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11
Episode 02: Cosmic Imperative / Re: C3: S [Day 2 19:45] Tis Not Goodbye...
Last post by P.C. Haring -
[Lt. Reggie Suder | Guest Quarters | Deck 06 |Vector 02 | USS Theurgy] Attn: @Stegro88‍ ‍ 

It took every ounce of self control she had not to cry.   Even so, Reggie felt the tear ducts open up and her cybernetic eyes start to tear up.  For T'Less, for any Vulcan really, those words were moving, and emotional and genuine.  She felt the feeling in what she'd said, and it wasn't necessarily through her Betazoid telepathy.  She choked up on the words, caught in her throat

She nodded, trying to keep her emotions in check, but when she finally spoke, her voice cracked and faltered, betraying her thin veil.  "Yes...  Of course."

Words failed the Betazoid and through more than a few ideas crossed her mind, most of which she rejected as being too overt too soon.  Finally she put her arms out, inviting T'Less into an embrace.

"Only if you want..."
12
Episode 02: Cosmic Imperative / Re: Epilogue: They That Shed Their Blood [Day 03 | 1800 ]
Last post by P.C. Haring -
[ Lieutenant Reggie Suder | Arboretum | Deck 22 | Vector 3 | USS Theurgy ] Attn: @RyeTanker‍  @Brutus‍  @Nolan @Ellen Fitz‍ @chXinya‍ @Dumedion‍ @Griff‍ @rae‍ @Stegro88‍ @Eiural @tongieboi‍ @Pierce‍ @Tae‍ @Nesota Kynnovan‍ @Hans Applegate‍  @joshs1000‍ @Krajin‍ @Eden‍ @TWilkins‍


Silently she stood.  Although the moment did not call for it, the Parade Rest stance felt most appropriate given the circumstance.  Respect needed to be paid, though standing at full attention would draw too much attention to her.  This was not about her, at least not directly.

Someone had once told her that memorials and funerals were not for the dead, but for the living.  The dead were...dead.  What did their corpse care?  No.  Through the dogma the various traditions, the religions, and the customs, Reggie had concluded long ago that they existed for the living.  To give them comfort in a routine in a protocol through which they could say goodbye to their family and friends. 

And she had more than a few to say goodbye to this afternoon.  Her wingman, Wraith, had been killed in the battle.  Troubled though he was, and despite the resentment he had tried, and occasionally failed, to hide over her being promoted over him after he trained her, Logan had been a steadfast pilot and, his insubordination notwithstanding, one of the best wingmen she'd ever had.

Now he was gone. 

So too was Kalil.  The only RIO she'd known since flight school, the other half of 'team Gemini' was dead.  Over the years and through the war they'd worked seamlessly together, their telepathic link being likened to a mini borg collective, one where pure thought was shared and the two worked as one.  Together they'd been formidable, skilled, deadly.  Now Kalil was dead.  And with the death of Team Gemini, Reggie wondered if she ought to consider changing her callsign.  Not sure if it felt appropriate any longer.

But before all that she would need a new RIO, and with Wraith's death, Hunter needed a new pilot.  Reggie had not yet approached the ensign, but she figured Alith would see the logic in the partnership.

What was it about her and Vulcans?

That thought led her to a certain Vulcan on bridge watch, one whom she wished could be there to comfort her now, one whom she longed to see.  They'd had a far more direct conversation before the battle of the Triangle and Reggie was eager... moreso than she realized... to see where the relationship between the two of them could go.  But even that took a back seat to a much more fundamental need... 

She did not want to be alone tonight.

Quietly she tapped out a quick note to T'Less...

2030 hours
My quarters
casual.

She was about to hit the send button when another thought hit her.

Please...

She left the note unsigned, knowing that the message header would identify her as the sender, and tapped the "send" button as she turned her attention back to the memorial service already in progress.

[ Lieutenant Kestra Pren | Quarters | Deck 7 | Vector 1 | USS Theurgy ]

She stayed away. 

Not because she didn't respect the sacrifice of those who had died.  Quite the opposite.  She respected it more than anyone knew and based on the looks she was already getting from the various crewmembers that passed her, she needed to keep a low profile aboard until she had the chance to talk to Lt. Suder, and Captain Stark.  For her to attend this funeral service would cause a hell of a spectacle and distract from the real purpose. Allowing this crew to say goodbye to their colleagues.

They weren't her crew, at least not yet.  They would be soon enough, but she hadn't seen even a meager fraction of the hell they had.  It wasn't her place to attend.

So, instead she remained in her quarters, unpacking and setting up.  Her tactical vest had taken a beating on the Romulan station, but it was nothing she couldn't get repaired in time.  Plus from what she'd come to understand, that gear was ancient tech compared to the gear on board Theurgy and she looked forward to the formal training.

She'd packed light, of course, with most of her off duty clothes having been stored as replicator patterns on an isolenear chip and while she watched the memorial from the wall mounted monitor in her quarters, she worked to replicate and put away her wardrobe.  But even as she worked, she knew that her job was just getting started and the hardest part was the first thing she had to do....

She had to introduce herself to Reggie Suder.

[Lt. CMDR Hathev | Chief Counselors Office | Deck 11 | Vector 2 | USS Theurgy]

It was illogical for the Chief Counselor not to attend the memorial service in person, but she had the duty and it would have been inappropriate for her to force a subordinate to take her place so she could attend.  Crew morale was served by these events and the emotional needs of the many far outweighed her own psychological needs.  

It was only logical.  

Yet she was not immune to the proceedings going on in the Arborettum.  As the the live feed from the official memorial service streamed into her office terminal, Hathev privatly held a memorial for the fallen in the Vulcan tradition.  No not all of the recently deceased were Vulcan, but still she felt their loss, felt the need to honor them, and given everything that had happened, decided that the grounding of the familiar was the most appropriate for her own well being.

It also gave her time to reflect. 

Not only had she lost a Kal'Toh partner in the form of Ensign Cir'Ce but she'd also lost a trusted friend and Hathev felt that loss deeper than any of the others.  Hathev had not come aboard the ship willingly, but it had been a mind meld with Cir'Ce that convinced her of the truth and caused her to decide to stay on board, to be branded as a traitor, and now pardoned by President Bacco.

The Vulcan found her thoughts returning to Cir'Ce, to their first Kal'toh game together.  Cir'Ce had observed that the Federation's core values had eroded, that it's mission of peace had given way to a mission of war.  She had likened the change in stance to a cancer that needed to be excised and although Hathev had reasoned that it was a necessity of the time, she now wondered if the Ensign was more right than she'd initially been given credit.

Hathev's time in the Starfleet had cost her dearly.   She'd lost her son, her son's father, her relationship with her fiancé, and her fiancé.  For a time she'd lost her freedom within the Federation, accused along with the rest of the crew of crimes she had not comitted, and now pardoned...excused for haiving committed those crimes in the first place.  Hathev saw it for what it was...

Political posturing.

Even now, with the truth blindly in front of them, the Federation could not admit they had been wrong.  At least not publicly.  The Theurgy crew had seen the truth, had stood against it, been the only one.  For their actions they had been branded as traitors and now that the corruption had been excised they had been pardoned.    A pardon should never have been in the discussion.  The charges should have been dropped, their records expunged and frankly, the crew was owed a formal apology.  But instead of an apology and a dropping of charges as was deserved, they were pardoned.  

Forgiven for the implied guilt of crimes that had never occurred in the first place.

It disgusted her and she realized he wanted no part in it.

She still had a job to do, and she would see the Theurgy's mission out to it's conclusion.  But when all was said and done, and if she survived, Hathev was no longer sure she would desire to find a home within the Federation.
13
Episode 02: Cosmic Imperative / Epi S: [Day 03 | 0900] Changing lanes
Last post by Krajin -
[ Lt.Thane Va’rek ] | Personal Quarters | Deck 7 | Vector 01 | USS Theurgy ] Attn: @Pierce

It had been just over six hours since Thane had been rather rudely awakened from his frozen sleep. His injuries had been treated, and he was released after being monitored. He had wandered the halls of the ship in naught but his skivvies and a thermal blanket with little care to what others saw or judged. There was so much damage to the Helmet, some corridors were blocked off, while others had only partial power. Approaching his quarters, Thane entered the code for the room, and sighed quietly as the door partly opened and one half developed an erratic twitch as something blocked it from fully opening. With a sigh and a shrug, Thane entered the room and looked around. The lights were dead, but power otherwise seemed okay, as its display was still functional.

The view out his windows to space outside was nice enough, though, and let in some passive light from the nearby Nebula. After his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Thane hunted for a torch and used it to take a shower and get dressed in the dark. He sat down by his trunk and unsealed it with a bio-print scan on the lock and checked the contents, the clothes, the personal tools and other bits had mostly survived intact with only some minor stuff needing cleaning and the more delicate tools replaced. He checked the S.I.-issued equipment kit and found it had survived. No messages or activation codes had been sent, so they got shoved back into the box and put away.

While he worked on getting his room squared away, his PADD dictated messages, reports, and the current senior staff of Theurgy. With the Theurgy's intelligence detachment onboard, he knew that they would become aware of another potential asset having been defrosted. One part of him was curious if he'd be activated and pulled from Security or if he'd be let to run around as a Security Officer. Gods knew that the ship needed allot of shuffling around, roles filled, and people promoted. When the Chief of Intel was brought up, Thane paused the PADD and pulled up her profile to give it a read. He had to know who was pulling the strings on this ship just in case things got squirrely. It was a fascinating read to say the least, but something seemed off. He laid out on the couch and began to read what he could of the other, active members of the Intel Branch before switching to Security personnel. Of course, while he read in the darkness, fate was about to mess with him with a call.
14
Episode 02: Cosmic Imperative / Re: Epilogue: They That Shed Their Blood [Day 03 | 1800 ]
Last post by RyeTanker -
[ Lieutenant Commander Frank Arnold | Corridor outside the Arboretum Terrace | Deck 21 | Vector 3 | USS Theurgy ] Attn: @Brutus @Nolan  @ob2lander961  @Ellen Fitz  @chXinya  @Dumedion   @Griff   @rae   @Stegro88   @Eirual   @tongieboi   @Pierce   @Tae   @Nesota Kynnovan   @Hans Applegate   @joshs1000   @P.C. Haring   @Krajin   @Eden   @TWilkins

It was a good speech.  That much Frank was sure of.  He looked around and saw everyone dealing with their grief and loss as each one would.  Some wept, others simply stared, seeing only the times, events, and experiences that came with the personal touch of having been there.  His own eyes went up as he sorted his way through the mental filing cabinet and pulled up each of the people he'd lost.  Each one had a story.  They were the main character in their arc of life, and now it had come to a very abrupt end.  His eyes went to the slab of stone that represented the memorial to the fallen on the ship.  It didn't seem to matter what was going on, how much the ship was battered, or how much fighting took place; it felt as if this one monument was untouchable, invulnerable from all the chaos that surrounded it.  The names were too hard to see from where he was standing, and the Chief Engineer had to wonder, would anyone write the stories of the the names that had gone up on the stone face.  His mouth frowned.  The list was getting depressingly long, and it felt like the worst part was there was still plenty of space for more.

His mind went over the litany of issues that still had to be catalogued for repair.  On the whole, it could have been much worse.  Sure the ship had been stretched by all the fire that it had taken, but overall, a lot of the damage was considered minor.  The ablative armour layer had taken the brunt of the pounding when the shields had been knocked out, and a few holes had been punched in the hull; but the critical systems were still intact.  Arguably the worst had been the loss of the transporter inhibitor that was supposed to prevent boardings on the ship.  The inside of the ship was where the worst of the damage and cleanup was coming from.  He would have had more people at the memorial service today, but there were so many little spots that needed replacement and repairing that cumulatively it added up to a huge amount of work.  Power relays, ODN conduits, corridor panelling, doors, control panels, the list of stuff that was normally taken care of during a ship's fitting out needed to be replaced.  All those things added up to a major job. And the bodily fluids from blood loss and ruptured organs!  Engineering teams with respirators were sweeping the ship with Baryon projectors just to get rid of all the biological material.  Things like potted plants were no longer a consideration in someone's quarters.  There was a questionable liquid on it, it got zapped.

The FABs and other shuttle bays on the other hand.  Calling them headaches was akin to calling a supernova a hiccup.  Wreckage and blasted parts everywhere.  At least the structural reinforcing had held there.  He was very aware how close the ship had come to being broken in two from having one of the fighter magazines deciding to self immolate.  There's been barely enough room to get the fighters back aboard, and his thoughts turned sour at that.  There's been enough room to get them aboard because too many had not come back.  The Lone Wolves seemed to live a charmed life, and it had finally caught up with too many of them.  At least their struggle was over, they could rest.

That was a technical matter though and he was accutley aware of the the Andorian near the front.  She was leaning on a walking cane and he felt like a Betazoid in seeing the resentment radiating off her for needing it.  Her department had taken a beating holding the line against the Romulan incursions.  From what he could see, it had helped that security was more soldier than cop at this point, but they'd been pretty liberal with smashing almost everything in sight to incapacitate the Romulans.  Still, the superiority margin in close quarters was never good and many members of Security were either in one of the sickbays, or in the morgue. Case in point was Lieutenant zh'Wann's number 2.  Lieutenant Zark was in sickbay under medical sedation as she recovered.  Word was her surgery had been touch and go for a bit, but she looked like she was going to pull through.  What that looked like when they went off on whatever their next objective was would be anyone's guess . Lieutenant zh'Wann's gaze swept the room as if looking for threats, or maybe it was just to gauge the mood of the crew like he was doing.  Andorian blue eyes settled on human blue eyes for just a moment. A brief moment of respect between two department heads and a shared hardness that had to conceal any grief they were feeling.  More was left unsaid than said, and her chin dipped slightly. Then it was over her attention returned to the President.

He really should be focusing on the dead and remembering who they were, but there was so much work to do.  If they had spirits, the dead's were long gone.  Maybe they'd infused themselves into the ship and would protect them from here on out in their own way.  It was strange notion, and maybe it would give others some solace.  He mainly believed in energy fields, power flows, and the solidity of alloy structures.  That was what kept a ship from falling apart.  There was something to be said though of the collective will of the crew.  Sometimes it seemed that a ship only kept going just because of the guts of the crew.

His combadge beeped and he gave an irritated frown before banishing it.  He hadn't left instructions to not be disturbed, and he was proud that it had taken this long before he had been contacted. A quick tap answered the call. "Yes?"  He replied in an almost mumble. "Sorry Chief, but we need help near the lower FAB, it's.......it's something we need your call on."  The Chief sighed.  As much as he wanted to continue paying his respects, the work had to be done. "Understood. I'm on my way." He replied quietly before slipping out of the alcove of life back into the cold corridors.

[Lieutenant Ida zh'Wann]
The current head of security projected calm as she stood near where Captain Stark would when she finished her portion of the memorial service.  To most, she looked like the was attentive and stone cold. Internally she was appalled and irate. She disliked the idea of being injured, yet it had seemed unavoidable with all the action she'd taken part in to get the Romulans off the ship.  The brig was packed and she'd asked to have as many of the Romulans repatriated as soon as possible. She'd raised the idea of converting a cargo bay into a prisoner holding facility if they couldn't get them off the ship soon enough.  She wasn't sure how the Romulans were taking their current predicament, supposedly being on a ship full of humans was going to do something to their sense of smell, and she had no idea what the issue was, but it was supposed to be pretty vile.

The part that was appalled were the number casualties the crew had taken.  The numbers actually weren't that high, nowhere near as bad as when the Klingons had stormed the ship, but this time felt different as she looked at the rotating holo display showing the portraits of the those lost.  So many of them had seen so much action, and they had survived so much.  Now their time had come and their light had gone out forever.  The image of a cigar chewing smile of the bald Evelyn Rawley.  She didn't know the Wolf that well, but everyone knew that pirate's shit eating grin she gave when she smoked that horrible stoggie.  A large and loud personality, now forever silent.  The blonde Romulan, Valyn Amarik.  She respected the exploits the Intelligence Operative had and the skill needed to pull of the missions that would shift the power of the galaxy.  Now she would affect the galaxy no more, but her accomplishments would live on and had come to fruition.  The fact the President was standing here taking cognizance of what hte ship and its crew had gone through was living proof of it.  The next image faded in and the Andorian couldn't help but grind her teeth.  The stalwart head of Commander Kai Akoni, her boss, and in many ways, her mentor.  While getting her leg fixed, she'd looked over the reports and the video of what had happened to the previous head of Security and from she could see, it was unlikely that anyone would have been able to avoid the attack that killed him.  If there was any additional proof of that, it was the fact the same type of attack had killed Kino Jeen, but at least the weapons chief had taken her attacker with her.  It was a small consolation though and the Andorian's antennae laid flat against her head as she worked to keep her rage under control.  They would be sorely missed and the Zhen blinked once. Spirits keep and bless you Kai Akoni and Kino Jeen as you make your way to the land of ever ending bounty and warmth.  This was thought with a special reverence, but widely offered to all the fallen whose journey was now over while the rest of them carried on the struggle to rid themselves of this insidious menace.

[Chief Petty Officer Dominic Lau | On his way to his new quarters]
He had no equipment baggage or anything to speak of.  All he had at this point was his away team gear that he'd managed to carry with him from Donatra's ship.  He'd turned his rifle over to security much to their bewilderment since he was knew and had a rifle that wasn't registered.  And that was on top of having to play impromptu nurse in a situation he was totally not qualified for as he watched someone literally struggle for life in his hands and almost lose. What a day.  It had taken a bit longer to get the over worked quartermaster to officially register his team, but they were all set.

The Intel Chief looked at the PADD and looked at the doors.  He was almost there, just a few more, and he could have a shower, and get some sleep.  Here we are. Chief Lau thought to himself as he stopped in front of the standard doors and double checked the room number.  Pressing the entry button, the system obediently opened and he entered and his sense of relief evaporated as he looked at the common area.  His figurative hackels started to rise as he saw several items that clearly had Romulan origins.

He quickly tapped his combadge. "Cheung, it's Lau."  The reply was quick but clearly exhausted.

"Yeah Chief? You know, I'd really like a shower and some sleep."

"So do I, but I have a problem and I need you here with your PADD.  I need some precautions put in."

The pause was a bit longer then followed by a sigh. "Understood.  I'll be over in a few minutes."

[Lt (JG) XamotZark zh’Ptrell (Lt. Zark) | Main Sickbay | Deck 11 | Vector 02 | USS Theurgy]
Ensign Valyrk stood with stony poise as she made her rounds.  A few of the other medical staff were at the memorial, and if she were capable of such emotions, she would not have begrudged any of them at all.  A time to mourn was acceptable and would allow them to return to their normal duties with focus. She stopped next to a bed that held a sleeping yet bruised Andorian. Nurse Newberry was next to the still form helping to fluff out her shiny snow white locks. 

"There is no known information showing this course of action will allow Lieutenant zh’Ptrell to recover any more efficiently."

The blonde Asian woman stopped and shot the Vulcan a look, then turned back to arranging the sleeping Andorian's hair. "There isn't any information to show otherwise either."  She said retorted in a huff.  "Besides, Zark has her vanities and her hair is very much a part of her identity, so since it can't hurt, it'll help."

The Vulcan arched an eyebrow inquisitively at the sheer emotional vehemence of the illogical statement.  "The Lieutenant has suffered major trauma and from the reports, barely made it through surgery.  Any recovery will take time."  She paused to let that sink in. "As humans put it, she's lucky to be alive."

Newberry said nothing.  She just kept working.  Ensign Valyrk recognized that the human intended to be stubborn about the task and she crossed to the other side of the bed.  Her eyes gave the medical readout a practiced check.  The stats were on the low, but barely erratic.  If nothing else, it simply indicated that the Andorian needed rest.  She punched a few keys to check the status of the medical dispensary.  All dosages were within normal parameters.

The Vulcan turned to look at the human woman once more and her mind took in all the details of the clearly exhausted nurse.  Bags under her eyes that were going dark, dry and oily skin.  A certain need for support in her stance by leaning on the bio bed.  And she smelled worse than normal. "Nurse Newberry, when was the last time you slept or ate?"

Newberry looked up startled as she'd never really thought about taking a break with all the casualties in their care.  "Uh.....I don't remember ma'am."  She waved a hand almost frantically with each bed being full. "I mean, there are so many.  I'm needed....needed...."

Ensign Valyrk nodded her understanding.  "Consider this an order.  You will take the next 5 hours off.  Go find something to eat, and get some sleep."  The human was torn. Clearly wanting to take the order, but being torn away from duty for the wounded.  "I am not going anywhere nurse.  If there is an emergency, I will comm you."  This seemed to satisfy the human's honour as she nodded her acceptance before patting the sleeping Andorian on the shoulder.  "Yes ma'am."  The Vulcan nodded her acknowledgement and watched the nurse go before looking at her PADD and logging Lieutenant zh’Ptrell's information and moving on to the next bed.
15
Director's Cut / Re: [Stardate 57714.5: May 12th, 2381] - Boldly they rode...
Last post by Ellen Fitz -
[ Lt. Enyd Isolde Madsen | Security Centre | Deck 7 |Vector 2| USS Theurgy ] ATTN: @Hans Applegate @Pierce @P.C. Haring @RyeTanker

Enyd stood before the assembled team with the data chip resting in her open palm like it weighed considerably more than its physical mass suggested, which it did. She did not fidget with it. She did not look down at it. There was a specific category of discipline that came not from training but from the knowledge that if you let yourself look at the thing in your hand, you might let yourself think about how it had come to be there, and that particular line of thinking was not available to her right now. She had filed it. She would retrieve it later, when the architecture of the immediate crisis was no longer load-bearing, and she would sit with it properly. Just not now.

"The chip contains internal Tal Shiar communications," she said. Her voice came out even, which was a miracle considering how much she wanted to scream and cry over everything that was happening around them. "Encrypted directives from Tal'aura's inner circle. Proof of contingency plans targeting both Romulan and Reman leadership. Assassination authorizations. Fabricated intelligence designed to sustain and prolong this conflict past any natural conclusion." Her jaw tightened. "It demonstrates that this war was never meant to end in any outcome that involved either side winning. Only in an outcome that involved Tal'aura's faction retaining control over both."

She let that land. One of the things Cardassia had taught her — among the many things she had not asked to learn— was the particular importance of letting a true thing have the silence it deserved before you moved past it.

"Kino Jeen died ensuring we had this opportunity," she continued.

The words were steady even as her mind's eye saw the woman's blood pooling around her body.  Her gaze moved across the team, cataloguing — it was involuntary by this point, the near-eidetic habit of her mind committing faces and postures to memory in the way it had always committed things she might need later, whether she intended to or not. She had come to think of it less as a gift and more as the brain's stubborn refusal to let her travel light.

"So." Her hands found their way behind her back, which was where they went when she needed to look more authoritative than she currently felt. Her grandmother had told her once that the difference between confidence and the appearance of confidence was smaller than people thought, and that in a room full of people who needed to believe you knew what you were doing, the appearance was almost as functional as the real thing. Almost. "Non-lethal force whenever feasible. Stuns. Disables. Contain and move on. You do not need to be gentle about it," she added, because she had learned that teams sometimes heard non-lethal and interpreted it as tentative, and tentative got people killed. "Efficient is fine. Thoroughness is encouraged. Theatrical is unnecessary and time-consuming."

She allowed a small pause. "And in case it was not sufficiently obvious — do not hesitate to neutralize a threat that requires neutralizing. I will not have any of you killed for the sake of optics. The optics will survive." No objections. Good. "The reason for the restraint is practical rather than sentimental," she continued, which was not entirely true but was true enough to be useful. "It is going to look fairly remarkable — and I mean that in the original sense of the word, the sense where people remark on it because they cannot quite believe what they are seeing — if I stand in front of Donatra and ask her to lay down her arms and abandon a thalaron weapon while we have just spent the last hour carving a path through her crew. Diplomacy requires, at minimum, the appearance of good faith. We will do our best to provide an actual version of it."

She had watched diplomacy attempted with insufficient good faith on Cardassia, and she was aware of what insufficient good faith produced.

"When I reach Donatra," she said, and her voice shifted into something that was not softer exactly but deeper, the register she used when she was saying something she had thought through to the bottom of, "I will tell her what is on this chip. I will tell her that the manipulation is documented and over. I will tell her that there is an opportunity — a real one, not a Federation-constructed one, not a trap — for a ceasefire. For Romulan and Reman forces to stop killing each other long enough to look at the same evidence and decide together what they want to do about it."

She was aware this was, by any realistic assessment, an ambitious goal. She was also aware that every significant diplomatic outcome she had ever been part of had looked, at some point before it was achieved, like an ambitious goal.

"Theurgy will remain neutral in any talks that follow. We will not dictate terms. We will not install leadership or advocate for particular outcomes. The Romulan and Reman people will determine their own future — but they cannot do that if they have annihilated one another today." She took a breath. "A ceasefire buys them time. Time to verify the information on this chip independently."

Her grandmother had a saying about the difference between winning an argument and winning a war, and the relevant part of it was that winning a war required your opponent to still be standing at the end of it, capable of choosing to stop. You could not make peace with rubble.

"Donatra is not a fool," Enyd said. "By now she has almost certainly detected the same long-range sensor readings we have — additional Starfleet vessels en route, intentions unknown." Her gaze sharpened. "She does not know if they are coming to help us, to stop us, or to complicate everything in ways no one has fully anticipated yet. Neither do we. A ceasefire also gives everyone on this side of that uncertainty time to prepare rather than escalate. This is, if nothing else, a case where buying time is genuinely valuable and not merely a delay of the inevitable."

She looked to Zark for a moment — an unspoken exchange, the kind that developed between people who had survived things together and no longer needed to narrate all of it.

"While I negotiate — with Commander Zark at my side — the rest of you will proceed to the thalaron weapon. Do what is necessary." She emphasized the word deliberately and let it stand alone for a moment. Not reckless. Not performative. "Stop it." She exhaled once, slow and even. "I would very much like to believe that this ends with everyone making reasonable decisions and no further bloodshed." A small, dry quality entered her voice — not flippancy, but the particular kind of honesty that came out sideways when the situation was serious enough to require it. "I have, however, been doing this work long enough to have a fairly calibrated sense of how often that is the outcome. So." The dry quality receded. "Assume the worst. Hope for the best. Keep your heads. And stop the weapon."

Her fingers closed around the data chip. "Let's go."
16
Episode 02: Cosmic Imperative / Re: Epilogue: They That Shed Their Blood [Day 03 | 1800 ]
Last post by Krajin -
[ Lt.Thane Va’rek ] | Arboretum | Deck 22 | Vector 03 | USS Theurgy ] Attn:  @Brutus  @Nolan  @ob2lander961  @chXinya @Dumedion  @Griff  @rae  @Stegro88  @Eirual @RyeTanker @tongieboi  @Pierce  @Tae  @Nesota Kynnovan  @Hans Applegate  @joshs1000  @P.C. Haring  @Krajin  @Eden  @TWilkins

It had been only hours since his emergency defrosting in the cryobay and the horrible experience of what it must feel like to be buried alive. The Ferasan stood in the walkway that led to the Arboretum near the Romulan, Hirek, and observed the entire spectacle from where he was. As normal, the Ferasan was impeccable in presentation, fur neat, hair spiked as he liked to style it, clan paint on the face, and his uniform pressed to perfection. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back and stared straight ahead at the President and the wall behind the woman.

Grief washed over the crowds like a dark tidal wave as they looked upon the wall and heard the names of those who had passed or were placed into stasis. That darkness threatened to drown all in its path if it weren't for that burst of bright blue of inspiration and determination as the speech went on. It flooded through the darkness with streaks of blue in a stark contrast.

Let the crew mourn, we have work to do here. He turned slowly on one heel and left the arboretum. He had quite a lot to organise and get sorted for his new job. If people saw him as cold for it, that was on them.

[ Lt. JG Dominic Winters | The Den | Deck 16 | U.S.S Theurgy

Atlas sat in The Den while most people had gone up to the Arboretum to pay their respects and listen to the Federation President do her Peacocking and Politics with everyone. He hated it. The words were hollow and always meant nothing when it came to politicians who only to him, said what they said to look good and show they cared. Yet they would never step foot into the arena of war and rather acted like armchair generals.

He'd seen too much death from the Dominion War, where pilots had a low as hell survival rate with the Peregrines. The  Thunderball had a section of Deck 10 dedicated to the Memorial of the pilots and crew of the ship, along with another of fellow vessels. Hell, his name had gone up on there as MIA at one point. Every pilot handled their mourning alone and while Atlas had never met most of these people, he could still feel the weight of their loss on him. Fellow pilots, wolves, the ground crew that was not often shown the appreciation they deserved and earned since they pulled feats of engineering. These people would be down here soon enough after to have their wakes as the different bars and galleys on the ship would be occupied and a few would seek to avoid the pomp of El Presidente lingering around to shake hands and have their faces on the F.N.N.

Instead, Atlas enjoyed an Old Fashioned while in dress uniform at the bar. The alcohol was replicated so it wouldn't get him drunk. His body would process it into sugars faster than he could make them unless he chugged a bottle of real whiskey. He didn't need to be there in his mind, and honestly, it was probably for the best. He'd call the President out for her words, and as far as he saw from the broadcast, it certainly seemed that way. Hopefully the remaining Wolves would come down, or maybe someone would manifest out to tell him off for not being there. Either way, company may be had soon enough.

17
Episode 02: Cosmic Imperative / Re: Epilogue: They That Shed Their Blood [Day 03 | 1800 ]
Last post by Dumedion -
[Ens. Talia “Shadow” Al-Ibrahim | Arboretum | Deck 22 | Vector 3| USS Theurgy] Attn: All
[Show/Hide]
I don’t want to be here.

Of all the days tasks that needed to be done, Talia dreaded walking into the Arboretum the most; she didn’t want to be there – didn’t want to hear the names of the lost – didn’t want to let herself feel the collective weight of all that sacrifice. She’d seen enough during the battle to know that thousands had likely perished. She went anyway, of course; dress uniform immaculate, hair braided into obedience, head held high, shoulders back… just another face amidst a sea of faces staring up at the terrace above.

Commander Stark’s words were inspiring. Talia had never met or even seen the woman, yet found the words heartening and uplifting – enough to rouse the pilot’s attention away from her own cauldron of grievous emotions and treacherous, irrational thoughts – adding her own raw voice to the chorus that answered.
 
Less than a month ago, I was just another broken body frozen in  stasis, Talia reflected, in the quiet lull while the President stepped up to speak. She’d woken and been briefed on everything, had read the reports herself…yet never given herself time to dwell much on what they meant. Three weeks of the most intense training she’d ever endured immediately followed; Talia had thrown herself into mastering the Mk. III with typical obsessive zeal – knowing the odds of survival were laughably low. Her mind flicked through the few friends and acquaintances she’d managed to run into along the way: Medusa, Gramps, Kali, Moody, Duchess, Skittish…Pretty-Eyes.

Hirek was likely long gone; back to his island paradise on Romulus – that dream of a place –reunited with his kin to live out his days in peace. That’s what she hoped for him, at least, refusing to dwell on any other outcome. Talia blinked slowly at the thought, lips twitched into a frown as her mind raced into places she didn’t want to go. She hadn’t seen the official reports yet. Hope remained that the rest of them managed to stay alive…she vowed to find out as soon as possible, and to see them if able, as a profound sense of loneliness covered her like a shroud…

She wished he was there…if only to share a quiet look, or a knowing smile. She missed him; missed the way he aggravated her so easily, and the way he made her feel safe to just be herself around him. That realization alone threatened to spill a tear from her eye.

Dark, watering eyes tracked across the sea of strangers around her.

I shouldn’t even be here. I haven’t endured anything close to what the rest of them have suffered. In her mind, she saw Rawley’s crooked grin while she had spelled it all out…

Six months on the run: contagion, god-like entities, a future sent to destroy them with an entire Task Force hunting them. Treachery from within – yet they fought on in desperation to call out the truth. They fought everything from Starfleet to Savi to Borg. Survived a Klingon Civil War. Lived through horrors I cannot imagine…

Talia's brows creased as she screwed her eyes shut. It felt…cheap…to stand there, on the shoulders of so many that had sacrificed so much only to fall on the eve of accomplishing what they had fought so hard for: the truth. It was out now – the President of the Federation was right there – living vindication for all of it.

I wish you were here, ace, Shadow managed a weak smile, despite it all, thinking of what Ghost would have to say. About bloody time, or something to that effect, she mused.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right…but there was nothing she could do except remember the ones that couldn’t be there – even if she barely knew them. To honor what they fought for, to keep fighting for it. To make damn sure that it was worth it in the end.

Talia bowed her head as the President spoke, breathing deeply to calm herself; swallowing her grief and guilt by force of will – commanding her body to relax and endure the uncomfortable closeness of all the bodies around her. Refusal to break in public warred with the instinct to run from pain, lighting her anger and adrenaline in equal measure.

I don’t deserve to be here, the pilot fumed internally, behind a façade of calm acceptance. But I’ll earn it by carrying on – to whatever end – for all of you. By living, she breathed out, by living, not just surviving.

“The Federation stands with you.”

Talia’s eyes rose at the words, brow knitted, jaw clenched; her whole body trembled with suppressed emotion.

You fucking better, she growled silently.
 
[LT Arven Leux | Med Lab 01 | Main Sickbay | USS Theurgy]

Having woken up hours ago mid-fall from the couch in the CMO’s office, Arven looked and felt like he’d died and forgotten to lay down; dressed in the same uniform he’d left the wreckage of his quarters in – thanks to a very specific individual that he refused to even name, just in case she manifested like the red-headed plague she was – facial stubble well on its way to a ragged short beard – eyes bloodshot but attentive.

A hot goddamn mess, in short.

He focused intently on the simulation data that played across the screens before him, bathed in blue-white light: a difficult case, which had been further compounded by even more unfortunate circumstance…

Two individuals linked by unimaginable atrocity; their bodies violated at the cellular level, to satisfy morbid unethical curiosity. One had already perished, her body unable to cope with the agony. The other…

Well.

Arven worked to find a solution, while his own problems were pushed aside without ceremony; it was easier for him that way, actually. Vulpinian biological processes streamed into digital mimicry of life, natural and unaltered. In the background, barely registered while his mind worked to absorb and understand what was possible and what was not, a female voice addressed the crew, ship-wide.

Arven’s brow knitted in concentration; there was something in her tone that gnawed at him – as if he had forgotten about something important. It was annoying, and terribly distracting; worse than the hours he spent treating the various Vaharran newcomers and their endless questions and commentary.

“This is intolerable,” Leux finally growled, then threw a padd at the speaker nestled into the ceiling above him. “I’m bloody working,” he snapped, then sighed and blinked his tired eyes, trying to work the tension out of his shoulders.

Ah, the damned memorial, his eyes snapped open, only for his head to slowly lower to the terminal in defeat. “Shit.”

Memorial...Memory! Auto-mematic neurosynergistics! His body jerked upright, fingers dancing across the keys in a flurry of command inputs - layered upon layered as the imagery rotated, zoomed, and networked the entirety of the Vulpinian chromataphoric cellular structure – activation pheromones, support nuerophlages – down to the individual protein complex combinations of DNA. It all functioned, in theory, off memory. Intrinsic, instinctual, but memory.

“I cant repair what’s lost…but I can still use what remains,” Arven muttered aloud, utterly consumed by the task at hand. “It wont heal the trauma…but maybe…you’ll get back a little of what you lost. Maybe.”

He worked away, and hoped he was right. He’d lost enough patients already – enough for a lifetime of doubt and regret – if he ever allowed himself to stop and reflect...

But who had time for that?
18
Episode 02: Cosmic Imperative / Re: Epi S: [Day 03 | 0800] Meeting of the Minds
Last post by Nesota Kynnovan -
[Lieutenant Dr. Nathan Frost, Ph.D. | Deck 01 | Conference Lounge | USS Theurgy]
[Attn: @Brutus, @Pierce, @chXinya, @Eirual, @Ellen Fitz]

When the doors of the Conference Lounge hissed open with their signature hydraulic hiss, Frost shifted his attention away from the man he’d just addressed and turned his blue-eyed gaze onto the woman who walked in. He noticed how she waved at him and, in response, Frost raised his right eyebrow while he tried to figure out who this woman was supposed to be. The woman immediately apologized and mentioned that she was still getting her bearings and, in all fairness as he was a new transfer as well, Frost understood only too well how the massive multi-vector assault dreadnaught could be hard to navigate. Especially in her current state.

As the woman introduced herself as Ashley Kerina, a cyberneticist, Frost’s facial expression softened slightly and he presented the red-haired cyberneticist with a curt nod. Before he could welcome her aboard however, the male scientist whom Frost had initially addressed beat him to it by speaking up and mentioning that Kerina could possibly help the old Chief Science Officer. It prompted Frost to open his mouth and present the man with a somewhat exasperated look, but he couldn’t produce more than a petty, semi-annoyed sound before he closed it again. Unsure of what exactly annoyed him more. It was definitely because the man overstepped his authority, but a part of Frost wasn’t sure whether that was because the man had beat him to welcoming the new scientist aboard or because he’d began handing out assignments just like that.

Before Frost could settle on a satisfying answer, the man introduced himself as Sarresh Morali. Upon hearing that Morali was the scientist in charge of the Temporal Observatory Lab, the Canadian immediately disliked the man even more. Just mere hours ago, when he was making his visual assessment of the various laboratories aboard the ship and their respective conditions, Frost had spent more time attempting to gain access to the Temporal Observatory Lab than he cared to admit. The worst part was that he’d failed and Frost, not beneath harbouring a grudge, had taken it personal. On the bright side, the Temporal Observatory Lab apparently wasn’t damaged beyond anything Morali could handle himself, so Frost knew that it wasn’t his problem.

Things only got worse instead of better as Morali continued though, and Frost’s facial expression hardened considerably as he heard the emphasis on the word acting head. A part of him wanted to speak up and voice his opinion on this affront, but he could see that both Lieutenant Junior Grade Angharad and Lieutenant Junior Grade Zarqan were glaring in the direction of the temporal scientist as well. Neither one of them wanted yet another fight so soon after the last Battle, that much was obvious, so Frost chose to hide his anger beneath an annoyed grimace before he took a long, quiet sip from his coffee. bitter liquid did little to improve his mood and Frost, once again not beneath harbouring a grudge, took it personal. Especially when Morali finished with ”eh?”, which the Canadian interpreted as a swing at his accent.

And then came the silence as Morali stopped talking and Frost just kept glaring at him, mirrored by Angharad and Zarqan. The quiet hum of the impulse engines, which was normally just a background sound that barely anyone actively registered in their minds, became quite obvious now. After several seconds, Frost nodded and gestured that Morali could sit back down again. After the Battle and everything else the crew of the USS Theurgy had gone through, which Frost quite honestly couldn't begin to imagine, he was willing to give Morali some benefit of the doubt for now, at least until he knew for certain if the man was deliberately trying to bait him. ”Right, thank you.” While his annoyance was mostly hidden beneath his grimace, it could definitely be heard in Frost’s Canadian-accented voice before he turned his attention to the blonde-haired Xenoanthropologist. ”Miss Dunne, you have the floor.”
19
Episode 02: Cosmic Imperative / Re: Epilogue: They That Shed Their Blood [Day 03 | 1800 ]
Last post by Ellen Fitz -
[ Lt. Cmdr. Cross | Bridge | Deck 01 | Vector 01 | USS Theurgy ]
ATTN: @Brutus  @Nolan  @ob2lander961  @chXinya @Dumedion  @Griff  @rae  @Stegro88  @Eirual @RyeTanker @tongieboi  @Pierce  @Tae  @Nesota Kynnovan  @Hans Applegate  @joshs1000  @P.C. Haring  @Krajin  @Eden  @TWilkins

The applause from the arboretum rolled faintly through the bridge speakers and Cross stood at the center of it all like a man waiting for the other boot to drop. He did not applaud.

It wasn't that he lacked appreciation for Commander Stark's address, or for the weight of what had been memorialized. Those words were necessary. The dead deserved their accounting. He understood that better than most people aboard this ship cared to imagine — he had grown up in a Cardassian labor camp, raised alongside eleven other experiments as though sentiment were a resource to be rationed. He had held a dead sister in his mind's eye for fifteen years and never once had a proper ceremony to set her down.

It was not the memorial itself that set his jaw. It was the position. Acting Executive Officer. Temporary, they said. Provisional. A bridge until Captain Ives returned to stand on their own bridge.

If.

The word had the peculiar quality of a hairline fracture — invisible from most angles, catastrophic under pressure. Cross was aware of it the way he was aware of the prosthetic at the end of his left arm: constantly, without drama, a fact that had simply become load-bearing. He had not wanted this. He had wanted tactical. A clear field of fire and clean variables and the comfortable brutality of problems that could be solved by sufficient force or sufficient cleverness. Executive Command was standing in a room full of people who looked to you the way they'd once looked at someone else, and finding yourself acutely aware of the gap. He had filed approximately forty-seven reports since taking the provisional XO's chair, consumed enough raktajino to fuel a small shuttle, and slept in segments measurable in minutes.

The very idea of a proper meditation session felt obscene under the circumstances. His Vulcan half (now whole) demanded it with increasing insistence. His instructors had once described his meditative technique as "enthusiastic." They had meant it as a criticism. He had chosen to interpret it as a compliment and moved on. The structured quiet that meditation promised was not currently available to him. Things aboard the Theurgy were not settled enough to permit it.

His gaze shifted — he was not going to pretend it was unbidden — to the lower quadrant of the viewscreen as the memorial camera swept across the gathered crew. Chief Counselor Hathev stood among them. Whole. Present. Alive. He exhaled through his nose, slowly enough that no one on the bridge would register it.

Their situation was complicated, though the word felt inadequate. He had stumbled into intimacy the way a man might stumble off a perfectly ordinary curb — through a failure to correctly assess the terrain, at speed, with consequences. The aftermath had shifted something in her. He had handled it with the grace of a man whose primary model for romance had been unrequited and unconfessed and eventually overtaken by a transfer order. Aside from a brief exchange in the XO's office earlier that day, he had done nothing. He was, by any reasonable metric, the worst romantic prospect in the quadrant. He was also aware that "I have been doing approximately one hundred other things" was not, in point of fact, an excuse. He had once cauterized his own arm against a heated bulkhead on the Versant. He could probably manage a conversation.

He chose, with deliberate irony, not to examine that too closely.

"Continue standard operations," he said. His voice came out even. It always did, when he needed it to.

The bridge obeyed. He pulled the next requisition report and began to read. Work remained. It was, perhaps, the only reliable constant any of them had left. Starfleet had given his conviction a uniform and a purpose. He would not waste either. Not while there was still something left to protect.
[ Lt. Enyd Isolde Madsen | Shuttlecraft Aegir | Approaching USS Theurgy ]
President Nanietta Bacco's voice filled the cramped cockpit with the particular quality of a person who had learned, at considerable personal cost, the difference between conviction and performance. Enyd recognized it because she had spent years learning the same lesson.

She sat in the copilot's seat with a mug of coffee gone cold — the precise moment she'd stopped registering it as a drink and started using it as something to hold onto unknown. The memorial played across the shuttle's small forward display, a sad display for a memorial she knew she should attend in person but whose duties with the Remans prevented it. She watched it the way she watched most things that mattered: with her full attention and the practiced stillness of someone whose near-eidetic memory meant she only needed to see something once to carry it the rest of her life, whether she wanted to or not.

The President had exercised executive authority. Publicly, decisively, without the luxury of exhaustive debate. Enyd could not fault it. She had watched Castellan Ghemor navigate the impossible arithmetic of Cardassia's rebuilding and watched that arithmetic fail him in the worst possible way. The price of delay, when the situation had already outpaced process, was a cost paid in people. She also knew that every executive precedent was a door held open for whoever came next, and some of those people would walk through it in shoes very different from Bacco's. Precedent never cared about your intentions. Only what it could be used to justify later.

Her grandmother would have had something to say about that. Ida Madsen had raised her on the family ranch in Montana with the philosophy of a woman who had watched enough history to know that good intentions left unexamined had a way of becoming the paving material for very uncomfortable roads. You think, Enyd. You think before you leap, and then you leap anyway because sometimes there's no other option, but you don't get to be surprised by where you land. Enyd had been surprised by where she landed, more than once. She was still working on that.

Alistair. The exchange over comms had been almost funny in its simplicity, which was probably why she hadn't cried. Are you alive? Yes. You? Also yes. She had been sitting with her hands very deliberately flat on the console because her grip had gone tight enough to hurt. He was intact. She was allowing herself, provisionally, to file that under victories. Zark was a harder calculation. Technically dead. Pulled back by Doctor Leux and whatever stubborn will Zark had decided to exercise in the direction of her own continued existence. Enyd was grateful for both. She was also still metabolizing the whiplash — the swing from their recent morning together to the sterile shock of a recovery ward, the particular horror of watching someone who had been laughing be clinically described as having flatlined. She had held it together on the grounds that falling apart in a medical bay was not useful to anyone.

She would process it later. Fate, she had concluded, had a sense of humor that bordered on the pathological. She could either find it funny or find it unbearable, and she had already done unbearable — had spent several months on Vulcan being professionally unbearable, to the point of performing an Orion slave dance on a conference table and punching a Tellarite official. The Forge had burned what remained of that phase clean. She had walked out of it with blistered feet, a talent for gratitude, and a firm grip on the distinction between grief and self-pity. Grief was something you carried. Self-pity was something you set down outside yourself and then stood in the way of.

The docking clamps engaged. Enyd drained the cold coffee in one swallow. Her grandmother had been entirely right about cold coffee on general principle, but Montana practicality held that wasted caffeine was wasted caffeine. The ramp lowered. The Theurgy's familiar atmosphere washed over her — recycled air, faint ozone, and something underneath that she had come to recognize as the ship's own quality, as distinct as a fingerprint. She took stock: antsy, wired, bone-deep tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep debt and everything to do with the weight of caring about people in circumstances where their continued existence could not be guaranteed.

Her office was waiting. The Reman concerns would not resolve themselves. She would triage, catch the archived memorial minutes while working, drink another gallon of coffee, and make notes her colleagues would find overly thorough and possibly impolite. She had been told her margin notes bordered on editorializing. She had considered that a fair critique and done nothing about it. She straightened her uniform and tucked the empty mug under her arm. The Madsen family thread ran long. She was somewhere in the middle of it, not the beginning and not the end, which meant her job was to carry it forward intact. She could crash later.
[ Corpsman Ehfva Feynri | Medical Ward | Deck 08 | USS Theurgy ]

President Nanietta Bacco's voice moved through the medical ward's overhead speakers like water moving through stone — shaping itself to the available space, finding the cracks. Ehfva listened the way she had been taught before she had been taught anything else: with her whole body, without the need to fill the silence with her own response. Silence, the elders of Okashii Atama had believed, was not absence. It was the form that patience took when it was doing its real work.

She moved between biobeds and kept listening. Vitals checked. Dermal regenerator settings adjusted with hands that were — mostly — her own again. The fur had continued its slow reclamation of territory the Savi had tried to rearrange, and the bone structure had softened toward something she recognized in the deeper part of herself that memory lived in. She was still unsettling to look at, and she did not blame the patients who stared. Curiosity was honest. She had always found honest responses easier to be around than performed ones.

Small acts of attention. A smoothed blanket here. A repositioned pillow there. The elders of Okashii Atama had believed that care was not a feeling so much as a practice, that it lived in the hands before it lived in the heart, and that the hands were where you found it when the heart was too tired to be trusted. Her hands knew what to do.

She would not sleep if she could help it. Sleep was where Keokuk now lived, warm and laughing in the particular way he had laughed when something pleased him genuinely rather than politely. He had laughed like that when she finally showed him all her forms — not the careful partial-revelation she had offered the merchant clan kits while still learning the world was larger than Okashii Atama had suggested, but all of them. He had said she was honored to know all her spirits. Those had been his exact words — his people's framing, his understanding of a body that held more than one self — and she had committed them to the archive of things she could not afford to lose.

Nicoma. The name he had given her in private. We stand together. I do as I promise.

She did not say it aloud. She said it in the space behind her sternum, where it had always lived, and continued her patrol.

She had survived two wars before this one. The Vulpinian civil war — kin against kin, the brutality of people turned against each other by Ferengi interference — and the Dominion War, which had felt, by comparison, almost clean in its enmity. An alien enemy was easier to confront than a familiar face wearing the wrong expression. She had understood this since the first time she emerged from an infiltration mission with blood on her pelt that would not wash clean in the technical sense of the word, and the Kyodai Obi had called her Ha'tIa in that tone of half reverence and half caution. She had accepted both. Neither changed what had actually occurred.

The Savi had been different. They had not simply tortured her. They had turned her body into an instrument against her, her ability to shift reduced to a switch they could throw, a variable in their data set. She had spent twenty years becoming comfortable in every form she wore — built that comfort slowly, with attention, accepting the discomfort of the middle stages as the cost of arriving somewhere solid. They had dismantled it in days. She was building it again, the way a damaged bone is aware of its own mending: not always pleasantly, not always at a useful pace, but proceeding.

Glancing at a vid-screen to see the memorial wall in the background of the display, Ehfva wished there were a memorial wall for the Cayuga. The Theurgy's names carved in stone were real, and their loss was real, and she respected each one. She also knew the names she could not add. The Cayuga's dead had no stone here. She would build her own — not yet, while her forms were still unsteady, since blood painting required the feral state's full sensory access, and to do it wrong would be a greater dishonesty than waiting. But she had already begun composing it in her mind: the pattern, the crimson weight of each stroke. Keokuk at the center. That much she knew. Everything else would take its proper shape around him.

The applause from the arboretum arrived faintly through the ward's speakers. Ehfva adjusted a final setting and stood still in the way she had been taught — not passively, but with full attention directed inward. Her body said: still here. She had survived the civil war and the Dominion and a cold chamber where she had waited for a death that did not come. She did not yet know what shape surviving this particular loss would take when it had finished finding its form. But she knew how to wait. She knew how to work while waiting.
[ Specialist Hirek tr'Aimne | Corridor Outside the Arboretum | Deck 21 | USS Theurgy ]

Hirek stood just beyond the arboretum's threshold with his hands clasped behind his back and listened to a memorial for people he had not known long enough to mourn properly, delivered by a Federation president whose authority over him was precisely as binding as he chose to let it be. Which was to say: not very.

He was aware of the irony. He had spent the better part of his adult life working against the Tal'Shiar's insistence that loyalty was owed to institutions rather than to the people and places that actually deserved it, and here he stood in a Federation corridor exercising the same logic in a different direction. He found this symmetry mildly entertaining. A man who could not appreciate the absurdities of his own situation was going to be very tiresome company, and Hirek had never aspired to be tiresome.

He had not entered because entry implied a claim of membership he had not yet decided to make. The distinction mattered — not as pride, but as accuracy. He was a man who preferred to know precisely what he was standing in before he stood in it. The Uuluma Islands had taught him that early: the reefs around the island looked calm from above and were anything but below, and a free diver who did not read the currents before descending was a free diver who did not come back up. He had learned to commit his weight only after assessment. It was a habit that had kept him alive through two wars and several decades of work that could not be named in polite company.

President Bacco's voice carried the particular quality of someone who understood that the weight of a statement was partly in its silences. Hirek appreciated this. The Tal'Shiar had never needed to learn it, operating on the principle that weight could be applied directly and the silences filled with fear. His mother had diagnosed the error precisely: the Tal'Shiar had confused the mechanism of power with the thing that power was supposed to protect. They had inverted the relationship, pointed the weapon at their own people, and called the result security.

He thought about the islands. Not nostalgia — the Uuluma Islands were still there, still producing the distilled liquor the resident families were famous for, still wrapped in those clear waters where the jumbo mollusk clung to the reefs. He had built his own labs there after the Dominion War, when the College stopped interesting him and something — that Romulan instinct for approaching pressure fronts — told him to be patient. Something else was coming. He had been right. He usually was. This was either a talent or a curse depending on how much warning it provided before the storm arrived.

That had been when uncle  Maec Ethienhad, inadvertently, introduced him to the Madsens. Two of them dead in his family's service. Isa Leigh Madsen, who had chosen her own death over interrogation at the Citadel Val'Theldun. Ernan Lars Madsen, who had died in the rarest kind of human way — deliberately, the calculation running not toward self-preservation but toward what the math required. Hirek had killed Ernan Madsen at Madsen's direction, cleanly and without hesitation, because hesitation would have made it worse for both of them. He had not felt particularly good about it afterward. He had also not felt particularly bad, which said something about the person the Tal'Shiar's interference had helped make him, and which he generally preferred not to examine in detail.

He owed the Madsens a blood debt. He had understood this the moment he learned Lieutenant Enyd Isolde Madsen's name on Qo'Nos — the particular arrested moment when a long equation resolves into something legible. He had kept it because it was accurate, and he had always found accuracy more durable than sentiment as a motivation. Enyd Madsen was, from what he had observed, an extremely inconvenient person to be in debt to. This amused him enormously.

The recent news from home was less amusing: a public declaration on political leanings. His family had carefully maintained neutrality since the horrors had become untenable. His mother rendered sterile by state decree — an old wound his father had never stopped grinding his teeth over. His uncle Maec Ethien dead as he had lived: in precise defiance, with the last laugh arranged in advance. A thoroughly Aimne way to go. But now they were risking themselves and the islands by supporting the new Reman-Romulan government.

The Reman Senator's request also sat in a different compartment — the one he kept for things probably true in their surface framing and certainly true in a less flattering one. Senator Vkruvux was not wrong that a dissenting voice among the Theurgy's crew might prove useful to the emerging Reman-Romulan moment. The Senator was also not wrong that keeping Hirek here, removed from Romulan soil, meant keeping a specific variety of complication at a convenient distance. Both things could be simultaneously true. The question was always which one the person asking you to participate actually cared about.

He had not decided.

He inclined his head slightly toward the arboretum. For the dead. For the Romulans lost in the mess the Infested had made of the Civil War. For Ernan and Isa Madsen, who had no stone here but whose names he kept in a private accounting at least as reliable as any carved wall. For his uncle Maec Ethien, who had died with a smile, which was the correct way to die if one must die in a cause. For the children his mother could have had were it not for the Tal'Shiar.

The corridor held him in its quality of not-quite-darkness, the recycled air carrying the faint green undertone of the arboretum through the closed doors. Hirek breathed it in and thought of open water and the moons of Romulus rising over the islands, and the way his father had said his hidden name — Kejail — as though it contained something worth keeping safe.

He would decide tomorrow.
20
Episode 02: Cosmic Imperative / Re: Epilogue: They That Shed Their Blood [Day 03 | 1800 ]
Last post by Stegro88 -
[ Lt. JG Donna ‘Chance’ Petterson | Arborteum Cafe | Deck 20 | Vector 03 | USS Theurgy ]
[Show/Hide]
Donna stood in the Café, gazing down at the assembled crew gathered for the memorial. The pilot wondered what was going through their minds, if their thoughts matched her own.

“How many more of these will there be before its done? And will I live to see them all?”
[ Lt. T'Less | Bridge | Deck 01 | Vector 01 | USS Theurgy ]
[Show/Hide]
T’Less was on the Bridge, manning the Tactical Station, while the broadcast of the Memorial was being shown on the main viewscreen. She listened as she worked, reviewing the condition of the Theurgy’s offensive and defensive systems.

“How soon will we need them again?”
[ PO3 Lorad | Corridor | Deck 08 | Vector 02 | USS Theurgy ]
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Lorad shut off the plasma torch as the damaged section of hull frame fell to the deck at his feet. After speaking with Commander Cross he had gone to meet with the Chief Engineer, Commander Arnold, who had given him a kit and put him to work. And there was a lot of work to be done.

“You’re hurting as much as your crew is,” he said to the ship. “But we’ll look after you if you’ll look after us.”
[ CPO Mickayla MacGregor | Arboretum | Deck 22 | Vector 03 | USS Theurgy  ]
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Mickayla gazed up at the Federation President as she spoke. She had to admit, the silver-haired woman was a wonderful orator. Her words sparked hope and the idea of a peaceful future for them once the threat was dealt with.

“There is always another threat.”
[ Crewman Samala | The Apache | Hawk-class Runabout | Main Shuttlebay | Deck 11 | Vector 01 | USS Theurgy ]
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The cargo bay was quiet. She’d shut the rear ramp so that she didn’t have to listen to the service that others had broadcasting while they worked. She worked to try and keep her mind occupied. To try and stop the thoughts that kept breaking into her mind.

“Do I stay here or go with my own kind?”


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