STF

Main Sim - Badges? We Don't Need No- ... Oh We Do? Oops. (Tag Captain) (Tag Security)

Posted Jan. 13, 2022, 1:41 p.m. by Lieutenant Commander Bethany Kovra Gadi (Chief of Security) (Jennifer Ward)

Posted by Captain Sara Kiernan (Commanding Officer) in Main Sim - Badges? We Don’t Need No- … Oh We Do? Oops. (Tag Captain) (Tag Security)

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Bethany Kovra Gadi (Chief of Security) in Main Sim - Badges? We Don’t Need No- … Oh We Do? Oops. (Tag Captain) (Tag Security)

Posted by Gamemaster Alias Smith N. Jones, Esq. (Gamemaster) in Main Sim - Badges? We Don’t Need No- … Oh We Do? Oops. (Tag Security)
Posted by… suppressed (4) by the Post Ghost! 👻

(snip)
“I decided that if you are going to talk about me, you should really get the entire story.” he said as he leaned back in the chair as if he lived there.

GM

Bethany knew, she didn’t even have to turn around to the door when it opened, but she did. She stared at him, but all she could see was memories.

The task force had still been tracking Elias, but she’d been called away for a different assignment. Things went bad, then worse, and she’d been poisoned. The team had been holed up in a safe house waiting for the extraction team. Bethany had incoherent with no help of an antidote. The local doctors had no idea what she’d been given.
And in the daze Elias had walked right into her bedroom. He’d knocked out her whole team, minor pains but nothing serious. He walked right over to her bed, sat down and pressed the hypospray with the antidote to her neck. He’d patted her on the arm, “Tsk-tsk-tsk… you can’t die yet. I still have plans for you.” Then he’d got up and walked out, never actually harming anyone. Bethany had been paranoid ever since.

D@m^ him! The memories would have to wait. “I’m not dying, nor am I ignoring your game, or wasting my life on some ‘fruit cake.’ So why are you in my quarters Elias?”

It was TuKaahl all over again. The never-ending ghost. Her fingers tightened around the weapon resting in her lap that she had wisely kept close. Every nerve in her body had been on alert and her keen blue eyes stared daggers at him. “Give me a good reason why i shouldn’t test out how many lives you have and just burn a hole through your head right now, just for fun,” she said as if they were discussing what to eat on a picnic.

Commander Calloway, CIO

Bethany stepped between them. Elias was composed and calm at the moment, but there was no telling what would make that change. Calloway had family, children, waiting for her to come back from this mission. Bethany had…no one. If Elias already knew her quarters it was just as likely there was a bomb underneath that chair just waiting for him to feel justified in using it.

Elias yawned and said “Feel free, Commander Calloway. I assure you that death really doesn’t scare me. Nor do you. And as Bethany here can tell you, I may be many things, but I am not a liar. Now I am trying to be a good boy and do as I’m told… but you three are making that terribly difficult. So… in the vein… we can either get to work on your ship or you can tell my warden that I am excused. Although I doubt that they will accept your offer.” Piercing green eyes locked on Bethany and he smiled. “I told you… I’m here to help.”

Captain Elias Balthazar

Bethany sighed. Elias was NOT a liar. He was creepily honest, but Elias be ‘a good boy’ terrified her. “And what exactly have you been told to do and who exactly is your warden, Elias?”

Gadi, CoS

Elias smiled and laughed loudly once. “HA!! Finally some decent questions. So… after my untimely demise I was.... let’s say ‘uncompromisingly recruited’… to the endeavors of deciphering the enigmas of this particular station. It is, perhaps, the fanciest prison I have ever been guested at.” and he looked at Bethany directly and added “And wholly inescapable. Truly.” and he shrugged and looked at the group. “As to my ‘warden’… that is the pet name I have given the dear Project Manager. I was turned over to her when I was so unceremoniously accosted trying to leave the morgue.”

GM

Bethany didn’t even want to touch that one. He was probably there making sure the decoy he killed was convincing. But his words didn’t mesh with that assumption. Recruited? So someone knew he hadn’t died, someone with the resources to bring him here. Bethany didn’t have enough information to even begin to evaluate what had really happened. ‘Untimely demise’ could be a word play on the events or truth. She wasn’t sure how it could be truth though. Feeling almost like a petulant child she wanted to demand what the hell he was talking about. His comment about being a guest in a prison made her snort with half laughter. Elias had been imprisoned many times, all by his own choosing. There were questions she should be asking, she should be slapping cuffs on him and locking him the brig, that wouldn’t hold him. But she didn’t ask, she just stared at him, calculating.

“And how are you here to help? Specifically with details.”

Gadi, CoS

Elias laughed out loud and then shook his head. “So much for the good questions, then… ah well.” Taking a breath he looked at her then at Shara and Callahan. “Well, if the esteemed Ms. Gadi hasn’t told you yet… I am over four hundred years old. And I have dealt personally with Tholians in that time. So someone, I assume, decided that those dealings make me suited to perpetual indentured servitude. Yay me.”

GM

“We’ll get the good questions later, Elias. Like how you survived and who brought you here,” and why I shouldn’t stab you through the heart and cut it out since getting your head blown off didn’t work. Bethy only thought the last part, it wouldn’t serve a purpose to say it. “I don’t care about the Tholians or your ‘assignment’ on the station. What does your ‘warden’ think you can do to help us, or was that your idea?” Until that point Bethany had been standing, and finally she sat wishing for once Elias would just tell her exactly why he was there. She was loathe to admit that he could really give her officers an edge of being mutineers and pirates, but it was true. “How exactly do you plan to help me with this mission, Elias?” She had a headache building and she felt ill, like she’d run too far for too long and to top it off like she hadn’t eaten in days. The doctor said there was nothing wrong with her. She wasn’t convinced.

Gadi, CoS

Elias looked at her and then shook his… almost as he was disappointed. “The PM sent me here because I know more about energy-based weaponry and starship weapon systems than your entire crew put together. Also, and I am assuming you forgot or perhaps have some kind of head trauma, I was what you are supposed to be pretending to be. For decades. So she told me to come and help make you appear appropriately malicious. Because all of you Star Fleet types -” and he looked directly at Shara, “- well… most of you Star Fleet types anyway…” and he looked away, “… are just too clean and proper. And the way you do things? So regimented… organized… predictable. It really is quite pathetic, you know. I’m here to help you be less ‘stick up the arse’ and more ‘mess with me and I will hang your entrails from the main view screen’.”

GM

Bethany didn’t even justify that with a look. She’d never forget what he was or the things he’d done. The good and the bad. One good made of for a 100 bad but only led to a hundred more bad that outweighed all the good he’d done before. And he was scary. The man made her paranoid and had haunted her nightmares for years. After he’d died she kept waking up at night thinking she’d been recalled to the task force, or wandering another of his massacres, or once again walking away because she couldn’t justify punishing good people because he was thief but had helped them. The thing that just really got her, was if she had to pick someone to train her people, make them convincing, she’d pick Elias Balthezar. And he was irritating her to no end. Simple question: what are you going to do in order to train her people? And of course he had to talk out his rear end.

In a strange way Shara appreciated that he understood that fundamental difference between her and many, if not most, of the Starfleet officers on this ship. When you had started out as the rebel willing to die for your cause, well, it painted service in an organization like Starfleet rather differently. “Well, I suppose I should be grateful someone around here gets what it means to play dirty. But what guarantee do we have that you’re not here to mess sh!1 up?” Calloway asked, a playful smile slipping over her face. The compression rifle wasn’t aimed at him, but it was still in her hands in ready enough position.

Commander Calloway, XO

Bethany refused to let her eyes roll so hard that she fell backwards. Gods above and below don’t let Calloway fall for the charm. Bethany knew she had to be smarter than that. And though Elias might be giving Calloway her due, he was also trying to goad her, that she didn’t or wasn’t capable of doing what had to be done.

“None. I am not in the business of guarantees.” Elias said flatly. “But I will say that it serves me best that you are successful in whatever you are doing. Because if I play well with you, then maybe the leash gets a bit less short. So if serving you serves my own self-interest, I suppose you could call that what you want.”

GM

Oh Elias had a point. As long as it was in his interest they were safe, you could bank latinum on that. The moment the status quo changed though, they were in trouble. Bethany was sitting in a chair, leaned back ankles crossed, and her gaze slowly turned to him. “Give me your word.” Elias never broke his word…usually in terms of ‘I will kill you.’ and he did, but his word mattered to him. “There are children on this ship. I want your word that the children and their parents will not be harmed because of you or anything you do, directly or indirectly.” Honestly Bethany felt like they should step down from the ship given this mission, stay on the station until, but she couldn’t force that on them. And everyone else, well they signed up for Star Fleet and knew the risks. Those risks were about to get real, and they needed to grow up real fast. She also knew if Elias did give his word he would want something in exchange.

Gadi, CoS

Shara highly doubted that he’d promise something like that. These kinds of missions always had built in collateral damage. But still, she herself as curious as to how he’d respond and if he did agree? Well Shara would gauge whether she believed him. Or even just lying to himself

Commander Calloway, CIO

Elias looked at Bethany for a moment…

And then grinned.

“Oh, I give you my word that no children or even any member of this ship’s crew will be harmed by me or anything I do while I am here or by anything I have done after you leave. I will not sabotage your ship, nor will I set you up to fail. Of that, you have my utmost promise. Now shall we get to work?”

GM

Awww hell. Bethany felt like she just jumped from the frying pan into the fire. That was too easy. It wouldn’t stop them from getting hurt. Things like that could never be totally prevented, and this mission was a nightmare before it got started. But at least Elias wouldn’t be going after them. Even though she knew there was some twist to it, there always was, she could, at least for now…for the duration of this mission, breathe, if not well. “Where do you want to start?” She had the feeling by the time they were done with Elias’s ‘assistance’ she was going to wish she’d died.

Well if he was staying. =/\=Captain Kiernan could you come to my quarters please.=/\= Is wasn’t like Gadi to make such a request so if she did there was a reason for it.
Gadi, CoS

=/\=On my way.=/\= Sara responded. She expected something terribly urgent to be happening when she arrived. Though a ship’s Captain from day to day could hardly guess what.

She arrived at Gadi’s quarters and hit the door chime.

-CO

Bethany was tempted to tell Elias to behave and be charming, but the problem was Elias was extremely charming when he wanted to be. Bethany opened the door, “Come in Captain.” There was an unknown man sitting at Bethany’s desk, well maybe depending on how much Kiernan kept up with Federation security matters and the most wanted list. Calloway was sitting in a chair holding a weapon that may or may not have been aimed at the man, and Gadi, herself, looked well unreadable and the ever present smile seemed forced. “Captain Kiernan let me introduce the man that has been sent to turn us into pirates. He’s quite qualified for the job seeing as how he’s the most feared and successful pirate - dead or alive, Elias Balthazar. Elias this is Cot Kiernan, but I’m sure you already knew that.”

Gadi, CoS


Posts on USS Asimov

In topic

Posted since


© 1991-2024 STF. Terms of Service

Version 1.15.9