An Echo(fox) in the Night
Posted on Mon Aug 3rd, 2026 @ 5:40pm by "Sonnet" & "Echofox"
Edited on on Mon Aug 3rd, 2026 @ 5:40pm
978 words; about a 5 minute read
Mission:
ARYL 1X06: For Peaceful Purposes
Location: Somme Colony
Timeline: 3 November 2290, 0130
It was raining in the valley.
The Federation colony on the largest moon of Somme II was not a sunny place. Starfleet puts its outpost on the hilltop. For strategic purposes, it was said, but to the locals it still meant all the best real estate was in government control.
Further down, the locals lived their dreary little lives. They awoke, they went to work, they drank their troubles away, they went to bed. And beyond this little world, nobody cared. Few probably even knew about it. The local Councilor, all the way on Neumenedes, might have struggled to remember that the hundred thousand or so sentients that made this little mudball their home were his constituents. The important thing was that the factories met output quotas. Beyond that, no one cared to give the little moon a second glance.
The clinkity-clink of a few credits on the glass-covered front desk told the security guard not to look up from his videos for a few seconds. Oh, did the door open? The wind pushes debris past sometimes. Ignore the elevator, it activates on its own sometimes. The manager should call maintenance about that. In the morning. On someone else’s shift.
The apparently broken lift stopped on the ninth floor, and the hooded figure who had most certainly not just bribed their way into the building found themself at just one nondescript apartment door out of dozens.
Knock knock knock
The door audibly clicked unlocked and slid open with a grind. It closed behind the visitor just as loudly.
”Password.”
The visitor took another step in.
”There are three disruptors pointed at you. Tell me the password.”
The figure pulled her hood down and smirked. “There’s one disruptor pointed at me and it isn’t charged properly.” She teased out her blonde hair, pulling a few loose locks behind her pointed ears.
”…Close enough. Wipe your feet and come in. Don’t mind me not getting up. How’ve you been, Sonnet?”
The Romulan took off her cloak and dropped it into a pile on the floor as she strolled into the apartment’s poorly lit living room. Indeed, the only light came from monitors. A dozen screens of different sizes and origins were scattered around the room, with half as many keyboards or similar input devices plugged into them.
In the middle of it all was one woman, human, sitting on a rolling office chair, lit up by the screens and a set of electro-tattoos on her forearms.
”Get yourself a drink,” she told Sonnet, gesturing vaguely toward the apartment’s small kitchen. “I’ll be just a minute.”
”There’s nothing in here but Red Bull,” Sonnet observed as she stared into the fridge.
“Oh, am I out of Monster? Sorry.” Her expression of intense concentration softened into a smile, followed by a grin. “Yes! I am invincible!” She pushed herself to her feet in triumph. “These idiots. Apparently no one told the Syndicate reps here about a little thing called ‘data security’. Their mistress is gonna be pissed.” She leaned forward to tap a few more keys. “‘Better luck next time, slug heads!’” She looked up and finally met Sonnet’s eyes. “Hi. Been a while. Wanna go get something to eat? I’m buying, since I’m about half a million credits richer than I was five minutes ago.”
“I need you to pack up,” Sonnet said. “I’m activated, and as of right now so are you, Eli-”
”Echofox,” the computer whiz corrected, frowning and crossing her arms in front of her. “My name is Echofox. You know that. We’ve only worked together for eight years.”
”Well, Echofox,” Sonnet said, teasingly. “Maybe I just like reminding you of what I know about you. Things Starfleet Security would just looove to know about…”
Echofox impassively tapped a few keys and a new image came onto a monitor that Sonnet could see. “This is still active, you know.”
Sonnet knew it well. The deadman’s switch that dumped a plethora of information onto the public networks, which her enemies could easily use to track her down. She frowned for just a moment… and then her grin came back. “I’ve missed you, Echofox. Now, pack up what you need and let’s go. Bring a coat; my ship’s a bit far and it’s raining.”
”It’s always raining,” Echofox said, gathering just a pair of unusual amber data rods from one of her terminals and putting them in her pocket. “Just one last thing.”
She lifted a floor panel to reveal a storage compartment, from which she collected a complicated-looking electronic device. “I should be leaving anyway,” she observed, “on the off-chance that the Lady Of The Azure Night hires the right kind of cyber sleuth.”
”They’d find you here?” Sonnet asked.
Echofox shrugged as she adjusted some dials on her machine. “They might track it to the block. And they have enough muscle to search every room if they wanted. Here we go.” An analog clock started to tick down. “We should go. Grab my coat.”
Two minutes later, the clinkity-clink of credits alerted the front desk guard to the fact that his show was very interesting and he should keep watching.
Thirteen minutes after that, the entire building lost power, as a powerful electromagnetic pulse disrupted the EPS grid and erased every computer system within a two hundred meter radius of a nondescript apartment on the ninth floor.
And nearly two hours beyond that, a ship with a false transponder signal took off from a clearing deep in the valley below Somme Colony. On which agent Sonnet and agent Echofox were starting their work in support of their employer.
END
“Sonnet”
Enemy Agent
“Echofox”
Enemy Agent
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