Joint Personal Log - Capn Ivanova, LtCmdr Waterhouse & Lt Atarah - Earth Calling

Posted on Thu Oct 2nd, 2014 @ 2:44am by Danielle Atarah & Admiral Rochelle Ivanova & Commander Amelia Waterhouse

2,761 words; about a 14 minute read

Mission: Are You Touched?

The plan was far from simple and very far from being short, but it was all that Dani had, and all that Dani was going to concentrate on for however long this will take. She had ideas on what to do and some on how to do it, but there was one thing she needed to make sure of first — one thing she had to take care of before anything else on her list.

"You better know what you're doing, D," Zett whispered from the doorway and Dani nodded, without looking, aligning her equipment and connecting it to wires that stretched down under the floor. They were in a utility closet at the lowest level of the tower building Cardello used as his West Coast headquarters, and Dani was going to use every trick in her book to make this work.

Hiding in plain sight, she explained it to an extremely worried Zett, but it was more than that. To make this work properly, she would have to connect directly to the computer hub, hiding the transmission within its other illicit operations. The only hard part was to find a connection. The rest was easy.

And so here they were, hiding in plain sight, Dani hooking up to the wiring directly to avoid raising any alarms, and Zett, concerned, watched the security feeds from a console near the door. If anything started beeping, she'd be the first to know, and they'd get out of here as fast as they got in.

Encrypting and hiding this transmission was easier than the one she did for Andrea. Dani was more worried about having someone answer. She tapped the console and waited for the connection to form, find its target ship, and hook up through the deflector dish to the EPS relays and into the Captain's Ready Room, hoping against hope either the Captain or the first officer were there.

"Pick it up..." she muttered, as if begging would help. "Come on, Ivanova... Pond... someone... pick it up."

* * *

Rochelle had let down her hair, shaking it from it's usual severe French twist with gusto as she anticipated the end of her duties for the evening and sought to alleviate a headache caused by none other than the brand new JAG officer and the rousing round of testicular fortitude she'd engaged in.

Her screen, however, had other ideas. The monitor lighting up and practically screaming that someone was trying to reach her on an unknown emergency frequency. "On screen!" She called, praying it wasn't something to do with the planet below. So far they'd been successful in reclaiming most of the refugees, Noah Waterhouse was in custody and Logan Grant was safe, sound and insisting on working as a psychologist — a request she'd readily and quickly granted.

"...Dani?" She asked as she spied a familiar face taking shape through the fuzzy connection as it began to sharpen.

"Ivanova!" Dani breathed a sigh of relief and nodded, half smiling, into the screen. "Good, you're there." Zett muttered at her from the doorway, and Dani leaned closer to the camera and lowered her voice. "Can you talk? Is Po— —ere?" the connection fuzzed for a second, and then cleared again. "-va—ova? I need your help. Can you hear me?"

"Hold on you're breaking up!" Rochelle had to keep herself from yelling, knowing that getting loud wouldn't make the connection better as it sputtered and hissed and threatened to collapse in on itself. Her brows knit together as she listened and tried to decipher the words into some sort of order that made sense, but was left with nothing until a sudden moment of clarity. "Perfect! Don't move, Dani. I can hear your perfectly. What's wrong? What can I do for you?"

Dani let out a sigh, nodding. It worked. For now, at least. She glanced up at Zett, but the woman seemed to be occupied looking through the screens in front of her. Good. That meant they were safe.

For now.

"Oh, it's good to hear your voice, Commander." Dani finally smiled, though her expression was lacking her usual chipperness. "I— it's about Andrea. She needs our help. Your... help. We need to get her off the planet," Dani leaned closer for emphasis. "Now."

Both of Rochelle's eyebrows shot up in response to what Dani had asked for her. Something inside her stomach churned and she felt a slow, pained wine crawl its way up her throat and beg for release at the thought of Andrea being so far away and obviously in trouble. "Dani..." She began, the panic forcing her heart to race. Andrea was family. She hit her combadge instinctively, "Waterhouse to the Captain's ready room, stat." Was all she said after the chirp and disconnected the channel knowing Pond would come running at such a call. Her attention shifted back to the woman on the screen as they waited.

"We just responded to a distress call in Klingon space," her mouth dried as she spoke, "We recovered a few refugees, Pastafarian being lead by Pond's little brother and..." The woman tried to smile and managed a small one, "we found Logan. He's safe, already terrorizing the crew and staking a claim out in Counseling. We can't leave right now, but the moment we wrap this up we'll be on our way. I need you to get them to safety, Dani. Somewhere they'll be ok until we can pick them up. Do you think you can get them to Qu'Vat?"

Dani's jaw clenched and her lips tightened, frustration showing in her eyes. "I can barely get them out of the damn house," she muttered, and then shook her head and took a breath. Her hopes of getting Andrea and the kids away from Cardello melted; her brain worked, turning and churning options, looking for alternatives. For a way out.

"I have a plan B, but they're not going to like it," she finally allowed, running a hand through her hair. "I was hoping to avoid getting them involved with more of my contacts."

When her combadge went off, and Rochelle's voice barked out at her, Amelia had just shed her uniform. She'd intended to get dressed for a run down the wall of the Grand Canyon, after checking her messages with Bugs Bunny. Hearing the tone of Rochelle's voice, she instead grabbed the first thing that she could pull on quickly: a blue tank top dress that looked like the Tardis, kicked on her green flip flops which still had a little of the Qo'noS sand on them, and took off for the ready room like a shot, the sound of rubber slapping heels echoing down the corridor in her wake.

She crossed the bridge without paying any mind to the looks the crew directed her way, and palmed the controls into the ready room. The page she'd received spoke of this being too important to ask for entrance. She moved inside quick enough that the doors only paused a second fully opened before they started to close again, and Amelia looked at Rochelle with her headed tilted in question.

"The ends will justify the means, Dani I promise." Rochelle answered the nervous young woman on the other side of the screen and was about to draw another breath to say more when Amelia came flying into her office dressed more like the crazy cat lady than an officer. An eyebrow immediately shot up in question of her attire, but the shake of her head said that she was going to just let it go. "Dani brings word from Earth. Andrea and the children need to find safety while we're out here cleaning up this mess." She sighed and gestured towards the screen, knowing Pond was just as frustrated about the entire debacle as she was.

"I can put Dani in contact with family that's still doing cargo runs out that way?" Amelia offered, quirking her eyebrow upwards at the look Rochelle had directed at her upon arrival. She stepped closer to the desk so she could see the screen and hopefully be seen by Dani also. "Cousin Mara's company hasn't been caught moving anything illegal, so Fed First has left them alone as long as they crew their freighters with humans when they swing by Earth."

"These ends don't justify these means, Commander," Dani muttered, and then sighed. "The problem isn't moving them off of Earth — that's the easy part. The question is how to get them out of the damn house. You don't understand —they're being watched right now. Constantly. With forcefield and armed soldiers." Zett hissed for silence and Dani lowered her voice. "I can sneak in — I can probably sneak someone out — but taking them all out is starting a damn war."

"Then plan B it is," Zett called from the entrance, and Dani sighed. It might have to be.

In all honesty, Andrea and the children were safe for now, safer inside the house than out of it, that was for sure. And they will continue to be safe as long as Dani plays nice with Cardello; as long as she delivers what he wanted, no one else will get hurt. But she didn't trust him, and she wasn't going to take any risks. Not now. She sighed and sat heavily on the chair, rubbing her eyes. If anything happened to Andrea or the children, Dani will never forgive herself.

Amelia chewed her lip as she considered. "I think Uncle Mouse- er, Ray is still on earth, I think he intended to stay there and feed info back to Intel. Maybe he could do... something? Though I don't think he's properly trained for anything convert, and he'd probably need to high tail it out along with you if he stuck his neck out."

With a shake of her head, Rochelle dismissed the rising panic and sighed heavily. "Dani..." She began, her weight shifting from one hip to the other as she folded her arms across her chest, "I need you to be very honest with me, that's the only way we can help you now." The Captain's tone was deep, foreboding as she locked eyes with the wayward engineer, "what happened?"

Dani leaned back at the wall and slid downwards to a crouch, resting the PADD on her lap, freeing her palms to rub her forehead. I got stupid and cocky, she almost said — but didn't.

"I... I screwed up," she managed, and in the corner of her eyes Zett turned abruptly. Dani ignored her. "They're okay," she added quickly, "they're fine, they're just... it's not as safe as it was for them here anymore. If they stay here they'll have to stay inside the house now and... and I'll have to do... do things—" she stopped, frustrated. "Look, it's really important. I can't have them be in the middle of this. I can't let them be my leverage. Please tell me the fleet didn't forget about Earth, Captain. Tell me they're coming."

"Noise keeps being made, but I've become a little disconnected from Intel lately with my job change," Amelia answered. "They're keeping plans pretty hush hush, wouldn't want anyone to know when they're coming. You understand. They're coming, it's a matter of when."

Rochelle nodded along with what Amelia was saying, knowing that the fleet hadn't forgotten about Earth, just being unable to open her mouth with a definitive answer. "Just hang tight. Provided they're okay everything else can be worked out."

"Yes, the fleet is wonderful," Dani flushed and bit her lip, forcefully, to prevent much worse sentiment from coming out. "I'll make sure they're okay — I really hope you're right about the fleet. Things here aren't really very peachy, you know?" She shot, somewhat poisonously, as she picked herself up from the floor.

"I know," Amelia returned softly. "Being behind the lines is always hard. Believe me, if I could send the fleet in right this very second to free earth, I'd do it in a heart beat." She sat on the edge of Rochelle's desk. She doubted that Dani could keep the channel open much longer, but she wasn't going anywhere until she knew Dani had to disconnect.

"It's painful on this end too." The diminutive one spoke, her lips tugging in a sad smile, "If we could we'd come charging through the lines and rescue everyone, but that's just not feasible." She added, rubbing her hands along the sides of her hips in mild discomfort at the idea of being utterly helpless in the given situation. "We're coming, Dani. Just as soon as we can without everyone getting killed in the process. I promise you."

Dani sighed audibly and rubbed her forehead. "We're going to have to go with plan B, then." Zett smiled from the door, but Dani didn't find this as cheerful at all. She looked back into the screen and took a breath. "Okay. We think we have a way to get them out, but we'll need your help."

"Whatever we can do," Amelia quickly insisted.

Rochelle's eyebrow quirked upwards as she nodded, "Just say the words, we'll be on it."

Dani looked up a moment beyond the screen. Plan B was ambitious, dangerous, and, quite honestly, sheer madness. But it meant the safety of Andrea's family, and the outright destruction of Cardello. It could work. Zett smiled at her from the doorway.

Yes. It could work. Dani looked at the screen again, her doubts melting, a small smile decorating her face.

"I need you to lie. Call up your contacts, whoever you know on Earth or close to it, whoever is in touch with Federation First or anyone else that can spread this around. Spread a rumor about the Commodore from Starfleet, the lead developer of Starfleet's new matter/anti-matter intermix engines, who's being kept alive in secret by the Cardello Syndicate." Dani's smile expanded, lopsided, her eyes twinkling. "Make it sound like she's the crown jewel of ship engine technology, and, most importantly," she gave the two women in the screen a meaningful smile, "make sure people know Cardello is keeping that valuable secret from Federation First, so he can have her for himself. Can you do that?"

The pink of her tongue worried itself across the Captain's lower lip and she looked to Amelia for a moment and then back to the screen, finally nodding. "We can do that. I'll get our intelligence officer on the case as well, he can be trusted which is odd enough for a spook." Rochelle replied.

Dani nodded. "Well, it might be the one thing they're actually good for," she glanced at Pond on the screen and smirked, her confidence rising. This will work. It has to work. And when it does work, it may actually make things better not just for Andrea and her family -- but for everyone.

"I should go. We've spent too much time here. I'll start moving things on my end. Get the ball rolling on these rumors. I'll contact you when I have news."

When Rochelle had made the comment about the oddity of being able to trust intel, Amelia shot her a look. The quip hit a little close to home since easily half of Amelia's time in the fleet has been working for Intel. That was also who she was answering to when she'd arrived aboard Vindicator. When Dani follow with the additional quip, acknowledging that Amelia was in the room, and did have the Intel background, the spunky engineer got a head shake for her troubles.

"We'll spread it like wildfire. Hell, they may already know at HQ before you leave the building," Amelia quipped with a wink. She wasn't going to raise to Dani's bait, picking on intel.

Muffled speech sounded from outside the screen, drawing Dani's atttention. She nodded briskly and looked back at the PADD. "I don't know if I will have a chance to call like this again," she ignored Zett's horrified face and continued. "We'll have to use the holo program to send messages, at least for a while. But if all goes well," she smiled slightly, "we won't have to very soon." Either because they'll manage to get out of the planet, or because they'll all be dead.

The picture clouded with static, and then vanished, leaving nothing but a black empty screen behind.

* * *

Captain Rochelle Ivanova
Commanding Officer
USS VINDICATOR, NCC-78213-E

Lt Commander Amelia Waterhouse
Executive Officer
USS Vindicator, NCC-78213-E

Danielle Atarah
Grifter / Thief
Earth

 

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