Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind

Posted on Thu Dec 23rd, 2021 @ 5:45am by Captain Calypso Skyie & Ensign Rene Rouen

Mission: The Dexic Negotiations
Location: Dexic: Dorje Bazaar

Rene had stepped away from the main group of the away team to take some tricorder scans of the area and peruse the store fronts and sidewalk vendors along the avenue. He had been just inside an alleyway when the others on the away team had been apprehended by the armed group of Dexicians.

Another Dexician had noticed not only one of their fellow natives slipping away, but knew what it meant. He'd been from Aneset, brought over to Dorje to coordinate, but had seen things degrade from their time with this part of the protest groups. He noticed one of the Starfleet officers moving away from their group, whether intentionally or not and quietly but quickly moved to follow them.

He stayed a few steps behind, timing things as best he could with the knowledge that his fellows would be back in short order and in numbers. He removed his cloak and cleared his throat as he came up on Rene's blind side and swept his cloak around the gold uniform of the officer, "Friend." He said quietly, "I am a friend, but you must hide now." A quick flip and the hood came up over the not-scaly head of the human, leaving only his face visible, and that in shadows.

Rene was just about to step out on to the main avenue when the lone Dexician through the cloak over him. Startled at first he opened his mouth to call for assistance, but held off as he spotted the away team's capture by armed assailants. He ducked back further into the alley and faced his strange benefactor. "Why are you helping me?"

“Because I do not agree with their intentions.” The Dexician said under his breath, placing an arm around Rene as if shepherding an elder that was unsure on their feet. “I am one of their allies, from the other region, we have been coordinating our protests against the proposed merging of our nations, but what I have seen here has made me wary of their methods. They intend to pressure your starship to withdraw using your lives as collateral.”

Rene pulled the cloak tighter and shifted the hood more to obscure his face in the shadows. He put his right hand on his phaser under the cloak and glanced around cautiously. "Can you get me to a place that is within eyesight of where my friends are being taken?"

“I can spirit you to safety, where you can contact your starship. There are too many of them for you to combat on your own, but if I can save your life, perhaps the wrath of the Federation will be-“ His low-breathed dialog was interrupted by the clap of a hand on his shoulder.

Another Dexician, pistol held in hand roughly turned the cloak less Dexician around, “Rozteb, we have the Federation officers, helping the elderly is admirable, but we have more important-“ The armed Dexician took a look at the ‘elderly’ cloaked human a bit closer, “Who are you?” He reached out to move the hood of the cloak to get a better look at the figure.

Rene whipped his phaser out and stunned the armed Dexician. He looked at his ally. "Phaser only rendered him unconscious. He will wake up with a headache, but we have to move now."

"R-right." Rozteb the Dexician agreed, looking at the crumpled form of the one that had been shot, then turning away and moving past Rene, "I am going to take you to a house a short ways away, it is near the safe house that your friends will be taken to, but it will be dangerous. As we get closer, we may run into others of their group."

Rene nodded as he pulled out his tricorder and set it to scan for energy weapons power signatures. "Walk about five meters in front of me. That should put enough distance between us so you are not associated with me in case we run across any of the local antagonists."

"Of course, it will only take a few minutes to get here, but please, be careful." True to his word, Rozteb took them around the back ways until they approached the small house and glanced around before he went inside. "The owners are out of town right now, they'll be back in a few days, but we should be safe here. The place your friends are being kept is around the corner from here, so there will be others passing by, we should stay away from the windows."

Rene pulled his tricorder out and scanned the area for human life signs and detected four in the direction of the of the building Rozteb indicated. His brow furrowed. He glanced up at the Dexician. "Would one of my companions have been taken to another location? I am only detecting four of them."

"I don't know why they would be." Rozteb said quietly, "It would be as I may have feared. What would your Captain's response be to a demand to leave this system?"

Rene took a deep breath and blew it out loudly. "Starfleet does not negotiate with terrorists. She would probably refuse, try to talk them down. Barring that I would guess send a tactical response unit."

"And if she didn't... They would have killed one of their hostages in order to show their resolve." Rozteb shuddered, "They have lost their minds... This isn't our way to enact change, this is unconscionable, to murder a helpless prisoner. My people, from Aneset, would never condone this."

Rene thought for a moment. He was the best chance for a response team to gather enough information to mount a successful rescue. "Does this cell have the means to monitor my commbadge frequency or even just detect a nearby communication?"

Rozteb had to think for about thirty seconds, aware of the eyes of the human on him, “Something that has the power to reach your ship? Probably yes. Something more localized, say within a few kilometers, probably not. After all, they wouldn’t want someone coordinating from your ship with forces on the ground.”

Rene had few options. The person he had stunned would be conscious fairly soon. The hunt for him and his benefactor would soon commence after that. "What about a short transmission? I could keep it under a few seconds."

"I think we can do that. A burst transmission, one-way only. Any normal communication will get caught and we don't want that." Rozteb thought again, "I don't think they'd catch it."

Rene recorded a message to send with the data burst transmission he was setting up. It wasn't much, but hopefully those back on the ship would be able to fill the gaps to mount a successful rescue. He gave one last review of the data before sending the burst transmission. "Hope someone sees this soon."