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Interregnum 02-03 S2 / Re: Day 01 [2100hrs] When All is Stretched Thin

Last post by Dumedion - August 13, 2026, 12:09:37 AM

[Ens. Talia "Shadow" Al-Ibrahim | Private Transport, En Route to the Uuluma Islands | Romulus] Attn: @Ellen Fitz

There was no answer from him at first, and when one came there was little surprise when it took a path she hadn’t expected; so Talia had sat, and listened, and allowed Hirek’s voice and the shape of his mouth and the comfort in his eyes to distract her from what they were flying into.

It helped — truly — until it didn’t. The anxious knot in her gut refused to abate because the patterns and names were recognized for what they were: a rotational cumulonimbus system, a massive one; the main column stretched nearly 10 kilometers tall, easily. At its foot, the monster sucked in stratocumuli in all directions, devouring them, eating their energy to fuel its own. There was more than one term humans used to describe such a phenomenon on Earth, depending on which side of the planet one lived on: hurricane and typhoon.

…And they were flying straight into it, or, more accurately, beneath it.

Talia also knew that wasn’t what had rendered her speechless: Hirek had. If it had been easy to sit, listen, and absorb his account — delivered in calm measured tones as if he had spoken about nothing important at all — processing how it all made her feel proved extremely difficult. Even so, there was no attempt to hide it behind a carefully constructed mask; there was no time and zero preparation for that. All too late she realized, in that moment, that a part of her that had always been guarded finally slipped the leash, broke through its own battlements, and refused to follow all the rules so carefully maintained — and she didn’t waste a heartbeat fighting it.

She wanted him to see her: to see the concern, the worry, the anguish about what the Tal Shiar had done to him. Behind that, she wanted him to see the outrage, the anger, the desire for vengeance. Deeper still, she wanted him to see how much she valued him, how wrong she had been for everything before, and how sorry she was; if only she had known what he could have faced, what had been waiting for him before…

That didn’t matter — what she chose to do about it did.

Her hand reached out for his arm; the body moving on its own to communicate the words and emotions the voice couldn’t. She squeezed, pouring in everything she felt, everything her eyes carried, everything she wanted to say but didn’t possess the language for.

The moment passed; Hirek’s attention returned to the controls and the weather — out of necessity or something else? Talia couldn’t tell. The ship bounced again, nothing dramatic, but enough to break her mind free from the emotional soup, but her hand stayed where it was just above his elbow, nestled against the curve of bicep, like that was where it had always belonged.

‘How did the last mission go for you,’ he’d asked; Talia inhaled a breath, then chose how to respond. Truth deserved truth; trust deserved trust. There were a dozen reports he could read on the matter — she had written some herself and attended several review sessions to listen and read the others. Instinctually, her mind pulled that file up for recitation: almost an hour-by-hour account of the previous three days: what happened when, why, how. What mistakes had been made and what lessons had been learned. Her mind slammed the file closed though; she could do better than that.

He deserved better than that.

She told him what she felt instead; something no after-action-review contained — something no one knew, and likely never would, beyond the two of them. The words didn’t come easy, and didn’t come clean, which he almost certainly noticed; Talia pushed on, even as she watched him for reactions, and discovered that his patience and presence offered her a different kind of courage. He’d offered the gift of a space for her to simply be — to be heard and seen. She refused to waste something so precious.

The carrier scrap went first:

Talia spoke of how the sheer size and shape of the thing had inspired both awe and dread; how painfully powerless she’d felt losing Ghost, how the entire affair seemed to happen so fast in hindsight, but had felt the complete opposite at the time. The sheer agility and aggressiveness of their opponents had shocked her — how the simple fact that it had taken entirely too long for her to realize that they were, in fact, trying to kill her — had shaken her. But it had been the end, when she’d broken; seeing the wreckage on the deck — the fires — the bodies. She'd carry that around for a long time.

The convoy op followed, after a pause that lasted longer than it probably should have, due to a series of bumps and shimmies that forced her eyes closed.

When the ship settled, her eyes opened, and Talia told him how they’d found the colonists, devoid of escort and on the wrong side of any border — unaffiliated with anyone, with their only intention set on finding a new home. It had felt good to try to help; that was the Federation she believed in — the one she fought for, you see? But then everything went wrong in the form of a flying-electromagnetic-disruptor-wielding…mechanical squid, from the future, apparently; a drone, sent back in time to destroy its own creators.

A pause followed, broken with a brief chuckle; the math hurt her head and didn’t make sense no matter how hard she tried, so she asked him not to press the issue. In the end, the day was saved by the unlikely arrival of an antiquated vessel of the Vaharran Navy — which also nearly killed her too, by the way, when it came out of warp right on top of her — but enabled the civilian convoy the freedom to pursue their own ends. Yay, happy ending.

That part ended with a lopsided smile; a dash of humor sprinkled over near-death — just as Hirek had done. Lightning flashed abruptly, close enough to make Talia flinch; the thunder that followed was an audible assault, a rolling cacophony that silenced the rain for several seconds. In its wake, she let the moment draw out unintentionally; because so much had been said already about the Triangle — and so much had been left unsaid.

She didn’t describe the battle itself; anyone with eyes and a viewport had seen it. She didn’t bother with details of combat tactics, or how her coms had shorted out, again. All of that happened, and she’d talked about it ad nauseam.

She told him about the parts that hurt. The parts she hadn’t had time to let herself feel properly, never mind come to terms with. When the words left her lips, they began as little more than a whisper: how she couldn’t accurately account for how she’d survived, when others with far more experience and skill hadn’t. How hollow it felt after; her hands bloodied, conscience in tatters. How she’d puked her guts out almost immediately, and couldn’t stop her hands from shaking for hours after that. Nothing and no one could have prepared her for it, and that was no ones fault but her own; she should have known better. How the entire thing had been saved by the sheer stubbornness and courage of Klingons, and the last minute fortune of a stolen prototype fighter – whose pilot she owed a drink, but had not yet found the time to hunt down and properly thank.

“I owe Dr Leux one too,” she added quietly, and Talia left her account to linger in the space between them; even as she raised her hand to trace Hirek’s jawline with the back of her fingertips without conscious thought.

The craft almost instantly bucked, more violently than ever before, forcing her to snatch both hand and arm back to grip her harness with a surprised hiss of effort.

“Shit – sorry, didn’t mean to distract you!”

Interregnum 02-03 S2 / Re: Day 01 [2100hrs] When All is Stretched Thin

Last post by Ellen Fitz - August 12, 2026, 05:35:02 AM

[ Hirek tr'Aimne | Private Transport, En Route to the Uuluma Islands | Romulus ] @Dumedion

The transport well cleared Dartha without incident but Romulus had never been a planet that rewarded confidence. The government had changed, the Citadel was rubble, the Tal Shiar had been scattered into cells and safehouses and whatever cousins would still open a door for them — and none of that had touched the instincts that had kept generations alive. Silence could mean safety. It could equally mean surveillance, or exhaustion, or that the person waiting to act had not yet decided how. Hirek kept one hand on the controls and the other near the auxiliary systems out of habit.

The weather had turned while they were in the capital. Cloud had stacked over the eastern sea in bruised layers, the lower edges torn apart by wind, and the rain came in sheets that whitened the canopy before the deflectors threw it aside. Below them the sea was already disappearing. He had flown through worse, which was not the same as saying this was survivable. He adjusted course by three degrees, watched the turbulence indicators climb, and did not complain. Nature and governments shared exactly one trait: neither cared how carefully a man had planned.

Talia's comment made him smirk, and he resisted the temptation to cause the transport to wobble just to tease her. Instead, he filled the transport with an anecdote of the last mission, not exactly his first with the Theurgy but assuredly the most intense. He delivered the play-by-play in a matter-of-fact voice, occasionally interjecting with asides meant to draw out a smile or a snort of playful annoyance, making light of the realities of his near death more than once.

The last mission had required him to work beside people who did not think like Romulans while standing on ground where everyone involved had sound reasons to distrust him. Then the Tal Shiar had taken him. There was no need to embellish what followed. The interrogation had been methodical, and the torture had been worse for being methodical — they knew enough of his history to make it personal, and they knew which parts of it were load-bearing. He had endured it because survival was a skill and because pain and defeat were both things he'd tasted before and wanted not to taste again.

What they had put inside him was his own work. He had designed the device decades earlier, for an entirely different reason, and wasn't it like the Tal'Shiar to twist something meant for good to deal out evil? He hadn't known it was there until Dr. Leux found it, and by then it had started. Then he had taken the remains of his own near-death, rewritten it, and put it into a Vulpinian corpsman. He had been back aboard barely long enough to change his uniform before the battle for the ship started, and had walked into it beside the Vulpinian he'd later save.

He noticed that now, with the storm shaking the airframe and the inertial systems catching the drop a half-second late, they were due for a rough ride in a few minutes, no matter his expert claims earlier. The transport dropped several meters. The inertial dampeners caught it. Below the break in the rain, black ridges of water rolled past like moving country.

Remembering her earlier concerns, Hirek continued to drawl out his thoughts, using his words and voice to distract her from the worsening weather. Or perhaps, they were just working to make her even more frustrated. Either way, he would know soon enough. Again he explained his position, now that he'd made it through the mission and was once more on his home turf. He could stay aboard Theurgy and go on hunting the Infested, on the reasoning that a parasite that had held a Praetor could hold the next one, and that everything his people were rebuilding was scaffolding over a hole nobody had filled. Or he could remain here while the Tal Shiar were still on their back foot, and put the last decade of his particular expertise into ensuring they never stood upright again.

They were now passing over a stretch of uninhabited islands, their reefs looked calm from above the surface and were nothing of the sort below it, and a diver who did not read the currents before descending was a diver who did not come up. He had built an entire character out of that principle. Assess, then commit. Know precisely what you are standing in before you stand in it.

He had already committed. He had done it somewhere back on the island, in a simulation, with her hair in his hands and no assessment performed whatsoever, and he had gone on descending ever since, and the honest part — the part he would take a spear through the chest before saying aloud — was that he had no intention of surfacing to check.

He checked the instruments, distracting himself from letting his thoughts go any further on that matter.

She had come through the same mission from a different seat, with different wounds, and he had learned long ago that what a person survived was rarely the same thing as what they carried out of it. Now that he'd passed the time regaling her with his side of the past few days, Hirek kept his eyes on the console a moment longer, then looked across at her.

"How did the last mission go for you?"

Interregnum 02-03 S2 / Re: Day 01 | 2200 hrs | The hunt is on

Last post by Nesota Kynnovan - August 12, 2026, 03:29:05 AM

[Ensign Jaya Thorne | Upper Gymnasium | Deck 06 | Vector 01 | USS Theurgy]
Attn: @Eirual @Pierce

A soft, rather bored sigh escaped Jaya’s lips as her brown eyes idly stared at the ceiling of the Upper Gymnasium. It had been a little over fifteen minutes since her arrival and the Assistant Chief CONN Officer was now laying on one of the yoga mats; her hands folded behind her head for additional comfort as she waited for Lieutenant Junior Grade Ashley Kerina to show up.

”It’s always the same…” While she was laying on her back, Jaya muttered softly. ”The eggheads stumble from one avoidable problem into the next, and the rest of us have to solve it for them.” As she griped about her situation, Jaya’s voice was as dour as the expression on her face. She took a couple of deep breaths and briefly closed her eyes to get a handle on her frustration, but that was easier said than done; it was one thing to help out the Science Department, they were colleagues after all and Jaya really didn’t mind them, but what bothered her was the plain fact that they asked for help and subsequently failed to show up.

After waiting for another five minutes or so, at least according to the chronometer displayed on one of the wall panels, Jaya sat up with a sigh. It had been twenty minutes now and there was still no sign of the scientist. Tired of waiting, the Denevan got up to her feet and began to walk towards the exit of the Upper Gymnasium. While she did so, she reached out and tapped the combadge on her chest before speaking up. ”Thorne to Kerina. Ma’am, I’m not sure if you’re on your way to the Upper Gymnasium or not, but I’m heading down to Deck 32 to see if the other search party has any success in capturing the vole.”

[Ensign Jaya Thorne | Deck 29 | Vector 03 | USS Theurgy]

Jaya had never gone down beyond Deck 28, where the Below Decks Lounge was located. As she rode the turbolift, the Assistant Chief CONN Officer mused that she’d expanded her horizons a little bit that day by going down to Deck 29, and a part of her wondered if there were any turbolifts that ran all the way down to Deck 32. She figured that it was unlikely given the fact that the lowest three decks only housed the forward landing struts and the emergency warp core jettison control; leaving Jaya with the unpleasant feeling that she’d probably have to climb three decks down using the Jefferies Tube system.

As the turbolift arrived at Deck 29 and the doors opened with their signature hydraulic hiss, a blast of hot air immediately filled the carriage. It prompted Jaya to stumble backwards and she instinctively raised her right arm to protect her eyes from the heat. She could smell the sharp stench of plasma in the air and, as Jaya’s eyes began to sting and tear up, the Assistant Chief CONN Officer slowly took a couple of steps forwards onto the deck. The sounds of her footsteps on the carpeted floor cut through the eerie silence and, given that she couldn’t hear the sharp crackling sound of a raging plasma fire, Jaya figured that life support on the lower decks was most likely damaged to some degree and that she was likely breathing in the residual fumes of an extinguished fire.

It definitely explained the heat on the deck.

The Assistant Chief CONN Officer coughed as she continued to walk along the deck. She was met with the sight of numerous escape pod hatches mounted into the outer wall and, with each hatch she passed, Jaya inwardly cursed the Chief CONN Officer and wished for more dishonour upon both the man and his cow. In her mind she pictured how Lieutenant Junior Grade Ashley Kerina was comfortably laying in her bed instead of assisting her like she’d been supposed to, and it only made Jaya’s mood even worse.

By the time the Denevan Ensign reached the nearest Jefferies Tube access hatch, she was panting for breath and perspiring heavily. If the air hadn’t reeked of stale plasma she would’ve audibly cursed, but Jaya knew better and instead just opened the hatch before crawling inside. On the bright side, the air didn’t smell like plasma nearly as much and Jaya couldn’t help but breathe a relieved sigh after the hatch automatically hissed shut behind her. On the flip side however, of which there ALWAYS seemed to be one lately, the lights inside the Jefferies Tube didn’t automatically come online as she entered; in fact, Jaya found herself surrounded by pitch-black darkness when the hatch closed behind her.

”Now, that’s amazing!” As she spoke, Jaya’s voice was dripping with sarcasm. She reached out for the only source of illumination, that being the flashlight mounted onto her left wrist, and activated the small device; bathing the narrow Jefferies Tube in a bright beam of light. Jaya wiped her forehead with her right sleeve before slowly starting to crawl forwards. Given that the lowest decks weren’t all that big, the Assistant Chief CONN Officer figured that she’d run into the other search party fairly quickly.

Interregnum 02-03 S2 / Re: Day 01 [ 0700 hrs] The Salvage Job

Last post by Dumedion - August 09, 2026, 09:29:22 PM

[Ens. Talia "Shadow" Al-Ibrahim | Wolf-04 | Near last known coordinates of Cayuga] Attn: @Krajin @Eirual @Ellen Fitz @Nesota Kynnovan @RyeTanker

It was fun to cut up with a new wingman en-route; Talia quickly realized the more they talked, the more Atlas seemed like a genuine goof-ball — which turned out to be a running theme with the Wolves. For her part, she had tried to reciprocate, but as soon as her hand eased back on the throttle to drop the Valkyrie from warp, Shadow switched back to all-business-mode.

The stars settled to distant pinpricks of light as the pitch of her engines dropped to a lower octave. A visual scan of the heavens around her revealed Atlas, a ways off to port, with the convoy of shuttles between them...

…And nothing else but infinite darkness.

In the following moments, she'd already checked the Valkyrie's sensors twice, along with a mid-level navigation diagnostic — just to be sure everything jived with the original flight plan the mission team had been given from Theurgy’s astrometrics. The obvious was apparent as soon as they'd arrived: there was no sign of the Cayuga — no emergency beacon, no IFF transponder, no debris…

Nothing.

Coms chatter filled Shadow’s helm while she circled back in a wide arc around the convoy, opposite to Atlas’ relative path, to open up space while forming a defensive screen — a standard redeployment maneuver. Active proximity scans of the system yielded unremarkable returns; long range showed the same. Dark eyes, tinted almost black behind the faint blue illumination of her helm, narrowed with worry.

Are we too late?

The probes launched. Shadow tracked the dull glow of their drives as they streaked away into the darkness. While the others talked and voiced possible theories, the pilots hands and fingers played across her control panels — accessing Theurgy’s astrometrics again.

Every known stellar object with sufficient mass to affect a disabled vessel of Cayuga’s tonnage was accounted for. While the data couldn’t rule out the possibility of a rogue element, or unmapped object — a comet perhaps — Shadow couldn’t help but consider that an unlikely scenario.

She wasn’t an astrophysics expert, however; the science nerds were — but that didn’t stop her from using her basic comprehension of fundamental physics to draw her own hypothesis.

Shadow’s eyes turned to the distant blue speck of the system’s far away star. To her mind, anything left powerless and adrift in-system long enough would inexorably fall into its gravity well, without fail. She’d already turned the nose of her fighter towards it when Atlas spoke up on a direct channel.

“Four copies,” she nodded, then a typed out a few quick commands on her OPS console. “Sensor network established, links active with both pups.”

She hoped he didnt mind the use of shorthand for the probes. Shadow chewed her lip in thought for a moment, considering Atlas' question.

“Doesn’t plasma cool and disperse relatively quickly? But yeah, we might get lucky and catch a trail,” she shrugged, then paused again. “We know Romulans favor plasma-based weaponry and cloaks — which have been known to leave trace tachyon emissions and anti-protons. The Savi — based off the Hobus mission data — used graviton beams. So…maybe if we look for what hunted the whale, that will lead us to her?”

Her hand keyed in the adjustments to the ship’s sensor sweeps; even with active sensor envelopes keyed in for max resolution — that still left a literal astronomical search area to cover.

“How about a clockwise spiral pattern split between us and the pups? It’d put some distance between us and the convoy, but only a few light-minutes at most. Or we can work it by quadrants and stay close; that’ll take longer, but our sweeps would overlap tighter, giving us more accuracy.”

Again, her eyes turned to the star at the system’s core.

“Your call, Atlas.”

Interregnum 02-03 S2 / Re: Day 01 [ 0700 hrs] The Salvage Job

Last post by Krajin - August 08, 2026, 09:58:03 AM

[ Lt.JG Dominic 'Atlas' Winters | Wolf-10 | Near last known coordinates of Cayuga] Attn: @Brutus @Ellen Fitz @Dumedion @Nesota Kynnovan @Stegro88

Atlas watched as distant stars streaked by while they travelled at Warp to the last known location of the Cayuga. It was boring and he had made conversation with his fellow wingmate along the way. Throwing bad dad jokes and puns around and the usual banter pilots go through. Coupled with Talia giving him the rundown of remote operations with his PADD and his fighter turned out to be a hoot. Until the dumbass tried it inside the fighter. Still it was amusing as heck while it lasted with the fighter now synced up to his PADD.

"Shuttlecraft Maslow, this is Wolf-10. All clear here. Roger on tying in probe sensors and beginning sweep." Atlas responded.

"Shadow, this is Atlas. Let's get ourselves busy. lets tie in and share our own sensor nets. If you have an idea on how to find a space-whale like the Cayuga out here, lay it out. I am thinking... if it has a leaking plasma system, we can track that?" He offered.

Episode 02: Cosmic Imperative / Re: EPI S [Day 03 | 2330hrs.] Lay Your Weary Head To Rest

Last post by RyeTanker - August 08, 2026, 04:21:18 AM

[Lt (JG) XamotZark zh’Ptrell (Lt. Zark) | Kalandra? | Delta 5-2?] @Ellen Fitz @Griff @Dumedion

The blue hand flashed out and grabbed the jem'hadar rifle that peaked around the corner. She ignored the slight increase in heat of the alloy that had been used to double-tap the unconscious and dead crew of the shuttle. If there had been a chance of saving any of the medical flight it was now gone, and a haze of white rage flooded the Andorian's system. The Jem'Hadar soldier stumbled inward, not expecting actual resistance, and he paid for it dearly as the alloy blade flashed forward with incredible speed. Zark felt the vibrations of the blade separating muscle, tissue, and grating against bone as it plunged into soft neck. Her stronger Andorian muscles yanked hard on the blade and the gurgling sound followed as a trail of black blood arced with the knife. There was only shock in the Jem'hadar's face when he briefly caught a glimpse of the lithe blue blur that had ended his life.

The next soldier pointed his rifle into the gap and tried get a shot off at the fast moving Andorian, and Zark gritted her teeth as the barrel of the rifle grated against her torso. White hot pain flared in Zark's eyes as yanked the rifle past her body and winced as the rifle discharged with a screech mere centimetres away from her body. Adrenaline and endorphins flooded her system as threw her elbow into the soldier's face and his head snapped back with a sickening crunch. The furious Andorian gave a berserker's yell as she plunged her knife into the soldier's chest then pulled him in to the shuttle. The blade came out and plunged into the jem'hadar's body again, and again, grunts of shocked pain echoing in her ear every time she plunged the blade in again.

This was becoming too much and for the Jem'hadar, Victory was life so the next soldier that followed his dead comrade in simply aimed and shot Zark's meat shield in the back several times. The Andorian yelped first in surprise at the sudden change in momentum, then in pain as the dead body landed on top of her abused one and agony flared through her vision. It seemed to take everything she had to pull the blade out and time seemed to move with syrupy slowness as she desperately threw it at the third soldier. And her eyes widened as the soldier's face and body changed. She could see brown locks, the familiar red lipstick, that elegant human neckline, those bright green eyes, and it was too late as the blade flew true. The Jem'Hadar soldier gurgled as the blade sank into his throat and he went back with a loud gurgle and spray of black blood.

Zark shook off the hallucination and she could feel exoskeleton clicking against each other as she pushed the body off her and scrambled to her feet and charged the gap in the shuttle's hull. Another body appeared in the gap and her body went on autopilot as she threw her body around the larger soldier with every intention of getting her thighs around his head. And her mind screamed in denial when she saw the short black hair, violet eyes, and body spots of every Trill she'd ever encountered. She felt like she was about to break when she got above the black hair and her body heaved using every bit of weight she had to toss him to the ground. There was a stomach turning crunch as the head smashed into the shuttle's deck and she stopped, no longer sure if her mind was playing tricks on her.

The Andorian yelled in agony as she felt a searing pain plunge into her back as metal sank into her body. There'd been on more jem'hadar outside and her distracted mind had fatally missed him. Her body hacked and painfully heaved a coughing up a slick splash of blue onto the body below her. "Zark, come on, we need you!" came a familiar voice. What? her mind thought as everything seemed to beg her to give up.

[Intensive Care Unit | Main Sickbay | Deck 11 | USS Theurgy ]

The dishevelled Andorian looked up into desperately concerned blue eyes and nearly bald head and her body became rubbery as it began to waver. She looked down once more at the battered Trill under her, a slick blue splat on the back of his head. "Doc......Leux? What haaaapeneee....." Zark trailed off as she coughed out a bit more blue blood on the Trill doctor once more then collapsed on him as she fainted. The door's opened moments later as a quartet of security exosuits armed for bear came charging into the ICU with rifles pointed at the combat medic's limp body.

Episode 02: Cosmic Imperative / Re: C3: S [Day 2 19:45] Tis Not Goodbye...

Last post by P.C. Haring - August 06, 2026, 06:27:21 PM

[Lt. Reggie Suder | Guest Quarters | Deck 06 |Vector 02 | USS Theurgy] Attn: @Stegro88‍

She hadn’t expected T’Less to melt into her arms so quickly. Truth be told, Reggie had no fucking clue what she might have expected. The Betazoid pulled the Vulcan in holding her tight, held tight in response and everything froze and melted away as the two remained locked in the moment.

“Then you shall have,” she whispered.

Reggie’s finger brushed the tip of the Vulcan’s ear as her hand found it’s way to the back of her head and into the Vulcan’s hair as she caressed the back of her head. Her other hand snaked up her back, pushing their breasts into each other. Under other circumstances, Reggie might have pushed the envelope further, but time was against them. Even if it were not, their re-connection was still fragile and she knew she would have to take it slow with T’Less. For now, the comfort of being in her arms again, of having her in her arms again was more than enough for Reggie.

The chirp of the comm broke the mood.

Fuck

[Lieutenant Suder, please report to the flight deck. Lieutenant Suder, report to the flight deck for repair inspection.]

Reggie sighed. “Sounds like my ride’s fixed.”

She pulled away every so slightly, just enough to get her hand to her combadge.

“Acknowledged. I’m on my way.”

She did not immediately pull away but rather held the embrace for another moment or two. “Listen T’Less. Don’t you die on me today. I just got you back and I’m not willing to lose you again. So If you die on me, I’m gonna kill you.”

She kept her tone light and soft, hoping her tone would convey the joke.

Interregnum 02-03 S2 / Re: Day 01 [2100hrs] When All is Stretched Thin

Last post by Dumedion - August 05, 2026, 11:57:45 PM

[Ens. Talia "Shadow" Al-Ibrahim | Personal Transport | Inbound, Uluma Chain] Attn: @Ellen Fitz

Her mouth opened to correct him instantly — 'dead reckoning was a method of navigation, not travel' — something intended to be playful but most likely misinterpreted as attitude; but then Talia realized Hirek was only teasing her. It wasn’t anything overt, either, but something in the way he paused, the way his tone subtly shifted…the intuition was there and gone, too fast for her to analyze properly. Hirek continued on anyway, in his way: clarification first, followed by measured response.

Flying without navigational computation? Yes, I am — no, I don’t see a problem here, Talia’s mind paraphrased.

Again, Talia opened her mouth to interject, and again Hirek continued; although neither of them seemed willing or able to draw attention to the physical contact of her hand atop his, even as the pressure there eased in unconscious synchronization as the spike of alarmed concern left her. Hirek dominated her attention, and through it all, Talia recognized the calm control he exerted; she’d seen it before, in herself and from instructors. Anyone who had grown accustomed to operating a craft long enough to do so almost by muscle memory alone moved and talked like that.

Okay, wonderful. Crisis averted.

Talia exhaled, nodded her understanding, and while the prospect of deliberately flying into turbulent weather still sat uneasy — she recognized the fact that Hirek clearly knew what he was doing and had far more experience doing it than her. It was his home, his craft; she trusted his ability then and there far more than her own, regardless how she felt about it.

That alone was more than sufficient reassurance, and in typical fashion, Talia opened her mouth to say so yet again — only this time, with an additional apology prepped and ready to fly — but then Hirek’s hand flipped and held hers. She couldn’t stop herself from looking, to verify what she felt.

He squeezed; Talia’s eyes darted back to Hirek’s face. Her lips parted with an unexpected smile, an unconscious response to his own. It wasn’t the usual one he wore; the one he greeted people with, or the one he flashed like a bullfighter’s cape to disarm and deflect her. It wasn’t the playful, flirty grin, either: it was real — she knew it, without a doubt, without any idea how. That smile alone, something so small and so easily taken for granted, affected Talia in ways she could never have prepared for and had zero defense against. The story that accompanied it was cute, sweet, and funny; she wondered if he planned on visiting this Aunt during their trip — the thought caused her attention to slip, just for a moment — while she seared the image of that smile and the way it made her feel into memory.

Hirek brought her back; she met his eyes and smiled again, softer, with another nod of understanding — then broke the connection to watch the approaching storms. Even as the tension left her body, there was no denying the thing-that-must-remain-unnamed — as it reared up inside her yet again, threatening, wild, yearning to be released. Nothing so basic as lust, because lust was easy — she knew lust.

No, this was something else entirely.

Lightning flashed, and Talia’s lips thinned in response as she inhaled — not quite a frown, more of a resignation — before Hirek released her hand. The loss was noted, cataloged, grieved; all at once. Her eyes fell closed as her head fell back to rest, hands gripping the harness straps at her shoulders; a habitual movement, borne of restlessness during long flights locked in a cockpit alone. A deep breath followed.

“I appreciate you,” Talia whispered, “just…don’t be surprised if I scream when this thing hits the water,” a smile cracked, just enough to show the attempt at humor as she glanced side long at him. “That’s not an invitation for you to try to make me, by the way — not right now.”

Later though? Who knows, Talia hid her smile behind a curtain of black hair, but she doubted Hirek missed that one. She hoped he didn’t. With everything going on, all the burdens and pressures of the current situation that he faced…

Talia realized how badly she wanted to see that smile again; she wanted to give him something else to think about, if only for the limited time they had left — but most of all, she wanted them to enjoy each other’s company. Simple things. Honest things. Everything sex should be, and rarely was; the nameless thing.

A girl could always dream, right?

Episode 02: Cosmic Imperative / Re: EPI S [Day 03 | 2330hrs.] Lay Your Weary Head To Rest

Last post by Griff - August 04, 2026, 07:56:52 PM

[Lieutenant Alistair Leavitt | Intensive Care Unit | Main Sickbay | Deck 11 | USS Theurgy ] @Ellen Fitz @RyeTanker @Dumedion

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Alistair, while still distinctly woozy, surged to his feet after Arven's arm was broken like a twig, the horrific snap freezing him in horror. He had heard that snap before, many times, in memories long since muted to protect his fragile psyche. He glanced at Enyd...

She looks...

Blind terror and desperation drove Alistair to stagger towards Zark from behind, and without thinking, he grabbed her antennae, squeezed as hard as he could, then twisted and wrenched them in opposite directions with as much strength as he could muster, as if trying to physically yank them off her skull.

Whatever had happened to Zark, even she could not ignore such agony, and she screamed, though Alistair, blind terror surging through him, didn't dare let up. His eyes drifted down, however, to Arven, and without stopping to think, he let Zark go, grabbed the hypo from Arven's hand, and injected it right into the side of her neck. At that, he hurriedly stepped back, hands raised, but open.

"Zark, come on, we need you!" he pleaded desperately.

Interregnum 02-03 S2 / Re: Day 01 [2100hrs] When All is Stretched Thin

Last post by Ellen Fitz - August 04, 2026, 07:46:39 PM

[ Hirek tr'Aimne | Personal Transport | Inbound, Uluma Chain ] Attn: @Dumedion

He had been happy to answer the unspoken question about the fabric.

"Shaanel," he said. "Open enough to breathe in wet heat. Tight enough that spray beads and rolls off rather than soaking through. And the patterning is not decoration, whatever they tell you in the Dartha shops when they sell you an imitation at four times the price. Every family dyes at its own interval. A man raised properly can read your home reef off your sleeve at forty paces — very useful at festivals. Don't want to...hook up with a cousin."

Then she looked past him at the console, and her face changed. What arrived now was worry, stripped of the armor she usually wrapped it in. That was worth more attention than the question. Talia did not hesitate. She challenged, argued, improvised, and had survived a great deal by trusting her own instincts absolutely — so watching those instincts tell her something was wrong was considerably more interesting to him than the weather.

"Wait — are you navigating by dead reckoning?"

The laugh came first. The concern came in behind it and stayed, his pause connected directly to her hand atop his on the controls.

"Dead reckoning." He turned the phrase over. "Charming. Your people put the word dead at the front of a navigational term, and then express surprise when the passengers go pale." A glance sideways. "Every Federation text I have read accuses Romulans of morbidity. We have never once named a method of travel after a corpse." Hirek shook his head before she could complain of his teasing. "If you are asking whether I am flying on calculated position, heading, speed, conditions, and known reference points — rather than surrendering the question to a machine —" He studied her hand on his on the throttle housing. He did not move it. He did not mention it, either. "Yes. I am."

He let it sit. It was likely not the reassurance she'd been fishing for. He was not interested in supplying a comforting version in place of an accurate one.

"The instruments give me velocity, altitude, pressure, heading. I account for wind, current, temperature, and what these formations do to the weather sitting on top of them. The storms look unpredictable to people who do not live beneath them. And the same is true of the waves." His fingers moved on the trim — a correction so small the deck did not register it. "They are not. They have patterns. Complicated ones. Patterns that occasionally kill men arrogant enough to think they have finished learning them." He pulled his hand out from under hers just long enough to flip, letting their palms connect, his fingers sliding between hers. "Lucky for you I believe one never stops learning." The corner of his mouth moved. "I have made this crossing since before your grandmother was born. Not in some years — but the route has not changed. The currents are where I left them, and we have not employed weather modifications in some time, so the weather should hold as I remember as well. And then there is the fact that the islands have not wandered off."

He squeezed her hand, his lips pulling back in a full smile, one he hadn't felt the desire to show in some time, making the muscles in his face tug strangely as he overrode the instinct to hide the amusement behind wry humor. "While I've never gotten lost, I once arrived at my aunt's island rather than my own." No embarrassment in it whatsoever. If anything, enjoyment. "Same chain. The correction cost me forty minutes and a great deal of dignity. She was delighted. She informed me that if I wished to visit, I might simply have visited — rather than staging an elaborate navigational failure for the sake of my pride." A breath through the nose. "She has repeated this at every family gathering since."

Something escaped him that was very nearly a laugh. Then it wasn't when he remembered Talia's fears had been real.

"The greatest danger in navigation is not the absence of automation." His eyes flicked toward her. "It is confidence without understanding. The machine will tell you exactly where you are, with enormous conviction, until the moment it is wrong."

He'd learned that at eleven, on a reef that looked entirely flat from the surface, with an oyster hunter's fist knotted in his shirt hauling him out of a current he had not read. He did not say so. She had her own version of the lesson — he'd read it on her the first time they met, in the way she checked exits before she checked faces.

Across the churning water, a flash of lightning bolted across the sky. He watched her response. Hirek had spent sixty years excellent at the beginning of things. The approach, the wit, the practiced escalation, the graceful exit before anyone had to learn anything true about him. He had never once been good at whatever this was.

"Your concern is noted." A pause. Quieter: "And appreciated." Then he returned his attention to the water, pulled his hand from hers to check various instruments, and left the acknowledgment where it lay rather than explaining it into something smaller.