Death of an Ambassador
Posted on Fri Sep 25th, 2020 @ 10:19pm by Commander Curtis Thibideaux & Commander Natan O'Donnaghue & Lieutenant Day Smith & Ensign Schen Gan'Agar
1,854 words; about a 9 minute read
Mission:
Diplomacy by any means necessary.
Location: Shuttle bay 2; USS Valiant
Timeline: MD005 0630 hrs (working)
Ambassador Telford sat in his work chair, turned so that he could use the shuttles’s viewer as a working monitor. At the moment, he was feeling more than just a little disgruntled. Captain O’Donnaghue’s choice to help find a new home had thrown his personal timetable off.
He should have had three days to get settled on Valdivae before the static display. Now Valiant was going to land spectacularly during the evening cycle of K’Shaw city’s day in a show and her crew would have to get the ship prepared for a small horde of the Valdivaeann’s to stream aboard starting the next morning.
The timeline would be tight and he had other things to think about too. Meetings that he should have made weren’t going to happen now and he didn’t risk using communications. He wasn’t overly sure how good Valiant’s crew was, but they more than likely would pick up the signal. Telford could piggy back messages onto his official communiques, but a message wasn’t a discussion…
He contemplated again the credits that had been applied to his account on Orion Prime and let himself daydream. Once his work on Valdivae was done, he’d retire and be done with the Federation and it’s collection of fools..
A noise behind his chair startled him away from his daydreams and he saw a reflection in the screen that surprised him. No one was supposed to have access to his shuttle. Giles opened his mouth to ask the person what they were doing when a hard loop of plastic looped around his neck and began strangling him…
Day's head was pounding, she took a moment to orientate herself. It was difficult to remember some parts of how she got here, where here was, and why she was there. But it slowly came back to her. Just as she was about to piece all of that together she smelled something. It was a familiar stench, and not one she was too fond of. Death. It was something that Day would never get used to. She got up from her place on the ground and looked around the shuttlecraft, in the front seat she saw a silhouette of a man hunched over. It was clearly the source of the wretched smell. Carefully she approached the seat and with a steady hand, she reached over to feel for a pulse in the figure's neck. The cold flesh beneath her fingertips already told her enough, even before she had given it enough time to feel a heartbeat.
Pulling her hand back it dawned on her who the hunched over figure was. The Ambassador had requested her to meet him in the shuttle, she had figured it was some sort of additional request in regards to the idea of allowing civilians onto their military vessel as a part of some sort of parade. It seemed harsh now, thinking of this once living being in such terms. His skin was pale, and the expression on his face was contorted in agony, it was clear that is untimely demise was a result of a malicious outside force. She spotted a plastic loop around the man's neck and dangling through the hold in the seat. Someone had clearly not wanted to take any chances, using an excessive amount of force in choking the man out. She look at her fingertips, some of the blood from the ambassador had gotten on her fingers. Absentmindedly she touched the loop that the killer must've held as they cut off the ambassador's life.
Behind Day, a noise of someone coming through the hatch came and the Orion, Sidri's voice called out, "Hello. Ambassador? We have that conference call..."
As she said that, the com unit in the shuttle kicked on and the displays flickered to life and several other beings visages came on. Horror began to sketch out over most faces and then someone screamed, a Betazoid woman with blonde hair in Diplomat's attire had a hand over her face, while a vulcan male actually looked pale and he barked out. "I am Ambassador Yome. Who are you. Did you kill Ambassador Telford?"
Sidri rushed up, pushing past Day to look at Telford and then turned to Day. "You have blood on your hands. Why did you do this?" Her hand mashed at a control on the ambassador's chair and she called out, "Security! The Ambassador has been murdered. I need help in here right now!"
Feet nailed to the floor Day looked at how the woman that rushed passed her in a panic contacted security and implicating her, "I... I went to... I checked if he was still alive..." she showed the motion of checking his neck with her two fingers, "He was like this... he was already... I didn't do this." She felt a panic starting to accumulate in her stomach and she tried to think fast on how she was going to convince them that she didn't do it. Then she realised that she couldn't quite remember how she had gotten here. Or how long she had been here. A full black out. The panic gripped tighter around her throat.
Schen put the data padd down on the desk. The Gem Hadar scowled at the interlinked personnel files that had suddenly become his responsibility as the 2ic Tac/security onboard. Luckily working out the new shift rota on the Valiant was a minor headache compared to a larger class vessel...
=^= "Security Alert... Security to Shuttle Bay 2" =^= the alarm came over the ship-wide coms system. Schen stood, grabbed a phaser and headed for the door.
=^= "Ensign Schen Gan'Agar responding" =^= he tapped his coms even as he was through the door in a blur of motion.
Schen pulled up short as he entertered the Shuttle, taking in the scene ahead of him. A dead man sprawled in the forward command chair, a bloody plastic ligature around his mottled neck. The man's head would have been at an impossible for any humanoid as, it seems, whomever had killed him had taken no chances. He looked around the gathered personnel taking in the uniforms and ranks.
"Ensign Schen Gan'Agar, second in command of Security aboard the USS Valiant" Schen introduced himself to the ensemble as he ran through the basics he'd learnt of dealing with a CSI as the first responder. "Everyone please exit the Shuttle and convene in the Shuttle Bay as this is now a secure crime scene" he asked politely though bluntly, aware that he was dealing with senior diplomatic staff.
The Orion, and Ambassador's aide, look large eyed at the Ensign and gestured toward Day, "Assem...but she's got his blood on her hands! Don't let her just be able to dash off and get rid of that evidence!"
When the alert sounded and the security was called, all of a sudden Natan's senses were on high alert. Even Nayuu's hairs were raised. The Lemur was on the captain's shoulder as he walked on the scene. His eyes quickly scanned the room. He then saw the dead body of the ambassador and Day with the blood on her hands. She turned Shen. "Ensigns, I trust you know what to do here, I expect a full report in an hour, he ordered. Please make sure to send the body for autopsy."
He could feel the tension in the room that was directed at his ops chief. All he sensed from her was confusion and she seemed a little nervous. He could imagine that, she was probably found next to the body with the blood on her hands. She is now of course the prime suspect. She was most likely convinced she was innocent. But he couldn't afford to make that judgement just yet. He turned to the diplomats. Please everyone go outside, let my interim security chief do his is job. As for Lieutenant Smith. " He now turned to Day. "Lieutenant, you are stripped off your position pending investigation, Lieutenant T'Pel will fill in for the time being. Ensign, please collect samples from the blood currently on her hands." He sighed as he hated to do this, but he had no choice. "Lieutenant, I will allow you to clean yourself before I escort you to the brig. Is that understood, lieutenant?"
Nayuu, the Lemur on Natan's shoulder looked to Day and just put his ears down and looked sad at the operations chief. Almost like it was sorry for the lieutenant.
It was all going by in a daze until it clicked in her head that Lieutenant Smith referred to her, then Day heard the words that meant she was no longer a Starfleet officer, for the duration of the investigation, compounded by the fact that she was going to be lead to the brig. She heard a question at the end of that but it was all such a blur, that she didn't quite know what to respond, "Yes." she said meekly, looking down at her hands. She had tried to check if the man had still been alive. She must've gotten blood on her hands then. She started to walk away in the direction of a nearby bathroom, not too conscious of the fact that they would probably want to closely monitor her movements.
"Excuse me" Schen said as he gently took a hold of Lt Smith's wrist and ran a small tricorder over the blood traces that were still very evident. He didn't know much about human psychology though he knew enough to see the Lt was in mental trumoil or schock.
Day startled at the touch of her hands, "I just want to wash my hands," she showed him the blood on them and saw that he scanned it. She wondered why. There was plenty more where it came from on the ambassador's neck.
Schen looked over at O'Donoghue. "I asked that the Shuttle be sealed as a crime scene until it can be phorensically checked and scanned. I will also pull the ships intenal scans and monitoring to see if further evidence can be provided" he stated factually. "Commander, do you wnat me to escort the Lt to the brig?" he asked.
"Yes," Natan said, "Seal off the area. as for the lieutenant. I will escord her." He gently put his hand on her shoulder. "After you, lieutenant, let's get you cleaned up. And then I will speak with you."
Day quietly went along with the request, looking down at her bloodied hands as she went along with them, the hand on her shoulder startling her, like the touch of her wrist had done. She had no idea what was going on but was getting the sinking feeling that she was being implicated in the death of the ambassador, "He was like that when I got here," she then shook her head, that wasn't quite true, "when I woke up, I mean."
RSS Feed