Extraction

Posted on Thu Jul 11th, 2019 @ 3:27am by Lieutenant Commander Adlyn Rowley & Commander Logan Vance
Edited on on Sat Aug 3rd, 2019 @ 3:56am

Mission: Preludes
Location: Extraction Point; Alley
Timeline: 2385 - Moments After 'Escape'
Tags: Prelude

Adlyn had scoped and been around the extraction point for two days now. She still hadn't been able to identify where he was. She knew that he had work done, but thankfully, her implant had been able to scan everyone that went by and she had yet to find a human among them.

After waiting a day, she started investigating further away from the extraction point. Obviously what she found was true and he had been compromised. It was now her duty to find him and get him out alive. Otherwise, she would be forced to clean up the mess.

She had picked up some chatter that there was a gang fight going on and that there were casualties. That was the deciding moment for her. She kept to the rooftops. It kept her out of the street lamps and allowed her faster, quieter access. She was a couple minutes away from where the chatter said the bodies were found when she heard shots ring out to her left.

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Alley
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Logan had taken yet another phaser burn to the shoulder and was now in danger from blood loss. He'd managed to kill four of the men after him but at this rate he was going to pass out or worse long before he would win by attrition. Cut off from the extraction point and pinned down, he was starting to consider going out in a blaze of glory and seeing how many he could get. That plan was quickly cast aside when he found he could barely stand. The wound on his leg looked quite a bit worse and infected to boot. He took one last deep breath and did his best to keep his arm steady to line up a shot on the closest attacker.

Just as he was about to fire at the closet attacker, three bolts came quickly from the rooftop behind him, hitting each one of the three attackers at the entrance of the alley way nearly simultaneously. She scanned the nearby area and noticed they had some breathing time. Knowing who was beneath her, she slung the rifle over her shoulder and lowered herself over the edge of the roof. She slipped down to the small ledge and then dropped down the rest of the way to the alleyway next to him. “You with me?” she whispered as she got close to him to give him some medication to get him moving.

Logan's eyes were heavy but he kept them open enough to see it was an attractive woman kneeling over him. Seeing as that had not gone over well the last time, he tried and failed miserable to hold her at phaser point as he mumbled something that sounded like "Who the hell are you?"

“One niner six, hotel foxtrot echo,” she whispered close enough that he could hear her. She quickly applied some adhesive bandages to his wounds and then stopped half way and quickly pivoted on her foot and two throwing daggers released from her hands impacting the guy that had just crested the corner of the alleyway. She returned with fervor to get him patched up enough to move. They were too far from the extraction point to get into the transporter range.

Another mumble akin to "What the hell took so long" formed on his lips before he eyes caught sight of shadows moving in behind them. He weakly tried to push her from his field of fire so he could cover her but he barely nudged her. "Mmmmmovvvvva…" he tried to yell.

She turned on the ball of her foot, and took the rifle off over her shoulder and fired two shots before one of them shot back at her, hitting the rifle. She dropped it to the side and pulled a small device from her belt line and chucked it at the end. Within two seconds, an explosion happened, filling the air with smoke, giving them the cover they needed. She threw a couple daggers into the smoke field and one hit their purchase and the sound of dead weight hit the pavement. “We got to move.” She grabbed a hold of him and helped him to his feet, a long knife came down from under her sleeve and now rested in her hand.

It was going to be easy as they now had to be streetside to get back to the extraction point. His right arm was draped over her shoulders as her left had a good purchase on his jacket allowing her to essentially carry him, leaving her right hand for combat as needed. So far, things were quiet. It was early, before dawn, and they still had the cover of darkness to get away from where the phaser fire had been. The local authorities would be convening soon if not already behind them.

She kept them moving at a good pace, and when she noticed shadows were moving along with them as she kept to the shadows, she stepped into another alleyway pulling him with her. She allowed him to rest behind some crates allowing her to stick alone to the shadows, enough to draw their assailants into the alleyway. One came in after another leaving three against herself. Having waited until they came into the shadows more, she lunged out, stabbing one with the long knife she had, and then ran up towards the other. Using his weight against him, she used his knee and lunged up, stabbing the knife down between the clavicle and the sternum. She twisted him hard as he went down and pulled her knife as his body fell. She hadn’t been quick enough and received a well placed punch to the cheek with brass knuckles. The bone crunched and she felt searing heat followed by chills enter the wound. Without hesitating, she rebounded back, and then lunged forward, grabbing the assailants hand and pulled him into her, twisted his arm behind him, using his momentum against him. Her knife entered sideways between a couple of ribs, and out through the front. As he fell, she took his gloved hand and brass knuckles from his body and shoved them in a pocket.

When she came back to collect him, he could see blue blood on her face from where she'd been punched. No matter how human she looked, she was mostly definitely not. He wasn't sure if that made it more or less likely she was a true ally but since she wasn't trying to kill him at the moment, he was willing to roll with it.

As she hoisted him back over her shoulder, the last of Ceretta's men fired blindly at them. When the woman turned, Logan swung his arm with the movement and fired, hitting him in the leg. He crumpled to the ground and started wailing in pain.

Adlyn threw out her knife from her grip towards the screaming man and it lunged in his throat. As they walked by, she leaned down and grabbed the knife and they continued. They made way without further incident to the extraction point. She tapped something on her wrist and they were teleported away, relayed through a booster in orbit to the dark side of one of the moons where they reappeared on a small shuttle flying dark. She set him on the bench and helped him lie down. The shuttle lights came on and the helm activated and turned the craft out towards open space and as they went to warp, she started working on triaging the worst of his wounds. “Sorry,” she stated in reference to what he mumbled before hand when she had first found him.

Logan could barely move at his point, let alone reply. He kept his eyes open as long as he could before his head slumped and he passed out.

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Ten hours later
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Logan finally awoke but was still a bit disoriented. He recognized his surroundings as a Federation shuttlecraft but had no memory of how he'd gotten there. The last thing he remembered was firing randomly at one of his persurers while a mysterious woman slung him over her shoulder. He tried to get up but the pain dissuaded his first attempt.

She brought over a mug of tea. “You’ll be sore for a few days, so take it easy.” She had applied medical strips to her face to keep the skin together to heal up. The bone structure underneath took her a long time to do herself looking in a mirror. She had gotten sloppy and now she would have the scabs to remind her that she had. “It’s bitter, but it’ll help.”

He grimaced when he finally propped himself up to take the tea. He looked down at the tea, still a bit suspicious by nature. "I'm sure I've asked you this when you found me and I don't want to seem ungrateful but who are you again?"

“Lieutenant Adlyn Rowley, one niner six, hotel echo foxtrot. Your extraction. Special Operations.” She sipped the same bitter tea from the mug she had herself. It was a home brew that she had from Ekahl that she had learned to use in the field. “The bitter herbs help with pain and healing.” Even though Starfleet had patched her up a month ago, her bones still ached where they broke. “It would have been another two or three days before a proper extraction would have arrived. I was already en route when you sent the command.”

Logan wasn't quite sure what to make of the situation since it was highly unusual to send in a single operative on an extraction like this. It all seemed a little too coincidental. Still, if she'd wanted to kill or drug him she'd have had ample opportunity before the tea. He took a sip. It was awful and his face scrunched up to show it. "Ummm, thanks… Now do you want to tell me what really happened or do I have to figure it out myself?"

“A month ago, I was a marine intelligence attache. We were sent into former federation space to a federation research compound that the Orion Syndicate took over and were building a Xindi superweapon. Intelligence I verified and vetted after getting the assignment from above. Intelligence that was faulty. It was a trap. The person who ordered us on the mission knew that we probably weren’t going to survive that mission. We did, half of us at least did. It turns out the superiors found out we had a leak to the Orion Syndicate and instead of plugging it, they decided to vet it and allowed the setup to happen. I spent the last month digging through the archives and intelligence networks trying to find any other missions or agents that may have been compromised, and I discovered yours. They didn’t want to break protocol to extract you prematurely in case your cover hadn’t been blown. I convinced them to let me go on my own to vet the intel. When I was a day out from Prana Three, I got your extraction request. I waited around the extraction point per protocol before breaking it to find you, figuring you had been captured. I wasn’t going to leave an agent behind.” She sipped her tea again, this time a bit more somberly. “I’m sorry I didn’t break protocol sooner for your sake. I’ve done what I can for your wounds with it not being a proper medical facility.”

Logan swore under his breath. So that's how Brakka had found him. He put the tea down and tried to stand. "How long was I out? And how long from when you got my signal?" There was a strong urgency in his voice.

She thought a minute and calculated the time. “It’s been just over ten hours since we left Prana Three. It took me about an hour to extract you to the extraction point, and I spent nearly twenty four hours at the extraction point prior to picking up chatter that there was a gang fight going on. I received the extraction request a day prior to me arriving at Prana Three as I was already en route. From what my friend at HQ said, your request had been sat on for a day prior to it getting to me.” They both knew what that meant. Normally when extraction requests are delayed it had to deal with semantics, politics, or logistics. It also normally meant that help wasn’t coming. “It took me four days to get to Prana. Only two people knew I was coming, my direct superior and the one person in this entire universe I trust explicitly.”

Logan did a little bit of quick math. "That's like three and a half days." He moved a little too quickly towards the front of the shuttle and nearly fell over. Adlyn was just fast enough to catch him from falling over. "I need a secure channel and I need it now. I have to make sure he hasn't gotten to her."

Her fingers flew over the console and a blonde hair woman dressed in the Intelligence uniform answered on a secured channel. Not many people Adlyn trusted in the Federation, she was one of them, especially now that there was a leak that needed to be plugged. “She’s a trustworthy friend.”

Logan hesitated but realized he had to trust them. "I need you to reach out to a woman on Caspeian Prime. The name is Rachel Snow. And it needs to be completely untraceable. That is extremely important. Do you understand me?"

=/\=“What’s the message?”=/\= the woman asked.

He thought for a minute. "Just one question. As her 'What's in her heart?' She'll know how to reply." If he got any response other than 'The fatal flaw', he'd know he was too late.

The screen went blank . “So who is Rachel Snow?” Adlyn asked wondering why he was frantic to get ahold of her while she waited for Nomi to get back to them with an answer.

Logan just stared at the blank screen for several seconds. It wasn't something he talked about with just anyone. In fact the only people who knew were the people that recruited him, Rachel and himself. Still, at this point, Adlyn knew more than enough to piece it together. "She's my sister," he finally replied. "And the reason why the syndicate was after me."

“It’s doubtful that the reason why the Syndicate wanted you is related to happened to my marine unit.” She thought for a moment and considered herself lucky that her family was no longer alive and she didn’t have to worry about them all the time. “Caspeian Prime is well within Federation space. Do we need to move her?” she asked. The way that she saw it, is that they needed to make sure that the sister was safe, or the Syndicate would be back. “Hopefully we can plug the leak so you don’t have to look over either of your shoulders for her sake or yours.”

"We'll have to do more than that," Logan replied. "Brakka's beef with me is personal. I betrayed him. And he won't forget that. He won't stop until both of us are dead because now that he knows we're alive, it's a stain on his reputation that he can't allow to persist. It'll leave his position too vulnerable."

“Then we find the leak, we deal with Brakka and in the meantime, we move your sister to protective custody, and not in this particular order,” she stated more as an afterthought. “Bernard can handle the coordination. If anyone knows how to work within the agency, it’s her. Because obviously, you have a past that isn’t on record, and for it to be leaked before this mission, that ended up being a syndicate cover, our leak goes deep.”

"She can't do that unless he knows everything," Logan realized. He put his head in his hands and rubbed his face. "How much do you trust these people? This is my life and my sister's life I'm putting in their hands. Cause this rabbit hole? It goes deep."

“Bernard has saved my life and I hers. We don’t need to know everything to make the right call. She can move your sister and do it off the grid. No one at HQ would know beyond us three that this has happened. This allows her to be safe, while we find the leak and plug it. Then we can deal with Brakka. It’d be easier if you were to investigate the leak from the safety of HQ. It’ll be safer for the both of us to not keep in touch until we find the leak.” She sighed. “This is all more than I bargained for when I signed that dotted line four years ago. Don’t you worry though, I’ll see it through to the end.”

Logan sighed. "Then… assuming it's not already too late… you can find everything you need to know by looking up two names. Devin and Rachel Fuller. That's who we were before we ran."

“First things first, we make sure Bernard gets a hold of your sister, and we let Bernard loose on this. You’ll hang back at HQ, and I’ll start following up leads in the field, as I can. Next time we have contact after we report in, it’ll be because we find the leak. I won’t mention your sister or what happened other than I extracted you per my orders. Bernard will handle the rest.” She held his hand and squeezed it gently. “Devin, I promise you to my last breath I will see this through.”

Logan shook his head. "Call me Logan. Devin died a long time ago." Before either of them could say anything else, the comm started to chirp that a message was incoming. No visual, no audio, just text. The reply to Logan's question. "The Fatal Flaw".

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Agent (Lt.) Logan Vance
Starfleet Intelligence

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A then Lt. Jg. Adlyn Rowley
Marine Intelligence Attache