Posted by Lieutenant Commander Faye Calloway (Chief Intelligence Officer) in CIO’s Office- Main Sim

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Faye Calloway (Chief Intelligence Officer) in CIO’s Office- Main Sim

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Faye Calloway (Chief Intelligence Officer) in CIO’s Office- Main Sim
Posted by… suppressed (9) by the Post Ghost! 👻
Faye beelined for her office and pulled the chairs around so the three of them could sit and work at the terminal, she pulled up her search history from the bridge and had the info on Silas Morgan on display. Then she sent an encrypted test message to both Marishka and Dawson: ||Important side quest. Need backup with your expertise. My office, ASAP.||

Blowing out a breath, she wondered what to say to Dag. She couldn’t say nothing but he was on his own important mission. She would send him something quick before they left for anywhere.

~Faye Calloway, CIO

It took very little time for Dawson to arrive at the door of the Intelligence Office. He was dressed with a bit more decorum at this point, but he knew that could likely change in a whim. He rang the time as he sensed the urgency within Faye.

-Dawson

Marishka arrived behind Dawson a few seconds later. Her natural approach was stealthy and silent. He likely wouldn’t notice she was even there, unless of course he smelled her familiar perfume.

“Greetings. I’m used to being the first one here. I guess I’ll have to get used to that.”

Marishka was dressed and what could pass for professional in her line of work.

• Marishka

“Come in,” Faye called out.

She gestured at them with a hurried gesture to the chairs. “Come, sit. I need your help.”

“As you may or may not know, we’re investigating the disappearance and/ or destruction of several ships in these parts. The Starfleet crews seem to have taken a worse fate than the civilian freighters. While I was investigating the ships themselves, something interesting popped up. One one of the freighters, there was an Intelligence agent undercover, Silas Morgan, who was operating under the alias Caden Falls. He was on the Dawn Treader to ascertain whether or not they were smuggling stolen Breen weaponry. But he’s since disappeared, though he sent no distress signal. There was also no sign that his operation was compromised. Intelligenc hasn’t been able to find him, but the Athenawas assigned specifically to this mision with the idea that I can exfiltrate Morgan if possible.

Faye blew out a breath and ran a hand over her tidy french braid. When she looked bakc at them, her stormy grey-green eyes were haunted. “Half of me wants to run away and say hell no. I can’t put myself in a position where I can be captured and detained again. I don’t know that I would make it. BUt the rest of me, the one that dmeands some sort of justice in this gods forsaken universe demands we not leave him there is there is any chance he’s in trouble. We don’t know that he is. For all we know, he fell in love and went native. But also don’t know that he’s not in trouble, and thus I am compelled to investigate. It’s not an order, but I can’t turn a blind eye.

“I need help investigating this and most likely, hunting for him. I can’t and should not do this alone. Now, neither of you are under my orders and I can only ask for your help. It’s up to you, but know that if I din’t absolutely think I needed the help, I wouldn’t ask for it. You know my history with the Tal Shiar. This all brings up really hard things for me and I don’t know what will happen to me. Also, you should know that my mind dumps may have shifted slightly and”-she sighed and shook her head-“when my mind is realzed sometimes I lose time. I’m not sure what happens other than I blank out. I don’t think that will be an issue here on this side quest of mine but I want you to have all the variables and know it’s a possible liability.” Basically, if she could not slip elsewhere and didn’t lose her shit due to past trauma, she’d be fine. Maybe.

~Faye Calloway, CIO

As Marishka watched Faye’s features intently, she listened to her words. She understood the look in her haunted green eyes. She knew that she wouldn’t be here unless Faye needed her help.

“At the stage I prefer to be asked rather than ordered. I am with you Faye.”

• Marishka

Dawson too had listened to her intently. It was odd in a way. He and Marishka weren’t officially officers, and yet here they both were ready to help. There was obviously no familial relation between the three of them, but the meeting felt akin to it in a way. She was divulging a lot of personal information, and Dawson was naturally perfectly fine with that. Marishka too seemed to go with the flow. There was something special about Faye that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Something that he certainly enjoyed about her. What it was, not even he knew. He didn’t share any of those thoughts out loud. But his eyes did meet hers in understanding.

“Sounds like the odds are against and the situation could be grim. I’m in.” he said plainly.

-Dawson

Faye closed her eyes and nodded, inhaling deeply, doing her best to find that calm centre that was there more often than not. She was no longer be able to meditate the way an elder Romulan member of the reunification Movement had taught her (thank you Tal Shiar for ruining that too) but Faye worked hard to regulate her nervous system. The earlier moment on the bridge had thrown her into dysregulation and it was imperative she was as clear-headed as possibly as they moved forward.

Faye opened her eyes and logged into the system at her desk (which comprised of multiple screen. She moved her chair a bit and gestured at them. “Bring your chairs around and let’s figure out where to start. I’m going to give you the full briefing before we start hunting for Morgan.

“First, we have our attacked ships,” she said, pulling up her earlier query from the bridge.

Starfleet - USS Indiana (All crew deceased)
Starfleet - USS Mandrake (All crew deceased)
Starfleet - USS Leopold (All crew deceased)
Private Contractor - SS Dawn Treader (Crew missing, status unknown)
Private Contractor - SS Half Moon (Crew missing, status unknown)

All 5 ships were registered and classed as cargo ships.

“Here’s what we know so far,” Faye said, counting off points on her fingers as she went. “Each ship was owned by their respective captains and were contracted by the Federation to ship supplies to colonies and outposts. We’re talking food, medical supplies and basic necessities, nothing extremely valuable or worth selling on the black market frankly. All of the supplies originally came from legitimate aid organizations. None of them made it to their respective last expected ports and when found, each ship was set on autopilot with dead or missing crews. Each was a separate instance and every time sensors tell us a cargo ship dropped out of warp and immediately fired. Once shields fell, the ships were boarded. All this lasts about ten minutes.”

“Each ship was fired on with Breen weaponry, however, readings from inside each ship tell us that us they were Federation phasers and it seems that the baorders were familiar with each ship design, though none were the same. There is still one missing ship with no transponder signal.”

“Now, each ship was carrying supplies for the colony of Halcyn Seven, was founded five years ago. Its administrator is Areth Kel, who was the person who ordered the supplies each ship was carrying. And Mr. Kel here has some interesting details too,” Calloway said, pulling up the details she had found earlier.

‘The colony itself could charitably be described as a dirtball. A moon orbiting a gas giant, the colony itself only had about 300 citizens. Their primary export was a natural gas used as a coolant in small-model warp cores. [All the gas exports were bought and paid for by a Ferengi company that processed and sold it as refined fuel.]

Areth Kel was the picture of a bureaucrat. He had been named Administrator of the colony at its foundation 5 years earlier. Public records were nothing special to look at- each time their cargo failed to arrive, Areth Kel requested a new shipment. In a private communication, he did acknowledge that he knew each cargo vessel would be attacked. Better them than the colony. He didn’t seem to have any plans to acquire those things being stolen beyond another request. The only other thing of note was that his private calendar contained a monthly meeting with no name listed. Always at 15:30 on the 1st of a month, lasting one hour.’

There are so many directions for me to take my queries at this point, that I just had to pick a direction and go with it as far as felt reasonable. So I checked on the status of those gas exports and found…” She pointed to another query result:

‘The colony had been maintaining a steady output, but a new and large supply had been discovered approximately six months earlier and the value of the gas had plummeted. They were exporting the same amount for about 1/3 the money.’

“We discussed the issue and it makes sense to need aid supplies if the colony was losing money, but the only conclusion about the missing crews we could guess, or rather I guessed, what that they people were worth more than their cargo, as slaves” Faye was calm enough again that she managed to say that without shuddering, but that didn’t stop her gut from twisting or her breath to momentarily catch. “The XO mentioned that someone else seems to have a grudge against Starfleet, and it’s hard to disagree based on the evidence so far.”

Faye tapped more keys. “The asteroid belt we’re in is the suspected area of attack since each ship’s flight path passed near by. We have since discovered that one of the larger asteroids is hollow and has a big hidey spot inside made up of different metals from several different ships from different powers, including the Federation. Our scans show those particular ships to be Stafleet vessels over 150 years old.

” Now, this hidey-hole asteroid got really interesting when we discovered there was an armed population there and hailed them. The man in charge, Kezrick and his second, Azirah, were none too friendly and after the captain explained our investigation loosely, we were told and I quote ‘I don’t keep up with the affairs of outsiders, but if you’ve lost a crew, they’re not here. All I do is provide for the people here. Whatever Federation business you’re on, leave us out of it.’ And I may not be great with reading people, but he really didn’t like us. Commander Hammor”-Faye smirked-” discovered this…” She pulled up more info:

‘There was no direct ID leading to a name and personal history. There was however a positive match for security footage captured on Outpost 42, when a shuttle was hijacked from the launch bay and went missing- along with its cargo. The cargo wasn’t anything of special monetary value, it was emergency relief supplies being sent to the site of a natural disaster on a nearby world. The shuttle was never recovered.

The structure appeared to be a patchwork of ships and small stations designed for long term living in hostile environments. It was all pressurized and fed breathable air to compensate for the absence of atmosphere. The one ship that seemed to detach from the larger structure and maintained flight capability was old and had been subjected to upgrades and maintenance that allowed it to outlive its natural years.’

Faye looked at both of them seriously. “We played up the missing shuttle angle and an away team took a shuttle there. Meanwhile, I went hunting for info about Silas and that little bit I shared is as far as I got and there were a lot of barriers to his files.” She blew out a breath. “It’s a lot, I know, but it could be possible Silas Morgan under the alias Caden Falls is wherever those two missing crews are. They could be also on the asteroid, or elsewhere. But where do we start?”

OOC: And funny enough this ended up being a sim summary. Sage will correct me if anything important is missed or incorrect.

~Faye Calloway, CIO

OOC: I needed that.

• Catt

Dawson leaned back as he listened to Faye, soaking in as much of the details as he could. When Faye finished and inquired of their thoughts, Dawson did not hesitate. “Two things stick out to me. One, Silas Morgan may be missing, but that doesn’t mean the trail just goes cold. What did he portray as his alias? Second, this administrator…Areth Kel? He might not be directly involved, but he knew attacks were coming and kept ordering more cargo like it was nothing. And if he admitted that he knew they would be attacked, that leads me to conclude one of two things: He either is under someone’s thumb and is doing the bidding of someone else, or he is personally the one behind it all. Might be worth digging into those anonymous monthly meetings on his calendar.”

-Dawson

Faye nodded. “Okay, let’s multi-task here. “Computer, how far away is Halcyn Seven from our current location at the asteroid belt?” As she spoke she brought up Morgan’s file and started to poke and prod into sub-levels of the files to see if she could find out anything more about the assignment as Cadence Falls.

~Faye Calloway, CIO

The computer responded “Halcyn Seven is 1.8 Light Years away.” As Faye dug for information, not much new was returned until she hit another clearance wall. The screen went black. And a few seconds later text appeared. It’s not about the smugglers. Some other Intel officer had noticed her digging. She was allowed into a file. Starfleet suspected that a trafficker had set up a new operation in this area. When cargo ships started getting attacked, they sent an agent in under cover. So he wouldn’t be shot for being Starfleet. His job was to find out what happened after the ships were attacked and where the civilians had disappeared to. It was very possible he was hidden somewhere on the station the away team was investigating.

-GM