Posted March 5, 2023, 8:09 a.m. by Commander Shara Calloway (Chief Intelligence Officer) (Lindsay B)
Posted by Captain Sara Kiernan (Commanding Officer) in Settling things with Intel
Posted by Commander Shara Calloway (Chief Intelligence Officer) in Settling things with Intel
(snip)
“Oh how I want to. How I want to just project confidence in this mission.” Sara decided it was the hour of ‘all cards on the table.’ “My time with Intel… wasn’t like yours is. Operatives like Strickland monitored me while I worked. I’m not used to all this cloak and dagger stuff. My ‘cover story’ is supposed to be that I turned against the Federation one day. I’ve never figured out why. Why would I do that? Why would I throw away everything I’ve done to work my way up from Cadet to Captain? Everything I’ve seen that’s disillusioned me about the Federation is classified and no small part of it is this mission. If someone asks me, some syndicate someone, why’d I turn pirate? That can’t be my answer. ‘Well I was assigned by a branch you’ve probably never heard of to do terrible things to create an image of a pirate and ended up sticking with it.’ That doesn’t feel right. I was a Starfleet brat, from a legacy family, so I went to school just to get into Starfleet Academy. I got in and graduated with honors, class of ‘87. I was so damn excited to put on that science officer uniform and go on my first assignment. I stuck with it, kept moving up. And on a brutal mission aboard the Asimov, we lost the Captain. I became Captain and it stuck. This is the culmination of my career, probably as high as I’ll go. And why did I give it up to become an outlaw? I have no idea. I just… don’t know. And the constant tug-of-war with the agents for information makes nothing any easier. I don’t know what we’re flying into or who’s going to be there. Just have to trust that they know what’s going on.”
-CO
Shara nodded, though she was deep in thought. “You need an honest story, something you can believe and throw yourself into. A cover story isn’t about adopting a name and a personality, it’s understanding their why.” Calloway sighed. “I’m sorry Sara, this is something I could have and should have helped you with had I known you needed the help. But we can rectify that right now.”
“Loss makes us do a lot of things we might otherwise not. So does love. What would make you, Sara do something seemingly out of the blue?”
~Shara Calloway, CIO
“Loss…” Sara said with a far off look “When my brother died, if the CO of the Dunkirk hadn’t granted me leave I would’ve ended up getting suspended. Grief makes you crazy.” She returned her focus to the CIO. “So who or what did I lose?”
-CO
“You tell me,” Shara said. “The way I do it, and this doesn’t work for everyone I admit, is to mine from your own life or someone you know very well. The trick to a good cover story is to be able to feel it. I’ve experienced losses I thought I’d never recover from. In fact, for a time it crippled me. So I can use that knowledge, that feeling and transform it into a story I can believe is true. So maybe you take that grief you felt for your brother and apply it to a made up person more recently. Something that would tie into the path of events that led us to be right here where we are. You need people to believe that you’re done with Starfleet, don’t believe in it anymore. What loss would convince you that was true?”
~Shara Calloway, CIO
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