Legend

Posted on 30 Sep 2014 @ 7:46pm by Maria Drake

1,098 words; about a 5 minute read

'The past couple of months have been...testing, to say the least.

'I came here as Maria Wells, troubled ex-pilot with a criminal past to bury and needing employment. The cover was well calculated. It let me play the right level of dislike and mistrust of Starfleet to favour the Cardies but also a level of really not caring much about politics either way anymore to get in with the kind of humans who end up working here.

'It took a few weeks to slowly build my legend, to feed scraps of information about Maria Wells into conversations, get them to believe in her, trust in her and for some to even like her. I decided to take it slow, building the legend can't be forced...trying to feed people too much of your cover's life story too quickly raises suspicions that something's not right. A delicate balance is needed, drips and drops of information, just enough to get the appetite going and make myself believable.

'Then it was time to 'recruit', build relationships with a few people who were in the position to get me what I needed and where I needed to be. I decided against out and out turning them; it would make my position vulnerable if they cracked and spilled they'd been knowingly passing information to a Starfleet Intelligence agent. No, it was better to settle for less intel from them, but ensuring they didn't even realise they'd been helping a Starfleet Intelligence agent. I got some good info from them though, enough to put the pieces together.

'Then, Starfleet comes rushing in, chasing ghosts down in the mine. It could have blown my cover and messed my entire mission up. Luckily, it's proven a valuable distraction.

'But now, I'm stuck. Literally. My exit plan has been destroyed, I have no way off this damned rock so everything I've put together may as well count for nothing if I can't get back with my report.

'Fact:

~ An asset gave Starfleet Intelligence information that there was a Cardassian Intelligence Bureau presence here on Lyshan III, causing quantities of uridium being processed here to 'disappear' for their own end.

~ I was sent in, undercover, to establish if this is true, and if so, why.

~ A number of admin files have deleted information within them.

~ All these admin files pertain to amounts of materials, especially uridium, being processed or shipped out.

~ There are also some discrepancies in the paperwork still on file between processed uridium and shipments out. Could be sloppy book keeping, could be more evidence of missing uridium.

~ The clearances to both get to these files to edit and actually misdirect the chain of production and shipments would require managerial clearance.

~ Cardassians are paranoid. But nothing new there.

'Assumptions and thoughts based on only partial fact and/or instinct:

~ Taurus is CIB. He has his hands on everything, more than any other Cardie here, and he knows everything that is going on under his watch. He's intelligent, considered, careful with his words, uses tradecraft to cover himself and his things.

~ No matter how good of an Intel agent he is, the downfall he can't make up for is that Starfleet tech is far more sophisticated against any Cardie tech he's using to cover his work.

~ The uridium is most likely being used in a CIB project. The very fact it's CIB means it's something they can't be seen doing officially by other powers. This means they're developing something, most likely a piece of technology, that they don't want us to know about. Which means it's bad news.

~ The Intelligence Officers from Galileo are on to Taurus. This is putting pressure on his ridged arse. This is a dangerous situation; he could either crack in a good way by making a mistake for me to grab him by the balls, or he could crack in a bad way by pushing him to arrange for an accident for the two Galileo women. I'd trap them out on the planet's surface to let them freeze to death myself. But that's just me.

~ I have lost my exit plan. I have no way off this bloody rock, and all of this will be for nothing if I don't fix that. If I can't come up with a new way off this planet fast, and one that doesn't blow my cover to make sure no one ever knows a Starfleet Intelligence agent was here, I may as well just hand in my resignation to my boss and become a dancing girl on Mirage.

Conclusion:

~ I can't decide on my next move against Taurus until I figure out where the Intel Officers from Galileo are going to push him.

~ I should probably be saving their lives by making them back off, but screw it, I slipped a warning to the red head; if they choose to come back, I'll use them for every penny's worth.

~ I need a new exit strategy.'


Sitting back from the small table with a sigh, Maria picked up the sheet of paper she'd been writing on with an old fashioned pencil. It was her favoured method of note making; there were so many ways of tracing and tracking computerised notes, but paper was completely destructible.

She ran her hand though her long, blonde hair, her blue eyes narrowing as she read back over what she'd written. She then read it again. And then a third time. Getting it down on paper and then reading it several times was her way of working a problem. Going back over the old, figuring out the present, the knowns, the unknowns, to try and then work out what the step forward was going to be.

Maria had read over it several times, thinking on it all with a mixture of careful consideration and flat out pissed offness, before she finally lowered it with a sigh.

Reaching into her pocket, she pulled the antique lighter out, setting fire to the corner of the paper and dropping it into the metal bin to burn into nothing but an intelligible pile of ash.

Sliding a cigarillo between her lips, she used the lighter to spark the end to burning embers, tightening her lips on the tip to draw the smoke into her mouth, closing her eyes as she held it there and enjoyed the warmth and taste of it before arching her body back to tilt the chair to balance on its back two legs as she tipped her head back and let a silky stream of smoke escape past her lips.

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