SEASON 2: EPISODE 03

A ROUGH TIME: Part Three

  Jonathan Masters milled around for an hour in his quarters.  He had seen nothing but the four walls of his secure quarters for the last few days before been taken to see the Supreme Admiral.  His escorts had made sure that on his way there and back that he didn’t come to any windows or pass anything too important and he had also passed very few crew of the base.  That was all he could tell was that he was not on a mobile starship.  He had been effectively sealed off from knowing where he was, he didn’t even have any idea if they were in space on a station or on the surface of a planetoid.  They were treating him carefully until they were sure what they were going to do with him.

  He decided to head to bed.  The bed was in the corner of the room, which was perfect.  Once he was in bed and under the blanket.  He wasn’t sure what type of surveillance was on him was he had to be careful with his movements.  He shifted a bit before settling on facing the wall that ran along the side of his bed.  Under the sheets he fiddled with a small device.  The device was a covert subspace transmitter capable of sending encrypted transmissions to his superiors, who in this case was Starfleet Intelligence.  The transmission was also undetectable according to the officer who briefed him; Masters just hoped the officer was right.  The device was so small and well designed that it slipped into a pouch that was put in his pants.  It was undetectable to scanners, as he had found out with he was scanned, and from a physical pat down as well.  It was only a transmitter not a transceiver, so while he could send messages out he couldn’t receive them.

  He brought the device close to his mouth and whispered, “Stage one complete.”

  Stage one was just getting him into the group.  It had taken him two weeks to get this far.  He had gone all over the sector waiting for a convoy to be attacked.  Because of the fact that the Rough Necks jammed transmissions when they attacked he had to detect the battle on his sensors, meaning he had to be relatively close.  The Rough Necks had attacked three convoys before he caught up with them.  He was amazed that each time they got the convoys without Task Force 59 responding until the Rough Necks had already looted the convoy.  They were good, Starfleet needed to get rid of them soon, the longer they were allowed to do this the more material they would steal and the increased effort Starfleet would need to put in hunting them down and they needed every ship to fight the Dominion.

  He slipped the device back into it pouch and hoped the transmission got to where it was going.  He waited for a few minutes half expected guards to rush in and kill him but no one entered.  Masters forced himself to calm down.

  Infiltration missions were among the toughest missions to be involved in, especially when you were infiltrating a criminal group.  Masters had done several infiltrations before but most of them were of the scientific nature and on one occasion it had been an extraction mission.  Why Intelligence chose him alluded Masters.  One of their agents would be far better, but since they chose him Intelligence must have a reason.  He just hoped that it wasn’t because they were stretched so thin that they had to recruit normal officers.

  Why Starfleet hadn’t given him a new name he didn’t know either.  He was concerned about that since he had just recently had a Federation News Service reporter doing a story on his ship and crew.  Intelligence had reassured him that it was very unlikely that they had read any of the reports since they had little to do with the sector the Rough Necks were in.  Plus his most recent appearance in the FNS had yet to be released.  Starfleet Command had convinced the FNS to keep the story under wraps for the moment.  Apparently they had been planning for him to do the mission and were even involved in getting his vessel assigned to join Task Force 59.  They had allayed his concerns during the briefing but now he was in the field he started to have his doubts again.

  Masters realised that he was now restless.  He decided to get up and run a test on the surveillance of his room.  He feigned tiredness and got up and went to his personal belongings.  He picked up a wooden ornament.  He pressed and turned a hidden switch and the bottom slide open, revealing a few knives, Kor’tel assassin knives to be exact. 

  The knives were an unpleasant weapon made specifically for assassinations.  They were small and easy to conceal, well weighted for throwing, and had an internal sack for poisons that could be administered when the knife penetrated the body, meaning you didn’t have to hit something important to get a kill.  The design was also very elegant making them a very attractive looking weapon.  There number was also very limited, the culture that originally produced them had stopped making them a long time ago and they were made as sets and as such they had become a collector’s item.  Apparently some of the top known assassin in the quadrant owned sets of these knives as a status symbol, given their value to afford them you would need a lot of money and assassins only got very rich if they were very good at what they did.  He had to wonder where Starfleet Intelligence had got their hands on a set.

  He pulled one out and held it out in the open making sure that if there was visual surveillance in the room they would be able to see it.  He then returned it to its hiding place.  As he was putting the ornament down he heard the door behind him open.  He quickly put it down and turned to see who was entering.

  He had expected a group of guards to be entering but it was only one person and when he saw who it was his mouth dropped open.  “What the…”

  Luckhurst smiled, so Masters was not unflappable.  She had turned up to his room in less clothes then a dabo girl.  She sauntered into the room.  Masters had now composed himself.  Luckhurst knew the biggest weakness of males – sex.  She was a sexual being and had no problem with using it to get whatever she wanted.  Plus she found Masters attractive, so at least it wouldn’t be terribly unpleasant.  With many men it didn’t even come to sex, they usually broke and told her whatever she wanted before it came to that and she would sometimes continue afterwards, but only if she found them attractive, no use depriving her of pleasure.  She knew she would enjoy Masters, simply for the fact that she would break him and turn him into a loyal follower without him realising he had lost control.

  “I take it this isn’t a business call,” said Masters calmly.

  “It is, but it’s also about pleasure,” she came up to Masters so they were mere centimetres apart.  “Your pleasure.”  She leaned in and kissed him on the mouth.  “And mine.”

  She saw Masters hesitate.  She was a tall woman, nearly as tall as Masters.  Usually her height meant that she could dominate males since most found themselves feeling uncomfortable around tall women, especially ones in power.  She wouldn’t be able to use this against Masters, but in the end her sexuality would do the same job, thanks to the help of a little drug she had procured several years ago.  The drug worked on most males of the various species of the Alpha Quadrant.  It basically made them very open to sexual suggestion and control.  She had a small amount on a pin stuck to her middle finger, when she kissed Jonathan her hands were on his face and a quick prick had put the drug into his system.  By the looks of it, it was already starting to work.  “I…I can’t.”

  “Why?” she asked sounding mournful.

  “There’s someone else,” he said.  It didn’t sound too convincing to her.  She had him where she wanted him.

  “She doesn’t need to know,” she said wickedly.

  She wrapped her arms around Masters and pulled him into her.  She kissed him again.  For a while he didn’t respond, but she didn’t stop.  Finally his arms came from his side and went around her and he started to return to kiss.

  That’s when she broke it off.  “That’s it.”  She pushed him back onto his bed.  “Now I’m going to give you what you want.”

  The look of almost fear that came to Masters’ face when she dropped her clothes to the floor was priceless.  She was going to give him something and he was going to return the favour, but not in the same way and it would be worth tenfold of what she would give him.

  Luckhurst rested her head on Masters’ chest.  She had enjoyed that a great deal, it was one of the perks of her job.  She looked up at Masters’ face.  He was looking up at the ceiling impassively, but she knew that he had enjoyed it and he was just trying to appear as if it didn’t effect him.

  “Jonathan, I have a question for you?”

  He tilted his head towards her.  “Yes?”

  “What are those knives for?”

  He looked surprised at the question.  He started to hurriedly deny that he had any knives.

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know about them.  We saw them when you removed them from that ornament over there.”

  Masters looked defeated.  “They are purely sentimental.  I like exotic weapons.  Those are Kor’tel assassin knives.  Very rare.  Very expensive.  I won them from a Ferengi trader when I first moved to Starbase 312.  He didn’t have the latinum to cover his losses so he let me pick from his personal items.  He tried to downplay their value, but I knew what they were and I took them.  I brought them with me since I wasn’t going to leave them behind.  I concealed them because I knew you would take them from me if I just carried them in.”

  Luckhurst looked at his face and could see that he believed they had value, plus the drug would make it hard for him to conceal anything from her.  But it was still possible.

  He seemed to sense her doubts.  “You can take them.  I will want them back once I prove myself of course.  There are basically my retirement plan at the moment.”

  She didn’t respond to the last part of what he said.  “Do you have any more weapons?”

  “No.  Your guards took my phaser when I first arrived.”

  She looked at his face and saw that he was telling the truth.

  “If I wanted to use them it would be stupid of me to put them back where I can’t access them easily.”

  She nodded in agreement.  He was trying to get back into her graces.

  “That’s true.  Anyway, killing me would be a big mistake,” she said.  The meaning was obvious and she saw him look nervous.

  “Let me make it up to you!  I’ll prove myself.  I have hidden data inside my runabout.  I’ll give you the codes to access it.”

  “Alright,” said Luckhurst.  “Depending on what it is you might get a reward.”

  “What kind of reward?”

  “I’ll let you keep your very expensive cutlery.”  She then licked her top lip.  “Plus a very special reward.”  Masters’ reaction showed that she had control of him.  He didn’t even know that the codes were why she was here in the first place.  Her technicians had found the encrypted files when they studied the runabout days ago.  He thought he was giving the information willingly, but in truth he had been manipulated.  Males were so easy to control.

  When Luckhurst left Masters’ quarters she found Glen Cory waiting outside for her.  He was looking as impatient and grumpy as ever.

  “Did you get the codes?”

  “Don’t ask stupid questions.  Of course I have the codes; you would have seen him give them to me.”

  She handed a padd over to Cory.  Glen had frowned when she had said that.  She knew he didn’t like the methods she used and never watched as she did her work; he was in many ways like a protective father.

  “I don’t like him.”

  She resisted the need to roll her eyes.  “You don’t like anyone, so what’s different?”

  “I have a bad feeling about this one.  His timing is suspicious.  A Starfleet task force moves into the area and in a few weeks we have a Starfleet defector come to us.”

  “I thought you checked him out and he passed?”

  “He did.  That’s why I don’t like it.  No one passes everything.  It is like he is perfect for us.”

  “So the fact that he is perfect for us makes him a spy?  We’ve had several people join who are perfect for us and every time you say the same thing.”

  “If you don’t want me to do my job, then just tell me!” Cory said angrily.

  Luckhurst patted him on the shoulder soothingly.  “No, no.  I love the work you do.  I know it is in your nature to be suspicious.  You continue checking until you’re satisfied.  Not that you ever will be.  You still have problems with Ad’mar.”

  Cory frowned.

  Ad’mar had joined the group two years ago and was in many ways like Masters.  Ex-Starfleet warrant officer who joined and Cory had the same problems with him, but he had turned out to be fine and one of her better lieutenants.  As Cory got older he seemed to get more suspicious of everyone, but she knew he was just trying to look out for her.

  “Why don’t you go and see what information we have and report to me when you’re done.”

  “As ordered, Supreme Admiral,” said Cory and he left.

  Cory always said that when he felt he was been dismissed unfairly.  Which was far to frequent these days for her liking, maybe she should give him a break and let him go to Risa for a holiday.  Luckhurst decided to make a decision about this later as she set the transporter to return her to her quarters.