Go FETCH
Posted on 01 Oct 2025 @ 10:05pm by Commander Calliope Zahn
Mission:
M4 - Falling Out
Location: [Cafe Ra Hetjan, Kalara, Loki III]
2208 words - 4.4 OF Standard Post Measure
Information gathering ‘cold’ was not usually very productive. It generally took time to blend in and get chummy with any one set of locals, and Eloise Kahdra-Vogel had long since put aside the local informant news scene in favor of bigger breaking stories and hopping world-to-world. So this was charming, as career throwbacks went. In any case, when it came to digging she had confidence in her well honed approach of cutting as opposed to chewing the fat.
She looked over the small cafe with its striped canvas-covered veranda and the comfortably ensconced occupants. No one seemed to be there to “grab a bite”; they were relaxing and conversing, reclining on cushions with plates arrayed to browse from. This was a place of business of another sort. A place where Obsidinites caught up with one another. A place buzzing with news (the sort with a lowercase n). She made sure her checkered scarf was wrapped around her head and ascended the steps to the entrance.
“Welcome to Cafe Ra Hetjan.” A robed waiter approached the newcomer. She was dressed as a fashionable Federation woman, and the waiter took in that information, relying on his practiced Standard to address her. “A table for the lady?”
She put a federation credit slip in his hand. “Something a little out of the way of the other tables.”
He tucked the slip inside the collar of his shirt. “I think there is something open inside, in the back which you will enjoy the privacy of.”
She followed him, weaving around the potted plants and rich decorations of basketry and storehouse wares; the barrels and crates and sealed pots served double duty as ambiance and chef’s supply, in all likelihood. Between the tables were elaborate dividing screens and overhead, lamps in decorative screens cast a mood over the entire space. Eloise took off her sunglasses and adjusted to the indoor lighting.
“Do you have a party meeting you? Will you require seating for more than yourself?”
“I was hoping to meet someone here.”
“Ah, who shall I expect?”
“I mean to say, I was hoping to speak to the owner of Cafe Ra Hetjan.” She slipped him an additional note. “I have no appointment, but if someone could let her know I am looking to speak with her, I would be grateful.”
The second note he put with the first. “Who shall I say waits to speak with her?”
“Eloise Khadra-Vogel, of the Federation News Service.” This time she gave the waiter a thin, flexible, translucent calling card.
He looked at the etched engraving on the card, considering something. “You will want a meal while you wait?”
Eloise took a seat as the waiter pulled out a chair. Feeling as if she were falling the last inch or two, the chair must have been lower than she was used to, but she was at least thankful this wasn’t the kind of establishment that seated everyone on the floor. Her knees were not what they used to be and it would have been a graceless situation for her if she were getting up and down from the ground, even if the rugs were ornate and the cushions plush and velvet and trimmed with enough tassels to dust the desert sand off the front steps.
“I don’t think I'll need a meal. I hope Lady Tr’Mari won’t be that long in finding time to speak with me.” According to Eloise’s initial round of inquiries around town, the owner was supposed to ‘know something of nearly any transaction worth noting’ and also purportedly be found in the establishment’s back office at this time of day. But just in case, Eloise gave the waiter a third credit slip with her order. “Just a refresher. A cool drink.”
“I will return with her reply.” The waiter bowed in three shallow dips as he backed away with the card, tucking the credit slip away with the first two.
“Oh, and please tell her a fellow named Ibn Sharjar recommended I reach out to her.” Eloise tacked on her reference at the very end, concerned from his phrasing that the waiter had already determined to advise a brush off of her request to meet. She was, after all, a reporter, and was used to being given the ‘no comment’ treatment just about everywhere there was a door to close on her face— even here, where doors were rare.
A look of recognition flashing over his eyes, the waiter paused, slowing his reverse walk. “I will relay this.” On his way through a beaded curtain, the waiter waved at a boy with a colored glass pitcher who obediently moved to serve a chilled herbal drink to the strange outsider.
Nodding to the boy when her glass was full enough, Eloise took to reflecting over her refreshment. Catching that talkative trader in the spaceport was useful, even if she had to purchase one of his more expensive gemstones and a bag of bug-shells to get him really talking. He’d gone on a long time about some tribe in the other mountain range he’d managed to connect with and trade for this Firestone Gem. She’d shelled out more than three months’ of stipend to get it from him, just so she could ask him where he got his best tips on obscure trading like that and he’d looked even more hesitant to part with that information than he had with his tale of the gemstone’s origin, or the stone itself. But he ultimately agreed on an exchange of information if she’d promised to connect him with a reseller on the station for his wares. Not that she actually knew anyone, but she supposed that the obfuscating, lumpy-lobed Ferengi art dealer might pick up the offer. If not, she’d send Otath on the hunt through the more upscale galleries and acquire some meaningful contact for Sharjar to peddle his wares to.
“She might not wish to speak with such as you, hmm?” The height-challenged half-Bajoran had purred from behind his bushy facial hair, his eyes always smiling too big to believe under overgrown eyebrows. “She prefers to guard her reputation. It is an asset greater than her business, her family and her reputation are. Maybe tell her you are a friend and customer of Atif Ibn Sharjar. But do leave me out of your news. Yes?”
“You can remain my unnamed source,” Eloise had assured him, not really having much use for a biography of a solo tinker scrounging the over-baked sands of Loki III, anyway.
…Although, the more Eloise thought about it, the more she wondered if the odd fellow might make for an interesting field guide to that distant mega mountain chain he had jawed on and on about. Maybe she could assign her junior reporter to it after the Engineering Conference ceased to keep young Sebastian Joyner out of her hair.
She hated having a shadow. But the service kept implying rude things about her age, and ruder things about her ratings and viewer demographics…
“Eff Enn Ess Eloise Khadra-Vogel?”
The feminine voice was brightly toned, with a slight breathiness. Eloise looked up from her glass to see a tallish, dark Obsidinite woman approaching her table, the swing of the beaded back-office curtains swaying in her wake. She was well dressed, and Eloise had to admit to herself that the finely embroidered robes would pass just fine back home in New York or Paris. Tr’Mari was savvy. In her elegant fingers was Eloise’s calling card.
Eloise stood up to greet her, extending a hand, which was always a social gamble in alien territories. “Tr’Mari, I presume?”
“You presume correctly.” Tr’Mari looked at the offered hand but let the moment pass awkwardly for Eloise.
The newscaster intuited from her look and confident projection that Tr’Mari was too experienced in hospitality to not have understood the other-worldly gesture, so she figured she could trade slight for slight and offer education. “FNS is not my title. It’s the short hand, or acronym, for my employer: the Federation News Service. We are the oldest continuous and widest operating news service across the United Federation of Planets.” Unlike that upstart, the Federation News Network, which was always trying to undercut them with over-the-top glitz and low brow culture trash. Hacks. That rivalry she kept to herself, behind her smile, however.
“News service,” Tr’Mari echoed.
“Yes…. News." Eloise said it with the impact of the capital 'N'. "We investigate events that the wider public would like to hear about, if they had a means to, and we publish it in multiple formats. Written, audio, video. We broadcast across accessible subspace channels which are syndicated all over the Federation.”
“Mm, I see. We have schinct kablish for that.” Seeing Eloise waiting for a translation, she supplied it. “The moving lips.”
“Word of mouth?”
“Indeed.” Tr'Mari folded her hands in front of her.
“I was hoping to ask you if any of your sources might have noticed someone, a Starfleet officer, here on Obsidian.”
“We have noticed many Starfleet officers.” Tr’Mari sounded indifferent, without quite appearing weary of this line of discussion. It was more like she was indifferent towards the presence of the Federation, than she was to this particular guest.
Eloise intuited that, since they were still standing, Tr’Mari was not going to waste very much more time with her. It was time to cut to the chase. “This one is high ranking— what our people call ‘The Brass’ or senior leadership. She’s an older woman, human, light skinned and greying, in a red trimmed uniform, and wears a boxed set of pips.” She tapped her collar where the officers advertised their ranks. “Her name is Admiral Brigid Harshman. Has she been to Kalara?”
“No one by this description has come through Kalara.”
“Maybe your schinct kablish failed to mention it?”
“Perhaps.” Tr’Mari suppressed a smug grin, and the micro expression didn’t escape Eloise’s notice. “I must return to my business.”
“Just a moment.” Eloise lifted her satchel. “I had something from Atif.” She put a small silk-wrapped object down on the table and flicked the corner opened to reveal the fire-stone. It wasn’t really sent from Ibn Sharjar, but, on the fly, Eloise guessed the elegant business woman wasn’t going to appreciate the direct bribe method. Better to imply, however true or untrue her pocketbook might attest to, that the gift came from Tr’Mari’s peddler friend and take the edge off, making it easier to accept than it would be coming from a 'presumptive stranger' such as herself.
Tr’Mari’s guard fell and her haughty voice dropped to a bare whisper as she watched her reflection dazzle from the facets of the expertly cut stone, the glow making it appear to heat from within. “He has been to the Oasis of the Nine Stones,” she breathed, looking at the evidence of it.
Having taken in the beauty of the stone, Tr’Mari flicked the cloth back over it and gathered it into the sleeve of her robe, disappearing it smoothly, like some magician’s trick. She knew that the news woman could have kept it for herself. It was a highly valuable stone, which would fetch higher prices fixed in the right setting and offered to the proper markets. But like her, this Eff Enn Ess service woman prided information more highly than ornament. Though neither of the stylish women appeared to eschew the latter, either.
“As I have told you, your Harsh Man has not been here.” She said, leaning in. “But her assistant, the lady devil-ear with the heart-of-stone, has become a volunteer, joining an outreach program.”
Lady devil-ear? Wasn’t that what the Obsidianites called Romulans? Or better yet, a Vulcan— who would better fit the description of passing as stone-hearted! And, if Eloise’s memory served her, there was one female Vulcan serving directly under Harshman: her assistant, Commander T’Sheng. “She’s here in Kalara?”
“No, she has arranged to work in Itonia, among the refugee population who have resettled there from the outpost of the outer-dark.”
It would hardly be the first time an agent of the government worked their designs under the cover of an NGO. Or the last. “What was the name of the volunteer organization?"
“Fetch.” She said in a clipped word, then expounded with a dismissive wave of her hand. “You must go to Fetch.”
Eloise’s face scrunched with confusion. Go fetch? Was this some bad translation of a telling off, she wondered. “Fetch what?”
Tr’Mari grinned, almost as big and wide as her peddler friend, pleased that she had landed a jibe at the reporter’s expense, and in the foreign language, no less. “Fetch, yes. I do believe it could be some kind of shorthand like your Eff En Ess, yes? So fond of acronyms, sky people are.”
Eloise smiled, finding Tr’Mari as engaging as Atif had promised and almost sorry she couldn’t stay longer. “Touche.”
