Fishing Trip

Posted on Mon May 4th, 2015 @ 7:55pm by Admiral Lucius Hawke & James Holbridge

Mission: Breaking New Ground
Location: Deck 31 Office

* * * Deck 31 - Guest Offices * * *

Admiral Tomas Cruzado lifted his mug for a drink and finding it empty looked down into it. What he really wanted right now was a double whiskey, but he had work to do. The report on Nicolao’s questioning...no it was an interrogation pure and simple….was on his padd and he glanced at it once more. He could just imagine Lt. Benson’s reaction. The mental image actually made him laugh - and be very glad he was not in Eria’s shoes. Even so, that sort of behavior couldn’t be tolerated and he intended to speak to her. A beep on his padd showed an incoming file. Quelle suprise! he thought. A formal complaint. That, too, brought a smile. He’d read it later over that whiskey. Now, however, one James Holbridge, former Intel Division, was due in. He rose to refill his coffee as the doors slid open.

Jim walked into the room, calm and composed. “Howdy, Tomas, I am Jim Holbridge. What can I do ya for?” Jim said genially, his eyes drilling into the admiral’s, daring him to make a comment about Wegener. Jim went over to the replicator and spoke a command, producing a bottle of what looked to be high-end booze. “I dunno about you, but I always do stuff like this when I have a drink with the other guy.” Jim poured two tumblers half-full and slid one to the admiral. “In your eye, sir!”

Admiral Cruzado eyed the bottle, the glasses, then Jim. “Let’s get one thing straight, Mr. Holbridge. You are former Fleet, not some bumpkin that just stumbled off a garbage scow. As such, it will be Admiral Cruzado. And as this is a formal proceeding, that,” he pointed to the bottle,”will wait till you are on your own time. Understood?” His tone was relaxed but the words showed no room for argument.

Jim poured another glass full of whiskey, slammed it down, then looked right at the admiral and belched loudly and long. “I am gonna tell you three things: First and foremost, I don’t give a flying fuck who you are. To me, you are some asshole conducting a bogus witch hunt whose sole purpose is the ruination of one of the best flag officers in the Fleet; second, if you think you are going to intimidate me into some namby-pamby, yessir-nosir-three-bags-full-sir-bullshit, I will remind you that I have faced more enemy action and survived than you; and third, and this one is the kicker so pay attention, I will say what I want, when I want, and how I want as I am not under your chain of command in any way shape or form, and should you be stupid enough to go after my livelihood, well, my legal team will have you rinsing plasma conduits at Qualor II for the rest of your miserable career!” Jim cleared his throat. “That being said, how can I help you today?”

Tomas’ expression hardened and he looked at Jim steadily. "You can help me by answering my questions and losing the attitude or I can give you a little vacation in a small room with a bunk. I don’t give a flying fuck, to use your words, who you are or what your livelihood is. I don’t care what sort of action you have seen in your short life, nor do I wish to enter into a pissing contest with you as I will win. You will cease to assume you know what I want and what I think. If you do, in fact, care about your officers, you will stop the bullshit and do what you can to help in a civil fashion.” His voice has taken on a knife-edge. “I am not here to crucify either of them. What I want is to find out who is behind this. Now then, for the record,” he indicated the recording device, ”state your name, current occupation and former Starfleet position.”

Jim chuckled softly. “Oh well, we’ll do it your way.” Holbridge cleared his throat, then spoke loudly. “James Holbridge, current Chairman of Holbridge Enterprises, Delta Quadrant division and former infiltration specialist and fight/attack gunabout pilot, SIR!” he shouted the last word. There was no way in Hell he was going to back down from some asshole admiral looking to get the dirt on Admiral Rick. “I’m sorry, admiral, sir, that was totally out of line. I meant to say “Lt James D. Holbridge Intelligence infiltration and fighter/gunabout pilot, sir...naw, I like the first way better.” Jim took another drink from his glass. The admiral could not say he didn’t do as asked, but Jim was damned if he would give in.

“May I?” Tomas reached for the bottle.

“Help yourself, but if you break it, you bought it, and it’s a bottle of the stuff Admiral Hawke programmed himself.” Jim wondered if the admiral was pissed enough to throw it, but kept his face neutral.

Tomas lifted the bottle, then held it out to his side. In an instant it slipped through his fingers and shattered on the floor. “As I said, that will have to wait, as much as I’d love to dive in and drink my way back up to the top.” Tomas smiled a moment. “Now then, let’s get to it. What I am interested in today is your time around the DMZ. You are here because you were stationed in the area at the time in question. Please lay out for me what your general duties were there.”

“I am glad you asked, admiral, sir,” Jim said in a low voice. “I was stationed at Firebase Yankee-Four-Nine-One along with the rest of Fighter Squadron Two-Seven-Seven, formally known as ‘The Vampires’. My duties were close-in air support, aerial combat maneuvering in dogfight situations, piloting attack runabouts on various missions of insanity, combat-search-and-rescue of any and all downed fliers, and last but not least, keeping the guys in my section alive to fight another day.” Jim toyed with the ice in his glass, but declined to comment about the broken bottle.

“Thank you,” Tomas replied. “And what contact did you have with the operatives on the ground? Specifically the colonies along the border?”

Jim rolled his eyes. “We spent most of our time at yellow alert, due to the proximity of our base to the DMZ. This meant constant Alpha Strike maintenance, or Condition-4. Occasionally I would fly a sneaky-peeky inside the DMZ and If I got a call, we used a series of pre-arranged codewords generated by the intel guys with no deviations in structure or intent. Other than that, zero contacto.”

Tomas nodded. “At the time, who was your direct CO?”

Jim smiled.“Commander Alura Kincaid, call sign ‘Oracle’. You may have heard of her, she’s retired and in a nursing home on Gault IV after heading up the Fighter Corps.”

Tomas smiled for a moment. “I know her, you might say.” He left it at that. “So you would have been notified of any missing operatives? Any that didn’t turn up where they should, or failed to report in as scheduled?”

“Jesus, yes. I think the worst one was the penetration agent sent in by Section 31 prior to hostilities with the Dominion. We got the code phrase to extract him and a non-combatant-slash-informer. Neither of them showed up at the exfil, and we had to haul ass outta there. I flew CSAR patrols for seventy-two hours and we finally got a fix on what was left of them in an alley. Some kind of dog was eating the kid’s guts.” Jim shook off the memory. “We got a Signal-60 from some bitch calling herself ‘Reiva’. Another no-show, no-go. We damn near got the hell shot out of us on that run.” Jim looked at the admiral. “I can’t believe you broke the bottle!”

Tomas grinned at Jim. “Would you believe that stuff is bottom of the barrel compared to what I brought him when I arrived?” He looked at the broken bottle for a moment, then lifted his padd, touched the screen, and passed it to Jim. On the screen was a woman with dark, curly hair and deep green eyes, humanoid in appearance. “Have you ever seen her before?”

“That is ‘Reiva’, for sure.” Jim said tightly, staring at the picture. “What the hell is going on, admiral?” he asked in a low voice. Gone was the malice and attitude, replaced by the sharp operator he had become before resigning. “I’m seeing a lot of pieces here, but no continuity.”

“Welcome to my world, Jim,” Tomas answered softly. “She was an operative on the ground at the time, deep cover. She was assigned as the contact point for Lt. Commander Nicolao. Then one day, he turned up, as you say, no-show, no-go. Shortly after that we lost track of her as well. Until six months ago. This picture was pulled from the database based on the garbled ramblings of an officer broken almost beyond repair. Her whereabouts are still unknown. But you….” he paused and sipped his coffee, “have just given me another piece. This Section 31 agent you referred to. What else can you tell me?”

“I’m not sure he was, but as vague as his bona fide’s were, he sure as hell could have been. His cover legend was flimsier than my wife’s negligee. He was shot up, but the kid had been worked over, primarily around the abdomen and pelvis, deep gouges and lengthy lacerations with organ and tissue scorching. I took as many pics as I could before I had to exfil.” Jim snapped his fingers. “Oracle had me look for a Mark-III isolinear chip on the kid, but I never found one. She said there was some information on there that was super-hot, as in the Intel pukes would sell their mother and sisters to the Klingon Fleet to get it.” Jim was lost in thought. “We did more than our share of after-action on that one, with too much time on the ground...orders came from Task Group...The last few hours we spent doing molecular scans of the surrounding alleyway….with no joy on the chip.” Jim got up to get his own coffee, not caring about the broken bottle of booze anymore. “I like mine blacker than Hell’s hinges!” he smiled as he sipped and returned to his chair.

“Good taste.” Tomas raised his mug for a moment. “And the Task Group’s follow-up orders? They were, as I recall, to get the hell out of dodge.” He set down his mug with a frown. “So, tell me. Where was the fly in that particular ointment?”

“Come to think of it, Task Group was insistent on us remaining in the area, but the enemy had other ideas about CSAR geeks in their sandbox. TGC left it up to me, and I ordered us to fortify at Exfil Site Bravo; easily defensible, good cover, and plenty of wildlife for food. I kept us on high alert for thirty-six hours, then we got the hell outta Dodge with five fighters on our collective asses and nobody to show for our hard work. I did a few sneak-peek flights in a Golf-model runabout, but there was absolutely nothing.”

Tomas’ smile had returned. He knew exactly what the orders had been and Jim had passed his own little silent test. Still, the information about the Section 31 agent was troubling. It, did, however, answer a question that had lingered in his mind since this all started.

“Thank you Jim, this had been most enlightening. So where are you staying on station?”

“I have a suite in the civilian deck and a suite of offices for my company in the corporate sector.” Jim replied. “Admiral, someone is trying to keep a lid on what went down. My family is on this station, and I think I just painted a very large target on my fat ass as well as my wife and children’s. That being said, I will be relocating them and me to my residence on the planetary surface. All I need from you is the answer to this question; where is she, and please don’t give me that ‘classified’ bullshit. I am in a position where I can take her out or contain her if she is in my sights.”

“Her?” Tomas motioned to the padd. “That’s what I’d like to know too. I think she’s just a small piece, however. Not the fish we’re trawling for.”

Jim stared straight at Tomas. “Admiral, I’ll do this one gratis if you will have me and my people. We are all ex-Fleet and Intel types, with a few Amazons...uh, Archadian women thrown into the mix.” Jim looked serious. “Somebody mind-fucked a fellow officer, and that pisses me off. I can get some answers if I am in the game.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. For the moment, get your family off the station and do it with as little fanfare as possible. I’d like for things to appear normal...for now. No alarms raised. You can understand my meaning, I trust?”

Jim’s smile widened on his face. “Consider it done. Now, if you'll excuse me I have to get back to my fam damnily and arrange a nice getaway to Archadia Prime without pissing off my wife! Good to meet you, sir, and sorry for the gas I gave you.” Jim held out his hand.

Tomas stood and shook Jim’s hand. “No worries. just do me a favor ? Stay out of harm’s way. And yes, that’s an order.”

Jim chuckled as he left the room. Game time!, he mused silently, forming a outline of a plan in his head….

Once the doors closed, Tomas sat down once more and looked at the woman’s face on the padd. “You keep turning up just like a bad penny….where are you now I wonder?” He tossed the padd aside and decided it was time for dinner with an old friend.

**********************
Admiral Tomas Cruzado
Looking For The Big Fish

&

James Holbridge
Live Bait