Gathering Information

Posted on Sat 24th Aug, 2019 @ 5:38pm by Lieutenant JG Kellian Michaels & Lieutenant Commander Dallas Briggs
Edited on on Sat 24th Aug, 2019 @ 10:24pm

1,683 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: A Diplomatic Affair
Location: Recovery Ward
Timeline: MD 6, 1943 hours

Dallas rested comfortably in the medical bed, in a way he could feel Victoria’s presence next to him even with his eyes closed. He wasn’t sleeping right now, he was well-rested even with the dreams that he had been having.

Kellian Michaels made his way into the infirmary and quietly asked to be directed to where Dallas Briggs was. He saw to his relief that the bed was private and guarded. He nodded to the guard and knocked on the door frame as the door slid open. "Lt. Briggs," Kellian said, "glad to see you're back in one piece--kind of. Are you up to talking?"

Dallas rolled in his bed towards the door and opened his eyes. “Hello Lieutenant, I can talk for a while if you like.” Dallas was in a pretty good mood considering he was stuck in a hospital bed and was nearly killed.

Victoria slid off the side of the bed where she'd perched herself to watch Dallas sleep, though perched was really a misnomer for someone with no physical form. She moved away to a corner where she could watch the investigator and Dallas, prepared to listen silently.

"I'm investigating the attack on you," Kellian said. He tapped his PADD screen and danced his fingers across it for a moment to both activate it and to prepare to transmit the attacker's image to FNS. "One reason I came here so fast after your surgery is that I'm going to need your agreement to some mild deception in the interest of helping us catch your attacker."

“Oh, and how’s that?” Dallas asked with curiosity.

"We have a sketch of him," Kellian said. "We came by that sketch through, well, unorthodox means. I'd rather word not get out about this, to protect the artist. Would you mind us saying that a Security staff artist drew a portrait from hidden camera footage?"

Victoria snickered in the corner. "Tell him that's all right. Otherwise, people are going to think all of us are crazy."

“Okay.” Dallas said, “I’ll go along with it.” Of course, Dallas already knew how they came about with the sketch, Vicky had told him.

"Thank you. So you won't be shocked when you see this image on the news, this is what I'm about to send them," Kellian said. He held up his PADD with an image of Purulence Addams' sketch showing on the screen. "This is the doctored version, with the artist's signature removed. Do you recognize the guy?"

Victoria had, of course, already seen the sketch and she looked away from the vicious figure Ms. Addams had drawn. It still gave her an uneasy feeling to see the look on the man's face.

"Oh wow, I'd hate to meet that ugly face in a dark alley." Dallas teased then shook his head, "He doesn't look at all familiar to me."

"He doesn't?" Kellian gave Dallas a surprised look. "This guy looks like he's personally angry with you." He noted that Dallas couldn't identify the attacker. "Did he say anything at all to you, or just lunge in and attack?"

Dallas shook his head, "This person was a professional, he got me by surprise and I'm pretty good at situational awareness, and also good at defending myself."

Dallas thought for a second. "You say this guy looked angry? Perhaps he had to prepare himself to attack a person of my stature, or that may just be how he does his attacks, but he was a pro." Dallas was knowledgeable with certain things and he knew this attacker was a pro, no doubt about it.

"Why a knife, though?" Kellian asked. "If I were an assassin, I'd never attack this way, so I'm trying to understand the kind of guy who does. You were attacked in the front by someone holding the weapon from behind you. The doctors said they also found high levels of a paralytic substance in your blood when you were beamed in. So--agreed; this guy was professional enough not to want a fight. At the very least, he wanted to slow your reflexes. The combination of low tech and high tech in this is odd. He attacks you with a knife and then tries to shove you out an airlock. Did you plan to go to the airlock, or was it just happenstance that you went there?"

"This man is thorough and thinking things through, Dal. I have a feeling the attacker is not going to have an easy time getting away," Victoria said with satisfaction.

"Maybe he likes to use knives, and maybe he likes to stab his victim in the chest. I really don't know his thought patterens. I was just walking around, looking at the view when it happened. Maybe the airlock was a for sure thing in his mind," Dallas said. He had to think ahead not to say we or Victoria.

"Oh, I'm sure it was," Kellian agreed. "So he has to have followed you, hoping you'd head toward some convenient place--because he couldn't just position himself near an airlock and expect that you'd conveniently show up. Did you ever feel as if you were being followed?"

Dallas nodded, "I did have the feeling that I was being watched, but didn't see anything." Dallas paused for thought, "The airlock may not have been planned. Perhaps he ran out of time and had to leave. The airlock would have been a sure thing if not for my leg. I'm just thinking of the stab to the chest and the chemical he used. Even a slice to any part of the body would bring paralysis and that is definitely an advantage for him if he is fighting someone big."

"True, but he went for the sure thing, which was the injection," Kellian said. He perched on a chair, tapped out of the image file, and returned to his notes. "Tell me about your enemies. Who hates you enough to want to kill you? To whom might you be a loose end?"

Dallas smiled, "Very good questions." Dallas thought for a moment, "Have you ever heard of Red Squadron?"

"No, I haven't. Who are they?" Kellian asked.

"Back in the Academy, there was a group of elite cadets that formed a group known as the Red Squadron. They received special training and got to go out on special missions." Dallas glanced over at the man questioning him. "I was in that group as well as Victoria. Years later an Admiral gave the two of us a special assignment. It was off the books, a secret assignment, in which we had to blow something up." Dallas explained. He knew he shouldn't mention anything about the assignment, but it might have something to do with his assassin.

Kellian made a note of that. "What do you think is the connection?" he asked.

Dallas thought for a moment, "It's grasping at straws, but if somehow the Cardassians knew or found out that Victoria and I were the ones who destroyed the secret base, maybe they get revenge?" Dallas even had a hard time believing that story himself.

Kellian's eyes widened at learning what Briggs and his wife had blown up, but he limited his surprise to that. "I could believe a Cardassian would have the strength, training, and speed to carry out the kind of attack you sustained--especially if the attacker belonged to the Obsidian Order--though this attacker doesn't look Cardassian. How would the Cardassians know you and your wife were behind the destruction?"

"Ha, they caught us on sensors," Victoria snickered. "We weren't as stealthy as we imagined, and they aren't as dumb as some people imagine." Of course, the investigator didn't hear her and the conversation moved on as if she hadn't spoken.

"I'm not sure." Dallas shrugged his shoulders. "They had security cameras all over, perhaps the camera feed was monitored or recorded remotely and not just at their security office."

"Security cameras might have recorded the type of fighter craft you used, but they wouldn't necessarily identify the two of you," Kellian said. "I'm sure you took pains not to identify yourselves by appearance or by flying in craft personally associated with you."

Dallas chuckled, "I'm not talking about in space, I'm talking about in the facility itself. We had to go in, find the lab and plant explosives. There were cameras and a Security Office there, but all of that was destroyed. It was all inside an asteroid and that asteroid was completely destroyed." He was sure it was destroyed along with the lab, completely destroyed. They even visually verified the destruction.

"What kind of lab?" Kellian asked.

“Before we go any further, I need your assurance that this conversation will not leave this room. The information that you are taking down is highly sensitive and secret. When we conducted the mission, no one was told about it, not even our Captain. You can mention or show you information to no one, give me your word.” Dallas said.

"I had a feeling you might say that. That's going to make it difficult to formulate a case," Kellian said. "Do you genuinely believe that that mission is germane to this attack on you, or are you just guessing? If you don't think it is, then I don't need to know. If you do think it is, then you have my word. We'll have to figure out how to tell all the truth but tell it slant, so we can prosecute this guy. We don't have to figure out all the strategy in this conversation."

"It's just a possibility, I didn't want to overlook it." Dallas began to rub his temples, all the questioning and thinking about all the possibilities wayed heavily on him and he had been developing a headache over the past ten or fifteen minutes. "I think I need rest, let's continue this another time."

After Lieutenant Michaels had left, Dallas closed his eyes and tried to relax his headache away, but found it not so easy to do.

 

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