Unnamed Source
Posted on 01 Jul 2025 @ 6:10pm by Commander Calliope Zahn
Mission:
M4 - Falling Out
Location: Obsidian Command, Khadra-Vogel's private quarters
Timeline: Late, Day 27
1333 words - 2.7 OF Standard Post Measure
Eloise Khadra-Vogel pitched her shoes off, one after the other, the double staccato playing sharply off the walls of the mostly empty room.
“Am I losing my edge?” She asked no one. The newscaster shook her head. She wasn’t still a leading reporter for the Federation’s primary interstellar news syndicate for no reason at all, even if she was just floating by for now, spinning what little she could get. “It’s not that bad.” She uttered as she flung off her designer dress jacket. “I really shouldn’t have missed the whole connection to Wallace’s father. I went to the wrong art opening,” she chastised herself with a groan. Even if the invitations had been issued privately, with the park being a public venue, she could have gotten around all of Commander Ruben’s blockade measures between her and Xeri and made a fresh in personal appeal to her.
Well.
She was still going to get her interview with Xeri, eventually. “Come hawking radiation or supernova shock wave…” as the saying went these days.
In the meantime, there were other things to hunt down. More fish to throw into the preheated pan.
Eloise reached back to her discarded jacket and fished through the pocket for her tiny recorder, thumbing open her holographic notes. She’d quickly marked down what she had committed to memory from the pad that Ruben’s assistant had fumbled at breakfast. The Lachares. Someone was searching for refugees, specific ones. But there were billions of displaced persons on the Romulan border. It was old news for a decade. Unless something unique was going on here. What made these ones special? What was Rubens hiding?
The thought recrossed her mind, that she should be getting as much dirt on Ruebens himself as possible. Her eyes went to the cronometer, then back to her message scroll. It said updated, but she refreshed it anyway just in case something was still sitting in the subspace redirect.
“Bartlefink.” She only said her contact’s alias. It was misfortune enough to serve as its own swear. She pulled up the contact info— notably absent was any profile image— and dialed again. It was possible that he’d just been sleeping the past twelve hours since her first attempt to reach out. But she was in too much of a hurry to care about local timezone differences between worlds. To be fair, she wasn’t even certain Bartlefink slept, or was a single person.
Her call was rerouted through various channels. It was a precaution, she knew, on Bartlefink’s end. As far as anyone knew, old number was dead and Bartlefink ‘himself’ was retired. She’d met Bartlefink once, or so she had thought. But the second time they arranged a meeting in person, she had not been met by the same wispy white-haired old man. Instead a middle aged, heavyset bolian woman had met her, and didn’t even claim to be a proxy, but also went by Bartlefink as if it were her name and always had been.
This was the nature of dealing with deeply planted government spy agencies. Eloise had spent a great deal of time thinking about who was actually giving her such salient leads over the years. She knew the agent had been using her, for whatever bigger purposes a black ops outfit might have, but the headlines provided to her were such breaks that she didn’t want to dig so deep as to make Bartlefink disappear. And she was always able to corroborate the leads, so she didn't end up with a defamation case or some kind of side blinding situation that left her holding an unconfirmable hot potato. She still believed there was one person behind the proxies, however. Eloise had a sense for the voice of the messages– the written ones– and they were self-consistent. Based on some terminology and reference slips, her money was on a yridian info broker whom the Federation had somehow secured the loyalties of. Unless, of course, those 'slips' had been intentionally peppered in, and that's what they wanted her to believe...
Eloise continued to reflect as she waited through the smokescreen of automated messages.
The routing number you have entered has been discontinued. Please disconnect and try again.
Eloise didn’t disconnect. Instead, with the line still opened, she entered another string of symbols, one she had committed to memory, which triggered the discontinued number display screen to switch completely black, as if the monitor was off. Squinting, Eloise saw two faint wiggles of light as a code passed through the line. She knew it was a feedback check, to ping for any security breaks or recording subroutines. She also knew from experience that if she tried to look up this call in the log, there would be a blank, as if a call had been placed, never fully connected, and neither end had hung up. It would simply read 'failed' in the station log.
A small flicker of a single cursor opened up.
“Query:” Eloise said out loud, watching her words become letters on the screen. “Lachares. Romulan refugees. Please confirm identities in full? Send.”
The words flashed, disappeared and the cursor stood alone once more.
Lachares brothers, Gildan aged 49 in standard years, Virrahk aged 35. Formerly franchised holders on Romulan settlement Melchom. Former internment at Halorok 9 Asteroid colony in the Toradas Sector. Charges of malcontent and inciting violent action against the state. Listed as escaping custody less than two years ago. Whereabouts unknown.
Knowing this information would soon disappear, Eloise flashed her recording device at it. When the blank cursor resumed the screen, she said, “Known immediate family?” She had seen more than two names on the list at breakfast.
Virrahk has a wife, Dinnade Llwei Lachares, daughter of Halwin Llwei. Two children. Female, aged 8. Male, aged 3.
Eloise picked her top lip thoughtfully. “Is there anything significant about this family? Outside of the Lacharas’ Franchise?” She knew from experience with this idea before that the settlers of these worlds had a vote which was passed down like an heirloom in the ruling houses established during settlements. It was a kind of Romulan system of freeman heraldry, tied to the land grants. Many had other political ties and were essentially the gentleman farmers of settled worlds.
No other known titles or relations.
So that was it then. They were just political refugees from a settlement that probably had a political overturn by whatever warlord or rising figure to their sector’s senate seat had thrown their weight around… “Who is the Free State’s sitting senator of the Toradas Sector?”
Senator Radak. A short profile to follow.
Eloise leaned back, prepared to capture the flash of information profiling the Free state senator. It was information she would normally source from a diplomatic channel, but She doubted the local diplomat was going to go to a lot of trouble to answer her promptly. Besides, she didn’t need him deducing what she had learned from her own requests.
Rubens already knew about the Lachares brothers. There was a story behind them, a political one that might make one hell of an expose revealing a crooked senator too.
Eloise teased her fingers along the side of her head, subconsciously fixing her hair for the camera.
“One other question,” Eloise voiced to the screen after capturing the political figure’s information. “Unrelated. Do you have an unofficial profile on Maurice Rubens during his time with the Department of the Exterior?”
The cursor flashed for what seemed like a small eternity.
We can discuss an exchange for further information on Rubens.
In other words, she would have to prove useful again before she got any juicy background insight on Rubens. Eloise bit the inside of her cheek.
“You know where to reach me.”
With that sent, the cursor winked into the black.
