[VINDI] PLOT - JDL | Com Ivanova, Cmdr Dahe'el, Cmdr Archer, Lt. Shran | "Gone And Gone And Gone..."

Posted on Thu Mar 15th, 2018 @ 5:21am by Commodore Rochelle Ivanova

Mission: Lacuna

There were more things to do. There was a far longer list of things he'd rather be doing, but none of those were either practical or feasible now. He banished those from his thougths for now, useless baggage, though he knew full well that those thoughts would return later, when all the excitement was over and the night would stretch out its empty hours, eager to fill them with nightmares both in dreams or awake.

That would be for the future. This was for now. Security on the station had been alerted. That was out of his hands. But more people would need to know. He tapped his comm badge again. "Anaxar Shran to Commodore Ivanova. I am sorry to disturb you, but a situation has arisen of which you need to be aware." His voice sharp, under taut control, but still soft and unfailingly polite, even now.

Anaxar was always the consummate gentleman; soft spoken and gentle. Rochelle had just stepped back in time, leaving the 1940s behind with a final delicate click of kitten heels against the make of the New York City library's grand foyer when the call came in and something in his voice chilled her blood and made her heart wobble in its incessant and stalwart course.

"Meet me in my ready room."

Her reply had been equally as clipped and concise, but there was that undercurrent of concern that was just weigh to let him know that he had her attention, that he was important. For once she was pleased that Vlimar's holodeck program both changed and returned clothes as one where'd and exited. It was far easier to hustle along the corridors in her off duty flats and jeans even though seconds passed like hours.

And when she arrived, Rochelle was far from surprised to find the Andorian already waiting. The sight of him was enough to make her heart sink as she let him in and let the door close behind them. "What happened?" She asked, not bothering to wait until they made it to her desk. Something was seriously and undeniably wrong.

His acute timesense told Anaxar he had been waiting for one minute, thirty nine seconds before Rochelle arrived, his panicking frenzied mind told him he'd been waiting for hours. Si'a… His mouth shaped the name. "Lieutenant Dai'xun has gone missing. I've reported it with Station Security. As near as they can tell, she was abducted near or on the middle tier of the Promenade. She went out of sight of one cam and never appeared on the other. No sign of whoever took her, no unauthorised transports." His mouth twisted as if he swallowed battery acid. "Whoever these people are, they knew exactly what they were doing."

"Time out." Rochelle's hands came together in the timeless symbol for the action. It was instinctive, a move that cared not whether he could presently see it or not, and helped her begin to process the ground swell of information that was beginning to crest over her delicate sensitivities. A member of her crew had gone missing while on the station's Promenade. In the middle of dinner hour, no less, when things were hopping, someone had managed to seamlessly nab a tiny blue haired woman out from under everyone's nose... And nobody noticed aside from Anaxar, who wasn't at the scene. "How long ago did this happen?" She asked, "An hour or two at most? She has to still be on the station..." The redhead muttered, gripping Anaxar's sleeve at his elbow and towing him along to her desk, her spare hand coming up to press her combadge, effectively summoning her round table.

"Here's the station as a whole," Once her hands were free to conjure further magic, she was swift to bring up a holo display of Cold Station Theta, orbiting slowly above her desk. Ships and shuttles zipped in and out in real time - only they were mainly coming in. Station security had done well to lock down all exiting crafts while extensive searches were conducted.

It wasn't long after the first flickers of the display appeared until Archer let himself into the darkened room. The lighting told him that they were at a state of 'war', but the enemy remained unseen. All he could glean from the way things were set up was that the problem centered around Cold Station Theta and had he been anyone other than himself, that's all he would have known. "Bring up the Promenade. I'll link the footage in." He spoke steadily in some form of greeting. Being useful was better than small talk anyway, and a brief look at two grim faces while he worked told him he was right.

The summons had caught him off guard but Almar had thrown his uniform back on and sprinted the corridors to the ready room, his entrance through the doors was as obvious as it always was.

His weight shifted from foot to foot, hip to hip, as he folded his arms across his check, cupped his chin, and watched Si'a happily float past one camera with her shopping in tow, but never make it onto the next... But neither did those around her. With narrowed eyes, he moved his fingers from his face and gestured to the projection, "Someone's fucked with the footage. The man beside her never makes it to the next camera either, or the woman in the yellow jumpsuit. So either they're all missing or I'm right."

Anaxar rubbed his forehead with one hand. Looking at holograms was difficult enough with the implants and interface working optimally, and at this moment the neural interface was far from optimal. He lifted his head to focus on the new arrival rather than on the image moving dizzyingly in front of him. "Station Security had no reports of other missing people. But on a station that size it would be impossible to keep track of everyone. Especially civilians in transit. Misplacing Starfleet personnel, of course, ought to be a different matter," he added with another bitter twitch.

"Jumpsuit is Starfleet... Looks like a pilot of some sort, probably one of the Endeavour's out for a bite to eat." Rochelle replied absent mindedly and looked between the men, "If anyone else is missing, we'll know soon. It just seems so weird that this happened during one of the busiest times of the day and no one saw or reported it." That was the fact that left the redhead completely stymied, "No hint of a transporter being used either... I think you're right, Archer, the footage has been tampered with."

"So we're looking for professionals who know the station." Archer's mouth drew down in a scowl and his hand returned to his chin. "This is how a war starts, just saying. The Empress is already running hot with the Vokar debacle," He continued, somehow knowing that everything said in that room would remain in that room whether Anaxar had been fully indoctrinated into the fold or not, "and now her cousin is missing? Yeah. Something's foul. I don't like it."

"It had crossed my mind." He had missed the whole situation right before midnight last night, drowned as it was in the confusion with the masked man and the joy of- He cut that thought off abruptly. Once he'd learned of Si'a's disappearance, there had been no avoiding to learning what had happened the night before, though. The connection between what happened with one Stenellis and the disappearance of the other was too big to ignore. But tempting as it was to focus on Si'a's disappearance as a possible retaliation for the murder of one Vokar by another (or whatever, the details were still muddy), they should not forget to include other scenarios as well. He wasn't aware he spoke that thought aloud.

The Cardassian had taken up a perch in the corner of the room and was viewing the scenario from afar, "I don't think the Vanguard are involved, they don't have anything to gain from provoking a war," Almar replied with a tilt of the head as a padd magically appeared in his hand from one of his multitude of hidden pockets, "How are station security conducting searches? section by section or sweeps?"

"Sweeps last I heard." Archer replied, reaching to tap the tip of his own nose, "I think you're right about it not being Vanguard. Baby Vokar doesn't strike me as being stupid enough to poke at the Empress any more than he already has. Or the Federation for that matter." Turning back to the display he continued to mutter; "Wasn't exactly a brilliant idea to shit all over a Starfleet shindig anyway. Didn't buy him any brownie points with Intel, anyway."

Rochelle scoffed softly in response, walking the full circle around the illuminated stone desk as she went to study things from a new angle, "Have they found her combadge?" She asked, choosing not to comment on the Vokar situation. Almar knew her sentiments on it. That's all that mattered.

"No," Anaxar said tightly. "They've tried tracing it. No luck thus far."

It was Rochelle's turn to have her face contorted by a scowl and the sound of unshed and whispered cusses slipped barely past her lips. "How much longer until we have an answer about whether or not she's on the..."

Something on Archer's body chirped, catching her attention and leaving the question hanging unfinished. Her eyebrow rose and her hands fell to rest of her hips, "Care to share with the class?" She asked, gesturing with a nod of her head, nose first, towards the source of the interruption.

James sighed and tugged the gadget from its place in his pocket, opening it he hissed through his teeth and shook his head, "Yeah such, Professor... There's been another kidnapping. Commander Valeese, station's Chief Medical Officer and resident Vorta." Flicking his eyes up towards his audience, he couldn't help but smirk, "Tell me that's a coincidence."

Anaxar had started to pace, one hand kept straying to his pocket and jerking away again, squeezing and relaxing. His aching head pulsed in time with the beating of his heart, until it seemed that only the rigid band which was his visual implant kept his head from exploding. At Archer's words, however, he came to an abrupt standstill. "A Vorta?" he snapped, as his thoughts raced ahead and dragged his voice in its wake. "What, are those people collecting for a circus?" How many Vorta could there possibly be in Starfleet? At least as many – or as few – as Stenellis.

He stalked back to the display above Rochelle's desk. "With your permission, Commodore," he said, the whipcrack gone from his voice for now. Calling up Commander Valeese's personnel file was a moment's work. Her face appeared next to the holographic display of the station: a slender face, framed with dark hair from which those elongated, ridged ears rose, startlingly purple eyes. He called up Si'a's face next to hers. His artificial sight had trouble matching Si'a's electronic image to the way he perceived her face to face, but memory told him that what was shown here were acute matches when seen with normal eyes. "Both young, unique, beautiful." He turned to face Commander Archer, and a hint of that whipcrack crept back into his voice. "I think you are right. This is not coincidence."

"Definitely not," Almar replied as he roused himself from his perch and moved forward, viewing the display with a cold fascination, "So now we have two missing Starfleet Officers from... exotic species" the Cardassian was thumbing through as many records as he could with one hand while rubbing at the back of his neck with the other, he'd been pulled away from his rock earlier than expected and still had some knots to work out, "A station of this size and age has a lot of places that are hidden, even from people who have been there a long time, we might have better luck if we assist station security by performing high resolution scans."

"Make it happen." Rochelle's reply was dark, cold. Looking at the two women on the screen she couldn't help but feel that cold prickle of anxiety settling deep within the pit of her belly. It had to have been a professional job, and their fate hung precariously in the balance until they could find a reason beyond doubt of a motive and intent. "Work with Station Intel and Security, let them know our instinct says that it's not amateur hour..." Another look at the pair of faces and she shook her head, "The question is whether it's sex trafficking or more. Stealing from Starfleet isn't exactly the move of someone looking to make a quick buck even if the species are exotic." She all but hissed in a voice filled with rancor. "Ferengi?"

"They're not stupid enough." Archer immediately answered, "This is bigger and they're on the inside. We currently have no one on either asset that has been subject to scrutiny or suspected of trading with the Ferengi... Except for her." He continued, flicking a finger towards the image of the Vorta, "Lieutenant Commander James Stacker and his man Parsuv put something in their notes to that effect, but seems to have been a dead end. Their only evidence was the fact she collected old Terran novels." His eyes rolled and he dismissed it with the wiggle of his fingers as if it were completely beneath him... And it was. It truly was. "Clear cut case of xenophobic bullshit tainting finer sensibilities."

"I couldn't give a rat's ass less." The redhead's matter of fact response rose quickly, "I want to know who took them. No doubt that xenophobe is working on this which means that you're going to work on this with him. If they're off the station, find out where they are are bring them home. I think we all appreciate and agree with that sentiment?" She asked, looking up and around to catch the eyes that surrounded the illuminated desk.

Not a single word from Anaxar, just a curt nod that indicated that he'd heard her. He was keeping himself together only by the narrowest of margins. Right now, there were a lot of uncertainties, too many questions, not nearly enough answers, and not an idea of where to begin. Were they, was Si'a still on the station? His heart told him no, but how trustworthy was that? And where to go next? Where to look? When all was said and done, there was nothing he could do right now, nothing at all but sit or stand and fume in aimless anger.

Anaxar's was a look the fiery Commodore had seen before... Many times. Sometimes in the mirror staring back at her during times of less repose... During times when challenged by people like Tr'Bak and the voids that threatened to devour Landon. She'd seen it on his face too, that heated urge to do something but marred by the feeling of uselessness and being void of direction to lash out in. Looking at him, she felt for him. "Go with Archer..." The order was softer than it should have been, but direct none the less. She didn't need to explain that she knew it would help him whether Si'a were found or not. At least then he could say he'd tried and hadn't just sat on his hands waiting for closure.

Another of those curt nods. "Yes, sir." And, softer, "Thank you." He turned his scarred, eyeless face to Archer. "Commander. I'm yours."

Archer nodded, "Get us an audience with the station. I think everyone needs to be briefed and we'll go from there. One way or another, we're going to find them." They could find anything, especially when pissed.

The Cardassian nodded at the instruction given following his suggestion, he turned and moved towards the door with purpose and stopped as it slid open, "I'll be on the bridge beginning the scanning routines, I'll coordinate with some of your staff, Lieutenant Shran, we can tie in the full sensor pallets and we should be able to penetrate most of the station."

"Consider yourselves dismissed. We'll reconvene after a conversation with the Station." The Commodore's arms folded across her chest and her hip rested against her desk in order to give a place to roost. It was clear she was staying in her ready room, working on the tasks at hand while the rest of her round table scattered to the four winds to bring back whatever they could. They would become her horsemen, reaching far and wide across the vast and open universe, working to bring back what was rightfully theirs.

At any cost.

---

Commodore Rochelle Ivanova
Commanding Officer
USS VINDICATOR, NX-78213-F

Commander Almar Dahe'el
Executive Officer
USS VINDICATOR, NX-78213-F

Commander James Archer
Chief Intelligence Officer
USS VINDICATOR, NX-78213-F

Lieutenant Anaxar Shran
Chief Science Officer
USS VINDICATOR, NX-78213-F