Taking the stage

Posted on 25 Dec 2021 @ 1:35pm by Captain Gabriel Barron M.D. & Petty Officer 1st Class Lia McCarthy

1,009 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Empty Creche
Location: Lia's Quarters/Engineering
Timeline: Current

ON:
Lia excused herself after the meeting with the Captain. They needed a whole other game plan at this point and had almost no info on their adversaries. But she had an idea where she might be able to get exactly the info she needed...

In the meantime, she was still fuming about the whole thing. Why would an operative or even the spouse of one go this rogue and why would Starfleet just send them in with no warning?

She wondered what had happened to West as well. All of the things happening lately were a little too coincidental in their timing. She hooked into her PADD and ran a basic search on whatever was publicly available on West, and his history with SFI.

Her PADD showed her West's service record. He had been a decorated officer during almost forty years of service. He had almost retired when the 6th fleet came to power and President G'ath had been assassinated. He had been appointed Vice Admiral over Star Fleet Intelligence over ten years ago and had served as it's face ever since.

She glanced through the files and ran the same search, this time for Ashcart and Barron. She wanted to get to know her new bosses she had a sneaking suspicion that there was something more than just the simple fact that they were all Starfleet and SFI that tied these men together she had no problem working for them superficially but she didn't trust them because of that she wanted to know who she was working for. You can't trust a shadow

Her PADD showed her Ashcart's service record including the most recent promotion to Rear Admiral. He had been a decorated officer during an almost forty year career with Star Fleet. His record included tracking down the assassin of Federation President G'ath after having taken command of the new flagship. He commanded the new transwarp experiments on the same ship and was the point of the spear when it came to first contact with the hostile Ee.

Her PADD also showed Barron, he had stepped out of the doctoral program at Washington and Lee university and enlisted in the SF Marines when the Dominion War broke out. He served as a medic participating in several large land based operations as well as some ship to ship actions during the War. He was promoted to Sargent by the end of the war. He then left service and returned to Washington and Lee where he graduated valedictorian and began his residency at the Health Science Centers in Houston Texas where he met Admiral Shora who convinced him to return to service but this time switching his greens for medical teal. He entered service as a Lt. jg owning to his enlisted service and his education and rose through the ranks to eventually take command.

Lia frowned at her screen. There had to be something that tied these men together outside of Starfleet. There had been too many coincidences to think otherwise. From how she had met West and got transferred from the academy pre-graduation to the Redemption on some highly secret mission, to his sudden retirement just as she was getting on the ship. Where that same captain on that ship just happens to take West's place and vanished from the public forum. Only to have some black op's crazy wife kidnap a bunch of kids for haven knows what.

She was beginning to get extremely frustrated and severely suspicious of everyone around her. Lia opened another section of her PADD and connected M0nk3y.

"There's got to be something..." she mumbled under her breath as her fingers flew across the keys. She began to run a deep dive into the three men. Lia knew there was something there and she had to find it before whatever war between ghosts and shadows found them. Lia started an extremely low profile hack and search, quietly peeling back layers of security into Starfleet and SFI itself. She intentionally bypassed the Redemption's computers so it wouldn't trip the upgraded system. She got better wifi in the brig, but it wasn't worth the trade.

As her PADD worked and the program pulled bits and pieces of classified data from the servers in SFI a pattern began to form. It wasn't long before M0nk3y was able to discover a locked server. The connection to the server wasn't blocked, but damaged in some way that prevented her from just jumping in.

It was a few moments before she realized what she was looking at was a deleted server. M0nk3y managed to recover a badly corrupted video file. It appeared to be something kind of mission or status report. An unknown voice entered her ears.

"Master.... Operation Blackfoot... Sixth Fleet... operative... psycho... wife... Vandor Station..."

It really didn't give her much to go on, but it was enough. She knew whatever was going on, it was happening at Vandor Station. With any amount of luck they wouldn't be to late.

She tapped her comm. "McCarthy to bridge, priority"

"Barron here, go ahead."

"I found them. They're headed to Vandor Station, and we are probably gonna have to break a few rules to get there in time to save those kids. I'll come up for a full briefing shortly but we don't have a lot of time on this. Out."

"Navigation, plot a course to Vanador Station best possible speed." Barron returned his attention to the open communications channel "My ready room ten minutes Chief. Bridge out."

She had already began gathering her things and forwarding what she needed to the ready room as the Captain responded. It was more than past time for those children to come home, and they would finally be able to get the chance to do just that.

She flew down the halls and made her way to the ready room, dodging people on both sides.

OFF

Gabriel Barron
Captain
Commanding Officer
USS Redemption

&

Lia McCarthy
Chief Petty Officer First Class
Encryption Specialist
USS Redemption

 

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