The Wolf And The Dark Wizard Catcher
Posted on Tue Apr 30th, 2019 @ 3:43am by Lieutenant Arkady Sjet & Captain Mrazak & Lieutenant Commander Leonora Wolf MD
2,418 words; about a 12 minute read
Mission:
S1E3: Barbarians at the Gates
Location: Various / Relief Vessel S.S. Pasternak
Timeline: current
With Delphi under new command, certain members of the team received reassignment. Leonora and Kali had been among them though, each to their individual assignment. Leonora was now enjoying a much needed break on Dalyston 3, a small trading colony on a border world between Alpha and Beta Quadrants. While she loved her work, even she needed a break from time to time. A chance to replenish her batteries and gain second wind as it were.
She was going to miss Delphi. Her occasional stints at Stratholme had been very rewarding and getting to work with that kind of tech was invigorating. She was also going to miss her team, even Karna and John, especially Kali. Alas, Starfleet Service, especially the Intelligence kind wasn't always keeping in mind the wants of the individual. Besides, her next assignment could just as easily be something she'd actually want to do. Or hate, depending on what it was, she supposed.
The akvavit she ordered from the bar was good though. It was, for a change real. Most called it nordic whiskey, but the nords, to them it was the water of life. So, long hair spread over her shoulders, clad in a black leather jacket, with a dark blue shirt and jeans, Leonora sat at a bar, enjoying herself among the crowd of strangers she didn't need to know anything about, for a change.
Before she was halfway through her drink, the barkeep disappeared into the back room for a moment. She quickly reappeared and hastily announced, "Is there a Cassandra in the house? You... have an urgent message."
What, already? She'd only just arrived and began taking her leave time. They wanted her already? Unless there was an actual Cassandra around?
Waiting for a moment to see if there were any takers, Leonora glanced around. "Well, fuck." Wolf muttered and took another sip, before raising her hand. "I'm Cassandra. What's up?"
"In the back," the barkeep said, cocking her thumb over her shoulder to the vacant community room.
Leah nodded, keeping up a look of mock surprise. In truth she suspected who might be looking for her.
The public monitor flashed the familiar face of Oversight. "Greetings, Cassandra. So good to see you." High priority. "Are you well?" Is anybody around?
Wolf waited a moment for the waitress to leave, before nodding, "You too, old friend." Message received. "I'm good, yourself?" I'm alone.
"Can't complain," Oversight said. Classified operation. "I saw a holofilm that reminded me of old times. It was the one about the Romulan Iruhe myth. Ghastly story. Do you recall it?" Your former colleague--Iruhe--has gone rogue. Apprehend.
Leah sighed. "Shit, Karna. I told you to stay out of trouble." She thought to herself. "Vaguely. Was it in public theatre or a home viewing? I so rarely go to theatre anymore." "Last known location?"
"We first saw it in a Cardassian theater, but my last viewing was at home with my Lagashi friend." He went from Cardassian space to the Lagashi sector. "I've got to say, Cassandra, it's just not the same as before. It made me sad." Rogue asset has gone dark. Wanted dead or alive. "Not as sad as my Lagashi friend, though, what with the tragedy that just happened in her home system." He was last reported at the scene. "Did you hear about that on the vids?" Did you get all that?
"I did. Terrible tragedy." All received. Leah sighed on cue. "So, you're saying I should have a friend over too, hm? Might have to do that soon." "I'll need backup. Will attain and move to intercept asap."
Oversight nodded cheerfully, directly defying the subtext of their real communication. "You should definitely do that." Conscription authorized.. "Just be sure to keep it clean. And don't forget your box of tissues." Minimal collateral damage of life and property. Use aliases. Exposure is unacceptable.
"Tissues huh? I'll remember that," Zero exposure, understood. Leah plastered on a smirk. "Just one of your random calls then? Or did you actually need me for something?" Any further orders?
"No, I've just missed your voice. It was so great talking to you again. Don't be a such a stranger." Nothing more. Notify us when you make contact. "Take care, Cassandra!"
The transmission ended.
"Peachy," Leah sighed to herself.
Who could she tap to help her with this? Delphi was out of the question. Karna knew them all too well and he'd see them coming before any of them even knew he was in the area. She needed an ace in her sleeve.
Lashmore, Sinara and Night were bound to the Ashland Initiative, Thannis was working with Commodore Rahal after the Ruhoka incident. Commander Khalfani was involved with cases at IA. There was one person she knew who could help. He'd brought her dangerous things before, without succumbing to them.
Where was he though?
If the bar had a name, it was only because it was a complicated tax scam. Shell companies, within dumbie corporations, within thinly veiled letters of ownership, all sprouting from a name painted on a sign. Things got hairy, the name changed and a whole new chain of events would have to start again. That's how to real owners of the bar made their profits, and it had worked out for them.
The fact two of them lay unconscious and bleeding on the floor of the back office, and the third was slowly crawling towards the bar's entrance was not a slight against their plan. It was foolproof.
Arkady Sjet, on the other hand, was no man's fool. He watched from behind the bar as the man in the loose-fitting tunic and trousers, the one bleeding from it's severely broken ankles, made pitiful gains in forward motion. He finished pouring his drink, and stepped from behind the bar and plucked up a stool. He walked past his target, settled the chair by the door, and sat down. Outside the dusty sands that covered most of Zandorse World rustled the tall reeds, they called Saber Tails that grew in the shadows of the low dune hugging buildings.
It was a very Martian looking image, like the artist renderings of what Mars would look like in a few hundred years.
"Look...I told you-" the bleeding man said, wheezing past what was most certainly a cracked rib. Not broken, cracked.
"Da. Da you told me," Arkady grumbled in a voice like grinding gravel. He sipped the drink, a local production that took fermentation to strange and exotic places his taste buds were not thrilled by. "And your friends told me. And their friends in the bar told me. 'I do not know this man!'. I hear this again, and again, and again. And I still not believe you. So I will keep asking until I hear truth."
"You...you know torture doesn't work right?" he said, looking up from the floor with a hopeful look in his eye. "Th-there were studies! Studies that said torture never gives out useful information!"
"This is not torture. Tedious, yes, but not torture. This," Arkady held up his glass. "-this is torture. In my home, you could buy better intoxicants made in still constructed from wastewater pipes and garbage leavings. Now I will finish this drink, and then I will ask-"
Arkady's comm link went off. For a second he sat there, amid the destruction of a bar festooned with the gang symbols for the Orion Syndicates, the Black Nagus, the Freedom's Legion and even a few old relics of the Hessian Uprisings. He then slowly reached into his pocket, pulled out the small earpiece and with an apologetic nod to his associate on the floor, slipped it in and hit the connect button.
"Am on vacation," he said. "Have drink from hotel bar in hand, am interrupting very enjoyable afternoon of getting to know the locals."
"Arkasha, is that any way to greet an old friend?" Leah's voice purred into his ear.
"Huum..." he said, and reached up to cup his ear as he leaned towards the man on the floor. "I will be moment with this, appreciate your patience."
"You take as long as you need," he wheezed, hacking something bloody and tooth-shaped onto the floor.
"Leah!" he boomed, removing his hand from the mic. "It has been too long! I ask you how have been since last we met, but please do not use old trick of saying 'classified'. It tired joke, needs rest in our circles.'
"I've been alright, moy drug. Busy, but alright. Been rostered out of Delphi. Yourself?" She said, happy to exchange a few pleasantries before the real work started.
"Still with EIS, currently running down a lead on very much person of interest. Man involved with import item I had to bring to nephew on Delphi. Devil In Jar," he sighed. "Is nice job, I get to travel. Meet new peoples. Get to know locals. Is broadening my horizons. Ah, one moment."
He got off his stool, walking over to where one of the supposedly unconscious thugs had rolled over, a small hold out phaser clutched in a hand whose broken fingers were not going to be much good. He took the toy-sized weapon, clutched it in his fist, and used it to rabbit punch the thug back into the land of dreams and internal bleeding.
"Sorry about that. So, you call for reason," he said, tossing the little phaser away. "Though is nice to catch up."
"It is indeed. And yes, I am. I'm in need of someone of your skills. I can find them, but I need help roping them in. Target knows me too well to go it alone." Leah was chuckling in his ears at the background sounds.
"Am on summer vacation," Arkady grumbled as he returned to his chair. He settled into it, and breathed slowly out of his nose. He looked around the broken bar, with its broken people, and its broken walls: Santra Arron really wasn't going to be found here. He let out a sigh.
"Where do you need me?" he grumbled. "I can flag down sneaky ship in sector, be back across border in a day."
"Sending you coordinates. Will brief you when we meet. Bring the goodies. Wolf out." With that the connection was cut.
"Bring goodies," Arkady grumbled as he looked back at the bar and its mostly destroyed patrons. "Am on vacation and wants trinket."
For Leah it was all to easy to slip into medical persona, especially one of the Federation Health Organization background. Sure the names were different and the general background, but Leah's lived the civillian life before she became involved in Intelligence, so she could embed herself into the group they were travelling with easily. She'd darkened her hair and was wearing murky green contacts, her general appearance dulled down so as not to stand out.
The destruction and the death toll were terrifying indeed and Leah couldn't help but feel a bit bad for the Lagashi, and once again feel lucky that she didn't have to endure the horrors of the Dominion War, but rather only it's after effects in the affected zones. So this too was familiar territory.
What still niggled at her, however was Karna. Had he really fallen off the rails so fast after he'd left her and Delphi? Or was there rhyme to his often askew reason? Was this why Oversight actually wanted him? Or was this a recurrence the old, "poked ones nose where it didn't belong?" These questions repeated in her head for the past several days as she and Arkady met up and began preparing their gear and tactic for bringing Zsan in.
She heard the seat next to hear creak a little as he sat beside her. "Any word from your contact? Our covers been fed to the Lagashi holding?"
There was nothing to be done with softening or altering the sight profile of Arkady Sjet. Starfleet Medical, the Epidemic Investigation Service, and Starfleet Intelligence had all scratched their heads when trying to figure out how to turn a tank of a human being into anything else. Professional sportsman had been one guise, and even wearing the teal of Starfleet Medical made it appear as though he were playing a role rather than enacting years of training and education.
So play to your strengths. Arkady settled the cut of the jacket he was wearing, brushing his fingers over the INS logo embroidered over the breast pocket. He didn't like playing the part of hired security, but Ingram nanoscale Solution's liked to send their security teams out on soft contracts like this as a form of training. Easy enough to get a file implanted listing him as part of the detachment.
But the baseball cap itched.
"No," Arkady grumbled in that subsonic purr that threatened the structural integrity of fillings everywhere. "No word, no sound, no hint. And the Lagashi have checked our travel information at last count seven times. Twice with flesh and blood communication back to source. Lagashi do solid work, but then again so do we."
This wasn't going to be a walk in the park. Karna Zsan was a literal ghost and knew how to disappear. As the Pasternak came to dock at the Song of Stars, the question of the hour was whether or not Karna was even there. The distinct possibility of a prolonged goose chase could not be ruled out. Even so... what had drawn the man off the rails and into Lagashi space? Even as unpredictable as the Betazoid could be, the timing seemed too coincidental to ignore.
"Very well." Leah pinched the bridge of her nose and thought about their next move. "Let's assess all local assets, whether green or dark, and see what we come up with."
"Will be interesting whatever is found," Arkady mused thoughtfully. "Hopefully before there is fire. But I have smaller hopes to wish upon first."
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