Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Posted on Wed Jul 22nd, 2015 @ 12:40pm by Lieutenant JG Maryam Syed
Edited on on Fri Jul 31st, 2015 @ 1:25pm

654 words; about a 3 minute read

It was something she had told herself she would quit doing, now that she had a chance at a fresh start. But there was a thrill to it that she couldn't ignore. She liked being skilled, and this was one skill she admired others for. Now she had it, she wasn't going to let it fade away.

It was easier, being Ops. She had access to the ship's systems, and learning all the little tricks was fun. She never fiddled with anything much, but she perfected her technique so that she could slip in and out without the system ever detecting a single change, a single presence.

She tried to forget the reason she had started learning, but the path to a happy new life wasn't so easy. Inevitably, her mind went back to the data she had stolen from various places, data that just sat on the secret console in her quarters doing absolutely nothing, that she could make absolutely nothing of. Maryam knew she ought to destroy the console and never dare to hack again. But the console was a key, and she didn't want to destroy the opportunity that came with it.

It was one of those nights where she felt listless and bored that she took the console from its hiding place and looked at the data encrypted within it. She hadn't dared to unencrypt it yet, but today she had nothing better to do and she reasoned that she would be as much in danger whether the data was easily readable or not. So what was at first a playful attempt to break the encryption became a determination that lasted all night and left her exhausted when her shift came. " Just video games!" she told Johnny wearily when she came into the Ops room. But the console sat in her room, hidden away, and the data visible for anyone to see - anyone who could guess her password and get past the encryption she had set herself.

The next night, before she collapsed with exhaustion into her soft bed, she let her eyes glaze over the names within the data she had. Most of them held no meaning to her, and she couldn't in this state comprehend their relations to each other - but then one just about caught her eye. Some Cardassian organization, Alin Alket, had worked for a time with a Romulan company, which Starfleet records had noted because of caution against Romulans on Vulcan. They had hired a contractor - a liason - to negotiate some deal between this organization and a Vulcan one. But it was the name of the Cardassian organization that troubled her.

" Why do I feel like I've seen it before?" She murmured, entering their name to search the nets for it. But in her exhaustion, her fingers grew slack and her eyes closed. Slowly, PADD slid off to the side of the bed and switched off after a few minutes, as secure as ever. It edged closer and closer to the edge before falling off and hitting the ground with a clatter, shaking Maryam out of her dreams, wide eyed and afraid.

" I know...I know where I saw it before." she whispered, to make it real. The nightmare she always had, of Marula and the footage of her brother, tortured...even though the dream was quickly fading, she could still see the tiny necklace Marula had worn that day, a gold necklace with a tiny bird on it, with a single blue gem for an eye. It had never caught her attention before, but now... A quick search on her PADD told her all she needed to know; that the organization had supposedly celebrated its 100th birthday, and the necklace, valued at more than 10 million credits, had been offered to her most loyal patrons, those that had offered most to the company. One of whom, it seemed, was Marula Lang.

RSS Feed