Gone Fishing

Posted on Thu Jun 18th, 2026 @ 7:09am by Lieutenant JG Kate Kono

2,114 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Sins of the Empire
Location: Intelligence Office - USS Washington
Timeline: current

The overhead lights in the intelligence suite glowed in a way that was almost kind. Lieutenant Junior Grade Kate Kono suspected it was intentional, a thoughtful act by the ship’s engineers to counter the cold, analytical mood of the space. Every edge; consoles, chairs, the broad table with its built-in display looked softened, she thought, as if the designers had tried to make the room safe for secrets.

Kono stepped through the hatch, let the pressure seal whisper closed behind her, and took a moment to survey the room. She had the place to herself, as usual. Day shift junior officers were running through a series of tactical scenarios in the holodeck, and AJ was “studying” the nuances of Klingon honor duels in the mess, likely accompanied by a bowl of frosted oat cereal. On shift, this meant Kono could indulge her private ritual: she walked to the false-viewport at the far end of the suite, stared out at the blur of stars beyond the faux shielded glass, and tried to guess whether the Washington was ahead of schedule.

From the selected viewscreens, the intelligence office commanded a discreet view of the ship’s saucer, the engineering hull’s contour, and, if she squinted, a touch of reflected running light on the edge of the secondary hull. At this hour, nothing moved save for the occasional wink of nav beacons and, somewhere beyond the hull, the throbbing blue edge of the impulse engines. The ship felt alive and asleep at once.

She left the stars to their own devices, drifted over to the broad black console that anchored the room, and slid into the command chair. The seat, shaped like the inside of a closed fist, hugged her ribs and legs, and she had to resist the urge to tip it back in rebellion against its posture-perfect alignment like AJ always did. Instead, she allowed herself a sigh and watched as her console came alive.

At first it was the routine: routine packet traffic from the Federation’s Fourth Fleet, a digest of encrypted sensor logs, two new intelligence bulletins flagged as “urgent” and “probably not that urgent.” Then the subspace receiver caught a handshake from the relay at Starbase 71. Kono’s display shimmered, cycled through three bars of blue-white static, and finally resolved into a window: a Romulan officer, his olive face sharp and motionless, eyes like black glass, the background an artful spread of banners and data glyphs.

She recognized the uniform; standard intelligence, with a plumage of medals and a high-necked collar in a shade the Federation quartermasters called whatevertheheck. The Romulan’s name, written in block glyphs along the bottom, was Kermek.

She lifted a glass of grape juice; her own personal vice, a child’s drink she’d had the replicator tweak until it tasted just like the kind from her parents’ fridge and sipped. “I’d offer you a drink, Commander,” she said, “but I suspect you only take Romulan ale.”

The Romulan’s mouth barely moved. “I am Commander Kermek of the Intelligence Corps. Is this the officer Kate Kono?”

“Only on even-numbered days,” she replied, giving him a half-smile. “You have my attention.”

Kermek seemed not to register the joke, or perhaps he did and found it beneath him. He leaned slightly forward, rendering his face even more a study in severity. “My brother was Selmek. He served with distinction. I request details of his death.”

Kono held the glass so the purple drink caught the faint console light. She recalled two Romulans that she had killed but didn’t know their names. She wondered how much Kermek knew, and how much he was willing to admit he did not.

“Commander Kermek,” she said, and the words were smooth and sweet, “I wish I could help, but you must know Starfleet’s policies. Anything I say would be reviewed by Legal before you could so much as frown at it.”

Kermek inhaled, a sound just barely audible over the low hum of the ship’s air processors. “Do not insult my intelligence, Lieutenant. The circumstances of my brother’s death were witnessed by your captain. And yet there you sit, despite your murderous rampage! You will provide the logs, or I will obtain them myself.”

Kono set her glass on the console’s cool surface and touched a command sequence on the display. The room dimmed, and a cold blue glow washed over her face. “That’s not going to happen,” she said, softer this time, the words clipped. “But I can tell you this: Selmek died well by Klingon standards.”

The Romulan’s eyes narrowed. “You think this comforts me?”

“I think it’s what you’d want to hear, in your position.” She shrugged, knowing how the movement would register with him: casual, disinterested, a perfect Federation poker face. “But you didn’t ask for comfort.”

He sat back, eyes moving in a way that suggested he was not alone in the room; that there was someone else, offscreen, perhaps another Intelligence officer, listening in, waiting for slip-ups. “Lieutenant Kono, I remind you that the truce in this sector is… fragile. It can be undone.”

“You’re not wrong,” she said, and looked down at her drink. “But that’s not my department. I’m only here to replicate grape juice and sometimes pass messages along.”

Kermek did not blink. “Then pass this message. If you set foot in the Neutral Zone again, you will find me there, and I will have the answers denied me.”

“I’ll tell my captain,” she said, and smiled this time, a fraction wider. “But you’ll have to go through Security. And the barista. He’s very territorial.”

There was, for a moment, a pause: an almost human touch of exasperation around the Romulan’s eyes. “You will regret your flippancy, Lieutenant. I expect better from a Starfleet officer.”

“We all do,” Kono said, and with a flick of her finger, she terminated the call. Kermek’s face dissolved into digital mist, and the room’s standard lights returned, painting the world once more in warm whites and subtle golds.

She waited a few seconds to see if the Romulan would attempt another link, but the comms stayed silent.

Only then did she allow herself a genuine exhale, long and slow. She brought the grape juice to her lips, finished the glass, and felt the cold purple sweetness cool her tongue.

From the false-viewport, the stars still spun. They seemed, as always, unconcerned.

The holo-link died with a soft chime, and for a few heartbeats the only sound in the intelligence suite was the low susurrus of environmental controls and the ghostly echo of her own voice. Lieutenant Kate Kono tapped the end of her stylus against the base of her grape juice glass and debated whether to log the conversation immediately or let it ferment in her memory a bit longer.

She leaned back in the chair, closed her eyes, and counted to five. The grape juice aftertaste lingered, syrupy and comforting, as if she were still a civilian, still a child, and not an intelligence officer with a Romulan commander gnashing his teeth on the other end of the quadrant.

On the eighth second, the comms panel pulsed bright blue, indicating a new incoming transmission. Either the Romulan was more stubborn than she’d anticipated, or someone higher up the Federation food chain had picked up the scent. She wagered on the former, set the grape juice aside, and slid her stylus between two fingers like a dart.

The face that materialized was the same: Kermek, but this time his face betrayed none of the old-world hauteur she’d clocked on the first call. Instead, he looked like a man who had just been handed an embarrassing dossier and forced to read it out loud.

“Explain this.” His voice carried the chill of hard vacuum, and his image was sharper, as if he’d found a better relay.

Kono eyed the feed with polite interest. A new window had opened next to his face: sensor data, mostly meaningless to anyone but a warp field analyst. The highlighted lines, however, painted a clear enough story: two ships, the Washington and a Klingon warbird, running parallel at less than a hundred meters exchanging bursts of energy as if they were old friends.

She let the silence grow, then picked up her glass and took an unhurried sip.

“Looks like nothing to me,” Kate said.

Kermek jabbed a finger at the sensor data. “You are aiding a Klingon vessel. An outlaw that violated our space and the Neutral Zone. This violates not only your Federation’s directives but also the treaty under which your presence is tolerated in this sector.”

Kono let her fingers drum a soft roll on the console. “Are you accusing me personally, or is this more of a ship-wide thing?”

“I am accusing your ship, your captain, and your command structure. If you do not provide context, I will act on my own assumptions.”

She looked up at the ceiling, considered the merits of open honesty versus her default mode of plausible deniability, and settled for something in the quantum superposition between the two. “Commander Kermek, I would love to help you. I truly would. But if you’re referring to that little blip on the edge of the Neutral Zone, you know as well as I do that pixel density on data displays is a very interesting subject. Did you know that a point-four shift in density is all it takes in difference for Romulan data to not show up properly on Federation viewscreens? It’s fascinating stuff!”

He bared his teeth in what might have been a smile. “You are mocking me.”

“Only lightly,” she said. “It’s my professional duty to relieve tension. You wouldn’t want this to get unnecessarily hostile, would you?”

His face darkened. “If you do not explain why a Federation ship is running escort for a vessel commanded by known traitors, I will consider it an act of war.”

This was, strictly speaking, above Kono’s pay grade. But she’d been in enough debriefs to know that most Romulan threats… especially from Intelligence… were opening bids, not final offers.

“Commander, may I offer a hypothetical?” She didn’t wait for permission as she just recalled some old movie called ‘The Hunt for Red October’ to fill the time with complete bull, “Suppose a rogue element in the Klingon Empire was attempting to defect, carrying with them information that could prevent a catastrophe in both our territories. Suppose further that your own government wanted them silenced, while Starfleet was more interested in what they knew than in the politics of it. How would you proceed?”

The pause this time was longer. Kermek stared at her, unblinking, and she could almost see the subroutines racing behind those eyes, parsing and re-parsing every syllable.

“You are saying this is an asylum matter.”

Kate found it very interesting that he wouldn’t blatently blurt out that one of his own vessels was attacking the Klingons.

“I’m saying the universe is messy,” she replied, “and sometimes we have to make choices that irritate all three sides equally.”

He nodded, a single sharp dip of the head. “You have not denied the accusation.”

Kono shrugged. “Nah actually I was just reiteating the plot of one of my favorite twentith century novels which was eventaully turned into a movie.” Kate shrugged as if trying not to laugh off her own joke in a comedy club.

“Do you know what it is to lose a brother, Lieutenant?” The question cut across the table, sudden and raw.

She matched his stare for the first time. “I do. I killed yours.”

He pressed his lips together, a tight line. “Then you know why I must pursue this to the end. I cannot allow his sacrifice to be forgotten.”

Kono nodded, slowly, and reached for her glass. “Understood. But let’s not forget, Commander: sometimes, the best way to honor the dead is to avoid making more of them by pushing this further.”

His gaze flickered, a minor seismic event in the tectonics of Romulan expressions.

“Next time we speak,” he said, “it will not be on subspace.”

The link snapped closed. This time, the silence felt heavier.

Kono exhaled, leaned back, and took another drink before writing her report.

“And now they can activate viewscreens without officers hitting the ACCEPT button,” Kate said to herself as she made a note to inform Engineering of the latest security breach the Romulans were capable of.

 

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