Local Airport, Tiaita Capital City
0:41 hours until departure
“I’m sure Litus would have been happy to give us a lift back to the airport.”
“Zol buddy, do me a favor and just stop talking for a while.”
It had taken them nearly an hour to find their way back to the airport on foot after their hasty departure from the Ait Gardens settlement. Val had been adamant that he had not been interested in asking the Tiaitan man who had so obviously deceived them for assistance to return to the airport. Zolwat had raised Eagle but had found out that transporters were still not reliable and none of the shuttles were available for a pick-up which had left them no other option but to hike back the old fashioned way.
“It could’ve been worse,” said the Bolian. “At least Litus’ motives were mostly altruistic in nature.”
Horowitz shot the man a sidelong glance of such an intensity, had he been a telepath, one could have assumed his thoughts alone could kill.
The two had barely spoken since hitting the road and any kind of conversation Zolwat had tried to strike up had resulted in a similar result.
The crewman quickly redirected his eyes forward. Then a small smile formed on his blue lips and he pointed ahead when he spotted the telltale airport control tower. “We’ve made it,” he said and checked his tricorder, “and with time to spare.”
Val’s only response was a grunt.
Very much aware of how little time remained until Eagle was due to depart the system, they jogged that last few hundred meters and to their relief found that a handful of shuttles still remained, their crews hastily unloading their cargo. Among them was the Cyrus and her pilot, Ensign Srena who did not appear happy when she spotted the two crewmembers.
“Where have you been?” she said.
“Uh, Horizon Protocol,” said Zolwat, hoping it would explain everything.
But it was quickly becoming obvious that the short Andorian woman wasn’t so much upset at their excursion, as she was irritated with the Tiaitan ground crew.
The airport looked impossibly more packed and chaotic then it had been hours earlier. Transport vehicles of various sizes and states of loading and unloading were strewn all over the tarmac and numerous more were either attempting to leave or trying to get in. In between all that seemingly unsupervised bedlam were countless Starfleet issue containers, crates and barrels still awaiting to be loaded on vehicles.
“Right,” said the ensign, clearly not having the time to consider the two any further and then turned to one of the crewmen struggling to find the space to unload another crate on top of an anti-grav unit. “Grosvenor, let’s have those crates out of the shuttle, we have to get out of here.”
The young rating shook his head with frustration. “There simply isn’t any more room,” he said. “We’ve already started piling them up higher than we should.”
Srena uttered a heavy sigh and then spotted one of the persons supposedly in charge of the airport and quickly headed towards him. “Mister Orgun-Tia.”
The Tiaitan turned around and sighed dramatically. “That’s Supervisor Orgun-Tia.”
“Right, whatever,” she said. “We need you to speed up loading some of this cargo on these vehicles,” she added, “I’m supposed to be wheels up five minutes ago and still got half my load sitting in the shuttle.”
“I wish I could help,” he said, already having lost interest with the blue Starfleet officer and making to turn away.
“What do you want us to do, take this stuff back? I thought your people urgently require these supplies.”
“Of course we do.”
“Then what’s the problem?” she said with clear exasperation. “You’ve got enough people here and a number of half empty vehicles.”
Val and Zolwat watched the exchange with fascination.
“It’s not that simple.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’ve got this vehicle right over there, completely empty, you haven’t loaded a single crate onto it since we got here,” she said and then headed towards the large truck parked nearby and doing nothing more than blocking off one of the access routes. “Get some of the crates onto that one.”
The supervisor whirled around. “No, that’s my personal vehicle, get away from there,” he urged and then quickly followed the Starfleet pilot, apparently determined to stop her.
Seeing that things were about to get physical. Zolwat and Horowitz quickly stepped up to cover Srena.
“This makes no sense, just put some crates onto this thing and unload them somewhere else later,” she said as she reached the vehicle and then undid the loading hatch in the back.
“Don’t touch that, that’s mine,” the supervisor cried but found himself unable to reach her when Val put himself in his path.
“Relax,” he said.
Srena opened-up the van and her eyes grew wide when she spotted the vehicles’ only content. “Oh my.”
Zolwat turned to see what the ensign had discovered and a big smirk came over his lips.
Srena turned around. “Mister Orgun, I believe you must be mistaken. This does not appear to be yours at all.”
The supervisor tried to free his sidearm but Val was faster and simply slapped that pistol out of his hand and then unceremoniously pushed the smaller man into the side of a large crate before he fell painfully onto his backside.
Zolwat climbed into the van and picked up the two type-III phaser rifles and lifting them up victoriously. “We got’em, Val. We finally got’em. Mission accomplished.”
“You can’t take those,” Orgun moaned. “Those are mine. I found them.”
Horowitz pushed the man back against the crate as he tried to stand up. “You want to be real careful about what you’re saying next. We’ve spent hours running around looking for these only to find that they were here all along.”
Message apparently received, the man cowered back and kept his mouth shut.
Ensign Srena quickly found another supervisor to hand Orgun over to-she doubted it would accomplish much-and then had her people load the remaining crates on the now empty truck.
Ten minutes later the Cyrus took off from the airport, empty except for its crew, Zolwat, Val and two phaser rifles.
Shuttle Cyrus
0:14 hours until departure
Val Horowitz looked as if somebody had just diagnosed him with a terminal disease as he sat opposite Zolwat on the now mostly empty Cyrus, approaching her mother ship.
The Bolian on the other hand seemed elated and he still had those two elusive phaser rifles clutched in his hands like trophies. “I really don’t understand why you’re in such a grim mood,” he said. “We’ve got them back and accomplished our mission.”
The human shot his partner and withering look. “We spent nearly eight hours looking for these cursed things and the ensign stumbles over them within a couple of minutes.”
Zolwat laughed. “Don’t worry, Srena promised me she’ll put in her report that we were the ones that thought of checking in that truck.”
“That’s hardly the point,” he shot back and then defiantly crossed his large arms in front of his chest. “We’ve wasted hours of our time chasing a dead end.”
He shrugged. “Most important thing is that we retrieved the weapons and that we prevented cultural contamination by having the Tiaitans take these apart and reverse engineer them. Prime Directive upheld. Everything’s good that ends right. Right?”
Horowitz rolled his eyes at yet another botched aphorism. “Right, so it’s the Prime Directive you’re concerned about. Well then, let’s recap today’s events then, shall we? We’ve handed a local a large amount of replicated currency, thereby influencing an alien economy. We’ve removed an official-even if corrupt-law enforcement officer from his post by violent means. We’ve destroyed an entire warehouse full of weapons, redistributed massive amounts of wealth and shifted the balance of power for an entire settlement with apparently positive short-term implications but impossible to calculate long term effects,” he said and glared at the other man. “Now, please tell me again how exactly we upheld the Prime Directive today?”
Zolwat visibly blanched and then looked at the two phasers whose retrieval suddenly wasn’t that much of a triumph anymore.
They heard somebody clear their throat and both their heads whipped around.
Ensign Srena was standing by the doorway leading to the cockpit.
“Uh, did you “? hear any of that?” said Zolwat.
She glared at him. “Trust me, I wish I hadn’t.”
For a moment nobody spoke as the three Starfleeters looked at each other in silence.
“Now what?” asked Horowitz.
She considered the petty officer for a moment longer. Then she shrugged. “I think you boys better get started on writing that report,” she said. “But as far as I understand it, you’ve retrieved what you came for. The Horizon Protocol has been a complete success.”