No One Gets Left Behind Part II
Posted on Mon May 11th, 2026 @ 4:01pm by James Leyton & Petty Officer 3rd Class Emiko Marley & Lieutenant Mira Jayna & Sergeant Adélaïde Moreau & Sergeant Andrew Shy
Edited on on Tue May 12th, 2026 @ 6:52am
2,643 words; about a 13 minute read
Mission:
The Cure: Operation Kakori
Location: Breyet Nor - The Badlands
Timeline: MD004 1700 hrs
Jayna looked at him coolly and raised an eyebrow. She recognized him from their briefings and her undercover assignment on Empok Nor. Leyton himself. This was unexpected and unwelcome. It changed everything and yet changed nothing. "Your information is...limited. I was on the Pioneer." She could not--would not--betray the mission or the rest of the team.
Emiko picked up on Jayna's lead. "I did not agree with the Federation either. So, when my mentor told me that she was leaving, I came with her."
Jayna raised an eyebrow at Leyton and smiled.
Leyton returned the smile, although his looked more sinister. "You are talking to a man who by all rights is the Director of Starfleet Operations. Do not try to tell me how limited my information is." He was about to turn on Emiko and ask exactly what she did not agree with, when his thoughts were interrupted by a new arrival.
Shy took point and lead the three man recovery party through the station. He could sense something was off amongst the crowd that sifted through the station’s areas. Weaving on a non-standard path toward the brig (Andrew was more than a little familiar with Nor class brigs) they approached to within fifteen meters in what he judged to be a blind semi-blind spot in the security cameras. Subvocalizing over the short-range coms they were using, Andrew said "We're in luck. No guards posted outside the brig yet. Unless there's a better idea, I'm going to jimmy the lock and we can walk right in..."
Andrew was scanning his sector of responsibility when he caught sight of a familiar face, though dressed differently than he remembered. "What the...that sure looks like Mira," he murmured, catching sight of a figure that was approaching the brig entrance.
Jayde was on her way to the brig when she caught the word Mira and stopped. Marines? Yeah. that tracked. She went over to Andrew, a finger over her lips to remind him to be quiet.
Adélaïde stopped half a step behind Andrew, close enough to cover him without crowding his shoulder. Her hand didn’t snap to her weapon, but it settled near enough that the difference hardly mattered.
For a second her eyes stayed on the woman’s face, taking in the familiar lines and the wrong clothes, the timing of it, the way she moved straight toward them with a finger to her lips like she had every right to be there.
That, more than anything, made Adélaïde wary.
“Andrew,” she murmured, barely moving her mouth. Not a warning exactly. More a tether. A reminder that he wasn’t seeing this alone.
Her gaze flicked once toward the brig entrance, then back to Jayde.
“Convenient,” she said quietly.
It wasn’t an accusation. Not quite. But it carried enough doubt to make clear she wasn’t about to treat this like a miracle just because they needed one.
Adélaïde shifted her weight, angling herself so she could watch both the corridor and the woman now standing in front of them.
“If you’re here to help, now would be a brilliant time to start.”
Andrew cast a covert look around, then moved to the entrance to the brig and sub-vocalized, "Convenient doesn't cover it by half but we're going to breach." Glancing around his shoulder for Walken, he assumed the Platoon sergeant was nearby but didn't see him. Since he recognized Jayde, he hoped he was guessing right.
"Jayde he said so she could hear him, "Andrew from the Cure. We're going in. Me first, Adelaide right behind and our Platoon Sergeant on drag. I'm going right, Addy go left...Jayde right down the middle and we'll sweep the room, go right inside the door and pause. Turn your faces away cause I'm going to toss a flash. Any problems with that?"
Jayde nodded once, her eyes continually scanning the area. "Quietly and quickly," she subvocalized back.
Adélaïde gave Andrew the smallest nod, already shifting her stance before he’d finished speaking. The nickname barely registered beyond the familiar ease of it. They had moved through worse spaces together than this, and if he said right, she trusted herself to make left work.
“Works for me,” she murmured, voice low enough to stay between them.
Her gaze skimmed the door seam, the frame, the panel, then the corridor beyond Jayde’s shoulder. No guards outside didn’t mean no eyes, and no noise didn’t mean safe. It just meant they had a narrow little slice of luck and not much time to spend admiring it.
She eased one hand closer to her weapon, shoulders loosening rather than tightening.
“On you.”
Jayde didn't care what they did, as long as they did it quickly. "We don't have much time."
"Less than even that," Andrew muttered as he walked up to the security door to the Cardassian brig area. He looked the control mechanism over, recognizing the interface and took a cube from his pocket. Placing it just above the access panel, he pressed the cube forcefully against the surface. The heat from his hand and the mashing of the cube caused vapor to rise as a chemical reaction caused acid to form and eat its way through to destroy the plate, shorting it out and causing the door to cycle.
When he saw the vapor, Andrew activated his comm again and subvocalized, "Hack: Three. Two. One. Go."
As the door cycled, he rushed in, moving to his right. With his right hand, he had the carbine up and out of his coat, the stock extending as it read level and charged. With his left hand, he cast out two Bester stun grenades out and yelled, "BANG BANG BANG," shutting his eyes and turning his head as he saw the stunned yes of a quartet Cardassian guards, a human that kinda looked familiar. In a cell, Jayna and Emiko's eyes flashed toward them."
The four Cardassian guards were on station. Two stood on either side of the cell, and two were in the corners. The flashbang caught everyone by surprise. The guards took a stumble back into the wall. The two in front of the cell, who were closer to the flash, fell to the ground stunned and blinded. Both began screaming with pain, but those were cut off as the shock affects hit. Trickles of black colored blood oozing from the corners of their eyes. The two in the corners seemed to experience pain and discomfort but were still on their feet as they rubbed their eyes. Leyton dropped to his knees with temporary blindness.
Shielding himself from the worst of the flashbangs, Andrew rushed forward and thwacked one of the guards in the back of the head who had been shielded from the worst of the affects by his fellows. Stunned, the guard's arms were like ropes as he bound him at the wrists with a zip tie, then got out the traditional duct tape for a gag. "Got a love species programmable grenades," he commented, as he finished trussing up the first guard and tossed the tape to Jayde as she did for her two guards.
Stepping to the vaguely familiar human taking care not to disturb Jade as she stuck her knee in the man's back, Andrew pulled a deck of cards from his pocket and held it near the man. One of the cards glowed slightly and he retrieved it from the deck. The red Joker faded and took on a near enough likeness, though the DNA programmed card was enough of a tell-tail. "James Leyton. Wanted for Treason by the Federation. Target of opportunity, alive or dead. Or some combination," the marine quipped. He dropped the card which fizzled as the self-destruct caused it to go up in vapor prior to hitting the deck. Andrew stuffed the deck into a pocket and moved to tend to the guards.
Jayde recognized Leyton and swore. This was bad. She looked at Andrew, then nodded to the man on the floor, then dropped to her knees beside him. There would be time for explanations later. She kept one hand free in case she needed it. With the other, she found the pressure points on the man's face and pressed in. "My mind to your mind. My thoughts to your thoughts, scumbag." She wasn't sure if the words were even necessary, but she needed to make sure this worked. She first told him to forget the flash bangs and the Marines. They'd have to deal with him later. That done, Jayde left him on the deck and went to join the Marines.
Once Jayde stepped away from Leyton he stood and motioned to the guards to get the Marines. When he stood up his demeanor was as if there was nothing happening. Instead, he stood resolute, as if the day was already his. "Take them down." He yelled and ran for the exit.
Andrew was caught flat footed, but went after Leyton still the same missing the slippery bugger by inches. Watching the man flee into the semi-crowded corridor, Andrew nearly fired his shock gun but stopped at the last minute.
"Mother puss-bucket," he swore slightly before turning back and taking in the room. "Ok, that tears it. We've got to go. Ten-seconds and we're out," Andrew said checking his watch and moving back to assist.
Emiko dared not move. After all, right now she was supposed to be a turncoat. She had to wait to see how this developed. If she was rescued, then great! She was out of this mess! If not, well, then she could ask, "If I was with them, then why didn't I help them?" All in all, the situation seemed to be beneficial to her. For now, she would watch the interaction and watch Jayna for what she should do next.
Jayna took Emiko by the arm and pulled her to a wall away from the door. This was going to get messy and they didn't need to be in the line of fire when what she hoped were the Marines came through the door.
Emiko let herself be pulled by Jayna and made certain to stay on Jayna's heels. Whatever was going to happen, she knew that she probably should not be there for it.
The second Cardassian guard groaned, and started to push himself up and Andrew kicked him in the ear. It was more of a love tap than a hard kick but the Cardassian's head bounced off the deck and he knelt on the female's back while he applied a zip tie, the cable auto-snugging. Then he looked over to Jayde who threw the tape back and he finished binding her. Not being a total snot, Andrew drug the Cardassians to seated positions and began duct taping all of them together into one big happy bundle.
He'd even add a bow.
While Andrew took care of the Cardassians, Jayde opened the cell. "Everybody out. Ride's leaving as soon as we get there."
Adélaïde came through on Andrew’s left as the flash went off, head turned just enough to save her eyes from the worst of it. Even so, the burst still bit at the edges of her vision, sharp white blooming and fading as she swept her side of the room.
The Cardassians took it worse. Much worse.
Their eyes were adapted for the lower, amber-dark lighting their people favoured, pupils and retinal structures built to drink in detail from gloom rather than shrug off sudden brilliance. The Bester grenades were built to exploit that, tuning the flash and sonic snap hard enough to overload their senses without killing them. To a human it was pain, disorientation, a few ugly seconds. To a Cardassian, caught close and unshielded, it was like having the room driven straight through the nerves behind the eyes.
The nearest guard had staggered into the wall, one hand clawing at his face, black blood already gathering in thin tracks at the corners of his eyes. His other hand groped uselessly for a weapon he could barely see.
Addy closed the distance before he found it, driving her shoulder into him hard enough to pin him back against the bulkhead. She hooked his wrist, twisted, and brought his arm down behind him in one clean motion.
“Stay down,” she muttered, though whether he understood her or not hardly mattered.
Her knee came in behind his, dropping him awkwardly to the deck. A zip tie snapped around his wrists a second later, tight and neat, her movements quick without getting frantic. She glanced once toward Andrew as he started making a package deal out of the other guards, then flicked her eyes to Jayde at the cell controls.
When the door opened, Adélaïde was already moving that way.
“Marley, Jayna, with me,” she said, keeping her voice low but firm, one hand reaching to guide without grabbing. Her gaze checked them both in quick pieces: faces, hands, balance, signs of bleeding, shock, anything that might slow them once they started running. Emiko had the look of someone still half inside her own head. Jayna looked steadier, but that did not mean unharmed.
“You walking?” she asked Emiko, softer now, but still with purpose. “Good. Keep close and don’t stop unless I put you down myself.”
The corner of her mouth lifted, faint and brief, more reassurance than joke.
She looked to Jayna next, giving her a small nod that said there would be questions later, but not here. Not with Leyton loose and the station starting to wake up around them.
Jayna nodded back, understanding.
Andrew tossed his carbine to Lieutenant Jayna and repeated, "Leyton had a capture or kill order on him. He's a bad bad boy...too bad."
Jayna caught the carbine and nodded. "Yeah. He'll show up again, just like a bad penny," But she, too, was sorry he got away, but he was not a priority right now. The data was.
She glanced once at Jayde as she fell in line with the others. The two would have to talk once they were back on the Valiant.
At Andrew’s comment about Leyton, Adélaïde’s eyes snapped briefly toward the exit he had taken, jaw tightening.
“Then he can be bad somewhere else for the next two minutes,” she said, already shifting herself between the rescued pair and the open room. “We’ve got ours. Move.”
As Leyton cleared the Brig complex he had one goal. He had to intercept the Gul and get to Ops. If Starfleet Intelligence was here, and the Marines that meant that there was a mothership somewhere out there. It had to be destroyed.
A joint post by:
James Leyton
Commanding Officer, New Maquis Forces
Sergeant Adélaïde Moreau
SAR Specialist, Team 2, The Cure
USS Pioneer
Petty Officer Third Class Emiko Marley
Intelligence Communications Specialist, USS Pioneer
Sergeant Andrew Shy
Tactical Systems Operator, Team 2, The Cure
USS Pioneer
Lieutenant Mira Jayna
Intelligence Officer, The Cure
USS Pioneer
RSS Feed