Escape and Evasion

Posted on 25 Apr 2016 @ 12:05am by Lieutenant Colonel Cassandra Blackburn

1,440 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: Errand of Mercy
Location: Tokyo, Japan, Earth
Timeline: ED1

The room in the hotel was sparse and barren of furniture, bare a bed and small table with chair. On the table sat a small terminal, clearly old, and the early morning Japanese sun was beginning to break through the thin curtains. The single door quietly opened, and a young woman in scraggy civilian clothing slipped in quietly. She threw a small rucksack onto the bed, and sat at the table. Opposite was a wall mirror, and she caught a glimpse of herself – short cut, unkempt black hair, brown eyes with bags under them. Pale complexion. Red cheeks. Cassandra Blackburn. She turned quickly away from herself and felt a prang of shame. She pushed the feeling away.

Rummaging around in the pockets of the old overcoat she was wearing, she eventually pulled out a hypo spray. Looking at the reading on the side of it, she sighed as it registered only three doses left. She hesitated, then pushed it into her neck. She felt her headache ease and her hands stop shaking. She had been up all night and tiredness was welling up.

After a few moments she stood up and returned to the rucksack. Picking it up off the bed, the contents fell out onto the floor. Padds, a few clothes, a few bars of gold pressed latinum, a hand phaser, tricorder, a concussion grenade. Blackburn swore. As she was picking up the padds, one of them caught her eyes with the text that she now knew by heart. Words written nearly a year ago and drove her every waiting moment:

//FleetNet
//From: Heyden, Michelle (Mjr; 1Corps; SFMC (Sol))
//To: Blackburn, Cassandra (Mjr; 1Corps; SFMC (Sol))
//Fw: Fw: Summary of Report CB/C41743S
//Classified

Cassy, see the below. Don't ask me how I got it. Sort yourself out or they'll do it for you.

Mich.

//
//FleetNet
//From: Blackstone, Jonathan (LtCdr; PsychServices; SFMedical)
//To: Smith, Andrew (Col; 1Corps; SFMC; (Sol))
//Fw: Summary of Report CB/C41743S
//Classified

Colonel

In response to your question, it is not a matter of a quick fix in the case of CB. I appreciate the urgency in this matter regarding the intelligence asset that she presents to the Corps, never mind the fact that we could lose a very promising young officer (Though I doubt many have thought of that aspect too; I assume you read her service file), but it is not so simple.

CB simply will not allow herself to be treated. Since her escape the change in her personality has been severe. According to her former colleagues she was always polite, slightly withdrawn, and never put a foot out of place. She had a bright future in the Corps. Now she's rude, quick to anger, and her social skills are breaking down. She just doesn't give a damn any more.

The psychological damage caused during her detention by the Sixth was extensive and conducted by people who knew what they were doing; it is almost as if we are fighting them in the medium of CB's mind. You are correct when you say that her alcoholism (which by her choice to indulge in such an ancient form of self-destruction is interesting alone) can be resolved in a matter of hours using modern medicine, but we are cautious that if we were to remove her support mechanism so suddenly we may lose a lot more of her than we save, and then she may be of no use to you. Any weapon is useless if it is broken.

Under normal circumstances I would recommend that we grant her wish: a medical discharge from the Corps and long treatment under a civilian regime, but in this situation that is clearly not possible. Given the time pressure you allude to, I believe our only option is that we gain an order to force any treatment as is necessary, including direct telepathic intervention. This treatment may result in some collateral damage to the subject, but as you say, it is a matter of the lesser of two
evils.

I await your reply.

Jon

Lieutenant Commander J Blackstone
Head Psychiatrist
Luna Base
Medical Services
//FleetNet
//END

She welled with anger when she read it again, then threw the padd back onto the bed. Direct telepathic intervention. The words were drilled into her head – they were going to forcibly fix her. They wanted her to help track down her old partner, Joe Fursman, former Starfleet Officer, traitor, and now head of intelligence in Sixth Fleet. She wanted nothing to do with it.
Her escape from Starfleet had been almost ridiculously easy. After Rhyan’s court martial, where she had hardly performed well on the stand, she had been placed under escort and returned to the USS Oynx Shadow, a Marine Corps ship, for “treatment”. Whilst on board she was confined to quarters, but the guard rotations inexplicably changed and left her a short period unwatched; sudden EPS problems on board rendered both external and internal sensors unreliable; and the shuttlebay was virtually unmanned. She suspected that Colonel Moore – the old style buttress of a Marine who had promised her release from the Corps after the Redemption was found – had kept his promise, albeit in a very underhand way. It was always clear that the Corps would never let her go as long as she was Starfleet’s only link to Fursman.

She almost cracked a smile, thinking of Moore. She remembered him shouting at her; screaming about duty and honour, and all those idealistic things that she used to believe in. It was the exact same sense of honour – the keeping of his promise – that had let her slip away.

She finished recovering her few possessions into the rucksack and returned to the desk with a padd. Opening a small port on the side, she fished about in the overcoat for a small fibre optic cable. Finding it, she plugged the padd into the terminal on the desk and switched it on. It came to life and the screen displayed quick succession of garbled text as the program on the padd auto-executed.
“This had better bloody work, Kamer, or I’ll find you and rip your ears off” She whispered to herself. She had spent all night meeting and paying a horrible little Ferengi for this backdoor software. The sun was coming up; the room was getting brighter. The terminal was old and slow.

Eventually the screen presented a command interface. She typed in a few keystrokes. She found what she was looking for – off-world transport movements to the outer colonies near the Cardassian border – literally lightyears away from Starfleet, the Corps, the war, the Redemption, the Ee. Lightyears from Rhyan. She just needed one more thing.

She opened a communications port and punched in an address. After a few minutes a rough image of a young woman in Marine uniform appeared. “Major Hayden speaking. How can I…” She said, before stuttering to a stop in surprise. She looked quickly over her shoulder and leaned into the screen. “Cass, is that you?” She said quietly.

“Yes, Michelle. Can’t talk, not sure how secure this net is-”

“Cass, there’s a warrant out for your arrest. Starfleet security are everywhere trying to find you. Where the hell are you?”

“Japan. Look, I need a favour. Can you get me the passcodes to the cargo supply area to the spaceport here?”

Michelle leaned back. “Are you serious? You need to hand yourself in. There’s no way I’m doing that.”

“Please Michelle. Look, you leaked me my psyche report. You know what they want to do to me.”

“Look, thinks around here are complicated. It’s not that I don’t want to help you, but it’s not that simple anymore” Michelle hissed down the videocom.

Suddenly, the tricorder in the rucksack started to beep. Blackburn jumped up and pulled it out. “Shit. Starfleet commbadges nearby”. She was rumbled - Kamer’s back door software was bad. Without saying anything to Michelle, she pulled the fibre optic cable out of the terminal and threw the padd into the rucksack, the image on the screen disappearing as she did so. She then picked up the chair and smashed it into the terminal, shattering the screen. The tricorder chirped again – she now had moments. She threw on the packback, her heart racing.

When the security team broke down the door minutes later, all they found was a broken old terminal and an open window into the streets of Tokyo below.

OCC: Good to be back, guys and gals! Forgotten how much I enjoyed writing for this ship!

 

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