[Backlog] DL | CIO, NPC | LCDR Stacker, WO Parsuv (NPC) | “Brielle, Pt. 2"

Posted on Sat Feb 10th, 2018 @ 12:02am by Commander James Stacker & Warrant Officer Parsuv

Mission: The Round Table
Location: Decks 678, 681 | Cold Station Theta
Timeline: This takes place before "Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici."

It was hard to say what it was, precisely, that woke up the lieutenant commander. One moment he was asleep. The next he was jolted to full wakefulness. When consciousness caught up to the moment, he found his heartrate coming down off an adrenaline high. He was also half-rolled onto his chest, with an arm reaching underneath the pillow for a knife that hadn’t been stored there in years. And then he froze and listened, taking only shallow breaths, ears straining for anything out of the ordinary.

The sound came only once, but faintly, and from the next room. A single beep was all he heard. His head cocked slightly to one side; were it possible his ears would have rotated to the sound. There it was again … now he softly slid back off the bed and padded towards the doorway. Somewhere deep inside he cursed himself for having had the weapons locker installed outside, next to his desk. The sound repeated itself and he froze. Then something clicked inside, and the tension started to bleed away.

Sure enough, he found his desk in one corner of the room sitting there chirping softly. A single red light was flashing on the console, indicating a waiting message. He exhaled, deeply, leaning with an arm against the bulkhead with eyes closed and head bent. No words were said. None needed to be said. After a moment he lips moved in a silent prayer of thanks, for reasons entirely personal. And he affirmed that the weapons locker would not be moved.

The chair creaked when he sat down and keyed the console, head turning only slightly now when the clock in the opposite corner of the room began to chime. It was a squat little thing, tucked onto the end of a shelf above a Benjamin Fig tree that'd materialized in the quarters mere days before. As it continued to peal its steady bright tone, he kept mental track even while his eyes kept moving across the page. It tapered off at four, some distant part of his mind noted before becoming subsumed by what had his full and complete attention.

A finger tapped a button on the console. "Lieutenant Commander James Stacker, authorization Pi-Tango-Gamma-Three-Six-Kappa. Display second message." A moment later he winced as the screen flared to life, realizing his error. "Computer, increase ambient lighting by twenty-five percent." The eyes closed again as he leaned back in the chair. When he could open them again, the bright flare was much-reduced. The text was still there, waiting patiently.

At the end of the first read his mind was still playing catch-up. There was a blink of his eyes, as if to ask wait, what? and then they went back to the beginning. It took several minutes for him to be convinced that the text said what he indeed thought it said. He hung his head, fingers running through short-cut hair, elbow on the console. The chair creaked again as he rose and headed for the restroom.

=/\=

"- don't care why he's in lockup. I want to know why a man missing for that long wound up here, on this station," the station intelligence chief was saying when the door opened to admit Chief Warrant Officer Parsuv. He glanced away from the duty supervisor and their lieutenant, gave the alien a nod, and went back to his focus on them. "He was a low-level intelligence asset. I want to know why we're seeing him, and not his case officer. Get out there and get me some answers. Dismissed."

The two exited the room past Parsuv, who had stood near the doorway. It was an advantageous position: able to observe, without being so close as to directly participate. Beady alien eyes darted to their faces, seeing frustration on one and a jaw set on the other. A dressing-down, then. It was his experience that some humans didn’t react well to criticism, no matter the location it was delivered. These were evidently two of them. He filed it away for future note and turned his attention back to the lieutenant commander.

The man was standing with his hands on the desk, leaning on them and head bowed as he sighed. His hair had that freshly-washed sheen about it; as if not enough there was a faint hint of ... apples? That alone almost made him smile - at least what passed for a smile amongst his species. Who would’ve thought the mighty MACO preferred an apple scent?

It took a minute before James spoke. When he did, he didn’t move. "You know, just once I'd like to have a normal day around this place."

"I believe we've used up our allotment for this month," came the reply. "Or are you forgetting last Tuesday?"

The brown-haired intelligence chief waved his top enlisted to a chair as he sat in his. It creaked, wheels giving a half-turn as it slid back a little from the desk. "Deina Rosesabeina disappeared a month ago on Brielle, without any sign of foul play. He left behind a wife, two children, an untouched bank account and a second one holding proceeds skimmed from freight shipments made by his employer. He booked passage on two separate liners and ended up chartering passage as supernumerary on a tramp freighter working a variable schedule. He jumped ship ahead of schedule and moved onto a second tramp freighter which brought him here."

Parsuv's head was tilted slightly to the side, eyes blinking. "The actions of a paranoid man."

“Paranoid enough to run off and leave behind a small fortune, by border world standards.”

A pause. “Frightened?”

“Of what?” James leaned a little further back in his chair, fingers reaching out to wrap around the handle of the sole mug of steaming coffee that had been placed just so. He took a cautious sip; a lesson of many past experiences involving scalding brew produced by cantankerous replicators. Parsuv said nothing as he swished it around before swallowing, taking with it some of the dry mouth. “Something scared him so badly that he up and fled, leaving behind his entire life.”

“What should we do with him?”

James sighed, and the chair came back upright, booted feet going back onto the floor where they belonged. “We’ll debrief him of course and pass the findings to headquarters. After that it’s life in Resettlement Central. I just wish I knew what made him bolt from his little hidey-hole,” he muttered, eyes going to the live yet muted feed of the man in the cell, with only a table and two chairs for company. Nothing to be done for it now, he told himself as he switched it off and reached for a PADD. It was going to be a long morning.

=/\= End Log =/\=

Lieutenant Commander James Stacker
Chief Intelligence Officer
Cold Station Theta, SB-1170

Warrant Officer Parsuv (NPC)
Intelligence Officer
Cold Station Theta, SB-1170