Steiner: History and the future share the same source

Posted on 07 May 2022 @ 7:40am by Chief Deputy Marshal: Ridge Steiner - FMS
Edited on on 06 Feb 2024 @ 10:43pm

Mission: M3 - Into the Deep
Location: FMS Office
Timeline: M3 D03. 0850Hrs
1346 words - 2.7 OF Standard Post Measure

After leaving the Medical level Steiner made his way down to the Field Office. Lofthammer was out but T’Sai was at her desk.

“Morning! I’m getting a raktajino, you want anything?” He called to her as he passed enroute to the replicator.

“No, thank you Chief” She replied.

He came back a few moments later and leant on her doorframe, large mug of the potent brew in hand.

“Need you to check on a couple of Markalians for me. Both adult males, only have a partial name for one of them. I'm sure it’s Bluarg, or possibly Bluerg, Tash, the other is unknown. Check promenade video from last night in the vicinity of Hanks Casino, around twenty-two hundred, they are going to be walked out by a couple of Gorn and sent towards the Promenade public clinic. One of them is probably limping or bent over”

T’Sai raised an eyebrow. “The Gorn attacked them?”

“No, the Gorn are two very pleasant ladies called Edith and Doris. The Markalians attacked me!” He held up his bandaged hand. “The Gorn just threw them out of the casino afterwards”

“They attacked you? Why?”

“They are members of a smuggling ring, associated with a case involving illegal weapons sales, that went to court last year” He gave her the case reference number.

“These two were not defendants as we couldn’t tie them in, but cross reference to an undercover operation using the freighter SS Leopard You'll need an access key for that file” he gave her the code from memory.

“I was posing as a smuggler and they think I double crossed them on a weapons deal. They wanted a little payback. See if you can find out how long they’ve been here, how they got here and where they are now. Let me know what you find out”

“Yes Chief” T’Sai nodded and started work

Steiner wandered into the other office, set his drink down, took a seat and fired up the terminal. Accessing the Marshal’s Service the search facility he gave it commands

“Search; Name An-Hank-Atha; Species Wadi; Sex Female; Planet Risa; Cross reference Hank’s Casino Obsidian Command Promenade; Cross reference Risa Casinos; Cross reference Deep Space Nine Wormhole inbound transit ship manifests Wadi vessel, date range twenty-three-seventy-two to twenty-three-seventy-three. Initiate search; Cros reference weapons permit”

He sat back and sipped his raktajino while the program did its work. In less than a minute, files began popping up on his screen. He leaned forward and began reading through them.

Twenty minutes later he had the basics. She was forty-eight years old, had come through the wormhole in sevnty-three, three months before the war started on a Wadi ship called the Phesola, she was listed as member of a trade and culture group.

It seems Starfleet had kept a track on the Phesola out of concern that as the Wadi were from Dominion controlled space, they might be spying for them. There was a detailed list of the vessels route and ports of call, although nothing had been deemed suspicious.

When war broke out and the wormhole closed the ship and crew had requested and been granted temporary asylum in the Federation.
Once Starfleet had become busy with the conflict, monitoring of the Phesola’s whereabouts had lessened. In seventy-four it had gone to Risa and several of the crew, including An-Hank-Atha, had left the vessel there. The last entry was of the ship returning through the wormhole in late seventy-seven.

On Risa, there were employment records from several casinos and resorts over the next ten years; croupier, team leader, shift supervisor, assistant manager, manager, general manager, up to vice president of gaming at the third largest casino on the planet.

The record stopped there, there was an entry that she had been head-hunted for a position at private resort, some place called the Grand Reef Club

He searched for that and came up with not a lot. It was a very exclusive and very private resort based on three small atolls on a coral reef in Risa’s Southern Ocean. It seemed membership was by invitation only, who were members and who owned it was not on public record. The Risians were always discrete about their resorts, but this place seemed positively secretive.

He tried a couple of media searches and learned the place was only open to the exceptionally rich, powerful and influential. There were only a couple of images on file, white beaches, blue ocean, kabanas and beach huts, a central building on the largest atoll, everything indicated luxury of the highest and expensive level.

There was nothing more for seven years, until ninety-one, when An-Hank-Atha was listed as owner and operator of the “Fortune of chance” a liner and casino vessel, registered on Risa.

For three years the ship had made its way around Federation territory, before returning to Risa. Where An-Hank-Atha had then brought herself a small but lucrative casino near Suraya Bay. The ship had gone back to cruising, she had stayed on Risa.

Then three months ago she had sold both the ship and casino and brought the lease for the unit on the Promenade.

The final file was her permit for a personal defense civilian phaser, minimum stun version.

He sat back and finished his raktajino. It was all pretty much as she had told him last night. He wasn’t sure how much a senior level gaming executive made, probably not enough to purchase a starship liner, she’d either been running bets of the side, a lot of bets on the side or more probably got help from a wealthy somebody at the Grand Reef Club.

There was no hint of any wrongdoing, even though gambling had always had a seedy side to it, she appeared to be totally legitimate and certainly there was nothing illegal with being a successful businesswoman. She was clearly good at what she did and as she had said, she knew how to keep her eyes and ears open for information, a useful skill. Particularly as she had lines into his own business.

He thought on that for a while, wondering on the best way to get her to share the kind of information she seemed able to pick up. His musing were interrupted by T’Sai, she had a report for him.

The two Markalians were Bluerg Tash and Retos Shesh. Tash was the one he’d kicked in the chest he recognized from the images on their ship’s docking permit and crew manifest. They had arrived two days ago on a Markalian freighter, the Klesdonan. It was listed as a trading vessel, registered to a Markalian merchant company and per its docking permit it had arrived from the Mesfield asteroid mining zone.

T’Sai had video of them being escorted from Hanks and taken to the promenade clinic by the two Gorn. The Markalians had not entered and instead taken a tubolift down to the docking levels and boarded a shuttle back to their ship, which had departed les than an hour later. They had not filed a destination with Traffic Control before leaving.

“Let’s put out an observe and report request on the Klesdonan and messers Tash and Shesh” Steiner instructed.

“oH and aR only?” T’Sai queried. “Not arrest and detain?”

“Nope, lets see if they lead us anywhere, something bigger than a simple assault case and three months in a rehabilitation colony” Steiner replied. “Good work on this T’Sai, update the files on those two; create one for the Klesdonan and keep me informed of where the ship goes”

T’Sai nodded and left. Steiner closed up the terminal and got up to leave, he stopped by her office on the way out.

“I’m off to the Command levels, I’ll buy you and Lofthammer lunch on the promenade, see you there around noon.