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Kansas

The Stiletto - Part 1

Note: the following is an off plot joint log set in the Mirror Universe of the ISS Agincourt, written by Lt. C.T. 'Junior' Caine and Cmdr. Kansas 'Will' JoNs. It follows the events established in the following previous logs: Mission Lead, (Dis) Satisfaction, Wheeling and Dealing, and Adminiztrative Skillz.

 

The Stiletto - Part 1

 

Before the transporter beam had even quite released her, Caine was down and moving, taking up a silent position behind a packing crate while she scanned the merc cargo bay, checking that all of her team had arrived safely.

 

"Clear, chief." Farragut had taken up a similar hold position and his whispered confirmation coincided with her own mental one. She took a moment to rest her head back against the crate and let a smirk slide across her face in satisfaction.

 

Four months of research had led up to this point. Four months of tracking, trailing, following leads, eliminating red herrings -- in short, four months of doing what she did best. Intelligence.

 

What she had revealed had been an organization both worrisome in its reach and impressive in its simplicity, an array of ships all tied to a single Orion cartel which had been laying the groundwork for this operation for months. It was a massive drug ring, large enough that Caine had to give them a certain amount of grudging respect for the fact that they had kept their operations relatively quiet up to this point; it had been surprisingly hard to track them down.

 

They had made a few critical errors in the disguise of their activities, however, and between that and the information that JoNs had provided as a result of her less-than-savory past, Caine now found herself standing aboard this ship. The Stiletto. All evidence indicated it as the main mobile drop point for the organization, heavily armed and carefully hidden, its cargo holds stuffed with the ketracel meth drug, its computers stuffed with information on its contact drop-off points. It was, in short, a gold mine.

 

Caine had every intention of taking it without much of a fight. The stealth infiltration had been, if she did say so herself, masterful, and with any luck they would be able to make a quick surgical strike and have the place locked down within the hour. Quick. Clean. No loss of life -- on the Empire's side, at least. Prisoners were an imperative, but if a merc lost their life here or there in the service of justice and expediency...Caine would not be crying in her beer.

 

There were four teams altogether, silently placed into different areas of the ship. Four officers leading – three security men and the XO – with Caine monitoring across the ship as things moved forward. According to the plan, they had fifteen minutes to settle in, get their bearings, and do a last check of their equipment. Then the push would begin. Ten of those fifteen minutes remained. Tapping the whisper-sensitive comm in her ear, Caine pulled her phaser from her belt and checked its charge. "Alright. You all know the drill. We get in, and we get out, and we go home. Team leaders, check in."

 

"Farragut -- green."

 

"Wright -- green."

 

"Parker -- green."

 

Silence. Caine waited for a few seconds and then her lip curled. "JoNs. Wake up," she snapped, the tone coming out as a hiss. "Report in."

 

More silence.

 

Farragut whispered an oath over the line, and Caine groaned, resisting the urge to bang her head heavily against the tritanium crates. Caine...Caine...when an operative disappears once during an operation, and you retaliate by bringing her to another one and expecting different results...you know, that bespeaks a certain amount of...oh, I don't know...basic stupidity?

 

"Where the hell is that damned cat?"

 

= = = =

 

Kansas ‘Will’ JoNs and the fifth assault squad had been deposited per the tactical plans drawn up by Lieutenant Caine at the insertion position that was located opposite and parallel to the section of the ship where the Vulcan security chief and her own squad had been inserted.

 

And said damn willful cat was currently involved with something that she did best -- nosing about.

 

The schematics of the cartel ship that had been acquired during the Intel gathering portion of the operation had been very thorough, but after JoNs and her team had been dropped by the transporter into this section, Kansas had literally spotted an unknown factor directly in front of her muzzle: a storage room area set just off the side corridor that she and her squad were currently hunkered down in.

 

The golden furred Cait first checked the charge on her phaser, and then the digital time on her communicator chronometer watch: the teams had eight minutes until the initial push forward, and then all covert implant teams would move out and take the Stiletto deck by deck, culminating with a lock down of the main bridge command center.

 

Her comm buzzed in her ear again.

 

"JoNs. Report in, dammit." Caine's hissed tone was tense. Whatever was causing this delay in response, she already knew she didn't have the patience for it.

 

Commander JoNs might have been the executive officer of the ISS Agincourt, but when it came to certain missions such as this one, rank and position didn’t necessarily dictate that you’d be in charge of any one mission or missions. When the ‘Court had initially been assigned to this sector of the Outer Rim colonies in order to clear out the criminal drug activity in the area, Colonel Charlotte Harper had placed Lieutenant C.T. ‘Junior’ Caine in charge over JoNs. The Lieutenant had the necessary background in Intelligence in order to make use of procedure, and in Harper’s eyes, the commander was ‘damaged goods’ and a bit too close to this sort of operation with the sort of background that she and her mercenary family had been exposed to in the past and in her exec’s younger years.

 

JoNs might have understood the reasoning behind the current orders and change of mission lead positioning, but that understanding didn’t mean the Cait had to like it.

 

The felinoid officer replied to the insistent communications of Caine only after she had performed a final readiness check on her tactical equipment. Once she had blended into the shadows just outside the unknown cargo area, she tapped her own earpiece and spoke in a purred whisper, finally acknowledging the lieutenant.

 

“Junior, this is Will. Team is in place at whiskey five, but we have encountered an unknown factor.”

 

Caine's tone snapped in her ear, protocol demanding a further request for information rather than the cold response she wanted to give. "Elaborate."

 

Kansas bared her fangs silently at the tone, but she kept her displeasure on taking orders from the lower ranking half-Vulcan from her answering tone…barely. “Our section is secure, no sign of hostiles. But, we have an offshoot storage area, medium sized, that was not mapped out on the original ship schematics. Deck 5, section 48.”

 

Across the ship, Caine's jaw worked in frustration. Every operation had its unexpected elements -- that was part of the job -- but somehow having JoNs be the one to deliver the bad news in this instance grated more than usual. If it had been Farragut or Wright on the other end, she would have had her response out before they'd even finished speaking.

 

Focus. Do the job. She'll keep to deal with until later.

 

"Investigate and report back. You have seven minutes. And, for God's sake, quietly."

 

Will tapped a graceful though wide paw to her combat earpiece. “Seven minutes noted and moving forward. Banshee squad is maintaining corridor position and undercover behind storage crates. And, for the record mission lead, I’m a feline. We are always quiet. Will over and out.”

 

Kansas signaled her team silently with tactical paw signs for them to stay put, and then moved forward on her own; she’d never send anyone where she -- or the angels -- feared to tread.

 

However, if you ever called JoNs an angel to her face, the felinoid commander would out and out kick your sorry ass.

 

With the approved order (actually, the commander would have investigated the room anyway without approval from the lieutenant, but the approval just made things easier) squared away, Kansas moved forward towards the bulkhead separation doorway blocking the inner room from the corridor. Weapon held at the read but in a downward readiness position, the Cait plucked her digital bypass card from her utility belt and swiped it through the entrance access reader mounted next to the doorway on the dark gray hull bulkhead.

 

The reader was a standard civilian issue security reader, easily bypassed by the higher military grade access cards such as the one that she carried. Useful device, the tactical bypass card; the little device was invaluable when it came to deciphering access and entry codes on the non-military vessels.

 

In a way, Kansas was a little disgusted that a mercenary vessel of this size and with this much meth payload stored on it didn’t have a better security system; with all the credits that the Orion Cartel factions made with their illegitimate businesses, you’d think this mercenary group would be able to upgrade their vessel with the black market security systems.

 

Hell, even the Dark Fury, the JoNs family clan ship, had a better security system then this merc vessel.

 

Within four seconds, the entry door obediently whooshed open, granting Kansas access to this interior room of mystery. She re-attached the bypass card to her belt and then set about her business.

 

The interior of the offshoot storage area was just like the rest of the Orion Cartel vessel: dark, gray and dingy. Although…this section of the ship was marginally cleaner, and JoNs could actually detect the faint smell of some sort of antiseptic cleaner. Kansas had grown up mercenary, but her family had kept their clan ship quite clean. Most (not all) mercenary ships didn’t care about clean as long as they weren’t overrun by cockroaches or mice. It just seemed…odd that an Orion merc ship would keep one area so clean when the rest of the ship looked figuratively like day ten of a fifteen day shore leave.

 

The storage area had the usual blue, green, yellow and red cargo containers and barrels scattered throughout, but also boasted an impressive stash of working computer consoles and hard drives that were whirring with internal activity, and at least two of the consoles looked as if they were dedicated communications lines. So, that explained the cleanliness what with the equipment. Was this a secondary communications center, or something more? There was no sign of a crewmember manning the section -- obviously, since JoNs hadn’t been shot at as soon as she had poked her head in – and she hadn’t picked up any bodily scents. So, if the care had been taken to keep the room clean, why weren’t there any guards posted to watch over the computer equipment?

 

Whatever. Not her problem. Some mercenary crews operated with military precision, and others were just this shy of what she liked to refer to as ‘civilian dumbass’. The Stiletto might have been the processing and distribution hub for one of the larger cartel factions, but JoNs was not impressed with the crew manning the vessel.

 

This was going to be a piece of cake, as the Humans were fond of saying.

 

The felinoid moved towards what she had ascertained as the main access console, and inserted a smaller USB version of the access card into a hard access point order to bypass any security measures on the computer system.

 

It took a bit of doing, working from her own knowledge of how merc ships systems were typically set up, but after some doing, Kansas had gained access into the computer system of the Stiletto by way of an application program.

 

Once she had gained digital entry into the computer system, the feline tapped gently at her ear communicator in order to establish a connection with the team leader.

 

“Junior, this is Will. I’m in the corridor room, and we’ve hit major pay dirt, as the Humans like to say.”

 

"I have no time for vague flights of metaphor, Commander -- what did you find?" Four minutes...

 

The Caitian officer’s voice was prompt over the secure wireless connection, with no hint of derision towards her temporary commanding officer. Business was business. “Contact listings. We have at least one Imperial Fleet captain and three commanders that are either clients or partners in the Meth distribution business in this sector…”

 

That got Caine's attention and she dropped her hand from the crate she was leaning on, shooting Farragut a look across the bay. "Fleet officers? There are Fleeters in this business?" Her lips curled in an expression part-scowl, part-smirk. The Cat had managed to stumble on something valuable -- this was what Intel was really all about. Up until now Caine had viewed this as a routine mission, but if there was Imperial treachery involved... "Names, you have names?"

 

“Hades, yes, I have names Junior. This lot’ll be in a bit of trouble, considering the civilian sectors out this way are considered off limits for side business, let alone working with the Cartel. Extracting information of proof now…”

 

And the Cat tripped an internal safety alarm at that moment, causing the computer system to activate a series of alerts within the small room, and no doubt throughout the ship as well, judging by the alerts that filtered to her sensitive ears from out in the corridor.

 

“Oh hell…”

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