I Come In Peace Or Whatever

Posted on Tue Jun 13th, 2023 @ 5:14pm by Lieutenant Commander P’rel M.D & Lieutenant JG Nayisa Wrea

Mission: Wrath of the People
Location: USS Serova, San Francisco Orbital Yards
Timeline: MD6 Early Morning :: After 'Seek And Deliver'
2122 words - 4.2 OF Standard Post Measure

Grey eyes scanned the relatively empty corridor, keeping a lookout for unwanted visitors. Ironic, given Arlen was more unwanted than anyone constructing this ship. Using what he knew of her sightings, he was able to narrow down a few possible hiding spots, this one being the riskiest of all. It wasn't easy, since she had covered her tracks quite well, but the potential for sixty bars of latinum was an offer Arlen just couldn't refuse.

Dakota really did know him that well.

Glancing behind him, Arlen pressed the button to enter some storage room, only to have the door simply not open. Glancing at the access panel, he noticed that it was ever-so-slightly displaced from the wall, and a faint smile crept onto his beard-trimmed lips. "Found ya," he mumbled. Remembering that there was an access hatch nearby, he backtracked and, after looking again to make sure it was clear, popped the hatch and slid inside. Pulling up a blueprint he just happened to swipe from a console in engineering, he identified the route he needed to take to get inside the storage room before crawling forward, pausing briefly to make sure the data chip was still safely tucked away in the zippered side pocket of his jacket.

The Vulcan woman's ears proverbially pricked up as the tell-tale click emanated from the disconnected control pad on the corridor side of the cargo bay doors. Barely habitable, with minimal power and a plethora of parts for installation on the next phase, this part of the Serova had become an ideal hiding spot. With false sighting reports being occasionally called in to Starfleet Security, she had them chasing shadows all over Earth and Luna whilst she patiently worked aboard the as yet unfinished vessel.

A few turns later, he spotted the hatch he was looking for and cautiously approached. This Vulcan had been evading Starfleet, so there was no doubt she had considered that someone might try to access this particular storage room. He wasn't incompetent, he knew why the door was locked; she had an advantage by limiting the number of entries. Stopping in front of the exit, he glanced through the slits in the hatch to see if he could spot her in the limited range the hatch offered. Not immediately seeing her, Arlen popped the hatch free of the wall and gently set it down. He crawled out of the hatch, not seeing her anywhere nearby, and he stood, straightening his leather jacket before picking a direction and beginning his search.

P'rel looked down the sights of the civilian disruptor she held out in her right hand, something of a mixture between a Cardassian disruptor and what seemed to be an ancient Starfleet power regulator. It was easy enough to kick-back the power settings to push the disruptor into an attenuation cycle, giving off the signature whine of an energy weapon ready to fire. "For each step, you will receive one hole through your body" she warned truthfully.

The voice interrupting the silence of the room and the whine of a weapon powering up sent a startled shiver down Arlen's spine, and he stopped in his tracks. In his head, he counted the number of steps he had taken from the hatch. Fortunately, not many. He didn't dare look around to find where the voice came from, knowing it could land him a shot to the head if his eyes witnessed her presence. She was smart to pick an area that carried sound. Slowly, he raised his hands so they were visible, eyes staring at the crate directly in front of him to avoid the temptation of looking around. "I understand. I hope my Endeavour can provide somethin' of an Overture," he replied to the room, testing the first phrase Dakota gave him. While to him, it was a normal sentence, albeit phrased in an uncommon way, his instructions said it helped confirm that he was talking to the correct individual.

Immediately recognising the ship postings, P'rel permitted a fractional element of ease to creep in. Perhaps this was someone sent by Ensign Wrea, or one of the officer's many aliases at least. "How many times have you been to Cardassia?" she challenged, referring in turn to her own service record. Though plausibly a message from Athena, she kept her finger ready to fire.

Good, he had found the correct person. Arlen himself had never been to Cardassia, but he didn't have to understand the phrases, just stick to the script he was given. "Four times." While he could control his breathing, his heart was racing, the only thing moving in his still form. She put him at a great disadvantage, and the only way he could see himself getting out of this alive was by answering the questions. "For research. How long have ya known Serena?"

Alright, she thought, he knew she'd been to Cardassia IV; few people knew that. P'rel was becoming increasingly satisfied that this little man was a messenger from Ensign Wrea. "Long enough" she answered, wanting to regain the verbal upper hand. "Start talking, same terms as before...If I do not like what you say, you earn a hole in your body..." she wasn't entirely serious, but she held the disruptor ready to fire just in case.

"Not with that answer, hun," Arlen replied, letting his shoulders rise with a slight shrug. It was a ballsy move, since he currently had a weapon trained on him from who knows where, but instructions were instructions. While he was pretty certain that the Vulcan had identified herself sufficiently, 'long enough' wasn't the correct answer to the question he asked. If anything, his insistence was to save his own skin, to say that he did everything right and couldn't be held accountable. "I got a script I gotta follow, an' my client would kill me if I didn' follow it. She'd gut me for my latinum if I gave this information to the wrong person."

Keeping the disruptor trained on the strange man, P'rel silently crouched and picked up a stray hyperspanner and, standing as silently, threw it off to the side to distract him. Having used the stacked crates and containers to mask her position audibly as well as visually, she was satisfied she had taken the man by surprise when two large strides brought her to within touching distance. Pressing the disruptor to the base of his skull, she swept her left back ready to strike forward if needed. "You appear to have more immediate concerns. Now speak", she threatened.

The clatter of some object made Arlen jump, and he turned his head to see a tumbling hyperspanner come to a stop on the ground. Before he could register that it was a diversion, he felt something press into the back of his head, and it took every ounce of willpower to not try and swat it away. Instead, he flinched, dropping a few inches as if it would keep the weapon away. "Sum'bitch!" Recovering from the scare, he slowly stood back upright, feeling the weapon follow him like it was glued to his head. "Alright," he grumbled, returning his hands to their raised position just above his shoulders. "I was contracted to pass along information. Don' ask me what it is, I dunno. The data chip is in the right zippered pocket of my jacket."

She'd heard that before, though admittedly only way back in a training course and never in the field. Captive combatants getting agents to reach into pockets lined with a cellular toxin, or a convulsion inductive device of some kind. "Then by all means..." she said, taking barely half a step back to relieve the pressure of the firing node from the man's brain stem. "I warn you, if there is anything other than a data chip in that pocket, then you will not live long enough the regret the lie...".

"I ain't that stupid, hun. Ya think this is my first time?" Moving slowly so as not to spook the Vulcan, Arlen lowered a hand until it reached his pocket, then unzipped it and reached in. Grasping the data chip, he just as slowly removed his hand from his pocket and returned it to shoulder height, the small yellow thing between his fingers. He tilted his right hand back slightly, enough to allow her to grab the data chip from him.

Retaining the weapon's aim right at his back, P'rel cautiously removed the chip from the man's fingers. She didn't yet make the mistake of taking her eyes off of him to examine it, and waited to see if he would make a move under the assumption that she had.

He let her take the chip before adjusting his shoulders to relieve the burn he was starting to feel from keeping his hands up for so long. "Once ya send whatever confirmation my client wants from ya, I can leave. I got time." It wasn't entirely the truth, because the longer it took to get this handoff over with, the less likely he'd get his sixty bars of latinum. But Arlen didn't want to give her the impression that he was being rushed. It was bad for business. He made sure to present himself as non-threatening, mostly to avoid getting shot, but he simply had no reason to turn on the Vulcan. While the reward for turning her in was tempting, maintaining the business relationship was a better deal in the long run.

"You fulfilled your task" she replied, not wanting to begin decryption with this decidedly untrustworthy man still hanging around. She returned the disruptor to her belt and made a point of clicking the deactivation switch unnecessarily loudly, so he knew the weapon was inactive. "Return to your client, and inform her that the Owl must return to the nest immediately. Do this, and you will double your fee"; whatever had been agreed it was a risk that he would turn her in, and P'rel was going to need to relocate rapidly. Just in case there was a chance of the man being useful, however, she wanted to get Wrea back to Earth, and assumed that the young woman wouldn't have used a courier who couldn't be trusted - or at least predicted.

When the weapon powered down, Arlen cautiously lowered his hands but still kept them visible. 'The owl must return to the nest' was a slightly more obvious code phrase from his experience, but without the context of what he got involved in, he refrained from jumping to conclusions. Doubling the latinum he would get for this task, though, left him with the comfort in knowing that accepting this task to begin with ended up being good for him. "Pleasure doin' business. I'll give ya 15 seconds to disappear," he said, still not turning to face her. The only reason he gave her a head start was so he wouldn't run into her, though he suspected that she could avoid him far better than he could avoid her. "If I never see ya, I can't say I ever found ya if any Feds ask."

P'rel's left brow involuntarily cocked as she processed the incredulity of this dismal little man giving her a head-start to leave. "As I said..." she began calmly, silently closing the single step back to within striking distance; "...you have more immediate concerns". His quizzical noise was immediately stifled as her fingertips found the blood vessels and nerves common across most humanoids and pinched them tightly. With the brain suddenly and briefly deprived of blood, and the vagus nerve in a state of panic, the man dropped to the floor in a heap. Kneeling, she took his face in her right hand and found the corresponding katric points; "remember..." she muttered.

As the man lay there vulnerable and connected to her own mind, P'rel was only too aware how nigh-impossible it was to remove memories via a mind meld. To actually take out the memory of where he found her was far too impractical, though obfuscation was itself a powerful device. Holding the facial katric points, the Vulcan flooded his mind with competing memories: Vulcan faces, voices, places and noises; all a cacophony of jumbled memories from which he could never unpick easily exactly what he had really experienced. Her mental work complete, she set about her task of moving him to somewhere that she could beam him to on Earth. He'd be found of course, and although dazed and confused would be able to deliver the message. Her base on the Serova was far too good a place to give up - just yet.