Communication Is Key

Posted on Aug 11, 2016 @ 1:31am by Selyara Chen
Edited on on Aug 11, 2016 @ 1:31am

Mission: Fortress: Earth

“Communication is key”

(Continued from “What Comes Next“)


Location: San Francisco, Earth

Stardate: 2.160810.2118

Scene: Selyara, Raxl, and Barton's Hotel Suite

Selyara had washed up by the time Barton made it back to the room, erasing any sign of her earlier crying fit with a combination of cold packs and judicious use of makeup, and was currently engaged in her rather aggressive campaign to keep Barton distracted by annoying the shit out of him.

Raxl felt bad for the man. He’d been on the receiving end of the abrasive, smug superiority act that he was now sure was part of Selyara’s emotional defense mechanism, but it was nothing compared to her conscious, dogging nastiness to Barton. Her current tactic was lecturing him in a very patronizing tone about escape and evasion techniques while wearing little more than her underwear. Call it an unconscious response from the unevolved lizard brain lurking in all sentient beings, but no man likes being lectured by a woman wearing lingerie; it’s adding injury to insult.

“I *know* that!” Barton finally grumbled, turning his back on her so that he could get properly annoyed with her.

“Well good then,” Selyara shot back, shimmying into a lacy pastel pink dress that was barely an improvement over her underwear. She tucked her hair up under a blonde wig, and set about putting on makeup. “That means I won’t have to worry about you and Raxl, then.”

“Worry about us when?” Barton, shot Raxl an exasperated look of commiseration.

“When you go out in a few minutes to check on Stephen. Leonard may well have left him with some information, or a way to get in contact with him. I think I was close to getting him to agree to help us.” Selyara chirped back, swiping a lipstick that matched her dress onto her lips. She was clearly getting into some new character of hers, because her voice had changed to a more lilting, girlish, voice with a charming hint of a lisp that conjured to mind the quintessential ‘girl next door’ trope.

“And what are you going to do while we do that?”

“I’m going to go out all by my little lonesome and find some of our brave Starfleet Boys to steal the communicators off of. The official channels have to still be working, and if I manage to steal them in such a way that the marks are too embarrassed to tell anyone what happened, I should be able to keep them active, which means we will be able to hear a little of the traffic, and possibly get a hold of Leonard directly. At the very least it would allow us to communicate with each other under the radar.” Selyara pouted into the mirror and slipped on a pair of uncomfortable looking heels.

“Not by yourself you’re not.” Barton turned around to glare at her. She looked up through her eyelashes, and batted them sweetly. “The Captain will fire me out of a torpedo tube if something happens to you-”

“Yes, by myself. I can’t do this with you cramping my style. You’ll scare them off, and besides, you know I’m perfectly able to handle myself.”

“Yeah, and what if they decide to institute curfew, or you get caught where you shouldn’t? Are you going to fight your way out of that?” Barton’s tone was challenging. Clearly he knew that she wasn’t much at hand to hand combat. She cocked her head head and let some convincing tears well up in her eyes, her lower lip trembling.

“Excuse me sir, can you please help me? I broke my heel, and have no idea where I am, and will all the things going on, gosh, I’m just so scared! Can you help me mister?” She added a subtle little twist which caused bits of her to jiggle enticingly.

“Oh, relying on the sex kitten act again? What a surprise.” Barton said snidely.

“Oh, sorry for playing to my skills. But you’re right, instead, how about I start solving every situation by glowering and being intimidating, and maybe smashing a few heads.” Selyara’s sneer was still on her lips, but Raxl could tell that Barton was starting to get under her skin. “You boys have fun, try not to get into trouble.”

* * *=[/\]=* * *

Scene: Near Starfleet HQ

The night was sultry and hot, with a slight breeze coming in off the water that was nearly undetectable save for the maddening way it caught the fine hairs that framed Selyara’s face and sent them fluttering, tickling her cheeks and lips. The night was eerily still, though it was not much past eleven.

On a normal day, this plaza should have been buzzing with activity. People should have been going to clubs, enjoying wine and coffee at the street cafes, eating food from rows of food carts and trucks that catered to the Starfleet late shift workers, to drunken cadets, those pulling all nighters studying, the tens of thousands of civilians that supported Starfleet operations but had never joined themselves, and those that lived for the joining of diverse cultures and brilliant minds that Starfleet brought to the area.

Not so tonight.

The crowds were even patchier than they had been a few nights before. The clients at restaurants had the wary air of men and women to whom the need of their daily ritual had only barely outweighed their sense of self preservation. The sudden affliction that had gripped several species so theatrically earlier that day and the abrupt shutdown of planetary communications had made people tense, uncertain, terrified. Under the tension, even old friends and lovers danced around each other in circles, snapping and snarling at each other nervously

Most conspicuously, to Selyara, at least, was the complete absence of any alien species. Normally San Francisco and the erstwhile Paris were hubs of Xenodiversity on Earth. When she was younger, she’d always come to the area around Starfleet HQ when she got tired of feeling like people regarded her as a ‘not quite’ being. Not quite Human, for all that she talked, acted, and knew only the culture of Humans. Not quite Vulcan. Not quite Betazed. She used to come to the plaza and feel less alone. But tonight, the faces that stared at her from the darkness and then flitted away pretending not to see were nearly all Human. She brushed her fingers against the prosthetics that covered the delicate points of her ears self-consciously, and double checked her makeup in a small compact. It would hold up to dim lighting and an hour or two of contact, but not to intense scrutiny. She daubed more color on her lips to counteract their greenish cast, and snapped the mirror shut.

The place she was looking for was a little nightclub that she vaguely recalled from her time at Starfleet, the Kit Kat Klub (she’d never understood the Human obsession with misspelling words with a K, and had up until this moment, made it a point to avoid any business who did it), a pre-warp retro themed club that had become very popular with Human Starfleet officers with Neo-Essentialist leanings. Typical, Selyara thought with a hint of disgust. What was it with fascists that they always seemed to gravitate to idealized ‘good old days’ model, some sort of bucolic dream of days gone past when they had an empire and were the envy of other nations. The Klub ended up being as seedy as she’d imagined, down a flight of stairs, with antique neon lights, and grubby carpet that really should have been redone years ago. A bored looking singer was belting out a mishmash of popular music from throughout Human history in a jazzy do-wop style that Selyara was fairly certain was not historically accurate. The inside was dim, and holographic smoke drifted through the air to lend it ambiance. Three pool tables graced the center of the hall, and several groups of Starfleet officers were playing pool. Fortune apparently had chosen this night to smile on Selyara, because many of them had just come off their shifts, and were still in uniform, communicators still on their chests.

With a practiced eye, she picked out her targets from the gaggle of patrons; a trio of young men, cocky, tossing down drink after drink, and flirting outrageously with the waitress, the singer, and any other attractive beings in their line of vision. They were already well on their way to drunk, enjoying real alcohol, and placing bets on their games. They would be easy to lure out of the club, easy to control once she’d gotten them where she wanted, and full of enough pride and bravado that they wouldn’t ever report their missing communicators if the circumstances by which they lost them embarrassing enough. She sidled up to the leader, a large dark-skinned young man with green eyes and dark curly hair, and struck up a conversation about how to play the game. He offered to show her how to play, and in a matter of minutes she was handily schooling them, all the while giggling and acting surprised. After the game she settled down to drinking with them, her Vulcan heritage allowing her to match them drink for drink without feeling inebriated, though she pretended expertly.

“You know, this would be a perfect time to go skinny dipping at Baker Beach, what with everyone staying inside.” She said imitating tipsiness, and winked slyly at her companions. They didn’t require much cajoling, drunk as they were. She convinced the bartender to give her several bottles to go, and they headed out to the beach. It was quiet, the ocean glowing eerily, the sickly glow of the Aegis shield reflecting across their dark waves. She waited until they stripped their clothes, and then she struck, applying a nerve pinch quickly to the three of them. They crumpled to the floor, and she dragged them to the sea wall and propped them up against it, emptying several of the bottles, and scattering them around the three. She walked over to the piles of clothing and removed their communicators. She sized up the uniforms and mixed and matched them to make a uniform that might fit her, and then scattered the remaining clothes up and down the beach. She shimmied out of her dress and shoes and added them to the mess of clothes up and down the beach, and then put on the patchwork uniform. Good enough. She slipped the extra communicators into the uniform pocket.

There was one more place she needed to go before these communicators would be of any use.

* * *=[/\]=* * *

Scene: Lawrence “Call Me Larry” Declan’s mother’s house.

“Lawrence! Open the door!”

Larry Declan winced as he heard his mother’s voice through the door, accompanied by pounding on the door. It had been only a day and a bit since his apartment had blown up, he’d run into the knife wielding psychopath, and he’d moved back in with his mother, and she was already starting to drive him insane. He yanked the door open.

“Ma! What is it? What now?” He started to grouse at her, but rather than the sour look on her face which meant he was in for an earful, she was beaming.

“There’s a GIRL here to see you. Such a pretty girl too, why didn’t you tell me? I was beginning to worry that you’d never find someone. Maybe I will have grandchildren before I’m too old to enjoy them!” His mother was gleeful. Larry was confused.

“A… Girl?” He stared blankly at her. He tried to think of what girls he even knew, let alone which ones his mother could possibly be so ecstatic at meeting, but he drew a blank.

“Oh, so polite, and smart! She’s in Starfleet too, did you know?”

“Ma, I have no idea who you’re talking about.” Larry was getting more confused by the moment.

“She said you’d know her as Shadow.” Oh no. Oh hell no. Larry felt an icy panic grip his heart. He didn’t need this. He really didn’t need this. His mother mistook his fear for something else. “Oh don’t look at me like that, sweetie, you’ll be fine, just be yourself! Shadow, he’s still up, you can come ahead to his room. Would you like anything to drink? Tea or something? I have lemonade too…”

“Tea would be lovely, thank you Mrs. Declan,” the Shadow Master said, her voice cheerful and sweet as she came up the stairs, and sat gingerly on the corner of his bed. She was wearing a Starfleet uniform, and she had put on makeup and prosthetics, but she was definitely the woman from earlier. Larry’s mother bustled off to the kitchen.

“How *dare* you! Get out of here!” Larry hissed as soon as his mother was out of earshot. The indignity of the past day couple days was catching up to him, leaving him uncharacteristically sullen and mulish. “You got my apartment blown up, you got me a visit from a crazy asshole with a knife, you’ve caused me nothing but trouble!”

“I need your help,” the Shadow Master looked slightly surprised by his outburst, as, indeed Larry was.

“Nnno way,” his earlier indignation fell away, and he was suddenly nervous again. “Forget it. You’re gonna bring that guy with the knife back on me… He’s gonna… He’ll…”

“He won’t be back,” the woman said with a dismissive wave. “That’s why I came to you. Only an idiot would go back to someone they knew had been compromised. I am not an idiot, and the gentleman with the knife knows it. You’re the textbook definition of ‘last place they’d expect me to go’. You are going to help me, Lawrence.” Larry’s mother brought a cup of tea up the stairs, and the Shadow Master’s body language changed, and she thanked his mother graciously. His mother beamed, and then gave Larry the thumbs up as she went back down to the sitting room.

“I need you to disable the communicators’ positioning devices, give them a random ID, and an encrypted two way connection with each other. You aren’t even a second rate criminal, but I know you are something of a dab hand with electronics, so don’t pretend that you’re unable to do what I need.”

“What… What’s in it for me?” Larry squirmed under her gaze, knowing that he was in no position to bargain. She’d probably just threaten him into compliance, maybe suggesting that she might harm his mother, or something. He’d end up doing what she wanted, but it made him feel a little better to know that he’d at least put up some sort of defiance. The Shadow Master looked surprised again.

“You’d be a hero,” she offered. Now it was Larry’s turn to be surprised. He gave her what he hoped was a steely gaze, and she sighed. “I’d owe you a favor. One favor of any magnitude. People would kill for that, you know. Having the Shadow Master in their debt.”

Larry pretended like he was thinking it over, but he did know exactly how much that was worth.

“Fine. I’ll do it.”

* * *=[/\]=* * *

Scene: The street.

Selyara stopped in a quiet street to test out the new communicators. If she was going to be able to get in contact with Leonard Cagney, it had to be sooner rather than later. She tapped the communicator.

“Aella Navarron to Leonard Cagney,” she said softly, as though that somehow made the connection more secure.

[[Leonard is indisposed. Who is this?]] The voice that emanated from the small communicator was decidedly familiar, and decidedly not Leonard. She froze and quickly cut communications.

**Edgerton. You bastard.** She felt a trickle of guilt filling up her stomach as she thought about the fate of Leonard Cagney, and the pain news of his passing would cause his dapper partner Stephen. It was her fault.

But she also knew it was necessary. She hurried into the night, hoping that Raxl and Barton had had better luck than she, and that Leonard had told Stephen the location of the secret base. Edgerton knew they were gunning for him, and they had to move fast.

* * *=[/\]=* * *

NRPG: Endgame!

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Selyara Chen

A woman on a tight timeline