Surveying the damage
Posted on Mon Nov 10th, 2025 @ 3:52am by Captain Tesha Froyce
843 words; about a 4 minute read
Mission:
On the Trail
Location: Empok Nor
Timeline: Four days after Neverwinter Boom
Captain Tesha Force (Star Fleet/Retired) walked through the corridors of Empok Nor dressed in mufti, surveying the cosmetic damage from the Ashen Hand’s attack. She’d cued up corresponding intel reports from multiple sources, which in retrospect was mostly guest work.
She expected that of initial reports. Generally you used old information to pain the best current picture you could. Fleet Intel, new Caradassian Intel (rebranded Obsidian Order), Federation Intel, and rumblings from the other major players (Roman, Klingon and Ferengi) had speculated on the Hand’s simultaneous attacks on Empok and the raid on the Savant Royal.
First billed as a terrorist attack, field by the Hand’s message blurb, most of the players were taking it as such, but the intel rumination was calling this a heist. The Hand had made off with an estimated one thousand bars of gold pressed latinum from both the night club’s office and the liner’s secure storage , though that estimate was rough and investigators were getting the runaround from both entities.
A thousand bars wasn’t much for such an operation. It had been well timed, well executed and had made certain intel communities look foolish.
As she surveyed the workers cleaning up the debris and running scrubbers over the singed night club interior, Tesha decided that Valiant’s intel was giving them the BEST answers. The Hand had worked through some intermediaries and through away actors to cause mayhem and disorder in order to make the Cardassians and Star Fleets security and intel groups combined look bad, at least aboard the station.
In order not to draw attention to herself, Tesh kept walking, picking a random path back toward the promenade as she considered a new thought.
What if the whole thing had been a shopping list?
The Hand had been working to disrupt frayed factions of the Federation: The pirate activity that continued to work at the edges and along with the bombing and graffiti were all meant to thumb eyes at the Federation and now the Cardassians.
Pausing just slightly to purchase a caff at a street vendor, Tesha made her way to a nearby bench where she could keep an eye out for anyone shadowing her and enjoy her beverage. The heat from the cup felt good through her hand, giving her a sense of peace and comfort.
A sense of the familiar.
The comfort part drew her back and she looked over the people that moved past her. There was a wariness to their movements and she decided the terror part of the Hand’s attack had served that purpose too. “Computer,” she said, holding her thumb against the back of her ring communicator. “Run down traffic patterns at Empok Nor following the Ashen Hand incident.”
In the time it took her to take a sip, the computer’s voice sounded in her ear, “Empok Nor’s civilian traffic has fallen fifteen percent while military traffic has increased by twenty, including both Federation and Cardassian.” The computer told her. That made sense and it was going to take a while for consumer confidence to grow back. To a station like Empok, that would hurt its growth for probably eight months to a year, Tesha guesstimated.
On the Ashen Hand’s shopping list, that could be marked a success. But they couldn’t be doing all of this by themselves. Someone had to be bank rolling this. That’s who Tesha and the President wanted to track down. At first, Tesha had thought maybe someone from the Gamma quadrant had been behind it. That still hadn’t been ruled out but her gut said no.
Setting that aside, Tesha thought about the more troubling of the Hand’s activity: The abductions. At best count, twenty five people had been abducted by the pirates and as far as FI could determine, nothing had been heard about them as of yet. That would probably change as expectations were that there would be ransom demands.
Again, Tesha wasn’t so sure. She thought there would be some of course, especially the ones that could embarrass the Federation. She’d told both Koratt and Dimitri that in their last briefing that she expected that if they didn’t announce the abductions themselves, the Hand would. The President had stated that his advisors were telling him they needed to sit on it until ransom demands were made. SFI and FI departments were very sure it was another money making opportunity and for now, the President had to abide by that since it wasn’t hisdecision. The Federation Security council had recommended it and he had to go with that.
For now.
Finishing her caff, Tesh stood and put the mug in the recycling tray, then began making her way toward the restaurant called E-WOK’s. Even if the President couldn’t do something, she could. She just needed to get an operative on it.
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