Bolians in the night III

Posted on Thu Feb 19, 2015 @ 6:39am by

1,406 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: https://ds5.sim-station.net/index.php/sim/missions/id/5
Location: Q'uits Bar

[ON]

[Q'Uits Bar]

Steiner and Tu-Selok entered the bar, it was different type of joint, dark, crowded, smoke filled and very noisy. A heavy metallic beat track pounded out of speakers and a series of strobes and arc lights flashed and flared. It was frequented by a rougher clientele than places like the Box. The place had a bar along one wall, the other sides had a few high-top tables along a balcony that overlooked a sunken dance floor, which was in turn packed with an assortment of species dancing to the horribly loud music.

Steiner muscled his way up to the bar, getting a few scowls from a couple of people, they backed off when he snarled back. He'd been in plenty of places like this and found out the best way to survive the experience was to act as mean as the rest of the patrons and trust nobody called you out.

He ordered a beer and an orange juice and returned to Tu-Selok to find her the center of attention of a drunken Ferengi. "Get lost shorty" He growled at the man and the drunk backed off.

"How you doing?" He asked his junior Deputy

"I have a headache" she replied "And the music is very loud"

"Yep, here" he handed her the orange juice, her Vulcan hearing was probably agony in here "You'll enjoy that better than the beer" he said after tasting his drink. "Let's find somewhere we can keep an eye on the door and wait for our Bolians" He led the way through the crowd, until they found a table. "All right, keep your eyes open, they should be here soon"

Steiner was pretty sure they were not going to get much out of this surveillance. There was no way to hear anything unless you were stood right next to somebody who was shouting and the crush of people meant any attempt to do so was pretty much doomed from the start. The best he was hoping for was to try identify who the Bolians met, then try and tail them when they left.

They kept a watch on the door as clients came and went, some fifteen minutes later the two Bolians entered. Tu-Selok spotted them, coming in behind a party of Klingons. She nudged Steiner who picked them up too.

The pair ignored the bar and instead went directly to the spiral ramp leading down to the dance floor, dropping quickly out of sight.

"Damn, lets get over to the railing" Steiner shouldered his way through the crowd and reached the balcony railing just in time to spot the Bolians going through a swing door that led off the lower level as Tu-Selok joined him.

"Wanna dance?" He asked

"I hardly think this is the time to engage in... " Tu-Selok started

Steiner raised his eyebrow and gave her a look

"Oh... yes, sorry Chief"

"Sure, c'mon" Steiner said with grin.

They pushed their way down the ramp, there was a mist in the air down here, some kind of artificial fog streamed out of vents in the wall and the strobe lights were more numerous, making everything appear jerky and disjointed. The dance floor was heaving with a mass of hot sweating drunken people all having a good loud time.

Picking a spot near the doorway which had a sign for the restrooms, Steiner and Tu-Selok hugged the wall and tried not to get their toes stomped on by the dancers.

A series of patrons went in and out and after a couple of minutes Steiner began to wonder where the Bolians were. "Let's go check out the toilets" he said "Just go in, make like your using the place, come out and report" he nodded Tu-Selok towards the female bathroom and he ducked into the male one.

There were a line of cubical along two walls and some cleansing stations on the other two. He washed his hands for a couple of minutes, watching the cubicals in the mirror. No Bolians came out. He waited until there was nobody else in the area and dropped to his knees to peer under the door. Four of the cubicals were in use, none of the foot ware or clothing looked like that worn by the Bolians.

"Where the hell did they go" he wondered, getting back to his feet just before the next patron came in. He went back out and to check with Tu-Selok, some species had different bathroom habits and it was possible they had used the other restroom.

She was waiting for him and shook her head. "Just two drunk human women telling each other they really really love each other and a Denobulan throwing up"

"Damn" Steiner looked around, there were no other doors leading from the short corridor, just the two rest-rooms. "Maybe they came out before we got down here" he said and they went back out to the dance floor. "Go that way and I'll meet you by the ramp" he said, pointing her off to the left as he went to the right.

Trying to spot anyone in particular in amongst the mass of bodies on the dance floor was not easy and the difficulty was compounded by the flashing strobes. Steiner pushed his way through but could not see any sign of the Bolians. Then suddenly there was a break in the crush of people. An open space surrounded a couple, they were both tall, slim and would commonly be called attractive, but in a hard cruel way.

For some reason there was a three foot space around them, although none of the people around the edge of the circle even appeared to notice.

Steiner blundered through the open space, the couple turned and looked at him, there was something odd about their gaze, almost calculating, but he was too busy to notice and pushed on through the other side of the circle.

A few minutes later he met up with Tu-Selok at the base of the ramp "Any sign?"

She shook her head instead of shouting over the noise and music.

"Damn!" He walked a little way up the ramp, enough to be able to see over the heads of those on the dance floor, and trying not to be too obvious he looked for any sign of the Bolians.

There was nothing. "Can't see them anywhere" he muttered "C'mon" and led the way back to the restrooms.

"Chief?" She asked once they were in the corridor away from the dance floor and could be heard

"Maybe they vanished into thin air...." Steiner said cryptically and pulled his investigative tricorder out of his pocket. Flipping it on he checked for transporter resonances and sure enough there were residual traces of a transport in the vicinity within the last twenty minutes or so.

"Alright, they're gone" He said, showing Tu-Selok the readout "We're done here. I'll check with Security in the morning, see if they can trace where they might have gone"

As they left the bar Steiner wondered to himself why the Bolians would have transported out of the restrooms. He was concerned that his presence might have triggered the beam out, even though he did not believe he and Tu-Selok had given themselves away.

That could mean that somebody had tipped the Bolians off that they would be followed, which in turn led back to the source of his own tip, from the owner of The Box of Delights, Yolanthe Ibalin.

Am I being led a dance here? Steiner wondered as he walked back to the Precinct


[Two Thousand Five Hundred Kilometers away from DS-5 out in space]

There was a brief shimmer, then when it faded two bodies drifted aimlessly in space, there was a small cloud of frozen droplets of blood around the head of each of the Bolians from the arterial spray that had gushed from the wound in each of their necks, frozen in milliseconds after they were transported into the silent cold embrace of space.

Frost formed over the lifeless eyes and fizziled off into space.

The wounds had frozen equally quickly, each one a raw diamond shaped slit under the chin.

There was a brief eddy nearby and the distant stars swam and waned for a second or two then all was clear...


[OFF]



CDM Wolfgang Steiner

DM Tu-Selok

FMS Precinct

 

RSS Feed