The Art of Subtext (Part 12)

Posted on Fri Oct 31st, 2025 @ 12:52pm by Lieutenant Jean-Baptiste Dorsainvil & Commander Irene Seya

1,369 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: How to See in the Dark
Location: City of Lorna, Barisa Prime
Timeline: MD 02, 1725 Hours

The girls had returned.

Brionna entered first, her hair damp, the collar of her dress buttoned incorrectly. Zharia followed just a step behind, her eyes fixed on the table. The dining room was modest but well-kept--lace curtains, polished wood chairs, a vase of wildflowers that were beginning to wilt at the center of the table. It felt like the sort of place that was trying too hard to be ordinary--a living unit where nothing bad should happen, though it often did.

Kaurel stood by the stove, her apron without any stain, her face set in an expression that was neither cruelty nor overt kindness. She was simply caught in a years-long performance that she'd used to survive.

The two men were seated at the table. The one they referred to as Daddy had a hand draped over the back of his chair, thumb tapping on the wood. His suit was made of good fabric, but the cut hung poorly on him. The other man, the stranger, sat opposite him, his silver-fringed shirt and gold chains the only real ornaments to an otherwise ordinary body. His belly pressed into the table edge. He smiled but there was something sinister about it.

Zharia and Brionna stopped at the threshold.

Kaurel turned. "Come now, don't keep our guest waiting."

In the safe house, JB's jaw tightened. The light off Krin's screen reflected across JB's face making him appear ghostly. He could hear nothing--the audio still dead--but the scene itself was enough.

"Ng," he said quietly. "Can you patch through the auxiliary visual?" Give us a second angle from the street?"

Ng's fingers moved fast. "Trying. The building's shielding is bouncing the signal, but I'll--wait." He pointed. "Got it."

Another window popped open beside the main feed: the outside of the building, dark except for slight spill of light from the window. A shadow passed--one of the men moving.

Inside, Kaurel gestured toward the table again, voice firmer now. Zharia moved first, hands clasped before her. Brionna followed, her knees brushing the underside of the table as she seated herself.

The man in the silver fringed shirt leaned over and whispered something inaudible to the other. He wanted the younger of the two, Brionna. He was concerned about taking on two girls who were bonded, it could mean mischief, and the younger would be easier to train, to mold.

Daddy gestured to Kaurel, "Take Zharia to her room."

Kaurel raised an eyebrow, but said nothing to her master in response, speaking only to Zharia a simple order to come along.

Zharia flashed Brionna an alarmed look, her facial expressions weren't captured by Starfleet's cameras, but her body language said it all as she was led out of the room.

"I don't like the looks of this," Irene stated more coolly now, though her tone was still sharp. "Where are we on the telemetry for the other girl?" She asked.

"Still working on it, Ma'am. We'll get it," a voice called out from the far corner.

Jean-Baptiste watched through the grainy feed, every muscle in his body held in quiet rebellion. The room suddenly felt colder than it had only minutes before. On the screen, the air inside that modest living unit was thick with the kind of pregnant silence that came before a terrible thing.

The man in the silver-fringed shirt slid his chair back and came to his feet, his voice still lost to the feed, but his meaning clear enough. He laid a small black credit wafer on the table. It was a sleek tiny rectangle that seemed too clean for all it implied. Commerce of flesh, sanitized by technology, JB thought. Civilization had learned to package its crimes in subtler shapes.

'Daddy's' thumb stopped tapping. He looked toward Kaurel--who had just reentered the dining area on her own--and then back to the wafer. JB saw it in his eyes: the calculation. He was converting human life into numbers.

"Ghuy'cha'," Krin muttered under his breath. "Is that a legitimate exchange code? That's Federation."

"It's legit," JB said, his voice low. "Private key. Probably shadow-routed through frontier trade hubs. Whoever's running the network has their claws deep."

On the screen, Brionna looked at the men the way a trapped bird might look at a pane of glass--knowing it can't break it, but still, it watches for the faintest avenue of escape. Kaurel lingered in the doorway, her expression unreadable. There was something tired in her, something that suggested she had stopped trying to reconcile what she did and what she allowed to happen.

The man in silver slid the wafer closer.

'Daddy' nodded.

JB placed a hand on the muscled Klingon's shoulder. "Krin," he said, leaning in behind him. "Can we get a closer look at that chit? If we can identify that unique code, we should be able to track the money."

Krin tapped his console, isolating the lower-half of the feed, then zooming closer and closer until the black wafer almost filled the screen. "That is as close as we will come," he said, defeated.

"Wait," Ng interrupted, "Let me roll back a few seconds before it was moved--we might get a clearer look at the code from that point."

"Numbers, I want numbers," Irene called out, walking to the tactical unit. "What does it look like if we go in now? Scoop those girls out of there before he transports Bri somewhere we don't have people?" She asked. "Can we get a lock?"

"We can, ma'am, but they will know when we do," called out the same voice as before - a blonde Bajoran man. Younger. "We'll have to take out their inhibitor, but we're already tagged into it - no problem."

Brionna had not moved. She was now sitting, shoulders hunched, eyes downcast. Kaurel reappeared, her hand on the girl's shoulder, guiding her up with that terrible gentleness of someone who long ago learned that fighting only made the hurt come sooner.

JB wanted to shout through the screen. Wanted to throw the table over and drag the child out. But this wasn't the moment. It was an operation on a knife-edge. One wrong move and the whole network would vanish into the dark again--and so would this Nerissa and every other innocent soul still in their clutches.

Irene was beginning to get a bitter taste in her mouth. There was a chip on the table, at least two relates traffickers, pimps--whatever they were--to be taken into custody, and a madam - maybe more.

"If we take out the inhibitor, then our friends might get away," Irene said shaking her head as she walked over to rack of Starfleet armored vests and pulled one on.

"JB, wait for Nerissa's lock and go there."

"I want every starfighter available from every ship docked at 773 on alert, I don't care if they've been briefed or not. If these assholes try to hightail it anywhere, I want someone on their ass," Irene ordered.

"I'm going down there to receive the girls, lets send SWAT in. We'll get what we get."

JB placed a hand on Irene's shoulder. "We don't even know where the rest of those kids are being held. Do you really need to go in there now?"

"And we may never if we lose Brionna tonight. The girls getting split up and sold was not part of the plan for tonight," Irene stated firmly. She was the commanding officer and her position had become non-negotiable. "We'll get at least a few breadcrumbs from this, maybe get to squeeze who we can get for more. Our people are good, it will have to be good enough."

"Understood," JB said, though his tone carried very little in the way of agreement. He wanted to keep the girls safe, too. The only problem was, he was now coming around to the idea that moving in too quickly would lose them the remaining trafficked Romulan children--wherever they were.

Jean-Baptiste slowly and quietly slipped on an armoured vest for himself, a type-two phaser already holstered. He knew he'd be part of the team to extract the others as soon as they had coordinates.


~TBC~

RSS Feed