Smoke and Mirrors, Part 1

Posted on Sun Sep 5th, 2021 @ 8:22pm by Jissa Tanner
Edited on on Sun Sep 5th, 2021 @ 8:30pm

Mission: The Black Planet Rises
Location: Space Station Cyrga
Timeline: SD 242109.02

Captain Jissa Tanner paced up and down in her quarters. Had it really been months? She was free to go almost anywhere, ‘almost.’ She’d tested the waters on occasion, to see how much latitude she could get away with. Very little, that’s what she’d surmised. The CSEC seemed to have located the biggest security officers on her staff and rotated them every 8 hours when the detail outside her door changed. They were polite, but clearly, they towed the line. Wherever she went, they followed. Her quarters, far bigger than anything she’d had on her hyperlight craft, were growing confining and more and more often she felt the walls closing in. There was a nagging waft of thought that seemed to quietly shout at her from the hollow recesses of memory, but it would too soon dissipate just when she was on the verge of figuring out what it all meant. She shook her head and frowned. She walked over to the desk, pulled the chair out, flipped it around before ungracefully sitting down, running her hands across the data screen. Starfleet cartography was out of her reach, but the Delta Quadrant was vast, and Jissa had learned a long time ago that most people, regardless of species had a price or a secret and sometimes both. Anything could be had if one was light on scruples. All communication traffic was typically monitored by Starfleet and yet, Jissa had quite by accident stumbled upon a small glitch – low frequency subspace was not. Transmission was very short range but that wasn’t really the point. If one knew what they were looking for, one could hop from one low frequency subspace signal to the next much like pinging a server from a DOS command prompt. Jissa quietly chuckled to herself. How many people today would even think about DOS command prompts. Sentient AI’s were normalized when they would have once been scoffed at as pure fantasy. Jissa couldn’t remember how she knew what she knew; then again, she was an avid reader. She had yet to find a book she didn’t read at least once. Now that she’d found the signal she frowned. It wasn’t like she knew too many people and it wasn’t like she needed rescuing. She needed an escape strategy. She needed the right lie, a distraction that was just convincing enough to be plausible even if it lacked a grain of truth. Misdirection would provide the means of her ‘release’ because with the lumbering brutes outside the door, escaping on her on wouldn’t work. Still, there were a few contacts – a few people whose debts she should call in. A plan decided, her fingertips set to work with the final strike on ‘send’. That done and feeling smug in the knowledge, right or wrong, that she knew something others did not, she strode to the doors and waited for them to open. She leaned her head out, gave the two men on duty a quick wink before cryptically remarking “Good night boys. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.” Her not so quiet giggles could be heard even after the doors closed behind her. The two officers shrugged. Their human charge was Quixotic at best and crazy if not, at least from their perspective. Jissa always was one to try to turn things to her advantage and this was no different. She washed her face and then dimmed the lights. Tomorrow was bound to be an interesting day....tomorrow she would orchestrate a symphony that would allow her slip the bonds of her confinement, and the Admiral and her crew would willingly albeit unwittingly assist.