A Favor...

Posted on Sun Jan 15th, 2023 @ 12:01pm by Captain Tristan Faust & Alcibiades Xod
Edited on on Mon Jan 16th, 2023 @ 8:35am

0 words; about a 1 minute read

Mission: Mission 1: A Fool’s Errand
Timeline: M1 MD09 (2268.24.05) 1000

Captain Faust was lounging in his Eames style chair in his quarters with the lights dimmed and soft latin music playing in the background. He was wearing just the back undershirt, his uniform tunic tossed onto one of the Burke chairs, his boots were lying on the floor. An open physical copy of Popular Mechanics magazine was lying on his chest.

Last night bleeding into this morning was the longest of his command thus far. Things weren't about to get any easier as the ship headed sped off to the lonely outpost where the Orions were headed. He had an idea on how to deal with the situation short of a military action, but he wasn't sure if it was the best option.

Tristan sighed as he stood up, setting the magazine back down onto the chair. He picked up his uniform tunic and dumped it into the laundry receptacle. He grabbed his faithful green wrap around tunic and put it on before sitting down at his desk. He keyed up the comm sequence, "Patch this through," he said to the comms officer on duty. He knew he was going to regret this...

There was a crackle, a fizz, an eerie high pitched whistle and a strange symbol appeared on the Captain's view screen. What happened next might well have given the commanding officer ructions, considering what had happened with the Orion pirates: Mister Alcibiades Xod appeared in the flesh in the Captains's quarters!!

Well.

Not exactly in the flesh.

A flicker or two: this was some kind of three dimensional transmission.

"Is it on?" Xod asked some unseen person 'off screen' He nodded and then looked at the 'camera', where ever he was. "My dear Commander Faust! Hellooooo!!" he beamed, then looked sideways at Faust's discarded tunic with its distinctive braid.

"Oh!! Or should I say Captain Faust?! Ho ho ho! At this rate you'll be catching your dear Father up and overtaking him! Then you'll have to give HIM a leg up! Oh ho ho ho, I jest, I jest dear Captain!" the orange-faced, unscrupulous, double-dealing bastard laughed genially.

"I don't suppose we could dispense with the usual pleasantries?" Tristan asked, "I have situation... One that could use your particular skill set." He knew this was probably a mistake... No, definitely a mistake...

"Ohhhh, but I like the pleasantries!" Xod pouted "Oh well, very well, go ahead! But I warn you, before I go there is somebody I have promised to introduce to you, don't let me forget!! Ho ho. Now then, what is this little, ahem, situation you have. It's not your friend... er... " he clicked his fingers on remembering the name "... Mister Amato is it?! Ha ha ha! Oh dear , dear me. Mister Amato. Where was it? Alpha Triangulli VIII, when we had to dress up as Romulans to rescue him from those jelly things, ha ha ha. Oh, and then your ear fell off, and you... ha ha ha, you said..." he was talking bout Joseph, clearly not realising the man had passed over.

The Captain shuttered at the mention of his fallen friend, "Mr. Amato is dead," he said, "He was on the USS Defiant when it disappeared..."

"Eh, what?! Mr Amato? D..." Xod's customary bonhomie crumbled for a second. "Oh! Oh, well, I... I am sorry, Captain Faust... Tristan. I am, truly sorry."

There seemed to be some kind of party going on wherever the orange alien was broadcasting from, for suddenly he turned and yelled at some unseen revellers "SHUT UP!!! SHUT UP ALL OF YOU!! In fact GET OUT! GO ON!!!" he turned away. "A... a good friend of myself... myself and the Captain. Mister Amato. Yes. Gone... gone... beyond the farthest star." He turned back to Faust.

"Beyond the farthest star, eh, Captain? That's where we are all headed.We'll... we'll see him again Captain, we'll see him again." The man, creature, whatever he was, shuddered and pulled himself together.

"Life goes on. Eh, Captain Faust. Life goes on. What can I help you with? Dilithium crystals, perhaps? Zenite?"

"No I am calling about something else. We have had a run in with an Orion Captain named Arianna D'Tal... Partial Vulcan, partial human. She is currently holding some of my crew hostage as well as Federation colonists... I need your cooperation to ensure they are released to my custody."

"Well..." Xod spread his hands expansively "Just buy 'em back!" His jovial attitude had returned, with a slightly strained undercurrent. The rogue trader was either genuinely upset by Joseph's death or a great actor. But then Tristan knew he was great actor.

"Or does the, estimable Lady want something else? What, Captain, are her demands?"

"I would assume she wants her crew back too.. Especially her favorite," Tristan responded, "And as far as I can tell, her motives are to sell the lot into slavery... Considering how much we pissed her off, I very much doubt she would negotiate a deal with us. Even then Starfleet Command would be pissed at me."

Xod looked puzzled, his Machiavellian little mind a-ticking. He knew more about this business than the Captain assumed he knew, but what the Captain had just told him made him realise he didn't know enough!

"Captain Faust... dear Captain Faust... there is a slight predisposition in your race to overestimate the value of human slaves. Generally speaking, they are rather hard to shift on the market. They are shiftless, whiney, loud... ugh, terrible house slaves. And the women! Oh dear: let me tell you, Captain, human women vastly overestimate their attractiveness to other alien species!"

It wasn't all bad news though:

"I myself of course, do have a particular buyer who happens to find your people quite peculiarly, er, toothsome, shall we say... but otherwise they are the sort of commodity that tends to end up on the highest shelf at the back of the stock cupboard gathering dust."

The slightly flickering image of the white bearded merchant paced the Captain's room, deep in thought, accidentally disappearing into the wall at one point, before turning back to the Midway's senior officer.

"Hmmm, I simply cannot see Miss D'Tal going to all that trouble to get hold of a Carmellian one-shot shield-shift-dodger device to beam all her pirates onto your ship just to grab a few slaves, it does not 'add up', as they say."

Had Xod just accidentally let slip that he knew exactly how the pirate queen had executed the surprise attack. Maybe not. 'Accidentally' was not a word that appeared in the dictionaries of Alcibiades' race.

"Yes, yes, yes - it is all very vexing, Captain. Tell me about this 'Favorite'."

"I hope you aren't tacitly admitting that you sell such Carmellian devices..." Tristan responded with an annoyed glare. He wasn't about to give away the information that the Midway was now immune to such a device.

"Ah well, there we are Captain. The is always 'hope'" Xod sighed philosophically. Oh dear, so Neanderthalically blunt these Earth humans.

"And I am to get my people and the colonists back without delay," he said, his voice becoming agitated. He briefly paused and then he answered Xod's question.

Xod held an orange finger to his orange, white bewhiskered lips "Hushhhh now Captain. Tell me about the Orion." he prompted. Yes, blunt and over-emotional these earthers.

"This favorite is an Orion female, exhibiting all of the normal characteristics... She was fiercely loyal, but was left behind," he said, his voice returning to its normal even tone, "She took a great deal of persuading to give us the information we needed."

The alien frowned. He was very human in some respects, and had once told Tristan that his father had been a humanoid space captain whom he had sadly never met, due to some unfortunate honeymoon habits of his mother's species.

"Sounds like her First Officer..." he pondered. "... and she was 'accidentally left behind', didn't kill herself to avoid capture and then succumbed to your 'brutal and fiendish' Federation interrogation procedures? Oh dear, Captain. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear." He even went so far to wag an eloquently chiding finger at Faust.

He thought for a second, cogs whirring.

"No doubt she told you the slaves were being taken to Exar. That much is true: I was supposed to meet her there to pick up my consignment of... er... well, some other thing, not slaves, of course. Ho ho ho! As if!" Xod chuckled nervously. Oh, what a pity if all of this meant he wouldn't be able to take Mother her customary birthday present.

Still, for his own particular reasons, Alcibiades had decided to help the earther Captain.

"I would pretend to believe the First Officer, and go there. Send your men and women down in disguise - don't bother taking too much trouble about that, they'll stand out a mile in those ungainly boots you all wear anyway - contact me in person when you get there, don't risk another transmission. I'll see if I can work out what nasty plan our dear pretty little Arianna has up her silky sleeves." he said tersely, before becoming more expansive.

"And now Captain, please permit me to introduce you to my dear sister, well, half sister technically, our people are unable to have full brothers or sisters. This is 4C672, or Gassy as we call her in the family..."

An obscene, sagging blob of floating flesh floated into view, its image hovering next to Xod's in the room: pustules on its surface oozed a yellow sort of pus and strange, whispy tendrils cascaded down to the floor. The only resemblance to the humanoid Xod was the orange colour of the ugly flesh and tufts of white hair that sprouted randomly from the surface of the round space-hopper-like monster.

"Gassy, Captain Faust, Captain Faust, Gassy!" Xod beamed proudly, as if he were responsible for introducing Anthony to Cleopatra, or Romeo to Juliet for the first time.

"Pleasure Miss," Tristan responded, trying his best to keep a straight face, "I'm sorry Mr. Xod but my mother is requiring me to marry a Catholic girl or at least one that can give her grandchildren."

The creature bobbled up and down excitedly. Perhaps it was Catholic!

He returned to business, "I will do as you instruct and I will see you on Exar." He hated to see what Xod would demand as a favor. He hoped it wasn't a date with this... Entity.

"Very well, Captain, until then!" Mister Xod gave a sweeping bow as he and his amorous sister, fizzed and fizzled from view within the room and the symbol on his viewscreen did the same. Only the familiar noises of the ship and the faint smell of mandarins remained.

 

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