The Troubles

[MKSheppard]

The Troubles

A Fanfic by Col. Falkenhorst
and
Mark Sheppard

[Somewhere in the DMZ]

The two roughnecks slowly stepped behind the Cardassian soldier on leave,
their footsteps quickly matching the Cardassian's stride. From within their
voluminious leather coats, wooden truncheons were drawn from their
inner pockets and readied.

Just as they were about to smash down onto the Cardassian's head with
the truncheons, the taller of the two roughnecks suddenly tripped on his
shoelace, and fell into the gutter, making a horrible clattering noise as
he did so.

Hearing the sudden noise behind him, the Cardassian soldier whirled
around, and saw his would-be assailants.

Acting quickly, the Cardie quickly caught the roughneck who was still standing
there like a deer caught in the headlights of a vehicle, with his truncheon
still in an upraised position, with a swift kick to the groin from his steel-toed boots,
causing him to kneel over in pain.

The soldier then noticed the fumbling moron who had alerted him to their
presence, and he returned the favor by smashing his boot down onto the
moron's skull, driving the idiot's face into the stinking refuse that littered the
alley they were in.

Snorting happily to himself, the Cardassian soldier left behind the two prostrate
fools who had tried to ambush him. He'd report them later to his Sergeant. Right
now, he was going to enjoy his leave on the planet of Kheops, one of the DMZ's
most infamous pleasure pits.

Whistling a nice ditty, he turned the corner and walked towards the place his
friends back in the garrison had told him was the best - Madame Kelly's Pleasure Pit.

Meanwhile, back in the alley, the two would-be assailaints slowly recovered
from the wounds inflicted on them by the soldier. The shorter of them slowly
picked himself up, and rubbed his aching balls. Goddamn that Cardie and
double-damn that fucking incompetent he had been saddled with.

"Get the fuck up, Deimos." snarled the short one as he began to kick the taller
assailaint, who was still moaning in pain in the gutter.

[Meanwhile, across town at that same moment]

"Fuck you, asshole. No way am I giving up the business." snarled
Graham Kennedy as he looked at the impudent asshole who
had barged in onto his private sanctum above his bar/bordello.

"Madame Kelly wishes to buy your business out. This is your last
warning, Mr. Kennedy." growled the heavy set man who stood
in front of Graham Kennedy's desk.

"Fuck you, and fuck that bitch too!" snarled Kennedy as he yanked his drawer
open and reached for the hidden Klingon heavy disruptor pistol inside.

The thick-set man moved with a speed and grace that his bulk belied,
whipping a smallish-looking pistol from within his coat. Firing short,
precise shots from the suppressed pistol, he quickly dispatched Kennedy's
two bodyguards before they could react with 7.5mm explosive tipped rounds.

Spotting Kennedy reaching for the pistol, he fired a single round at Kennedy's
wrist, blowing it off in a shower of gore.

As Kennedy slumped over in his seat, obviously in shock from the blood
spurting from his missing hand, the stranger placed the pistol onto Kennedy's
head.

The last thing Graham Kennedy heard was "Bye bye, fool."

As the late Graham Kennedy's brains dripped off the walls, the man
walked out of the office, and downstairs into the bordello that the deceased
man had owned until a few minutes ago.

Clearing his throat, the man spoke.

"Attention, everyone. My name is Iggy, and I work for Madame Kelly, who
now owns your business. Anyone who objects can take it up with your
former boss, Mister Kennedy."

Predictably, there were no objections.

[Two Hours later - Starfleet Regional Headquarters, Starbase 454]

"Admiral Dalton, Good morning, sir." said Ensign Stas, the bubbly new
aide who had just been assigned straight out of the Academy.

"Shut the fuck up, and get me some coffee," growled Dalton,
who was having a bad day so far.

"Yessir."

With that, Dalton picked up the folder for that morning's briefing,
and walked into his ready room, which was rapidly filling up with
his subordinates, most of them Rear Admirals attached to the
Starfleet DMZ Anti-Smuggling Task Force, which Dalton commanded.

Minutes later, the meeting began.

First up was Rear Admiral Nitram Talashia, in charge of Starfleet
Intelligence.

"Sir, I have unfortunate news to report. It seems Lieutenant Deimos
Anomaly fucked up his initation into the True Maquis movement."

Everyone groaned at that. Lt. Anomaly (formerly Ensign Anomaly),
was the truest embodiment of the Peter Principle in action. He had
come straight to Starbase 454 from a failed infiltration attempt on
a militarist/fascist movement on Earth, which had resulted in several
deaths.

Because Ensign Anomaly was the illegimitate child of one of Starfleet's
most influential Admirals, he was merely promoted out to a place
where it was thought he couldn't fuck up any more. This assessment
had just been proven wrong again.

"Is he dead?" asked Dalton, praying to God that he was, and that
he wouldn't have to deal with that loudmouthed idiot again.

A scowl came across Nitram's face. "Unfortunately, no. However,
he has indicated that he has one last chance to prove himself to
the True Maquis, before he's permanently blacklisted."

"Fuck that, let's just cut him loose. He's more trouble to us than he's
worth," argued RADM Orlick..

"God, I would love to do that, but Admiral Crierie would have our fucking
ass if we got his bastard son offed." replied Dalton.

"Enough on that waste of genetic material," muttered Dalton. "What's new?"

"Sir, we've gotten leads on a new Maquis movement that's sprung up recently
over the last few months. They've claimed responsibility for the destruction
of the Cardassian warship _Pasheka_ a few months back." replied Talashia.

"God, not another fucking splinter group," moaned Orlick.

"I'm afraid so."

"Any leads on which fucknut is in charge of it?" muttered Dalton as he took
another swig of coffee.

"Sheppard," was the reply.

"Oh for fuck's sake, just what we fucking needed!" shouted Dalton.

Everyone knew about the former Commodore Mark K. Sheppard and
his fellow henchman, Colonel Heinz von Falkenhorst.

They had been instrumental in helping Admiral Leighton's attempted
coup off the ground several years ago. Everyone in the Federation had
been shocked at the footage of the carnage left behind at Starfleet
Headquarters after Sheppard's forces had tried to seize it during
Leyton's failed coup attempt. When the coup had fallen to pieces,
both Sheppard and Falkenhorst had disappeared from sight...

Until now.

Dalton took a deep swig from his cup and looked at everyone gathered
around the table.

"Doesn't Sheppard still have a price on his head?" asked Dalton.

"I believe so. He's pissed off everyone, from us to the Romulans, to
the Klingons," replied Pounder.

"Good. Make it known on our daily broadcast to the DMZ that the war criminals
Sheppard and Falkenhorst are somewhere in the DMZ, and that Starfleet is
offering a 20,000 latinium bar reward for their capture, dead or alive."

"Sir, the Federation doesn't use Latiniu...." said Ensign Stas,
before Dalton interrupted him.

"Shut up and sit down, you fool. Of course we don't use latinium. However,
we do have lots of latinium from seized Maquis bases."

Dalton paused to take a sip from his coffee, then continued with the briefing.
"Mr. Martin, would you please give us a rundown on what the latest news
is on the area around the DMZ?"

Alex Martin, who worked for the Federation's secret intelligence service, rose
and began his briefing.

"Nothing new to report, sir. The Free Canadians under Ted Archbold are
being their usual selves, stirring shit on the subspace channels."

Dalton nodded and made some notes on a PADD he was holding. "Tell
Signals to start jamming their crap again."

Martin nodded, and then continued. "A new splinter group has broken off from
the Free Canadians, calling themselves the True Canadians, and we only know
their ringleader's codename, Enlightened. All efforts to find out his real name
have failed so far."

"Get SIS onto it. I want those assholes tracked down and nailed to the wall.
Are they benign or are they full of shitheads like Sheppard?"

Nodding, Martin sat down, and the next person to report, Admiral Stravo, stood
up and began his report.

"Sir, the underworld element is making a particularly nasty upswing, with
the crimelord Antilles killing her rivals recently. We haven't been able to pin anything
onto her, but sooner or later, she'll slip up. Off those matters, Starfleet customs
has been finding a large number of illegally manufactured Type Six phaser rifles
turning up everywhere in the DMZ with no identifying marks whatsoever on them."

"Investigations into that matter are continuing, and we have some very promising
leads on whoever is making these weapons."

As the meeting continued on, at that very moment, inside an asteroid that had been
hollowed out in secret, thousands of Cardassian prisoners of war who had been captured
by the Maquis years ago slaved away for their new masters.

On the production line inside the asteroid, dozens of military-grade disruptor cannons
were being put together by downcast-looking Cardassians under the watchful optical
sensors of Guardian Robots who never tired and were always ready with their electro-prods
24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days of the year.

From a viewport set into a rock wall, the man in charge of this operation watched his slave
laborers scurry around, trading their hard work to the Organisation for their continued
existence.

Colonel Heinz von Falkenhorst was considered by many in the Federation to be irredeemably
evil, but he didn't give a whit. He lived by his own set of rules, and life was good. Ever since
he and Sheppard had escaped as Leyton's coup attempt had collapsed like a house of cards
in a Ferengi casino, they had lived in a various series of abandoned Starfleet bases before
finally settling down onto these old Maquis manufacturing bases in the Badlands left over
from the pre-Dominion War days.

Sheppard handled the small work involved in their various enterprises, while he handled
the big stuff, like this disruptor cannon factory. The disruptors were based off an old
Klingon design that had been stolen by the Maquis some five years ago, and had been
slowly and continiously refined by Maquis engineers to be as good as the current generation
of Federation phasers.

Pirates and other unsavory characters all came to them from all over the Alpha Quadrant
to obtain these cannons, since the Federation always had controlled starship-grade weaponry
quite strictly. It was said amongst some in their organisation that six tenths of the entire
criminal element was armed by them.

Falkenhorst watched as a Cardassian suddenly collapsed on the line from overwork. One
of the Guardian robots slowly floated over to the Cardie and began to shock him with it's
electro-prod. After three minutes of failed prodding, the robot gave up and distengrated the
unwilling worker as an object lesson to the others.

Behind the viewport separating his office from the production floor below, Falkenhorst
smiled a predatory grin. The workers next to that fool would work ten times harder
now, to avoid that poor fool's fate.

Idly, Falkenhorst wondered what Sheppard was doing now.

[The Planet Nasbit - 10 LY inside the DMZ away from the old Cardassian Border]

Mark K. Sheppard looked down from the catwalk onto the cavernous
production facilities that the Maquis had carved out from under the Nabit planetary
hospital over several long torturuous years with nothing but low-powered phaser
drills. The factory had been run by one of Sheppard's former Maquis contacts
which he had secretly supplied with industrial grade replicator parts during
the pre-war years.

His contact unfortunately, had been part of one of the many Maquis cells that had
been exterminated by the Dominion during the Dominion War due to piss-poor
operational security, and for almost a year, the factory had sat silent, until Sheppard
had arrived to re-start production.

Thousands of phaser rifles were now being churned out every week by the
secret facility, along with dozens of man portable heavy disruptor cannons
to arm Sheppard's True Maquis Liberation Movement, or as the others in the
DMZ called it, the TMLM.

As a side business, large quantities of these phaser rifles were sold through
underworld contacts to filter up through the DMZ to spread discontent
amongst the population, a strategy that was working superbly.

[To Be continued]

[Stormbringer]

Nice. Really nice.

[LT.Hit-Man]

OOOOHHHH I like this nice work Shep, Falk keep up the go work.