Ongoing

Posted on Wed May 22nd, 2019 @ 4:12am by Lieutenant Commander Jaeih t'Noramei-McKinley & Commodore Evelyn Mountbatten [ADMIN NPC] & Commander Arrianna Salannis an Vantar & Lieutenant Wynter & Captain Garrett Lovejoy [ Taylor]

Mission: Episode 1: Hell is a four letter word
Location: USS Elysium - Ready Room, Deck 18
Timeline: MD4 - 11h
1378 words - 2.8 OF Standard Post Measure

They had arrived at the shuttles' last known position. It had been a tense trip. And they had found nothing but many different warp trails leading off into different zones. But there was one thing.

The distress call had abruptly ended, and the signal truncated as if it had been destroyed. But there was no debris.

Weapons fire signatures they had found. Romulan, and that was concerning.

Overtures would have to be made. And she hated that diplomatic stuff.

So she called in those of the crew she needed. [["Commanders Lovejoy, Albright, Salannis an Vantar, Brett and Mckinley to the Ready room. Lieutenant Wynter to the Ready Room. Legat Toran to the ready room"]]

Lovejoy heard the call to report to the Ready Room he had been overseeing sensor sweeps to find any clue of the missing shuttle. Also the disturbing fact that Romulan weapons fire had been discovered, the situation was rapidly getting worse. He tapped his combadge, "Lovejoy, Acknowledged."

Arrianna entered the ready room studying the sensor readings. "Clever.... Very clever." She said to no one in particular.

Percy stepped in next, and stopped dead cold upon seeing Arrianna. His eyes darted off to one side, eventually finding his PaDD instead. "Commander," he said tursley.

Wynter reported a few moments later his head down as he reviewed information that was streaming across his PADD.

Jaeih came in behind Wynter with a puzzled look on her face. Her hands were filled with PADDS from the Academy and the Cadets they were basically forcing into service. "Commodore?" she asked as she placed them on Phoenix's low coffee table.

Evelyn merely waved her off as she waited for the chief of Operations.

Anje entered quickly, "Sorry, Commodore, I was just going over some potential sensor recalibrations that could make it easier for us to track the shuttle." She apologized, taking her seat.

Lovejoy entered, nodded to the Commodore and took his customary spot to the right of her. His eyes sweeping over the assembled officers.

'Ascendants have mercy, this is not going to end well.' Arrianna noted as she began to speak. "We found debris indicating Romulan weapons fire and warp trails leading in about nine different directions. If the Romulans are involved, It's almost certain the warp trails have been fabricated."

Lovejoy listened in stony silence as Arrianna spoke and mentioned Romulans. If she were indeed right and there was no reason to think she wasn't, then their mission just became much, much harder not only in finding the shuttle but rescuing the command team.

Arri pushed on a large view screen, and a theoretical course was created all the way from Romulus to their location. The course involved the scout ship passing through Nebulae and other subspace phenomenon Federation Space to arrive at their location. The screen then focused on their current location and several circles about ten through twenty light years appeared. "I have managed to perform some initial calculations based on what we know of Romulan long range scout warbirds. The red circle represents a search area if they were pushing a standard scout ships's engines to the maximum output while cloaked. the smaller yellow and green range circles represent our search area if the Romulans were to err on the side of caution and use their cloaking devices to their maximum potential while evading our search efforts."

"Lovejoy studied the screen then spoke, "Commander, this is very good. A question how to you propose we eliminate the false trails and find the true one along with our missing shuttle and people?"

Arri looked at Wynter. "Who said there is a true trail, Commander? And the bigger question we need to answer is not what or where? But who? Who is the mastermind behind this plot?"

"Mastermind?" Percy cut in. "Excuse me, but on what grounds are you presupposing that there is a mastermind behind this incident?"

"There is no logic behind this. Why do the Romulans cross the majority of Federation Space, attack a shuttlecraft, kidnap a Starfleet Captain and her companions, then leave possibly false warp trails to possibly mislead." She was not going to recognize Albright's authority. "Even if it's not the Romulans, the amount of logistics this operation requires is massive, they could have taken someone more valuable, but no; Phoenix Lalor, Gary Taylor, Liselle Qwyyn, and Aurelia Holmes. We need to find out what these four individuals know that would make someone go through that much trouble." She was not going to loose her emotional control over these two again.

Jaeih took a breath and said "Well... then its personal?" She looked at Wynter. "You would have read their files... is there anything in their personal files that screams there would be someone after them?"

~Shit...~ Anje swore silently as her mind made the connection; all the 'black ink' in Taylor's file from years of serving her Aunt taking on the dirty work that the rest of Starfleet ran from, that had to be the reason. Problem number the second, she couldn't tell anyone in this room any of that information. She'd have to get it to her Aunt and Tate somehow, which created problem number the third...

She couldn't reveal any of that, but she had to contribute something, and there was one logical, if only known to her now totally improbable motive, "Sir, Capt. Lalor's defection from Erisia upset a lot of people in high places. It could be as simple as a bounty on her and the others were simply collateral damage. As for the Romulan weapon's signatures, in the time since the Shinzon Rebellion and the destruction of Romulus the empire has fragmented, there is doubtlessly a good bit of Romulan hardware out there on the black market, so it might have come from there. Avalon, what's the current Erisian bounty on Princess Phoenix?" She hated giving these people, many of whom had become her friends, mushroom treatment: keeping them in the dark and feeding them bullshit, but she had no choice yet.

Avalon frowned. "Still active. A fairly high one, but there has been no bounty hunters sniffing around the ship for the last 3 years."

Wynter listened to the speculatipn. "I am still digging, but at the moment given what the warp signatures are and my cross referencing the service records of those taken, I think it prudent that this has something to do with our XO and that the Captain, Liselle, and Auriellia are targets of opportunity or collateral targets, so I will be delving deeper into all of this."

"Please do so Lieutenant. And also set some of your team onto the bounty hunter idea. But I agree that with the Romulan warp signatures etc, it might be as you say, something about Commander Taylor's past assignments." Evelyn said. "I will contact our diplomat within the Romulan star empire and see if they have any leads."

Arri spoke again. "We may also have another resource. I know someone on Deep Space Nine that, if properly motivated, could give us plenty of leads. We could have Deep Space Nine Security pick him up and question him."

~That tears it, I've got to tell Aunt Anje now.~ Anje decided, wondering as she did exactly what Wynter knew about Taylor, ~This keeps getting worse.~ "Quark won't respond to strong arming, Arri." Anje offered, knowing exactly who she spoke of, "If we can't bribe him, we'll have to... arouse his interests some other way." Her voice sank, knowing exactly what that meant and what she might have to do to pull it off, ~Yep, worst day ever.~

"No deals with the ferengi" The Commodore said a note of finality in her tone. "We have enough issues without bringing them into this."

Arri nodded and glanced at both the Commodore's aides. She was waiting for them to have a smug look on their faces. They were very silent thus far, but she knew sooner or later they'd say something idiotic. She wondered if these people even wanted to find Captain Lalor, besides... Mountbatten was in a perfect situation to permanently assume command of the Elysium. "Understood, Ma'am."

"Dismissed." Mountbatten said calmly. "I will start deploying away teams now."

OFF