Chapter Text
Prelude: Arrival
Triangle Protection Zone
USS San Sebastián (NCC-3230)
Lieutenant Meghan Emma Rosewarne stares at the sparking debris and energy discharge. Her XO, Haveka, a Western Hemisphere Tellarite comes up beside her command chair on the bridge. She closes her eyes, knowing what she is going to tell her.
“We can detect no sign of the Aerfen, Captain,” she says in her deceptively mild and quiet voice. “There is nothing but debris here. We haven’t been able to determine whether it is hers or not. The sheer volume tells me that there is something else out there.”
Emma nods. Chandra is going to hurt on this one, she thinks, her mind on her Academy classmate. Along with her new Deputy and her flag captain.
Scarcely had the San Sebastián arrived at Merlin, before the distress call had come in. Her own squadron commander hadn’t arrived yet after their shakedown exercises. Chandra had given her a quick greeting, as well as a kiss that few subordinates would receive that hadn’t been part of their Academy bond, then sent her here, promising backup of some sort. In that brief moment, she had felt Chandra’s familiar taste in her Link. She’d also felt the weight of Chandra’s regard for the younger missing officer. Perhaps another prelanka-soné, a bond of all, was on its way to being formed.
She’d also felt, in another brief burst, the weight of Chandra’s pain and responsibility as CAG.
She knows a little bit of what that might feel like. A grave Rigelian’s multicolored face flashes in her mind—just as quickly sent to the recesses of her mind, where the memory of a destructive battle in a Nebula against a madman resides.
“Captain,” says another voice from the speaker below. She recognizes her new tactical officer, Lieutenant j.g. Jenny Morksogian. Her slight Philadelphia accent comes through in her words. In spite of everything, Emma thinks about her own pride in her Boston Southie accent. Her heart falls at Mork’s next words.
“We’ve got the signal of Aerfen’s log buoy,” she says.
“Where away?” Emma asks after a moment.
“At the edge of the debris field.” There is a noticeable pause there.
“What is it, Jenny?” Emma prompts gently.
“Some strange readings here. There’s a great deal of energy discharge around it. As well as debris that is non-Federation.”
“Any idea what that debris is?”
“No, ma’am,” Jenny replies.
“Is it safe?”
Another moment. “Radiation levels are kind of high, but we can bring it into an isolation hold.”
Emma looks at Haveka. “See to it, Number One,” she says.
“Another ship coming in, Captain. Can’t tell the signature right off hand,” says another voice at the Cohort table.
“Shields are still up, Cap,” Jenny says.
“Very well. Switch from standby mode on the Cohort.”
“Acknowledged, Captain.”
She feels Haveka looking at her. She moves her eyes to Haveka calm, but resolute features. The one remaining broken tusk giving her that resolute cast.
“What have we gotten ourselves into, Em?” she asks.
Your guess is as good as mine, Veka, she thinks, but doesn’t say.
I. Notification
Rear Admiral Mary Decker rubs her forehead as she reads the reports on the progress of the newest Excelsior-class being constructed in the yards. She reaches in and pulls out a small hypospray, making sure that she has the right dose for the massive migraine that splits her head.
She holds it up to her throat and presses the discharge button. The pain eases a little, but not too much. She replaces the injector in her bag and rises from where she leans on her elbows on her stand-up desk. She closes her eyes, seeing a slideshow of two faces in her mind’s eye.
The first, is of one who had come from her body. Decker’s bright smiling features, from a time before she had made an ass out of herself where her daughter was concerned. When she had pressed Decker to follow her into the engineering field. Instead, the stubborn young woman had opted for the command/pilot/weapons track that Mary’s own grandfather, father, and older brother had taken.
All of whom had died in the line of duty. At least two of them in the orbit of Jim Kirk, Starfleet’s premiere starship commander.
She had held a grudge against Kirk for that, from the time that Matt Decker had died on the Constellation’s shuttle, to the time that Will had ‘merged’ with whatever alien presence was threatening Earth. Matt’s death had already encouraged her to continue her rebellion against the command track, following in her maternal grandfather’s footsteps, with the encouragement of Montgomery Scott, her mentor in the Engineering field.
Her aptitude, as well as Scotty’s interest, had propelled her into her life’s work. She’d shared the Scotsman’s love of fixing and building things. His respect for Kirk, as well as gently pressing her to open her eyes and her heart to heal, sometime after Will’s disappearance, had gone a long way towards healing that grudge against his captain. She feels a stab of grief shove its way into her chest.
It had been two years since Scotty had disappeared. The loss was incalculable, particularly since he had told her in no uncertain terms, after a talk with her daughter, to let Decker make her own path. She had been angry with him, as he had revealed that he thought that while Decker was smart as hell and could do most anything she set her mind to, her heart was in commanding a starship, rather than fixing one.
The same thing that had caused a schism with her own wife, who had practically raised Decker, even though they shared no blood.
Mary grits her teeth. She’d called Kim to talk, after they had laughed together at Decker and Chandra’s medal ceremony. She’d found out that her now ex-wife was no longer on Earth, but on her way to an assignment to Chandra’s group as CMO. Her furniture from their formerly shared apartment in storage.
Mary exhales.
The hatch to her office opens. She looks up at the interruption of her reverie. Her Chief of Staff, Commander (E) Joelle Grayson walks in. For once she isn’t wearing the thick-framed screens over her dark eyes, feeding data to her in real time.
Mary opens her eyes to address the intrusion when she sees the look in those dark eyes.
A look of pain.
“Joelle?” she starts. She falls silent as two men in service dress-Alpha uniforms step in from behind her aide. She recognizes the Tellarite Gavek, the full Admiral over Starfleet Engineering Command.
The other is a Rear Admiral, carrying a swagger stick.
The chief of staff for Starfleet Special Operations Command, Lawrence Styles.
Her heart seizes. She closes her eyes, seeing the dry prose of the official Starfleet communiqué that is suddenly in her future.
The Admiralty regrets to inform you of the loss of the USS Aerfen (NCC-1794). All aboard are missing and presumed dead.
II. Backup
Emma wakes from dozing in her command chair as she waits for the ship that jumped into their area to further identify itself. It looks like a Romulan dartship—a mothership, but doesn’t have any Romulan signals or even signatures of the usual singularity driven warp engine of a Warbird. Any of the raptor-like skin of a Romulan fleet vessel had been scoured away, leaving only the sigil of a flaming Klingon skull.
She keeps her breathing even as she wakens. Jenny Morksogian is on the bridge now, while Gaveka is elsewhere. She realizes that the seven-hour second ‘overnight’ watch from 0000-0700 had changed to a five hour ‘day’ shift and that the full starboard watch is at battle stations.
“What are you doing here, Mork?” she asks, her eyes narrowing. “You should be asleep.”
“I will when you do, Skipper,” she says. “I’ve got Ensign Stokes on watch in CIC. I can take the bridge, as well. Haveka needed her beauty sleep so I’ll take this one and let her get back up here.”
Emma stifles an eyeroll at Jenny’s good natured dig at the surprisingly agreeable Tellarite. One who only seems to demonstrate her genetic argumentative nature with her own kind. Particularly those from the eastern continents.
She’d had her zingers for Morksogian, as well. Particularly well-researched zingers about ancient and revived Philadelphia sports teams. Still beloved after three centuries and two world-conflicts.
Just as they are in her own Boston.
She finally nods under Mork’s obsidian stare. She gets up and moves towards the woman, a year behind her in the Academy.
“Any change?”
“Nope. Don’t seem to want to let us near the log buoy. We’re keeping our shields up and at Condition III.”
Jenny nods. “They’re just moving to keep between us and the log buoy right?”
“Captain,” comes from Stokes in CIC. “Ship is powering up weapons!”
“Sounding General Quarters,” the comm tech says from the CIC. The alarm gong starts in.
“Some sort of displacement between us, Captain!” Stokes shouts.
“Calm yourself Mr. Stokes,” Morksogian says as Haveka climbs up to the bridge. She and Mork exchange an old-fashioned fist bump as they pass.
“The ship is opening fire,” Stokes says more calmly.
Emma shakes her head. “Power up weapons,” she says.
She sees a flash of light in the middle distance. There is a full, soundless explosion of light, fire, and gas.
A distinctive shape can be seen for a moment, before it disappears into the ball of fire.
“A Klingon Bird of Prey,” Haveka says.
“There were no Imperial signals, Skipper,” Stokes says.
“Signal from our new friend, Captain,” comms says.
There is a pause.
“Well, Comms?” Emma asks.
She hears the start of a word. She exhales sharply, but doesn’t intervene.
“It’s a code I’ve never seen before. I had to look it up. It’s Federation. Computer ids it as an idiosyncratic code for a Federation Free Agent.”
She didn’t expect that. An agent who answers only to the Federation Security Advisor, on the authority of the President. She didn’t even think they were even around anymore.
“What do they want?” she asks.
“To beam someone directly to the bridge.”
Emma purses her lips. “Any other ships around?”
“No, Captain.”
“Lower the shields.” She nods at Mork, who pulls out a phaser from a small-arms locker.
Another two seconds and the figure is on the bridge.
Emma stares at the figure. Memories surge through her mind at the familiar opalescent eyes and auburn-gold beard. Another one who had been closest with Roged Meeliy, their Rigelian classmate.
The gray hair and the uniform are not familiar. She feels her eyes widen as she sees the olive green reactive camouflage uniform, with an assault phaser pistol strapped to his lower right thigh. On the left side of his chest is a subdued patch. Showing between the two lower arms of a Starfleet delta is a pair of ancient crossed rifles superimposed over an anchor. Below it on a scroll are the words, Per Astra, Per Terram.
By the Stars, by the Land.
The muscular bulldog with a spiked collar holding up the rifles and delta is probably unofficial. The black compass rose-star of his rank on a flap buttoned to his chest might still be unofficial.
“Jesus, Croft,” she says. “I didn’t know you’d turned into a jarhead.”
He gives that crooked grin, so familiar to her. “They had to find a place to put me, somewhere,” he says. The grin turns even more devilish, if that is possible. “I’ve apparently developed a taste for crayons.”
The eyeroll can probably be felt in the Triangle. “So you’re a Federation Free Agent now?”
He snorts. “Guess they’ll have to change that code, now that somebody hacked it and abused it.”
III. Aftershock
Chandra sits at her desk in her ready room. She fights to keep her Link under control as the crushing grief threatens to overwhelm her. She stares at the text on the PADD in her hand. A report from another of her classmates, just arrived in-theater.
The first one of her first Lancer squadron. Just one ship commanded by a woman who had suffered her own incalculable loss at Mutara. A loss of the one who had grown closest to her and one another among those of their bond.
A loss, as well as her own injury, that had sent her from Starfleet for two years.
She exhales, looking at the decanter in its stable cabinet. No, she thinks. I’m needed.
Chandra refuses to sink into the mourning rites of her people. Not just because she doesn’t have enough evidence of Decker and her crew’s deaths. She chokes as she thinks of those words.
I also can’t find her in the Link of the bond we had started forming, she thinks. Her heart sinks at the reality that a young life, full of promise as a person, as well as a Starfleet officer, had been snuffed out.
She stands up and moves out of the ready room. The crew in the CIC rise and gaze at her. She nods to them, then moves through to the main passageway.
There are two others on this ship whose grief probably outstrips hers.
She moves into the Sickbay.
Dr. Kimberly Sinclair rises from her desk. Chandra sees a hologram playing over her PADD on the desk. The image of a younger version of Decker Sinclair. No more than six years old, her hair more blonde in this holo.
Until the image changes and she sees Decker in the dress whites, with the gold sash under her sword belt of the Cadet Captain of the latest Starfleet Academy class to graduate the newest crop of officers. Her eyes and smile shining almost as bright as the six thin gold stripes and star on her shoulder boards.
Chandra reaches out with her Link, keeping the physical manifestation of the Threads to nil.
Kim looks up. Her dark eyes show her pain, but she is calm, otherwise.
“Kim,” Chandra says.
Kim rises and walks over to Chandra. She pulls her captain into her arms. Chandra lets her tears flow, as she feels the wetness on her own shoulder. They hold each other for a long moment. She wonders if this would be the right time to start the mourning rites in her Link manifesting in the Threads.
The door snaps open. They both turn and look at the young woman standing there.
Siobhan Lincolnton stares at them. There are tear streaks on her freckled cheeks; her mass of copper curls are unbound and wild. She is clad in a tanktop and her underwear, as if she had been sleeping.
Chandra’s eyes widen as she sees the small creature attached to Siobhan’s wounded right shoulder.
Or her formerly wounded shoulder.
Chandra moves over to her captain. She stops when she looks into Siobhan’s eyes.
The brown windows aren’t filled with grief, as Chandra knows that her gray versions are. As Decker’s mother’s are.
They are filled with certainty.
“Captain,” she starts. “Chan.”
“What is it, Shiv?”
She takes both of them in with her gaze. Her voice is calm, but with some urgency.
“I think Decker’s alive.”