i-Xann rematerialised on the planet. The surroundings were a bit strange, but the vegetation was lush. She looked around and realized that the forest vegetation was, in fact, quite thick. The blonde Romulan took a tricorder and scanned around. The scanner picked up the location of the strange power signature about five kilometers west of her position. A number of humanoid lifesigns were detected in the same general direction as well.
*Ah well,* she thought with the raised eyebrows. *It certainly appears that the Starfleeters have found something of importance out here. i-Ren t'Danna, out you come...*
The Tal Shiar Captain turned in the direction of the power signature and started walking. With any luck, she would be able to make it there in approximately two to two and a half hours. In normal terrain, she would have breached the five kilometer distance in less than half an hour, but in a thickly vegetated country like this one, with enemy and an unknown threat ahead, it would take at least four to five times longer.
Walking through the forest, she noticed images carved on every tree. They were quite interesting, and she wished she could stay and study them all a bit longer, but she had a job to do. tr'Kama wanted her dead and he would get his wishes soon enough, but, despite that, she was still Tal Shiar.
Approximately half an hour has passed, and she had covered a lot of terrain when, up ahead, she suddenly heard loud noises including phaser fire and other sounds of battle. Swiftly, t'Danna pulled put a Federation-style phaser, and slowed down her pace scanning what lay ahead with the tricorder. It soon became obvious from the scan that the humanoid forms engaged in the battle ahead were Nausicaans. The Tal Shiar cryptographer nodded to herself. Nausicaans were one of the species often engaged in smuggling and other acts of piracy. What did not make sense however, was that according to the scans, the Nausicaans were engaged in battle with animals.
*An unusual form of hunting?* wondered t'Danna as she cautiously proceeded ahead. Her Vulcanoid eyebrows rose. *Hmm... and the animals appear to be fighting back?!*
i-Xann carefully approached the battlesite, clinging to the trees for cover. Finally, she was within a few meters of the encounter, and could now make out the moving shapes. *Let's see what those Nausicaans are doing.* She dropped to the ground, took out a pair of Tal Shiar issue digital binoculars and brought them up to her eyes...
...The sight that immediately assaulted her senses was horrifying: on the ground lay many of what appeared to be dead monkeys, some of them decapitated. There were quite a few other monkeys in sight, and the latter were trying to fight off a bunch of Nausicaan pirates armed with knives and phasers, with what appeared to be a very primitive form of spears. It was an evidently unfair fight, and t'Danna estimated that, at the rate it was going, the monkeys who were still alive would be totally wiped out in a matter of a few standard minutes.
"Sseikear! ("jackals")" She could not help swearing under her breath. There were monkey-like species on Romulus and Remus as well, and they were protected by the decree of the Romulan Emperor himself. Any Romulan found in possession of a dead animal of the species would face heavy criminal penalties including a possible very painful time at an imperial mind-reprogramming facility.
She reached for her field pack, and took out a disassembled light portable phaser rifle. Just like the cloak-penetrating sensors on the runabout, the rifle design was one of the best examples of the inventiveness of those serving at Tal Shiar Scientific. Unlike most of the portable phaser rifles officially known in both in the Empire and the Federation, the one t'Danna was now holding in her hands took only 30 seconds to disassemble or reassemble. It was also much lighter than most of the ordinary or even portable phaser rifles available outside the ranks of Tal Shiar.
In just a few moments the rifle was assembled, and i-Xann was looking through the computerized aiming telescope straight at one of the battle-enraged Nausicaans. He looked quite tall and was also enormously fat. *Eek!* She looked around at the other Nausicaans and understood that the former was probably the leader of the pack.
*Let's see if you can take on someone your own size, you big bully!* The blonde Romulan took aim and squeezed the trigger.
A concentrated burst of phaser energy hit the fat Nausicaan's phaser, and the weapon immediately exploded engulfing the pirate in an uncontrolled energy burst and sending him flying back into the bushes behind him. A loud cry of pain escaped the Nausicaan's lips just as he faded into unconsciousness. There was an immediate look of horror and bewilderment on the other Nausicaan's faces, and the attack on the monkeys appeared to have stopped for a moment.
Quickly t'Danna jumped up from where she was previously lying on the ground and moved under the cover of another tree. Even with the advanced Tal Shiar technology one could never be too careful when one was out in the field.
When she looked through the scope again only a few seconds later, another Nausicaan had been hit, but this time with one of the monkeys' arrows. The field of battle was quite a sight with one of the other Nausicaans looking in horror, this time at his second comrade to be downed in the battle with the primitive natives. As yet another Nausicaan raised his weapon in the direction of the spear-wielding monkeys, i-Xann aimed and took another shot. This time she missed, and instead of the exploding weapon saw an enraged and horrified Nausicaan whose weapon- wielding hand had been hit by the burst from her phaser rifle. The latter Nausicaan yelled something in a voice full of what appeared to be panic, and, as if ordered to do so, those pirates still standing lowered their weapons and retreated in a hurry by running at a very fast pace.
*Well, looks like the fight was evened a little bit,* thought t'Danna as she disassembled the portable rifle. *Now let's see what the Federation are up to...*
She calibrated her Tal Shiar issue personal cloak, and quickly donned it as she walked towards and past the clearing where the pirates had just been hunting the primitive monkey natives. She saw that the monkeys had a lot of wounded and probably needed help, but she had neither time nor aptitude to stay and help them. Beside the fact that she had to make it to where the Federation crew were heading, she also realized that she could not risk an unfriendly reaction the monkeys would probably exhibit were she to show herself. While she was way underqualified for this mission at hand, the wisdom and common sense were not limited to those with Tal Shiar Operations.
*I've done what I could for you, my little animals,* thought t'Danna as she was now way past the field of battle and pushing through the thick brush towards the location of the power signature. *Now I have my own job to do, God help me...*
It took the blonde Romulan another good hour to close the distance to the energy-radiating structure. She was finally only some ten or so meters away from what looked like a very strange stone building, and the power readings on her tricorder were very strong. There were some Nausicaan guards posted outside the entrance, and there were a dozen Orion land hovercrafts parked to the right of the building.
The heightened security reminded her of the Tal Shiar headquarters, and t'Danna's mind immediately began burning with insatiable curiosity. She understood however, that unlike during the forest battle, this time she was no match for the pirates' firepower. Thus, there was no way of satisfying her curiosity until the Starfleet crew got there and engaged the pirates in a battle of their own.
i-Xann chose a tree with a more or less comfortable trunk to sit against, and, keeping her personal cloak running, took out a hand phaser and hauled up for the wait.
She did not have to wait long. After approximately five minutes, her tricorder picked up multiple humanoid readings, and soon she saw a group of heavily armed Starfleet officers moving towards the structure ahead. They appeared to be moving freely until one of them suddenly stopped as if having received a comm transmission. Immediately the group's movement halted, and there appeared to be a verbal exchange between the officers. Following the exchange, the group spread out and moved in to attack the barely-visible pirates guarding the facility.
The battle was long and bloody, and t'Danna found herself unable to stop herself from taking out a digital field scope and watching everything that was going on. As a cryptographer, she had heretofore never observed so much action in real life.
After about fifteen or twenty minutes, the battle still raged on and neither of the sides appeared to be winning. Two of the Starfleet officers made their way to the top of the building, and from there, eliminated some of the pirate resistance with precision phaser fire. One of the Starfleet officers returned to the ground and appeared to be dragging a fallen comrade, when suddenly the pirates were being attacked with stones, sticks and flying spears from the treetops nearest to the structure.
*Aha! Now that's more like it!* t'Danna's eyebrows rose at the exhibit of such bravery by a large bunch of monkeys.
Surprisingly, the monkey attack tipped the scales of the battle to the Starfleet officers favor, and very soon the pirates guarding the outside of the building were defeated. As the victors moved into the building, t'Danna got up and moved closer, constantly scanning with her tricorder for the signs of the battle inside. She was grateful to her personal cloak once again -- this way she could stay unnoticed for as long as she needed and show herself only when the time came.
Slowly, the vital signs of the humanoid readings she was scanning for slowed down and then, probably due to the interference, started to fade. i-Xann sighed: it was time for her to follow the Starfleeters inside the building and satisfy her curiosity.
Slowly but steadily, she took one step after another until she was finally inside the building. What she saw was a staircase leading somewhere underground. Naturally, it was adorned with three dead pirates' bodies. To i-Xann's surprise, only two of the corpses were Nausicaan. The third dead man appeared to be Bolian - not the usual race to be involved in that kind of business.
She slowly descended, following the weakening lifesign readings, when she realized that she did not even have to rely on her tricorder any longer: what appeared to be a system of long cavern corridors was covered with a trail of dead bodies. The only thing the tricorder seemed to be reading now was the power signature.
*Hmm,* shivers ran up her spine. *This is definitely a suicide mission. These Starfleet officers are as efficient at killing their enemy as the Romulan Imperial Fleet...*
It took her a few minutes to finally approach the part of the underground cavern from where the power signature appeared to originate. She took a deep breath, and entered... to almost collide with a tall Bajoran man in the red Starfleet uniform!
It took i-Xann a couple of minutes to recover from the shock, when she realized that the other Starfleet officers were also in the room right in front of her. A couple of them were scanning what appeared to be some kind of a spacetime gateway, while one other of them, a man, was trying to console a seemingly grieving human female. The later was behaving as if she had just lost a relative in the battle.
Then... she noticed her target. Admiral Jeffrey Pike was giving some orders to some of the crewmen, who immediately left to go to the surface to, from what she understood, get an extensive Starfleet Security team for reinforcement. As the Admiral was getting ready to go back out himself, the Romulan realized that now was going to be her only real chance to eliminate the target. She sighed, and lifted her hand phaser... but, in the moment she was about to pull the trigger, she found herself unable to kill the momentarily helpless Starfleet Admiral standing in front of her...
As the unsuspecting Admiral made his way past her and up to the surface, she lowered her weapon back down... What was she going to do now? She did not know. The curiosity of the gate however, momentarily overtook her and she forgot about the danger and approached it, drawing the tricorder out once again and checking the readings.
She found the data from the gate so fascinating! She now knew what the Starfleet were doing here: they were on the same mission the Tal Shiar was conducting for the benefit of the Empire, only they of course, were doing it for the security of the Federation!
Suddenly there was a beep from her personal cloaking device, and in the horrifying seconds it took t'Danna to lose her invisibility, she had no time to draw a phaser...
Immediately, the Human female who only moments previously was very distraught and appeared to be in no condition to fight jumped t'Danna with such force and skill that in less than five seconds the Tal Shiar Captain ended up restrained and flat on her back on the cavern floor. The Starfleet officer who had attacked her turned out to be so strong that, in the midst of the horror that gripped her, t'Danna realized with a shock that the woman was most probably genetically enhanced.
*Oh boy.... Now what?!* The blonde Romulan's mind was racing. *Why didn't they just execute me on sight? That's what they do to all their opponents, don't they?*
At that moment, the "Super-Humanoid" woman eased her grip and a tall male lifted i-Xann off the ground like she was made of fluff. t'Danna lifted her eyes and saw that what had actually lifted her was some kind of forcefield and... there were suddenly TWO identical tall males! One of them appeared to be controlling the field, while the other approached her with a pair of manacles.
i-Xann tried not to show her fear, but all the surprises were too much for her. As the manacles closed around her wrists, all the colors started to dance in front of her eyes and then darkness gripped her as, for the first time in her adult life, Tal Shiar Captain i-Xann t'Danna fainted...