local time: 11 november 2022. 0800. location: collective starfleet housing.
Over the past week @russovito has started moving. He has spent an absurd amount of money, purchased a home, and been personally responsible for multiple starship arrivals. Many of those starships had public manifests you could look over due to your position as General within Starfleet (they contained furniture, clothing, and miscellaneous gadgets), but two ships in particular had blacked-out manifests even your clearance wouldn’t allow you to view.
This morning, you receive a high priority video call from the Collective Shadow Service (CSS). Charged with conducting criminal investigations and protecting Collective political leaders, their families, and visiting heads of lesser governmental bodies, CSS is a group outside of Starfleet directly overseen by the Collective Council. They inform you that in exactly one week Venpalan Collective Councilor Theran Romano and his wife Silvana will be landing on Sotiris and staying for an undetermined amount of time.
While the man you are talking to is incredibly vague and refuses to answers most questions, he does tell you the Councilor will be updating your mission while he’s on-planet. Officially, though, the Romanos will be on vacation.
Laeponia tried to ignore her gut on this one; she honestly, genuinely did. She tried to ignore the fact that the purchase of land and a home pointed towards something much more permanent than shore leave. She tried to ignore the loads of cargo that comfortably outfitted such a large piece of property, money apparently little to no object.
It was the two ships with manifests so thoroughly redacted that neither she nor her Admiral — yes, she’d even bothered to send a casual request up the chain of command — seemed to know anything about; those, she could no longer ignore.
Whether the General would’ve been so up in arms about covert shipments if not for the ongoing drug crisis was unclear, and honestly irrelevant. It wasn’t even necessarily that she thought the shipments contained drugs. It was, as the tired saying went, the principle of the thing. She had enough cargo monitoring headaches without adding fully obscured manifests from her own officers to the list.
The call Laeponia received from the CSS did little to assuage her concerns. It served little to no purpose at all, honestly, for all the deftness with which the caller at the other end of the line dodged her demands for more specifics.
There was little more to be done, Laeponia decided, than try to get some answers from the man himself. She doubted it would help. She was almost certain it wouldn’t, really, but Laeponia was nothing if not adept at throwing herself into situations stacked against her. It was only unfortunate that combat wouldn’t help her here; lord knew her skills with a blade and Phaestron rifle were head and shoulders above her diplomacy, but needs must.
The evening was wearing late, but Laeponia could see a sliver of light around the door to Vito’s quarters as she approached. One long, slender finger pressed the comms button without hesitation, adding when he answered: “Vito. It’s Laeponia.” More personal than she’d normally announce herself, but Vito obviously wasn’t someone for whom pulling rank was all that effective. “Can we please talk?”