Tracking Party: Down the Drain

Posted on Tue Aug 17th, 2021 @ 5:31am by Indigo (*) & Madison Indri

Mission: Elsewhere
Location: Ice Ferry Loading Dock, Stardust City, Freecloud
Timeline: 2396
2003 words - 4 OF Standard Post Measure

Meanwhile, on the loading ramp Ryder stepped out between Calliope’s trail and the Wexler hireling in pursuit after her. He brandished a stunner and caught the Wexler guy by surprise. As he seized and collapsed with a look of shock on his face, it was clear that he hadn’t expected the lanky, obviously professional looking man to be packing. The rest of the crowd was quickly dispersing, although more than a few citizens, likely still Watchdogs themselves, drew weapons of their own in preparation for self defense.

As the group headed towards the tunnel Indigo decided to go further along above ground seeing some access work being done further down the line. She climbed over the barrier and could hear the running and yelling below.

“It is always tunnels… why couldn’t it have been grass or nicely lit above ground.” Indigo hissed to herself as she climbed down the ladder. She could see them running towards her and dropped the last few feet dropping in front of Messier with a bit of a splash blocking his path unless he decided to try and barrow through one of them. She glanced down at the puddle under her boots relieved it was not ice, that would not have been graceful falling on her butt. “Starfleet might not if you truly think that but Fenris Rangers can. Why you are here isn’t it?”

Messier came up short, the water sloshing under his feet as he skidded, glancing back over his shoulder. He was as lanky and curly headed as his photo had advertised, barely a year out of secondary school and looking it. Like a trapped animal he looked back over his shoulder, The Commander still a stretch away and out of immediate earshot. He nodded at the blue headed lady and wiped his troubled brow with his cuff. “Yeah. I gotta get somewhere, somewhere Wexler and the Graves can’t find me. They’ve got their reach even in the Fleet. I’m not safe there.” He looked like he wanted to cry but was too exhausted from living like a scared rabbit in the pure stress of survival over the last week or so.

Indigo was not that much older than the crewman but she wanted nothing more than to give him a hug and tell him everything would be okay. “Okay. You have my word. I will get you away but you need to tell them everything that happened. They need to know to understand.” She said simply moving to stand in front of him.

Messier nodded. If he’d had a minute that wasn’t spent hiding and scared he would have eagerly spilled his guts to anyone.

The Commander’s silhouette appeared in the opening at the end of the tunnel and she hopped the rope, still dashing ahead. Her urgency quickly faded as she realized Indigo was with the crewman and her hand went to the stitch in her side.

“Indigo, Crewman, we’ve got to beam out. Baranovski lost the Orion Assassin.

“I’m not going with you, Commander.” Messier piped up with all the bravery it took to defy a ranking officer when you were a scrub.

“That’s enough of that Mr. Messier.” Calliope reached for a transport tag to clip to his shoulder, prepared to apprehend him.

Indigo shook her head. “I am sorry but I am not going to let you guys take him if he does not believe you guys will keep him safe.”

“He’s enlisted with Starfleet and he’s our responsibility.”

“Your heart is in the right place but he does not believe in Starfleet when people like Wexler and the Graves exist and have power. Kid what happened?” She demanded still between them both.

“I was drunk, I was drunk and to impress this girl, I told her I owned art and she said her boss was an art dealer too. I talked myself into a corner and ended up in this weird meeting with all these guys over a meal. I think each one thought I was with the other one’s guys. They had this whole conversation about a deal, a deal they were cutting for some kind of territory rights. I knew I had to play it as cool as I could before I could get out of there, and then... I ran.”

Indigo had the grace not to laugh at how drunk he must have been to talk himself into that type of situation when she realised just how deep it had gone so quickly. “I bet the hangover was not good after?” She offered as sympathy for his situation.

“Of all the—” Calliope bit back a swear. How was she losing control of this situation? “Forget the hangover! We need all of those details for Fleet Investigations. We can’t debrief here. You’re not out of the woods yet.”

Indigo looked at Calliope and shook her head at the woman. “He is not going with you. He can’t.” Indigo said bluntly. “We both know Starfleet is not what it used to be. People like Wexler and the Graves have power in places neither of us want them to be. How long do you think he would last?” She asked honestly.

“A lot longer when we get him out of this drain—” Calliope paused mid sentence. Her gut suddenly twisted as her senses picked up on something that seemed off and honed in on soft little splashes in the water on the ground. Alternating. Like footsteps. “Get back! Get out!” She shoved them both and made herself as wide as possible for cover.

There was a low whump sound and the air around them distorted, the brunt of a shot smoked through her outerwear and was dissipated by Calliope’s armor, forcibly knocking her onto her butt and sliding her backwards through the drain runoff. By the time she’d drawn her phaser, the other, now decloaked, Orion woman closed the distance with a knife and Calliope was forced to drop her side arm to grapple instead. Twisting her opponent's wrist and digging a thumb into the tendons until the knife was released to the water where it was dragged away in the flow.

Indigo knew that she should get Messier out of there but she also could not leave Calliope to own devices. Damn moral dilemma, she thought bitterly to herself as she moved from where she had covered the kid with her own body to pull out her phaser.

Having found the same shortcut as Indigo, one of Wexler’s men closed from the opposite side, his boots hitting the water and announcing himself as he leapt from the last rungs, running into the fray to secure his mark, but didn’t get off a shot before the Watchdog turned and honed in on him.

The blue haired woman fired off one shot to the man approaching her, dropping him stunned to the floor before lining up the Orion that was grappling with Calliope.

There was no clear advantage between them as the two Orions applied their might one against the other. Calliope began from disadvantage initially on the ground, but used some point force to fulcrum the other woman’s body weight to the floor of the tunnel. The slippery concrete first severed to her advantage in defense, but then against her in offense, as she tried to press her opponent’s chin back with the heel of her hand, but was still fighting not to be twisted into a headlock herself. She pressed to her knees for more stability as the assassin tried to hook her leg. Chilly drain water sopped through all of their clothing. They seemed equally matched in training and tumbled a couple times more before Calliope found herself running out of strength and pinned, trying to keep her face turned away from the water and sputtering for air. The force of a knee in her back shot pain throughout and one side of her face scraped along the concrete. She couldn't find air and started to thrash.

When Indigo could not line up a shot as they moved around too much she decided to chuck Messier her phaser. “Shoot anything that isn’t Starfleet.” She instructed as she pulled out her own knife and flung it towards the woman's thigh. She watched with satisfaction as it went deep allowing Calliope to turn the tide on her.

When the force against her suddenly released, Calliope sprang up, more out of a reflex for breath than anything else. One side of her face was shredded and pulped with green blood. One arm felt out of socket, but she rolled her shoulder and threw a punch as she came around, satisfactorily landing a hook in the pained woman’s ear, before spying the hilt standing out, and bringing a kick from the opposite side that was calculated to further drive in the knife and capitalize on the pain.

As the Orion assassin yelped, Calliope gave her a shove backwards.
A slight distance between them now, Calliope watched her opponent reassess. As if the hit woman were channeling pain into pleasure, Calliope witnessed her yank out the knife with a terrible grimace, green blood seeping through her clothing, and then test the weight in her hands, turning Indigo’s knife as it glinted with her own blood and fixing a wicked grin as she brandished it. She knew the freckled woman was exhausted, weaker than her, and would be easily dispatched. She licked her lips. She could lick her wounds when she had finished the fight.

As she was being advanced on, Calliope back-pedaled and tapped her wrist twice. The hit woman began to dissolve into a Starfleet transporter beam. As she dissipated, she looked down at the spot on her chest where Calliope had shoved her and realized, all too late, that she had been transporter tagged.

Calliope relished the shocked expression and gave a weary wave. Having pinned the hit woman with the signal boosting tag she’d brought for Messier, the team would find her in the holding cell they’d prepared for Messier, later. Calliope didn’t expect the other Orion was going to have very much to say for herself, but it was apprehension paperwork she was going to enjoy filing.

Messier locked Indigo with the wild eyes of a trapped animal. He knew that once the Fleeters gained their breath, there was no way they would bargain to release him. “If I don’t get out of here now—” he left the rest off to her imagination. Debriefings, maybe jail time, likely a record to follow him for the rest of his probably truncated lifespan. Whatever happened, the Graves and Wexler and the rest weren’t going to forget him and they’d snake their way into wherever he was held or released to. He would live everyday wondering when he was going to go down. “Help me, Indigo. Help me, please.”

Indigo turned, hearing the kid's voice and nodded. She was getting him out of there and it was perfect timing as she saw the doctor and security officer coming towards them. “We are going.” She said, throwing a communication chip towards Calliope that they would be able to use to contact her in the future. She hoped that her taking the crewman that they had spent so much time tracking did not taint their thoughts of her. If they needed her help in the future she would be there but right then she needed to do the right thing which was saving the man's life.

As Calliope spun to figure out what Indigo meant by ‘We are going,’ she instinctively caught the sailing comm key from the air, and then groaned, watching Indigo vanish with Messier.

She spat blood and soot out of her teeth where the drain swept it towards the icy ocean. “...son of a vole.”