[greaterfrost]

The faint whistle of a dagger flying at an incredible speed seemed like a torpedo glinting in the pale light blistering against the bleak of space; a deeply verdant muscled arm broke through the canopy of a tree and snatched it from the air as the blade relayed telemetry and thermographic rendering of the nearby forest. The perfectly camouflaged former assassin was perched expertly in a Giru tree, a tall, dense conifer with broad, thick branches; it was an absolute staple for survival in this region as it held water and a dense pulp, Cerim IV had come to be as authentic a place as any forgotten world Shavi had hidden in, but this place with the emotional attachments that seemed to linger especially when the air was as quiet as it always seemed to be, it held you, gave you more of a reason to stay.
 
The wizened assassin watched the ground eight meters below as three children passed under her running from something raucously barreling after them; ten years earlier than this moment, she wouldn’t have even looked up as the children lost their bid for survival, the universe didn’t play favorites, and there was always more than one way to see a story. 

The olive-green skin of her right palm squeezed around a remote trigger that activated a trap on the other side of the retreating children.  The chase was encouraged by a Vaure a 2.5-meter-tall mass of thick fur and razor claws, an apex predator clearly after its next meal. It broke through the undergrowth and roared as it closed quickly on the children.  The youngest boy, Hurin, tripped over a root as something he was holding became dislodged and fell to the ground in front of him, a Vaure cub barely four months old.  Shavi wouldn’t have hesitated  to let the errant boys meet their grisly end, but people change, and with guidance, it is usually for the better.

The artful killer dropped from her perch, descending the full height of the tree to land effortlessly between the gaining predator and the clueless child.  A field of force filled a small two-meter square portion of the forest floor and caught the Vaure in the air, halting its advance.  Shavi turned to Hurin and gave a disapproving look before lifting the cub and returning it to the trapped mother.

Shavi released the trap but kept the barrier between the predator and the boy; the massive mother gently inspected her cub for injury and let out violent and rage-filled complaints against the field; she was right to be upset, but sometimes the law of nature shouldn’t be so absolute, or its sense of justice, so unforgiving to curiosity.  Eventually, the rightfully entitled mother locked eyes with her green-hued opponent and came to an understanding.  The lumbering beast pawed at the isolation field, huffing and grunting in protest before giving up and carefully nudging her cub back home, both slowly disappearing into the undergrowth of the ancient forest.

Clicking a switch on her left forearm, the trap disengaged and closed; Shavi Nodama, the anti-hero of Cerim IV, turned toward the boy as he was still shivering in shock, and the other two returned to see the form-fitting black tracking suit with scintillating blue eyes behind a black facemask partially occluded by a white and red splay of long curly hair.

“A Vaure cub can go for sixty thousand credits on the market if… you get away with it.” She whistled in the subvocal range as the recon blade she had used slid from its sheath and hovered ominously over her left shoulder. “I, on the other hand, find poaching… upsetting.” She glowered at the boys as her eyes seemed to shimmer behind vapor escaping through the opening in the mask.

“I just wanted….” Hurin started while all the biometric and demographic data of the three played across a translucent ocular inside the mask. “it’s clear you wanted an early grave,” she interrupted. "I would likely just arrest you for being stupid, but the Vaure, they’d feed on you for an afternoon…” she looked him over and shrugged. “Maybe she’d feed you to her cubs.” She continued. “I’m not normally in the game of saving children, no matter what they’ve been up to.” More vapor escaped her mask as she seemed to smile from behind the plasticized steel of the helmet. “But… your parents are looking for you, and I’ve opted to help… for a price… I think I was drunk when I agreed, but here you are…” She growled as the blade slid back into its sheath along her right scapula. “Go home… and don’t let me catch you in my forest again. The Vaure encounter would have been preferable to what I’ll do to you if I catch you stealing their cubs again.” She clicked as two ranging lasers appeared over her ocular as twin drones camouflaged expertly in the canopy fired six harmless but very real-seeming plasma bolts in quick succession at the feet of the three boys.

The boys ran off in a panic at the impact of the gunfire tripping over one another to get away fastest. Shavi rolled her neck to both sides, popping her spinal column back into alignment, and pressed a tab on the side of the mask as it recessed into a much smaller slot attached to the armor of her shoulder plates.

“I know you’re there, Miy” Shavi smiled as she turned towards the nearby pitch-black forest behind her.

Miyan clicked the safety off her plasma carbine as she walked out of the underbrush with her ranger beacon lighting up, illuminating everything within six meters of her. “Those drones are illegal, Darlin….” She smiled.

Shavi made another subvocal command as the drones set off in different directions.

“Why, officer, whatever do you mean?” she lifted her hands to show she was unarmed as she turned to face the ranger.

“You know the drill, Shay…” She pulled out her wrist restraints and walked toward her suspect.

“Really? We’re doing this?” Shavi asked as the ranger closed the first restraint over Shavi’s left wrist, pulling it behind her to secure the other side. “You know the charge’ll never stick,” she grunted as she was pushed against a nearby tree to close the restraints around the right side. “This is what I hate about you, lot, think you can get away with anything,” Miyan growled as she pressed up against her suspect planting her knee against a pressure point in her suspect’s right leg to cause pain intentionally.

“If you had gear, that… ye’ know... worked, I think I’d get the message more convincingly…” her subvocal talents activated gravity pins in her synthetic arms to disengage the restraints causing them to fall open and drop harmlessly to the ground.

“You, bitch.” Miyan growled and landed an elbow into Shavi’s midfaulds plate of the armor, catching an exploit in the armor’s design and landing the blow under her protective outfit; the satisfying grunt of pain from her suspect encouraged her to tighten her grip, still holding on to Shavi’s back threw her to the ground. “I don’t have time to babysit VIP like you, playing the hero in my woods!” Miy moved to kick her in the same place, but her suspect rolled away and to her feet.

“I’m gonna give you the beating I should have when I first caught you with the boar.” Miyan dropped the carbine as it seated itself automatically in its holster along her rear flank. She raised her arms and threw an expert punch toward Shavi, as her target easily avoided and locked her forearm, allowing Shavi to use the leverage to throw the ranger into a roll three meters away. “I gave up because I didn’t have time to bury your body, mul’gat, but I got plenty of time tonight.” Shavi returned with a smile, using a vulgar term for cave worm in her native tongue. Shavi ran towards the ranger, letting her momentum continue moving forward as she dragged a knee across the ground into the same exposed region of the ranger that Miyan had used earlier. The grunt returned made Shavi smile but only momentarily as she dropped her right elbow trapping Shavi’s knee and landed a solid overhand punch into the left side of Shavi’s head, stunning her for a moment and climbing on top of her with her legs on either side of her waist locking them so Shavi couldn’t push her off. “It’s over, Shay… yet again….” Miyan began, but Shavi’s remarkable athleticism and vastly superior strength brought her right leg up and over the neck and shoulder of Miyan pulling her off and starting to choke her out with her shapely powerful right thigh putting her weight on it so the officer would be out in seconds.

Miyan used her strength to lift the suspect’s weight off her, letting her breathe again as she used the compromising position to get three or four good jabs into Shavi’s already tender right side before rolling away and catching her breath while climbing to her feet.
Shavi got up and winced at her right side, drawing blood onto her hand from her split lip.

“I can see you’ve been paying attention; that’d drop any of you at the station,” Shavi smirked.

Miyan slid her tactical harness off to improve her mobility as the carbine locked automatically and dropped to the ground.  Shavi pressed a tab just above her left hip as the armor opened and pulled away, letting Shavi increase her mobility while the state-of-the-art combat gear dropped as well.


“I’ve been prepping for payback Vog’” she returned with a vague insult herself.

Miyan rushed Shavi and dropped her right shoulder to catch her in the stomach, but Shavi saw the move and used her left thigh to redirect Miyan’s momentum, sliding up behind her and locking her powerful arms around the ranger’s throat. Miyan straightened her opposite leg and put all her weight into the grasp of her opponent, using her total body weight to slide herself out of the hold grabbing Shavi’s left forearm and twisting it to move her away from Miyan, dropping her knee into Shavi’s midback indirectly throwing her to the ground. Miyan moved in over the top of her back, locking Shavi’s arm behind her as she fumbled for wrist restraints again. Shavi couched her arms in over her chest and used her added mobility to turn to face Miyan; she used her head to come up underneath Miyan’s open grasp and kissed her attacker passionately, pushing her aggressively against the ground while they fought each other, Miyan feverishly returned the kiss and quickly moved to lock her suspect’s arms above her head as she let her lips linger over every inch of her lover’s face and neck.

Over the next few minutes, they worshipped each other, taking every passionate moment they had shared and reliving it in a way that was just their own.  Before long, they lay in a quiet embrace in various states of undress while they gently kissed and adored each other, embraced, and spent.  Miyan looked into Shavi’s eyes and shared a gentle kiss that lingered for seconds, lost in each other’s touch yet again.

“You were supposed to meet me at the Starport, darling….” Miyan whispered, their cheeks touching, still exploring each other. ‘’Mmmmm…” Shavi bit Miyan’s lip gently and stole a soft kiss as well. “Local kids were trying to get themselves killed, pet….” Shavi smiled and slid over her gorgeous partner, looking down with incredible pride and adoration. “Your job is much harder than you made it out to be.” Shavi scolded as Miyan searched for her love with doting eyes and a wanting smile. “Keeping them alive is a bit harder than leaving them for the janitor, I’ll admit…” Miyan laughed, and she sat up to press her chest against Shavi’s, kissing her deeply again, sliding slowly away to get dressed again.

Shavi pulled her top on again and reaffixed her armor; Miyan did the same and reset the carbine at her side. “I’ve been thinking,” Miyan moved to help Shavi fasten her armor correctly. “The new station is nearly finished, and they have an opening for a security chief.” She smiled, looking into Shavi’s face.  As she spoke, the former assassin moved her fingers through her ranger’s long black tresses. “I imagine you want this on your merit, and I’m to stay out of the way?” Shavi teased, fastening the tactical harness. “I think it’s a great idea, but it’s unlikely you’ll ever be a starship captain if you take it.”

Miyan frowned, having not considered that she knew that a word from her partner could get her the command of any ship in the fleet, but she had proven herself in her mind; her ambitions for justice made any opportunity on the surface out of the question on her own merits.
  
Shavi had done everything she could other than force the issue with the governor, too many hands were already mixed in with Miyan’s career, and there wouldn’t be less drama if heroes and heroine to the confederacy played their cards to try and bring balance to noteworthy people.  Miyan was one of the best, and she had proven that more times than most could.  Jada had come to use Shavi’s ranger with insertion and evac missions, Pauc had come to rely on her wisdom when it came to border protections, she had all the right connections to really send her career in any direction she chose, but unavoidably it would be seen as favoritism because her successes were private, and her failures received far more scrutiny than her contemporaries.

Shavi voiced her subvocal command again as the two drones returned. She lifted Miyan’s head to meet her eyes and smiled. “You’re already a better person than anyone they could find to fill that position.” She put her hands on Miyan’s shorter shoulders, looked up to the stars, and then back at her.  “Those are still gonna need to be registered, love…” she grinned mischievously at the drones and back to her lover. “The universe doesn’t need those that follow orders to make things better, and no law will make anything or anyone safe in ways they weren’t before,” Shavi noted. Miyan had come to soften Shavi’s gruff demeanor when it came to considering consequences, but Shavi had always shown wisdom hidden behind those killer eyes, a wise mind the darkest of moments had kept from so many others that came out often in the confidence of her partner.  “If you want the stars to change, then you must go to the stars to do it.” Shavi continued as she reached for a glove secured in her belt.

“I’m not you, shay…” Miyan protested. “I can’t just abandon the rules because they don’t work for me anymore.” She pleadingly looked into her partner’s eyes. “that’s not the life I know how to live.” She admitted painfully.

Shay smiled and nodded. “Aye, you’re not,” she kissed the Bajoran love of her life tenderly, using her weaponized pheromones so that Miyan could feel the rush of pleasure fill her body all at once.  Shavi had used this skill to paralyze her victims in euphoria at one point in time, but it hadn’t worked quite the same when she was equally transfixed as her partner. Both felt the rush, and it was closer than many could ever connect with one another. “My skills came from the darkest hearts of my people, and yours came from the need to protect the world from those who thought they were above the law.”

She smiled and dragged her fingers firmly across Miyan’s scalp as she smiled at the attention. “You’ve lived a life where people matter more than who gets the credit, and I won’t let you think that is somehow less impressive than being a weapon that no longer treasures her gift,” Shavi admitted herself.  “If you need the job to define yourself, the future is in that position, not the dreams you had before you said yes.” Shavi scanned the horizon as the artificial lights of satellites and space stations gave a lived-in feel to the nearby cosmos but not every part of it was civilized yet. “I think you’re not done exploring your life yet, and maybe this… position is what you think you should do, even if it isn’t what the rest of you wants to do.” She slid her hands under the tactical harness Miyan had worn for over 20 years. Maybe you’re more than a ranger, and this,” she clicked the release of the harness as it dropped to the ground. “Is what you really want.”

Miyan watched her deep blue eyes shimmer in the artificial light, “I want…” she embraced her killer and smiled “…peace.” She pleaded as she looked up again.

Shavi lifted her chin and nodded. “Someone else can save the stupid, right?” she grinned and looked up at her drones as they orbited; they seemed to have detected something moving through the underbrush towards them. Shavi instinctively spoke a sub-vocal command into a hidden microphone as the helmet materialized around her face, and Shavi held tightly to her ranger as they disappeared into the trees, leaving her illuminated ring on the ground as they left.  The light from the ground would have been insufficient to make the drone visible, but Shavi triggered the cloak anyway, her mask showed her everything the drones were seeing, and a monitor on her arm showed Miyan the same thing.

Four men armed with illegal disruptors moved into the clearing to close on the illuminated ring that was, in reality, a series of fourteen nano drones that moved at the motivation of the user, but they lay motionless, still activated on the ground without any indication to who their owner may be, Shavi was hiding in her Gavi tree with an isolation field to disguise any sensors that may be on the hunt for her, Miyan didn’t recognize the men but realized even with the element of surprise she couldn’t take them.

They couldn’t hear the men talking from their range, but Shavi knew mercenaries when she saw them.  News of Shavi’s unofficial retirement had spread, the rumors of a green death had grown stale, and if she was done killing, she still knew too many secrets to live a quiet life herself.

One of the men had a tracking drone scanning the area directly around him.  It chirped idly, not indicating the target but having collected significant trace evidence to prove she had been there recently. 
               
Miyan lifted her carbine and motioned towards another tree.  The monitor on Shavi’s wrist blinked with a message: “Understand your enemy… then, kill them…” she shook her head and spoke, seemingly absent into the wind as the drones moved off in a westerly direction and sank down to a two-meter glide over the terrain they released trace evidence of Shavi and Miyan in the wind and heat signatures moving at a running pace towards the village.
The drone chirped in the affirmative as the mercenary, and his three companions began running in the predicted direction.

After the men had run off into the darkness, Miyan looked up at Shavi. “The two of us could have taken them, Shay.” She checked her weapon. “Probably,” Shavi responded. “But then we wouldn’t know anything else about who comes next, and the ones after that…” She spoke again as the wind carried no sound; her Orion cutpurse fighter had been hovering only a few meters away; it was designed to approach guarded locations silently, so when the doors opened, Miyan seemed startled at the green and red lights simply appearing in the air as the rich interior of the attack craft was open to them.  Shavi moved through the air as though gravity had forgotten them and gently touched down on the luxurious carpet lining the deck of the exceptionally well-armed and prepared warfighter.

Shavi got to her feet and moved to the pilot’s seat while a twin console appeared, looking in the opposite direction, the seat materializing from onboard emitters. Miyan took the other seat and knew what Shavi was likely to do.

The craft moved over the mercenaries tracking any communications or latent identities of her pursuers; official records showed no marks of identity but legal common names and occupations. These weren’t amateurs, and it was very likely that the price on her head was well worth being found out, in some cases even worth dying for.  Only the syndicate still held that much sway in the sector, and Jada hadn’t rooted out all their locations yet, even if the information she had was credible.  They had been there for centuries before the confederacy and knew far more about that space than anyone else; lifetimes of hiding from each other and the law gave them an edge that would be foolish to assume wouldn’t be an issue at some point.

There was clearly a vacuum of power somewhere nearby, and it would take a pretty good kill to force the region's councils to recognize a new Primogen.  Shavi had even thought about taking the position by force once or twice while she was running from responsibility and the betterment of the sector around her.  “What are we looking for, Shay?” Miyan asked while she tracked tactical and science bays rooted to her console. “Not, what… who…” Shavi said quizzically. “I’ve been quiet for too long, Miy,” she mused as she tracked the likely path the men took through the forest.  “Someone’s making sure I don’t come back to challenge…” she concluded.

On the monitor in front of Miyan, the path they took came from a clearing of rocks once thought to be the remains of an igneous protrusion from a long-dormant volcano millennia ago; the disturbance of the brush and the chatter from electronics came from inside the rock.  Shavi smiled and tapped a button on her console as the drones returned to either side of the cutpurse.  The drone hovered for a moment and then disappeared in the direction of the protrusion as Shavi looked back, “They’re going to hit the town, hoping your forces attack; this isn’t just a hunt for me, Miy, they’re hunting you too, and they’re not going to stop while we’re alive… They’re Warling.”
   
Miyan was well acquainted with the name; Warling were a group of pirates that rented themselves out to start wars and conflicts with advanced species; they would leave just enough evidence behind to indicate a group had caused or done something that would easily be considered an act of war from some nearby clan and sell to both sides as the conflicts continued and the damage intensified.  Miyan had just returned from taking out a haunt in what was thought to be an abandoned asteroid field.

                Sensors picked six other teams moving in on the peaceful village of Cedir a fishing village that bordered Shavi’s favorite lake.
“Miy” Shavi started before she was cut off. “Contacting Cerim command, Havoc pylon inbound ninety seconds.” Shavi seemed shocked for a moment; havoc was a protocol used to temporarily halt riots or assist in evacuations, but Shavi wasn’t sure who else was coming, so it was better to be prepared.

There was a small commotion in the constable’s office as six men sleepily rushed from their barracks, well-armed but unaware of whom they’d be facing, when the image of Miyan appeared on a holograph in the air in front of them, an overlay of the area and telemetry of tactical information actively tracked all six teams, as command information from the orbiting security station was giving tracking information of each of the strike team members from the limited information they could gather.

A black cylinder materialized in the center of town; it was featureless and with no instrumentation on it of any kind; two pulses of blue light launched from the top of the cylinder, and the monolith went dormant.

A team of five was entering the village from the east. They consisted of two Klingon women carrying disruptor cannons and three Lethean men with morphogenic spatial charges that would instantly implicate the dominion and their settlements far away from the gamma quadrant.

“Please lower your weapons and prepare for legal detainment” the image of a human analog hologram appeared in front of the team. They fired as bolts of disruptor fire passed harmlessly through the holographic officer; six more holograms appeared surrounding the team.  One of the Lethean's tried to run through the officer and received a mild but sustaining shock that incapacitated the warrior.

“P…pl…plea…please lower your weapons and prepare for legal detainment” The six holograms repeated in concert, the two Klingon women raised their cannons in surrender as the Letheans soon followed suit.

Elsewhere the teams received similar interceptions from the holographic teams; the Havoc pylon created a synthetic field of emitters that allowed a local library of holograms and barriers to choose from designed to be used primarily in scenarios of natural disasters; in this case, the monolith was modified to be well suited for defensive measures versus uncoordinated and small terrorist insurgencies.

As the strike teams opened fire, hoping for sustained resistance, the holograms shifted positions around the battlefield with no issues of line of sight of concealing and cover limitations; very real phaser lances fired from the holograms, quickly stunning and disabling the strike teams. 

Miyan was coordinating the counterassault from an undisclosed location as the holograms brought the 19 conscious mercenaries to the security pavilion for processing; the seven disabled attackers were placed in medically induced status fields and transported to secure treatment facilities in one of the sub-levels of the Starport more than three thousand kilometers away.

“I’ll return to headquarters and start a file on the planet's protrusion and clear infiltration of global defenses.” Miyan started working on a recon report when Shavi stopped her. “I hate that I’ve brought you into this, Miy” Shavi moved from her seat to kneel next to her ranger. “This is just the beginning, and they won’t stop until someone is fighting someone, or someone takes them out at the source.”

“I agree, so I am going to spearhead this strike team and deal with the impression before it gets any larger.” Miyan protested as Shavi touched Miy’s soft lips. “Miy, they’re trying to start a war; the easiest way to do that is to kill a hero,” Shavi explained. “Killing me won’t be so easy given my experience with them, but…” She touched her ranger’s shoulder. “If they kill you, I will respond as they expect, and whatever happens next will involve those much larger than us.” Shavi smiled warmly.  “Nothing is keeping us here; if we leave the fight, we win the war; if we stay, no one does.”

Miyan thought a moment and nodded, “So, retirement it is?” Miyan smiled. “Somehow, I think a party and a speech are missing…” She chuckled as she watched the tactical readout of other teams appearing on scanners and holograph response teams closing in on them.  She knew Shavi was right, but not fighting here seemed so alien to her that it almost felt like a betrayal. “I’ll tell Jada not to try too hard to investigate our disappearance,” Shavi reassured her.  Miyan nodded and tried to let the gravity of the situation sink in.

The cutpurse fighter was an Orion marvel of engineering; it was barely the size of a shuttle runabout, but it contained everything needed to sustain the pilot indefinitely; since the Orion were notoriously known as pirates, the attempt to chase them down was rarely off the table, relaxing wasn’t in the pirate’s vocabulary.  This particular craft held the personal touches of a remarkably talented engineer and her team of allies; she had unlimited resources and had been working on it for more than twenty years in total.  Even the shell of the fighter was modified to absorb and adapt to the type of energy used on it.  The advantage of fighting and beating an enemy like the borg was the mountains of novel technologies that could be bought and sold, tech that neither the Federation nor the Klingon empire was actively researching. The Romulans had no such inhibition, and the Cerim confederacy had deep pockets.

Shavi moved the fighter into a known space flight corridor, hiding in the ion debris of the engines of a civilian freighter until they made it into cruising space.

“Any thoughts on where we should go?” Shavi looked dutifully towards the conn panel. “Something quiet outside the main space lanes, maybe Jori IX?” Shavi was familiar with the system and the planet; it was the site of a massive space battle with the Dominion and later the Elachi, with so many scavengers milling about and strangers moving unmolested through the region, sinking into a melting pot of so many cultures would have been better than the best cover Pauc could have come up with. “I couldn’t have come up with a better hideout, Miy… “Shay grinned back mischievously. “We’ll make a criminal out of you yet.” Miyan snorted in reply and was working on faking her disappearance so there wouldn’t be any breadcrumbs to follow while simultaneously making fake credentials for them to give to the authorities in the Jori region.


The Cutpurse had a mark eleven singularity drive, so it could reach the equivalent of warp 9.16 at cruise, making them forty-three hours from the system.  Shavi tapped the heading into the panel, and the refined craft adjusted its heading to “naturally drift” away from the ionic trail before heading to warp.