Smile and look pretty

Posted on Thu Jul 2, 2020 @ 11:16pm by Lieutenant Yukiko Winters

545 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: Things Past
Location: Velous
Timeline: Several years back

Silk stood at the entrance way just as she did for their other touchdowns once things opened up. It was her job to smile, look pretty and greet guests to the casino and endure the leers and pinches and grabbing of the patrons as well as they entered the casino ship.

Well, that is what it was on the surface, her real job as she continually said, "Welcome, enjoy, good luck!", was to make a quick read of the customers as they streamed in. There were a lot of Cardassians in the lot as expected as this was their claimed space, but definitely a mix of others as one would find at most out of the way places.

She smiled that false smile but noted a small group of Talarians heading this way. That is one thing they were after was what was going on in Talaria. A small group, but highly aggressive and one of the few groups that had much knowledge of the Tholians. The later never traveled anywhere hardly outside their realm.
All she knew so far about them was they were paranoid, and if one could say alien thinking, that applied to them. The silicone based entities were nasty customers but something that the Federation wanted intel on as well.

She made her usual phrase as the Talarians marched by and got in return a set of sour looks. One sneered at her and quipped, "Did a man talk to you? Otherwise shut up." She just kept the smile in the place, made a little dip and ignored the comment. Sweeping through their minds briefly the smile turned genuine. They had been to their home space fairly recent and would then know what the latest was there. Talarians were highly paranoid and while they traveled outside their space virtually no one other that a known Talarian was allowed in.

They traded with their bigger neighbor Cardassia only because there were things they needed and Talaria and Cardassia had a mutual dislike of each other.

Silk made a mental note and turned to greet the other patrons.

"Join Star Fleet, see the stars, get to know other species!" The recruiting phrase went. What they neglected to say was smell things you never thought you would ever smell in your life especially out on the fringes of the various societies. The underbelly of the that existed virtually everywhere. Well maybe not the First Federation, but you had not lived until you met a Kziniti with three day old breath.

Just smile, say welcome, see if anything looked interesting. Anything with a shield take note, they would be tossed out soon enough with a pretext of cheating or plied with alcohol until shields crumbled.

Anyone with anything, well later, after they had been made a bit more compliant with drugs or alcohol, she would ransack their minds for information. It was an unpleasant task at best. You had to dig through all sorts of things and see and experience things that no matter how long a shower you took afterwards never made you feel clean.

Shuffle them out the door, and start again the next day feeling a little more dragged down into the dirt that would not come off.

"Welcome, enjoy, good luck!"

 

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