Tea and Conspiracy
Posted on 05 Mar 2023 @ 6:21pm by Sylvie Hardt - Surrat Gallery & A'Koja Dea - Private Investigator
Mission:
M3 - Into the Deep
Location: Obsidian Command, Hardt's Art Storage Vault
Timeline: MD 07 Morning
1947 words - 3.9 OF Standard Post Measure
Sylvie Hardt's vault was less inviting than the gallery, but allowed for more private hosting as well as a chance to review the art not currently on display. As A'Koja was led inside and the lights came up in slow succession along the warehouse like ceiling, she found Sylvie's collection mostly crated and stored in shipping materials. The pieces visible were leaned up against the wall or staggered so as to allow passage between them and not so much for aesthetics. Three of the walls held drawers and lockers for flat art storage, looking not unlike a bank vault full of variously sized security boxes. There were secondary doors leading to deeper chambers where A'Koja supposed more substantial statues and installation work might be secured away. It was not too difficult to imagine that there was some maze beyond that in which even more secure interior vaults retained the most valuable works and artifacts. She didn't suppose Sylvie would tell her about any such secrets even if they did exist. As far as she was being shown, out in the central room of the vault it seemed the owner could assess work brought out at her request by her trusted assistants and consider their future display or sale opportunities.
A'Koja shivered and realized now why her host had suggested she wear a coat. It wasn't as cool as a wine cellar, but Sylvie was dressed up like she was expecting snow, a feathery collar high around her Cardassian neck bones to ward off the chill and her silvery hair caught up underneath.
"So this is where the real collection is." A'Koja ventured, putting her hands deep into the pockets of her coat and turning to take it all in— the abundant clutter of cultured chaos. It all seemed so different without the proper mounting, lighting, display pairings, and little description tags to read. Like being backstage at a play with years of discarded props. Or a little like catching them coming out of the shower— paintings were just canvases not at their best and sculptures just assemblages in a state of undress.
"It is the primary collection remaining to me." Her arms seemed somehow weighted down with emptiness and loss as she motioned around at the trove of treasures. " Considering the short notice and all of the moving around, I had to liquidate the vast majority of my physical collection. It will take me a long time to rebuild, but it will never be the same."
"Yeah, best to travel light." A'Koja tried to relate without letting the sarcasm show through. She'd never had a lot of wealth to shuffle around between chapters in her life and had always been used to taking nothing she owned for granted. Sylvie was almost the complete opposite. She'd been born rooted and the pain of that root being cut off seeped through the recent wound every time it was implied.
Sylvie rolled two stools up at a bench full of restoration and assessment tools and there being no delicate work on it presently, set out some hot tea from a hidden cabinet.
"You work in here often?"
"I hire the restorer when it is beyond my skill set, but I have learned to do much of my own authentication. I paint too, but—" Sylvie fanned her hand over the top of her cup, more to draw the steam to herself than to shoo it away. "—my own work is... amateurish and without value. It serves only my own amusement."
"Have you worked on anything lately?" Dea ventured, curiously. She herself had once had some artistic command of Dance, but she'd been young and far more limber then. She didn't bring it up.
Sylvie walked her new friend over to one of the sets of narrow drawers, opening one to reveal a small canvas.
"A portrait?" A'Koja took in the figure. He was an older Cardassian gentleman, but his suit looked as if it were a cross between a Ferengi style and a flashy Betazoid vintage one. Like he had both money and fun. He wore a pleasant expression and held a crooked lacquered cane with a bird head carved into the handle. The brush strokes were good enough to make out the depiction, but even A'Koja with her untrained eye could tell it had the underdeveloped qualities of a student work.
"It's a study of the portrait displayed in my childhood home. I only have the indexed insurance images to work from. The original was lost. It's of my Grandfather Surrat."
"The one you named your gallery after?" A'Koja assumed it had been a reference to the famous Earth painter but the spelling had seemed off. It made a little more sense that it was just a coincidence in nomenclature.
"Yes. His lineage descended from one of the original settling families of my homeworld."
With roots to founders, the family money made more sense. "Ah, so not from the Cardassian homeworld. That explains the difference in fashion."
"Well, my Grandfather was always a little more expressionistic with his personal taste than much of the family found proper. A bit eccentric, they called him." She smiled, clearly at a memory of the man, and A'Koja discerned that she had a great fondness for him. "But even so, fashions were certainly adapted from a variety of UFP influences. Iries left the Cardassian Union when the lines were redrawn with the Federation. Our schism with the homeworld only grew over the centuries and it made the most sense as we had become culturally more akin to the Federation as well."
"You should frame it, put it on a wall somewhere."
"Perhaps soon. Renovations to my suite are still underway."
"Suite?" A'Koja calculated. The displaced heiress had her own gallery, studio, secure vault and storage and what sounded like an extensive suite on the station.
"My personal and business accommodations here were part of an 'exchange' agreement. I had no choice but to relinquish the charter, but I did have some latitude in the negotiations for compensation, incredibly undervalued as it was." Her face turned sour at the fact that she'd traded a solar system for accommodations on a space station and... a few other line items. But the situation had been massively beyond her control.
"Ah, eminent domain." A'Koja indicated understanding. People liked telling more about their lives when the listener was listening.
"When Starfleet revoked my charter to the Iodora System, they took my family's birthright. There was a time when expansion was such a call that empires would pen anyone with a two seater warp ship a charter to settle a new world. Many people couldn't scratch out sustenance, but a few endured and made their fortunes on those frontier settlements, beginning new lives, opening up new futures..." A'Koja thought her friend's eyes looked very distant before she seemed to snap back and drink her tea again. "Well, none of that is coming back."
It would be easy to see Sylvie as simply a spoiled rich woman, but A'Koja sensed that having once been the inheritor of much, she'd likely had very much to lose and had only just begun to process what remained not just of her ledgers and inventory, but of her plans for the future and her purpose in the universe. Maybe one of these talks, Sylvie would let spill why she'd chosen life on a station out on a completely different border as her exchange for her past life.
"I wish I could paint." A'Koja said simply, as if the weight of worlds and history had totally gotten past her. Sylvie refrained from rolling her eyes, but A'Koja noted an upturned corner of her mouth. They settled once more at the workbench. "You think if there was an attack on the station, you might hole up in here?"
"The idea has occured to me." Sylvie admitted. "It is exceptionally reinforced and features self managed environmental controls with back up energy sources."
A'Koja thought that it was ironic that the art was better protected than most of the civilian lives at large, but she refrained from saying it. That's the way the money goes. "What are you thinking about the heightened alert and movement restrictions?"
"It seems a little excessive." Sylvie tilted her head in asymmetrical shrug. "But I suppose they aren't telling us something. I suspect the admiral is leaving the station management up to that Thaddeus Zayne fellow."
"Mr. Stick-up-his-ass?"
"Mmm, yes the very same." Said Sylvie. "They believe that since he operated Obsidian Command for eighteen months in a Void that he's qualified now."
"There's a little difference between a crew of eight and one of eighty thousand," A'Koja agreed.
"Ever so slightly. He's simply acting as if we're not really here at all, and can just be managed with an alarm button. Tell me, is that how it's done in Starfleet?"
A'Koja Dea shook her head, unwilling to comment on her life in Starfleet. She certainly had called some lockdowns but the threats were usually at hand at the time.
"Do you suppose they'll hold this alert indefinitely without so much as a bulletin?" Sylvie wondered.
"No idea. I've had to return my retainer on a few clients. Without any idea if this lockdown ends in a day or a month, I can't promise to be able to continue my investigations if they require me to look into anything personally."
"My gallery sales will certainly be constrained with the decreased traffic."
"I thought you said attendance was up?"
"Oh it is. With the influx of families and other civilians sheltering at the station, foot traffic is up appreciably. It's only that they haven't the expendable income of my inter-planetary clientele and of traveling aficionados."
"I still have my bread and butter clients." One of those being Station Security, although the contract hadn't been called on since Lt. Winslow had taken off. "But I agree," said A'Koja. "There's not much interesting knocking on my door since the restrictions."
"I could understand if there was actually an attack, or something to defend from, but it seems excessive. And besides, if the threat raises, they will have worn out the attentiveness of the Civilian population to threat. The people will have acclimated to a daily alarm like a pesky little maintenance alert light on a shuttle dash."
"I thought the same thing." A'Koja nodded. "Obviously there's more to it that's not being communicated to everyone."
"Yes, better line of communication. That is the key. Come now, if only there was someone to assume the Role of Civilian Affairs Director. Someone with experience running a Starfleet space station."
A'Koja chuckled as Sylvie seemed to be indicating her. "I certainly don't want it, and Starfleet would turn me down on approach, what with my criminal record. How about yourself? You'd engender trust and you have experience operating a Station, too."
Sylvie made a face of mild disgust. "I have had quite enough of negotiating terms with people in uniforms."
"Who can we get to stand in for us?"
Sylvie leaned in conspiratorially. "There was a rumor coming out of the security department that the new Vulcan security chief took a meeting with one Mr. Brek of the Timeless Treasures Gallery. I would wager that he is already trying to wheedle information about the situation from the officers."
"A natural schmoozer. He might just fit the bill."
"I shall have my solicitor draft the proper documents for gleaning the appropriate number of signatories to support his candidacy for the role."
A'Koja nodded with agreement before taking a hearty swig of tea. "Yeah, let's grease the skids for him."
