All in a Days Work

Azri had worked her Engineering shift as normal and returned to her quarter to change. She had spent the day trying to isolate a power drain in one of the primary power grid conduits. It had taken her most of the shift to trace where the problem was, but she had finally discovered that the drain was due to a fault industrial replicator on the deck above. Fixing the replicator had not only stopped the power drain, but as Azri’s work usually did, actually increased its efficiency through some fine tuning.

She unlocked the door to her quarters and after a quick change into her training gear, she headed out into the stations corridors once more. Azri hadn’t been on the station long, just a few weeks, but she had soon got into a routine. The young Engineer had been assigned to Starbase 901 straight out of the Academy. She liked her job and never found the work boring, but she had found the social aspects of life on the station a little harder.

Azri had always tried to keep herself in good shape, training every day. Almost as soon as she had arrived on the station, she had checked out what sort of training facilities were available to her. ‘Muscle Beach’ had seemed to her as the perfect place to train, but she had initially been laughed out of the place almost as soon as she’d stepped in. However, her powers of persuasion finally got her in and she showed everyone just what she was capable of, amazing everyone in the gym. Finishing her work-out, she showered, changed and told the brothers Schwarzenberger that she would not be back.

Instead she’d made alternative arrangements, visiting ‘Holo Pursuits’ every other morning, usually early when demand was low and after each working day, she did a full circuit of the outer rim of the station, a ‘jog’ of nearly eight kilometres.

Her daily jog around the station had turned her into a minor celebrity and as she passed people in the corridors, they’d often either nod their acknowledgement or turn and watch her running into the distance. An hour later, Azri returned to her quarters, showered, changed and headed out once more.

Four hours later, she was in her favourite ‘haunt’, the ‘Soma’, dressed in her usually garb, a red dress, with matching bag, dancing with an Andorian. She discovered the ‘Soma’ almost by accident and had never expected to have found such a lively place on a Starfleet base.

There were so many different alien races, many from the planets beyond the Briar patch, who were here to trade or just passing through to visit Federation space. There were also a number of ‘dodgy’ characters, which Azri tried to avoid. But her reputation for fixing things had reached the ‘underworld’ and she had already been approached on two separate occasions with offers of work.

Both times, she had been asked if she’d be interested in doing a little work on the side and these offers had been backed up with the promise of large amounts of credits. She had obviously refused; she didn’t want to sour her Starfleet record by doing some illicit work for people who in all likelihood were criminals.

She had however discreetly checked up on her pursuers and discovered that they did indeed work for two of the ‘seedier’ residents of the station. One was a Ferengi named Kol, who had the reputation of being able to get anything you desired, for a price. The other was a Vulcan, who no-one could actually name, which caught Azri’s interest much more. Vulcan’s by nature were a truthful and honest race and to discover one who not so honest was very rare indeed. The fact this Vulcan had remained anonymous meant he had something to hide.

As she continued to dance, the dance floor got more and more crowded. Suddenly she felt something stab her in the back of the neck and moments later, she lost consciousness.