Posted by Lieutenant Kohana Black Wolf (Intelligence Officer/Helm) in Meeting the Chief of Intel

Posted by Commander Shara Calloway (Chief Intelligence Officer) in Meeting the Chief of Intel

Posted by Lieutenant Kohana Black Wolf (Intelligence Officer/Helm) in Meeting the Chief of Intel
Posted by… suppressed (1) by the Post Ghost! 👻

(snip)

She both believed him and would wait to see how he actually did. Shara nodded. “Just keep in mind that this isn’t an Intelligence ship where everyone has the additional training, who understands how to navigate the stakes and evaluate risk from a different perspective. It isn’t about us. We”-she gestured between them-“and a very select few others understand truly what it is to go on a mission where you coming back alive is perk, not the goal though we will do everything we can to have as many of us come back as we can. But the goal is to drop Agent Blue into the mire he was once rescued from so he can get what he needs, then retrieve him and get the hell to safety, where after likely some prison time and a bit of a kerfuffle before the powers that be sort out the fact that were really not the enemies, we get to carry on with our lives.”

“Any questions so far?”

~Shara Calloway, CIO

“Yes, actually. Who is Agent Blue? I’m sorry, Commander, but I wasn’t given a whole lot of Intel on this mission. You, the ship going rogue, becoming pirates, retrieving some Intel, and Agent Pikelsimer’s name being mentioned. . . .not a lot more than that, sir. Command said my skills at both the helm and Intel would come in handy, but they left out A LOT of details.”

Black Wolf (Helm/Intel)

If they were in any other Intel situation, there would either be a full briefing or complete compartmentalized operative actions. They didn’t have the luxury of the latter, and she really wasn’t keen on the former, but her hands were tied here. “Alright, this is big and complicated, so make yourself comfortable,” Shara said, rising from her chair to grab a coffee in a tumbler with a lid. It was a computer space, after all.

Settling in again, Shara sipped. “Agent Blue is Commander Leroy Strickland, Starfleet Intelligence. He used to be a handler, specifically, my daughter’s handler during the time when Intelligence came calling for a specific mission. I won’t go into details about that, because they aren’t relevant, but what you do need to know is twofold: Faye Calloway was captured by the enemy, tried for crimes she didn’t commit and then she disappeared… right into a secret Tal Shiar facility where I happened to be on a longer-term deep cover assignment as a medic. Suffice to say, they were not kind to Faye in those nine months, but their goal was a lot more than get info and execute. Finally I was able to get her out of there and I went into hiding until I could make my own way back to Federation space.

“In the aftermath, Faye had a long recovery, both physical and psychological. But she was determined to get back to her life and career. Fast forward awhile and she was stationed on the USS Manhattan as a Data Specialist in a Mission Specialist capacity. But really that was only part of her role. She was a Senior Field Agent and in her public capacity she was working on some necessary and experimental upgrades to the ship’s hardware and software to prevent a semi-sentient computer virus from destroying the ship the way it had others in teh Delta Quadrant. She was also given secondary orders to conduct a security audit on the senior staff, hence the undercover part and no one knowing she was with Intelligence.

Kohana slowly shook his head. “I’m sorry, Commander. I can’t begin to imagine what that must’ve been like. As a parent, we want to protect our children from harm in any way possible, and here, you could no nothing but sit back and watch, , , ,”

“Yeah it effing sucked,” Shara said matter-of-factly.

“Here’s where things get dicey. I had done my own recovery after being diagnosed with PTSD, and as an aside, yes, I still have issues with it, yes people here know, and yes we’re working on it. In any case, I was working with Admiral Marissa Greyson in Intelligence to investigate a series of incidents with officers who seemed to be following false orders. I spent two years on this investigation until my leads led me to the next officer who seemed to be caught up in that mess: my daughter. Fast forward a whole bunch of stuff, and it turned out her handler, Agent Blue, had been abducted and replaced by a unknown person working for a group we’ve dubbed the Shadow Syndicate. No, it’s not a known thing outside a small group of us, and in fact, if you did know about it before, that would be highly suspicious.

“My daughter came up with this crazy plan to lure her handler to the Manhattan, because all her orders had come through her handler and the secondary orders from Admiral Yi were forged. Another long story short, but we caught the bastard who replaced Commander Strickland and my brilliant daughter managed to also find out where they were keeping Strickland. He was recovered by Agent Picklesimer, which is how I met him when he and the real Strickland came to the Manhattan.

“I can assure you, this is the first I’ve heard of it.”

Shara gestured widely around her. “This whole secret mission of ours is unfinished business. We’re going to insert Strickland, Agent Blue, back into the Shadow Syndicate at his request, so he can get the info he needs to help us take them down once and for all so they can’t mess with our people, or anyone else’s every again. But we can’t just waltz in and say’ hey, can we play with you?’. No, we need them to almost fear us so much that they are intrigued enough to let us into their realm. We get Strickland in, we pull him out, and we get back to Federation space where there are warrants out for our arrest, or people think we’re dead and we spent probably a couple weeks or so in orison until the whole mess gets worked out. Fun, right?” she said, with almost a bitter laugh, before waiting for his inevitable questions.

~Shara Calloway, CIO

“Sounds like a lot of this involves some personal grudges. . . I’m in, for whatever needs to be done. Let me know what you need me to do.”

Black Wolf (Intel/Helm)

Calloway nodded slowly. “I’m not going to lie, for me this is a bit personal. If we pull this off, my daughter gets to have the future she wants rather than have things hanging over her the rest of her career. Things that were not in anyway her fault. So I’m personally motivated, but I’ve also been in enough of these tight spots to know what I can and can’t ask myself to do. I’m all in, whatever that requires. But we have ourselves some complications.”

“The first is that you’ll have to decide what cover you want. Either you died in the mutiny and you are now someone else, or else you’re a traitor. Choose wisely and don’t deviate from that cover. Which is a little hilarious coming from me because I’ve broken cover several times already and am doing so right now. I’m not in my persona of Elaine Calloway, ruthless and calculating mercenary. And a part of that is because of my PTSD.” She rested her arm on the edge of the desk. “I’m going to level with you Black Wolf and say I’m not doing so great. But, I have been doing this kind of work for two decades. I should be done it, but here we are. So my symptoms have flared because it’s all just a lot. But I take my mental health seriously and I am working on it, though goodness knows we don’t have the time that it really requires. I don’t need you babysitting me. I have a husband on board for that, and the captain will probably be doing her own version. What I need is for you and I to be on the same page and working as a team asap. We don’t have time to waste and we have to pretend we have that rapport and trust op teams do until it actually forms.”

“Thoughts, questions?” Shara asked.

~Shara Calloway, CIO