“And Taran’s mother,” Caedan confirmed.
“You don’t seem particularly concerned,” Captain Penner said, their eyes looking at the display. The way they studied it belayed their previous tactical training, some part of their brain immediately looking for a weakness.
Running a hand through his hair, the man seemed to think about that question for a moment. “Jeg’ah’s dangerous, but she’s never been interested in harming either of us,” he supplied in answer finally, glancing back up as he said, “In fact, what I sensed when she left Taran with me was that – at that time anyway – she was doing it to protect him.”
"I suspect then there is more to this than a simple desire for family reunion," Yoshi said, crossing his arms as he studied the information being fed back. "And also explains why there was an immediate cover story, this information seems well calculated and planned, coordinated even. I already have information back from the Caelian, they have a rough idea of where the ship slipped off too, and have narrowed their search. Nothing so far, but to have slipped past three Pathfinder-classes seems unlikely. So we have a sector to scan. Anything else you can tell us?"
"Family reunion, definitely not," Caedan remarked with a nod toward the admiral. "When Jeg'ah pops up, its because she needs something. Usually its something repaired, but I got snatched from shore leave once because she wanted a Betazoid to monitor a transaction she conducted with a Tellarite freighter -- to be certain her contact wasn't cheating her," the engineer recalled. Then with a shrug, added, "The fact that she took Taran and not me would suggest she that whatever she's up to this time, she needs a telepath."
A lot of the questions Izzy was most keen on asking concerning the nature of the web between Willeg, the mother of his child, and House of Konjah would have disrupted the flow of the most urgent and initial inquiries, so she'd mostly kept quiet till now; but understanding motive was going to potentially be key to everyone's response at this point. "If you've served that role in the past; why do you think she took your son this time, instead of you?"
"I'm marginal at best. More empathic than telepathic. To another Betazoid, I come across like I'm murmuring," Caedan remarked evenly, before explaining, "Taran is on the other end of that spectrum. For someone like me, he can be overpowering."
"When was the last time you had contact with Jeg'ah before this?" Izzy mused, aware that depending on the answer it might be one the man didn't want to answer, but would be important in placing the expiration date of any information he'd given them. Since it was his child potentially in danger, she was hoping he'd answer it truthfully anyways regardless of what the answer was. "And anything you can tell us about her state of mind or such at the time? Klingon records - " 'Klingon records' in this case somewhat being a euphemism for 'information our embassy staff got orally from their local contacts and gave to me' " - seem to indicate she has a rather adversarial relationship with her own house?"
"The last time was the shore leave incident," Caedan recalled aloud. "It was maybe a year or so before I joined the Vesta. I think Taran might have been four or five... so it's probably been five or so years. When I tried to contact Jeg'ah more recently, I was told that she'd been disowned by the House of Konjah."
With a shrug, the man answered, "Which, wasn't terribly surprising. In all my interactions with her, I got the impression that Jeg'ah's rebelling against whatever it is that her House stands for."
The House of Konjah stands a good deal of the time for anti-Federation stances, so...interesting, thought Izzy. "Do you know of anywhere she might go, now? Or anyone she'd had contact with in the past that we might contact or observe to attempt to track her? Or, if you have been on her ship in the past; perhaps something unique about it, that might help someone lock onto or trace it?" The first two questions were perhaps typical for a diplomat; the last one was not, but was more an outgrowth of Izzy's mild amount of technical knowledge from growing up on Luna.
"I was never around long enough to learn much about her," Caedan said with a shake of his head. "Jeg'ah is very transactional. People either have something she wants, or they don't. As for the ship, it's an older bird-of-prey. Has a faulty plasma coil design, but its not really a critical component of the design."
"Maybe we're coming at this from the wrong angle," Davisson remarked. "Starfleet Security posted a bulletin a week or so ago, regarding a skirmish between Orions and a Klingon bird-of-prey."
It was a long shot. But it seemed the only possibly credible lead that they had left.
"I didn't pay much attention to it then, but I'd like to see if I can pull it up. Maybe compare our scans of this ship against whatever Starfleet Security has on the incident."
