Why Me?

Posted on Tue Feb 8th, 2022 @ 9:06am by Lieutenant Aiko Kato

Mission: The Orion Syndicate
Location: USS Washington

The trip back to the Washington from Cait had all been a blur for Aiko as she recovered from the copious amount of sedatives in her system. Once they arrived on the Washington, Aiko had been transported to the Sickbay, but her stay had been short, mostly on her insistence.

After she was discharged, she was instructed to rest and recover. It was an instruction Aiko found ironic given that she had been pumped full of sedatives that made it difficult to do anything but relax. She understood the intent...but as usual, she did things her own way.

She had thrown herself into work in the first few hours of arriving back. She caught up on the rather impressive work that the engineering team had done to the ship's engines. Next, she had focused on the administrative duties that had been sorely lagging behind as lead pilot, managing to catch up.

After a short reprieve she had thrust herself into getting into the weeds of the criminal investigation on Cait. Because the incident had involved Starfleet officers, the latter had exercised its authority to lead the investigation rather than the local Cait policing force.

She had also quickly learned that there were several aspects of the investigation that were classified. However, since she was one of the victims, there were certain information that was shared with her that was not public, although quite frankly, Aiko still felt Starfleet gave her just dribbles of information.

Then there were rumours of Starfleet Intelligence involvement, which try as she might she could neither confirm nor completely deny.

One thing that was abundantly clear though was that she had not been attacked randomly. The attack was actually an attempted kidnap of her and L'Rissa. There was some information that cast doubt on whether L'Rissa was a primary target or just a bystander who happened to be in the company of the primary target at the time of the abduction.

If that was true, Aiko thought it all the more ironic (and lucky) that L'Rissa had been present as the Caitian had single-handedly saved her from her captors when she had been knocked unconscious. Aiko was forever grateful to L'Rissa for that as she could only imagine how events might have played out differently had she been abducted.

Everything that she read however brought her to the fundamental question of why...why had she been a target in the first place?

Although this was where the information became restricted, coming in drips due to it being classified, she did gather it involved the Orion Syndicate, but she was not even sure how reliable this information was because it had been something the local news had broadcasted, and even they had not disclosed their source of the information.

If it was the Orion Syndicate, it raised even more questions than answers. Aiko had prior to New Krakow, had minimal dealings with the Syndicate. Sure, they would run into them every now and then when she was on patrol duty on the Scylax but there was never anything significant to warrant the Syndicate coming after her.

Even on New Krakow where the argument could be made that she had helped foil a network hub of slavery, dealing a huge blow to the Syndicate as the media had put it. Even still, her role was minimal. She was one of hundreds of personnel on the Washington that had been part of that mission. So why had the Syndicate picked her out?

It was a question that did not have an obvious answer and that was what terrified her the most...

Will there be another attempt to kidnap her? Or since this failed, would the Syndicate simply opt to just kill her? The Syndicate may not be a pound for pound match for Starfleet, but they were powerful in their own right and notorious for their galactic reach in silencing whomever they wanted to.

Since returning to the ship, Aiko found she was more skittish- more acutely aware of her surrounding as she feared that another abduction or attack could be around the corner.

The logical side of her mind knew she was safe on board the Washington and unlikely to be attacked but the less logical part of her mind argued that nothing was certain. If she did not even know why she was attacked in the first place, how could she be completely sure she would not be attacked on the Washington?

She tried various counter-arguments to that position- the Washington was her home now, and the crew her family; the Syndicate would dare not attack her on a Sovereign class starship.

But none of it quite worked...at least not completely. She could not entirely rule out the possibility that the Syndicate were not done with her and could come back.

And that worried her...

This not being her first rodeo with abductions, having previously been captured by the Breen during the Dominion War, Aiko suspected and desperately hoped that her anxiety was only temporary- an acute shock to a blatant attempt at her life. In time, her worry and fear were likely to dissipate, or at least so she hoped.

Turning off her computer terminal, Aiko decided she would get some rest before the start of her shift tomorrow. There was no telling what that would bring as she was aware that the Captain had called off shore leave and had gave instructions to have the crew be ready for departure imminently.

As she lay in her bed, Aiko yawned trying to cast the anxiety and worry from her mind and tried to remember the good parts, however brief it was, of her trip to Cait.