Still, each of them hid secrets from the other. All couples do.Tabor knew that. When he wanted to, he could seetheir secrets. It had aided him as a diplomat, and elsewhere. Marta kept secrets from him that usually had to do with cases being investigated by Starfleet Intelligence, but he also knew about her occasional indulgences with Andeluvian chocolate, and of her secret love for a distractingly loud form of 22nd‑century Earth music known as “splitter.” Aptly named.
And he knew that Marta still harbored feelings for Jean‑Luc Picard, the captain of this starship. She hadn’t spoken of him more than twice in the time she had been Tabor’s lover, but he knew–long before she had told him–that she had intentionally chosen the Enterpriseas the ship to transport them to Chiaros IV. He didn’t begrudge her these feelings. In fact, they made his tasks easier. So much to prepare.
He pulled the communicator from his sleeve pocket, pressing his thumb into a recess on its underside. It began to vibrate, almost imperceptibly. He wedged it in between the backs of the two nymphs that made up the statue. It clicked into place smoothly, and the sculpture emitted three short light‑bursts. Those flashes signified that the circuitry that had been specially built into the communicator and the sculpture– neither of which could work without the other–was active now. Tabor’s quarters were now completely shielded from all sensor scans and computer surveillance. No matter what he did within these rooms, no one would be able to track him.
The shield was most useful whenever he had to access protected Starfleet records. It was one of the many devices that made Aubin Tabor’s covert work with Section 31 easier.
Half an hour later, Tabor had narrowed his choices down to three potentials. Their personnel dossiers were all open on a computer screen in front of him. He punched a few more codes into a padd, accessing data files that Starfleet security only used in the most extreme of circumstances. He was an invisible entity in the database, his codes wrapping and doubling back on themselves, disguising his movements from any of the seventy‑three concurrently running automatic programs that sought out potential intruders.
He brought up the complete dossiers on the trio of Enterprisecrewmembers, his eyes scanning over the files quickly. He processed the information almost as quickly as the files scrolled upward. Here were the details on every movement of the three crewmembers since they had entered Starfleet Academy; their grades and performance scores, teachers they had favored, or who had favored them, links to any personal logs that had been kept on Academy computers, travel itineraries for every trip they had ever taken. Here too were the complete records of their actions post‑graduation, through whatever ships they had been assigned to prior to the Enterprise.Any mention of them in crew logs was flagged, and all duty and personal logs were catalogued. If he wanted to, Tabor could even find out what the crewmembers in question had eaten each day from the replicator, how often they used the sonic showers, and the intimate details of their personal holodeck programs.
Tabor had noted that some of his human counterparts in Section 31 were less than enthusiastic about poking into their subjects’ histories in such depth, especially if those subjects were Starfleet personnel. Invasive, they generally called it. But it was one of the reasons that Tabor made a good recruiter; as a Ullian, he was used to sifting through the clutter within people’s minds– memories of which they were not even consciously aware. He was not “invasive”; he was merely utilizing the abilities he had been born with. Because of their reticence, few human operatives could do what he did. One man, Luther Sloan, was among the handful of human Section 31 agents whose scruples were, like his, completely subjugated to his duties.
Tabor’s superiors had recently made the decision to recruit a new operative aboard the Enterprise.Given the crew’s illustrious history, and Captain Picard’s penchant for becoming involved in politically sensitive interstellar issues, having an operative here was an obvious choice. And while Section 31 could easily have transferred an officer onto the ship–they did that all the time, most recently on the Slayton–it seemed like a better idea to recruit from the existing crew. Trust was already established.
One of Tabor’s three choices was Lieutenant j.g. Kehvan Zydhek, a Balduk who worked in engineering, alongside his brother, Waltere. The Zydheks had entered Starfleet Academy upon completing their training as warriors on their homeworld. They were brilliant technicians, whose work on ships’ systems kept them close to Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge. The fact that they knew the Enterpriseand its computers so intimately made them good prospects as agents, but Tabor felt that Kehvan held the stronger potential for Section 31 work because of disciplinary incidents in his past. Still, the odds of one brother not telling his sibling about his covert affiliations were slim; in cases of close familial contact, Tabor had learned to err on the side of caution.
Another choice was Jyme Soule, one of the barbers. A jocular older Bajoran, Jyme was well‑liked by the command crew of the Enterprise–as was his colleague, the Bolian Mr. Mot. Jyme’s in‑shop patter with the officers and crew while cutting or styling their hair meant that he knew a lot about what was going on aboard the ship. And his loose schedule–as well as his civilian status on the ship–would allow him to accomplish many types of covert missions more easily than could a crewmember who was constrained by Starfleet regulations and protocols. However, that same civilian status would mean that Jyme would require a great deal of training to keep abreast of Starfleet operations, which was a negative toward choosing him, as was the fact that he would not have clearance to access all areas of the ship.
Which left Tabor with his final choice, Lieutenant Sean Liam Hawk. The officer’s records showed exemplary service in Starfleet, with a quick rise in rank following his first assignment, to the U.S.S. Yorktown.He was particularly adept at the conn, with reflexes faster than most of his fellow officers. He was athletic, personable, and well‑liked by his superiors. Tabor noted twenty‑three separate commendations in the files, and seventy‑nine other instances in which the Yorktown’s Andorian Captain Kentrav, or the Enterprise’s Picard, had favorably mentioned him in their reports.
Searching the files, Tabor probed further into Hawk’s past. He was born on Mars, the third son of Rhyst and Camille Hawk. Rhyst was a horticulturist whose work on the hydroponic gardens on Mars had gained him considerable renown in his field, while Camille was a popular novelist who specialized in period adventure stories set in Earth’s 17th and 18th centuries. Sean’s eldest brother, Darey, was the primary mining supervisor on Janus VI, while middle brother Jason was an archaeologist who had gone on a few digs in the Gamma Quadrant.
Sean had entered Starfleet Academy as soon as he was old enough, noting his desires to “explore space” on his application. He had performed extraordinarily well in his classes, leading experts to theorize that he possessed an eidetic memory. Tabor would have to test that theory when he met with the young man. A few simple mind probes should suffice. If he did indeed possess an eidetic memory, it would heighten his value to Section 31 immensely.
Tabor noted that Hawk was in a relationship with another male Starfleet officer, and that it was only his second major relationship. The first, with a classmate at the Academy, had broken up after a year; the man had later been killed in a battle against the Cardassians. His current partner was an unjoined Trill, who apparently had no desire to become joined with a symbiont. According to holodeck logs, Hawk and his partner spent much of their time in adventure scenarios, no doubt inspired by Hawk’s mother’s writings. A quick check of content showed, among other settings, seafaring pirate scenarios and programs set during the 19th‑century’s war between the North and South of Earth’s United States.