jan/feb Runner-up: Back-up Plan - Commander Leanna Beq

[Iain]

OOC: My first entry - be gentle!

Leanna hadn’t been certain of this mission from the get go. She had been reactivated rather suddenly, but then she supposed that was how the Intelligence service worked. They had required someone with her ‘particular skill set’ for a matter of ‘Federation security’, like she had never heard that brand of codswallop before. It had been over a decade since they had used it on her though, and she had been quite enjoying her career back in the mainstream. It had somewhat surprised Captain Hollis when his Chief Medical Officer had requested an urgent leave of absence for an indefinite period.

And so now the Trill found herself clad head to foot in the usual form-fitting black with absolutely no markings or indentifying characteristics. The tight hood was pressing her long dark hair oppressively to her scalp and it itched like hell. It was coming back to the middle-aged woman why as a younger operative she had always kept her hair chin-length or above.

She pushed the thought aside as she glanced at the civilian hand-held scanner, it was much too late to do anything about that. She doubted very much Starfleet Intelligence would accept that one of its agents got captured whilst shearing locks of hair off inside a hostile base. Her breath was beginning to get more laboured as she jogged down a metal-walled hallway. She was getting too old for this malarkey, she really would have to have a word with someone in Intelligence that they should find some younger, fitter models for this work. She suspected that they wouldn’t listen.

Her thoughts were interrupted by urgent bleating from her scanner and she rapidly cursed, silenced it with a jab and wondered when she had gotten to sloppy about keeping her equipment in discreet mode. There were two lifesigns approaching the next corner quickly. Leanna did a quick visual scan of her surroundings and it was blatantly obvious there was nowhere to hide and retreat was not an option. If she had been detected that meant that she now had even less time to complete her mission and more hostiles would be converging on her current position.

To fight it was then, Leanna made the only choice she felt she had and was glad that her chest hit the floor as two Romulans came around the corner firing at a level that would’ve caught her square in her torso a moment earlier. She didn’t let the two men time to process their confusion or realize their mistake as she let two rapid-fire shots off of her small disruptor that until she had hit the deck had been secreted in her left sleeve. She was glad that Lt. Commander Semal on the Paladin had kept her well trained as a marksman as each shot hit its target and the grey-tuniced men crumpled to the floor.

Despite her breathlessness, Leanna was back on her feet and at a full run almost as soon as her opponents hit the deck. Obviously aware that they had lost the element of surprise what she could only assume was an intruder alert alarm began to blare all around her and the lights dimmed. They should’ve sent tactical support, hell they should’ve sent a tactical officer!

Second room on the left…one…two! Leanna fired at the group that was coming towards her from the other end of the corridor as she jumped into the doorway, he shoulder jarring against the duranium door. Locked, there’s a surprise. Shots flew past and hit the wall only centimeters down the corridor and she made the call.

The Trill fired a trio of shots towards her attackers and a fourth and the panel in the wall beside her, the doors began to open then stalled. It was a tight fit but Leanna squeezed through the gap and gained access to her target. She had little doubt her breast tissue would be objecting in the morning… if she saw morning.

Her scanner had told her that there were Tellarite lifesigns in this room. Starfleet Intelligence had intercepted information of a plot by the Romulans to replace the Tellarite representative on the Federation council with that of a double and had activated an agent with expertise in both cloning and genetic manipulation – Leanna Beq - to investigate and if possible terminate the operation.

They had underestimated its extent.

The room was filled wall to wall in stasis pods, 5 per row and 10 rows. The temperature in the room was significantly cooler than it had been through the rest of the complex, or was that just a psychological reaction from the doctor-[...]-operative? The room was lit only by dim bars of deep green light from each of the four walls. And unless Beq’s eyes were playing tricks on her there was a light mist in the air. It was almost like an ancient crypt than a state of the art medical facility.

Each pod contained one lifesign. Leanna ignored the hubbub as the Romulans came closer to the broken door. Her scanner was picking up a different racial profile from each pod and if her civilian scanning device was functioning correctly at least a few of the lifesigns were close if not identical to Federation Councillors.

Her plan on being discovered and pinned down in this room had been to go to the backup plan of abandoning intelligence gathering and scuttling the operation even if that meant assassinating the double. That option had just become more complex. There was no way she was going to be shoot out all the stasis pods before the Romulans arrived and she wouldn’t be able to beam them all out in her narrowed but intensified emergency portable transporter device tucked into her waistband.

“I knew I should never have come.” The last device Leanna had on her person was one she often managed to put out of her mind, but this time it wasn’t an option. She fired off a few shots at a Romulan trying to prise the doors further open and he slumped against the doorway before disruptor fire tore his body apart and forced Leanna to roll behind one of the pods. She sighed deeply as she reached into her boot.

She heard the doors begin to buckle, and attempted to dump the data her scanner had held in a burst transmission to the stealth shuttle on the other side of the asteroid the Romulan facility occupied. It failed.

“Federation agent, you are surrounded. Surrender yourself or prepare to die.”

Leanna sighed again, time was up. She dropped all her equipment other than the small device that fit between her thumb and forefinger. Standing, the Trill pulled back her hood and raised her hands. Her long dark hair flowed free and her scalp thanked her as the itch subsided. She wanted them to be able to see who had caused so much trouble.

“I’m afraid I may have oversold your options, Federation, now that you’ve seen this we cannot allow you to leave.”

The Romulan sub-commander began to raise his disruptor.

“Screw you.” Leanna pressed the device in her hand.

The stealth shuttle jumped to warp as the automated systems detected the termination of Trill lifesigns on the asteroid. The asteroid exploded outward in a brilliant white light and the shuttle found itself racing a shockwave out of the area. Starfleet Intelligence Endgame explosives might have been compact but they packed a punch.

Leanna Beq officially had a shuttle accident on her way back to Trill.

Starfleet Intelligence never learned what had caused her to use such a drastic measure.

The Romulans had lost their clones.

At least the ones on that base…

Commander Leanna Beq (RIP)

Former Chief Medical Officer

USS Paladin

Starfleet Intelligence Operative