Volnar. It was a very deep, very fresh wound for Aleksander Jachim. His last ship, the U.S.S. Evanescence, along with almost two hundred of his friends and shipmates had been lost there. Now he was being forced to revisit it onboard his current ship, the Orion. It was a ship unlike any other he had served on and one he’d had no desire to go near, as almost everyone else was incompetent, ill-disciplined, or just plain unsuited to being in Starfleet—had it not been for the war, then none of them would’ve lasted much longer. Unlike the men and women he’d served with under Captain Ushaal, all of who had brought honour and dignity to the uniforms they wore. Being back in the system that served as their grave, with this crew was some kind of cruel cosmic joke.
One he hoped he could escape very soon. Rumour had it a new wave of ships would be available within the next couple of weeks, which meant his chances of being reassigned to something more fitting of his service record were greatly improved. That would mean leaving the Orion without such an experienced and trained ops manager, but that wasn’t his problem.
The boatswain’s whistle sounded through the intercom. “All senior officers report to the conference room. All senior officers to the conference room.”
With a sigh, Jachim pulled on and zipped up his uniform jacket then grabbed his PADD before leaving the pokey room that was his quarters—which were immaculately clean, neat and organised; he may have been forced to live among animals but that didn’t mean he was going to become one.
This day would mark the second month he’d been onboard the Orion, whilst it would be nine weeks and four days since he was last in the Volnar System. Only this time he wouldn’t be going into battle against Dominion and Cardassian forces, holding them back to give the colonists on the sixth planet time to evacuate. No, this time he was going in to pick over their graves. The thought sent a shiver down his spine.
From his quarters on deck five, it was a short though noisy ride on the turbolift up to deck two, where the conference room was located. He marched with purpose to his step, face set in such an expressionless manner than many Vulcans would’ve been put to shame. Though he may have a negative outlook on his current ship and crew, he had only ever voiced them in private and even then only just to one person—mere minutes after he’d first set foot onboard.
He entered the domed meeting room and quickly took stock of who else was present. Lieutenant Commander Clarissa DuMont was seated at the table, staring absently into the mug of tea in her hands; Doctor Baxx sat beside her, collar open wide and wearing a lab coat in place of the grey-and-black jacket everyone else wore; Lieutenant j.g. D’Kehra was next, stretched out in her chair, looking far too relaxed; opposite her was the traitor, Chief Ramirez; then Lieutenant j.g. Enan Lanali, who sat with a stack of tablets in front of her. Only the Captain was missing from the meeting, though seeing as he was on shift, he’d no doubt be organising whoever would be covering him on the bridge as he took the meeting—not an easy task as there weren’t many to choose from.
Jachim took his customary seat, opposite DuMont, and waited. There was some chatter going on between Baxx, D’Kehra, Lanali and Ramirez, but he paid no attention to it, focusing on the PADD he’d brought, which had their full orders displayed on it, familiarising himself with them for the eighth time since they’d come through. He cast a quick look over the top of the device at the ship’s first officer, who looked bored as she sat waiting for the meeting to begin. She was a tough one to get a read on, as she never showed any strong feelings or gave any impression that anything that happened to them left much of an impression on her. On more than one occasion, when reading her watch report after he took over for gamma shift, he’d found her logs so succinct and to the point that he was beginning to wonder whether she’d achieved kolinahr and wiped out all emotions from her psyche.
The doors opened and Reihyn hurried in. “Apologies for the wait, I had to bring Lieutenant Myza up to speed on our status.”
Arranging to get a counsellor onboard was possibly the smartest decision Reihyn had made over the last two months. If there was one crew that needed mental and emotional support, it was this one.
He took his seat at the head of the table and quickly got this started. “Now, you’ve all read the mission orders and know why we’re here, so I won’t bore you with the details. The crew will be divided up into several teams, each with their own objectives, seeing as how time is a factor here.
“Lieutenant D’Kehra, you will focus on securing ordinance: torpedo magazines, phaser coils, shield emitters, as many as you can get your hands on. Lieutenant’s Jachim and Lanali, you’re primary concern will be salvageable systems and technology—whatever wasn’t destroyed in the battle. Chief Ramirez and his people will be after materials; any metal panels, struts or debris that is structurally sound. Doctor, we won’t get the chance to recover every body, but you can at least make a start at identifying and storing them for transport home. Commander DuMont, your team will look for usable equipment that might be in armouries or cargo bays. I’ll be co-ordinating everything from here.”
Baxx scoffed, drawing looks from everyone around the table.
“Problem Doctor?”
“I feel like a frelling Angosian vulture, picking over the corpses. It just isn’t right.”
“I know, Doctor, I don’t like it either,” Reihyn admitted. Not for the first time his blatant honesty surprised Jachim, most Captain’s would keep such opinions to themselves—though most Captain’s weren’t just three years older than a Lieutenant of twenty-eight.
Under normal procedure, for dealing with the site of a large scale battle, the bodies would be recovered first, so that the next of kin could make funeral arrangements, before teams were sent in to salvage what they could from the ships; but with the war only heating up and fighting getting more intense, there just wasn’t the chance to get the two objectives done separately. Especially now, with a war tearing the Quadrant apart, they couldn’t risk leaving Starfleet hardware floating around for pirates and smugglers to get their hands on.
“We will make recovering the dead a top priority, and I’ll spare as many people as I can, but we might not have the luxury of time here.”
“Huh, when have we ever?”
Jachim couldn’t fault the elderly Bolian. Every job they’d been given over the last two months would typically have needed days or weeks to complete, but they had only been given a fraction of that time—made all the more difficult on a ship that barely worked and a crew of just ninety-three.
Reihyn gave the CMO a sympathetic look, but his hands were tied by orders from the Admiralty—they say ‘jump’, he says ‘aye sir’. “Believe me, I tried to get us more time, but they won’t have it. Two days maximum is all we have though, depending on when the next shipment makes it to Starbase 257, that could be cut to thirty hours.”
“Damn brass,” Baxx began before his muttering grew too quiet for others to hear, except for the occasional swear.
“Anything else?” he asked, looking around the table. No one else spoke up. “Alright, let’s get everything prepped; we’ll be in the system in an hour. Dismissed.”
* * * * *
Christchurch, Evanescence, Infinity, Kollani, Nezka, Tamerlane, Zet. Lanali had memorised all the names of the ships, classes and general specs. She’d also mentally prepared herself for what they’d find, this wasn’t a SAR-op, where their focus was on the living, this time they were picking over the dead. But the looks on faces of some of her crew told her they hadn’t thought about how bad it would be, coming face to face with the frozen or torn up remains of fellow Starfleeters. Torlin had already vomited in his EVA suit and had to be sent back to the ship to get cleaned up.
She’d be lying if she said she was okay with seeing the bodies. It was the eyes that got to her, wide open and glassy, staring out at nothing. She blinked back tears.
To help try and speed things up, and to keep them from tripping over one another, each team had been assigned to a different ship. They had a few hours to see what shape each damaged vessel was in and what could be recovered—though the one thing they all did was pin a transporter tag onto the corpses they found, so they could be beamed back to the Orion, where they’d be stored in cargo bays seven and eight, which had been converted into makeshift morgues.
Lanali, Jachim and a team of ten engineers and operations techs were onboard the Intrepid-Class U.S.S. Infinity, the newest ship in the graveyard, as such she had the most advanced technology—which made her the most likely target of scavengers. DuMont was on the New Orleans-Class Christchurch, Baxx was onboard the largest ship, the Ambassador-Class Zet, D’Kehra was on the Akira-Class Tamerlane, and Ramirez was on the Excelsior-Class Kollani.
She headed for the engineering computer core, to check up and help the team that was recovering bio-neural gel packs, her inspection of main engineering revealing nothing of use—an overload in a plasma conduit had fried most of the other key components and fractured the warp core. Had it not been for the fact the core was off-line at the time then the ship would’ve been all but vaporised. She rounded a corner and found herself looking out at space. A weapons blast had gouged into the hull and exposed the entire stardrive section to vacuum—only those in airtight compartments would’ve been saved from the explosive decompression. Who knew how many bodies would be floating outside the ships.
Her older brother was a minister for the Faith of the Guiding Light, and a deeply spiritual man. After she’d joined Starfleet and immersed herself in so much science and technology, whenever she returned home to Rigel VI and met up with him again they would debate the merits of his path against hers, neither one wanting to relent to the other. She had never believed in any of his ‘superstitions’, unable to hand over her life, fate and potential happiness to some higher power (just as how he could never live a life without the belief in something greater than themselves); but at that moment, she found herself wishing she had some words for the dead, for the bodies they may never be able to find.
“Lieutenant Lanali, respond,” Jachim snapped over the comlink, not for the first time by his tone.
“Lanali here, go ahead.”
“What was the status of engineering?”
“Main engineering is a write-off, sir. A series of explosions and overloads took care of anything that may be of use. I didn’t see anything of note for the other teams. Eleven tagged for transport.”
“Understood. I’ve heard back from Petty Officer K’Prra, she’s had about as much luck from the secondary computer core—only a handful of gel packs that haven’t been compromised. The main core was in better shape, as were the impulse engines and primary deflector. D’Kehra should be able to get something from the weapons array. Though I’d say for us there isn’t much else we can do here.”
Still looking out at the emptiness of space she nodded. “Agreed.”
“Very well. We’ll move onto the next ship.”
“Sir,” she spoke up, turning away from the belly wound the Infinity had suffered, “that will be the Evanescence.”
Though Jachim wasn’t the most sociable among the crew, with less than a hundred onboard the Orion, people got to talking about everyone else, so everyone knew he’d been in Volnar when the battle had taken place. He’d been one of only eighteen survivors from his last ship, the one they were about to head too.
“I’m aware of that, Lieutenant,” he replied, his tone as level as it always was. “Return to the beam-in site, I will meet you there.”
“Understood.”
A moment later he called all the team back to where they had materialised. She slowly headed back the way she came, the route now a little more familiar to her. As she clumsily walked (she’d never been very graceful during EVA training at the Academy, and the same was still true) she couldn’t help but wonder what the prospect of returning to his old ship might do to Jachim. Despite her best attempts, he had shown no interest in being friends, their relationship was, at best, colleagues, though was often more superior and subordinate, so she couldn’t judge just how badly affected he might be. It was an area she herself had little experience to draw upon, having only been in one ‘battle’ during her three years of service, and even that was just against a pair of Maquis raiders. He had been through much more than she had and survived it, though seemed emotionally cut off or distant. As much as she looked like one, he did a far better impersonation of a Vulcan.
She just hoped that he was a resilient as he appeared to be, as he’d soon be facing the remains of old friends.
* * * * *
It had only taken a couple of days for Lieutenant j.g. Myza to realise just how desperately a counsellor was needed on the Orion. She hadn’t even had a single appointment in that time, wanting to read through the last batch of psych assessments they’d had. What she’d read had been eye opening and a little daunting. This was definitely a troubled crew, from a Captain promoted very quickly (some might even have said too quickly) through the ranks, an XO who’d failed to impress pretty much ever superior she’d had, a Security Chief who’d been demoted for some ‘incident’ no one onboard had clearance to know, a senior non-com who’d quit Starfleet to join the Maquis, not to mention the sheer number of rookies, or crewmembers with some serious reprimands against their names.
Some may have questioned her own sanity for accepting such a posting, but it was easy to help the well-adjusted and mentally strong individuals on the bigger or more important ships. This was where a counsellor was well and truly needed. Though her orders were only on a short-term trial period, her own reports to Starfleet Medical would hopefully show that she would be needed onboard for longer than they had originally intended.
For now however, she had to leave her counselling duties to one side, and focus on being an officer first and foremost—seeing that over half the crew were off the ship, working amidst the ruins of the Volnar task force. She couldn’t help but feel a little concerned for Jachim and just what he would be going through; though she had tried to talk with him about it, he’d shut her down pretty quickly. She could only help if the person suffering wanted it, trying to force therapy on others didn’t work, some would fight it and the sessions would hit a duranium bulkhead, and he was definitely one of those people. So she had done all she could, telling him she was there is he needed to talk.
It was one of the platitudes she hated dispensing, but sometimes it was also effective. When people reached the point where they needed to unburden, they would seek her out and start babbling. It took time, patience and training to cut through all the waffle, until she could get to the route cause and begin to address that. Some patients came to therapists to go through things they wanted to talk about, it was a good counsellor who got them to open up about the things they didn’t.
She just wasn’t sure that Aleksander Jachim would ever be one to unburden himself on her. The comm system chirped and she looked at who was contacting them. Speak of the devil, she realised before turning to the centre of the bridge.
“Captain, incoming signal from Lieutenant Jachim.”
Reihyn looked across at her and nodded. “Put him through.” She tapped in the sequence and nodded at him. “Orion here, go ahead.”
“Sir, we’ve finished out check of the Infinity. There isn’t much we can get from here, though D’Kehra might have a little more luck.”
“Understood, I’ll inform her.”
“We at the beam-in site. Requesting transport to the Evanescence.”
The Rigellian-Enex paused, shooting a look at Myza, the concern evident on his tattooed, canary-yellow face. “Are you sure about that, Lieutenant?”
“Of course, sir, we have sufficient air supply and transporter tags for a second inspection.”
It wasn’t lost on Myza or Reihyn that the human had deflected the real source of their shared concern. Of all the crew, Jachim was definitely one of the mentally strongest, so if he said he was alright to continue she had to give him the benefit of the doubt. Though she doubted he’d ever show any of them that he wasn’t.
The Captain’s expression asked her the one question he’d been dwelling on: was Jachim ready for this? She gave him a slow nod in return.
“Understood. We’ll beam you over in a few moments. Orion out.”
When the channel closed, he rose from his seat and moved over to mission ops, where Myza sat and perched on the edge of the console, arms tightly folded across his chest, looking at her intently. “Are you sure, Counsellor?” he asked quietly. “I don’t know if I could handle going into a situation like that.”
“Jachim’s psych profile is one of the strongest among the crew, even when he was assessed after the Evanescence survivors were recovered there was a slight deviation, but nothing drastic. He’s not the kind of person to admit he can’t do something, but I do think he’s the kind of person who can compartmentalise and work through whatever ghosts may be waiting for him over there. You’d have a bigger problem from him if you tried to pull him from this one.”
Reihyn paused and thought for a moment, before he ultimately nodded. “I’d have to agree with you on that. Signal transporter bay one to beam them to the Evanescence.”
“Aye sir.” Reihyn pushed off the console to return to his seat, when she placed her hand on his forearm, stopping him. He looked down at her. “For what it’s worth, Captain, I think you’d be just like Jachim in this situation.”
He gave her a weak smile. “Thank you, Counsellor.”
As he headed back to his place on the bridge, she relayed his orders to one of the large emergency transporters they were using for the salvage mission, then alerted the team to prepare for transport. As she worked she silently hoped that she was right about the mental fortitude of the Ops Manager.
* * * * *
Jachim had thought he was ready for returning. He wasn’t.
They beamed into the hangar bay on deck six, being a wide open space from which they could set forth, gather together parts to either be beamed back to the Orion or brought over by shuttle. It was two decks above them, in main engineering where he’d been found by the rescue ship. In the middle of the battle both the chief and assistant chief engineers had been killed, so he’d headed below to take charge, his relief, Ensign McAllister, taking his place on the bridge. From there he had done everything he could to keep their shields up and weapons firing, at the expense of everything else, including warp drive and life-support—just like the other seven ships assigned to safeguard the evacuation convoy.
But for all his grafting, for all he had given, it hadn’t been enough. The Evanescence had fallen, her hull punctured with multiple breaches, her power all but depleted, torpedo magazines empty and most of her phaser emitters either burnt out or targeted by the Jem’Hadar, whilst only twenty-three of her two-hundred and three crew had survived—though five of them would die of their injuries before the Britannic arrived and saved them.
He had lost so much on this ship. More than he’d wanted to think about. Standing on her once again brought it back, hard. His breathing was shallow and he found it hard to pull air into his lungs, his heart thundered in his chest, his legs felt weak (made worse by the lack of gravity), whilst tears blurred his vision.
He had failed them all. They had been relying on him to get them through and he hadn’t managed it.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry, he repeated to himself, over and over.
Pressure on his bicep made him look around. Lanali stood beside him, her hand place on his arm, her big, blue eyes looking up at him and on seeing his expression through the faceplate, they welled up with tears of her own. She opened her mouth, as though to speak, but no words came. The Rigellian-Tomal was only twenty-four, but in that moment she looked like even younger. This was his burden to bear, not hers.
Clearing his throat, he kept his back to the rest of the team, not wanting them to see his moment of weakness. “We took heavy damage during the battle. I doubt D’Kehra will find anything of use here. Our warp core was off-line during the battle but intact, the antimatter pods were also in good shape. Environmental systems were a different story. The deflector dish took a little damage, though I never did ascertain just how much and the computer was fully functional. We’ll start with those systems and work from there.
“Rhodes, T’Ven and Prr’ke, make your way to the deflector pod. You’ll have to use the crawlspace through the nacelles, run a cursory check of the warp coils as you go. K’Prra and de Haan, you’re with me, we’ll take the computer core. Everyone else with Lieutenant Lanali, check over the warp core and also check what can get from the other systems, see if there’s anything else we can get.”
He looked over his shoulder and saw them all milling around a little uncomfortably. Before he could snap at them, Lanali stepped forward. “So what are you waiting for? Let’s get to it!”
That got them moving, picking up their toolkits and pattern enhancers, before heading for the exits. He sought out the engineer’s face and gave her a faint smile, thankful that she was stepping in to help him—even if she didn’t need too.
“We’ll report in every fifteen minutes, sir,” she told him, even though that was standard procedure, before heading after the rest of her team.
He looked at the remaining two and signalled for them to follow him, leading them deeper into the crypt where many of his friends floated in endless rest.
* * * * *
One he hoped he could escape very soon. Rumour had it a new wave of ships would be available within the next couple of weeks, which meant his chances of being reassigned to something more fitting of his service record were greatly improved. That would mean leaving the Orion without such an experienced and trained ops manager, but that wasn’t his problem.
The boatswain’s whistle sounded through the intercom. “All senior officers report to the conference room. All senior officers to the conference room.”
With a sigh, Jachim pulled on and zipped up his uniform jacket then grabbed his PADD before leaving the pokey room that was his quarters—which were immaculately clean, neat and organised; he may have been forced to live among animals but that didn’t mean he was going to become one.
This day would mark the second month he’d been onboard the Orion, whilst it would be nine weeks and four days since he was last in the Volnar System. Only this time he wouldn’t be going into battle against Dominion and Cardassian forces, holding them back to give the colonists on the sixth planet time to evacuate. No, this time he was going in to pick over their graves. The thought sent a shiver down his spine.
From his quarters on deck five, it was a short though noisy ride on the turbolift up to deck two, where the conference room was located. He marched with purpose to his step, face set in such an expressionless manner than many Vulcans would’ve been put to shame. Though he may have a negative outlook on his current ship and crew, he had only ever voiced them in private and even then only just to one person—mere minutes after he’d first set foot onboard.
He entered the domed meeting room and quickly took stock of who else was present. Lieutenant Commander Clarissa DuMont was seated at the table, staring absently into the mug of tea in her hands; Doctor Baxx sat beside her, collar open wide and wearing a lab coat in place of the grey-and-black jacket everyone else wore; Lieutenant j.g. D’Kehra was next, stretched out in her chair, looking far too relaxed; opposite her was the traitor, Chief Ramirez; then Lieutenant j.g. Enan Lanali, who sat with a stack of tablets in front of her. Only the Captain was missing from the meeting, though seeing as he was on shift, he’d no doubt be organising whoever would be covering him on the bridge as he took the meeting—not an easy task as there weren’t many to choose from.
Jachim took his customary seat, opposite DuMont, and waited. There was some chatter going on between Baxx, D’Kehra, Lanali and Ramirez, but he paid no attention to it, focusing on the PADD he’d brought, which had their full orders displayed on it, familiarising himself with them for the eighth time since they’d come through. He cast a quick look over the top of the device at the ship’s first officer, who looked bored as she sat waiting for the meeting to begin. She was a tough one to get a read on, as she never showed any strong feelings or gave any impression that anything that happened to them left much of an impression on her. On more than one occasion, when reading her watch report after he took over for gamma shift, he’d found her logs so succinct and to the point that he was beginning to wonder whether she’d achieved kolinahr and wiped out all emotions from her psyche.
The doors opened and Reihyn hurried in. “Apologies for the wait, I had to bring Lieutenant Myza up to speed on our status.”
Arranging to get a counsellor onboard was possibly the smartest decision Reihyn had made over the last two months. If there was one crew that needed mental and emotional support, it was this one.
He took his seat at the head of the table and quickly got this started. “Now, you’ve all read the mission orders and know why we’re here, so I won’t bore you with the details. The crew will be divided up into several teams, each with their own objectives, seeing as how time is a factor here.
“Lieutenant D’Kehra, you will focus on securing ordinance: torpedo magazines, phaser coils, shield emitters, as many as you can get your hands on. Lieutenant’s Jachim and Lanali, you’re primary concern will be salvageable systems and technology—whatever wasn’t destroyed in the battle. Chief Ramirez and his people will be after materials; any metal panels, struts or debris that is structurally sound. Doctor, we won’t get the chance to recover every body, but you can at least make a start at identifying and storing them for transport home. Commander DuMont, your team will look for usable equipment that might be in armouries or cargo bays. I’ll be co-ordinating everything from here.”
Baxx scoffed, drawing looks from everyone around the table.
“Problem Doctor?”
“I feel like a frelling Angosian vulture, picking over the corpses. It just isn’t right.”
“I know, Doctor, I don’t like it either,” Reihyn admitted. Not for the first time his blatant honesty surprised Jachim, most Captain’s would keep such opinions to themselves—though most Captain’s weren’t just three years older than a Lieutenant of twenty-eight.
Under normal procedure, for dealing with the site of a large scale battle, the bodies would be recovered first, so that the next of kin could make funeral arrangements, before teams were sent in to salvage what they could from the ships; but with the war only heating up and fighting getting more intense, there just wasn’t the chance to get the two objectives done separately. Especially now, with a war tearing the Quadrant apart, they couldn’t risk leaving Starfleet hardware floating around for pirates and smugglers to get their hands on.
“We will make recovering the dead a top priority, and I’ll spare as many people as I can, but we might not have the luxury of time here.”
“Huh, when have we ever?”
Jachim couldn’t fault the elderly Bolian. Every job they’d been given over the last two months would typically have needed days or weeks to complete, but they had only been given a fraction of that time—made all the more difficult on a ship that barely worked and a crew of just ninety-three.
Reihyn gave the CMO a sympathetic look, but his hands were tied by orders from the Admiralty—they say ‘jump’, he says ‘aye sir’. “Believe me, I tried to get us more time, but they won’t have it. Two days maximum is all we have though, depending on when the next shipment makes it to Starbase 257, that could be cut to thirty hours.”
“Damn brass,” Baxx began before his muttering grew too quiet for others to hear, except for the occasional swear.
“Anything else?” he asked, looking around the table. No one else spoke up. “Alright, let’s get everything prepped; we’ll be in the system in an hour. Dismissed.”
* * * * *
Christchurch, Evanescence, Infinity, Kollani, Nezka, Tamerlane, Zet. Lanali had memorised all the names of the ships, classes and general specs. She’d also mentally prepared herself for what they’d find, this wasn’t a SAR-op, where their focus was on the living, this time they were picking over the dead. But the looks on faces of some of her crew told her they hadn’t thought about how bad it would be, coming face to face with the frozen or torn up remains of fellow Starfleeters. Torlin had already vomited in his EVA suit and had to be sent back to the ship to get cleaned up.
She’d be lying if she said she was okay with seeing the bodies. It was the eyes that got to her, wide open and glassy, staring out at nothing. She blinked back tears.
To help try and speed things up, and to keep them from tripping over one another, each team had been assigned to a different ship. They had a few hours to see what shape each damaged vessel was in and what could be recovered—though the one thing they all did was pin a transporter tag onto the corpses they found, so they could be beamed back to the Orion, where they’d be stored in cargo bays seven and eight, which had been converted into makeshift morgues.
Lanali, Jachim and a team of ten engineers and operations techs were onboard the Intrepid-Class U.S.S. Infinity, the newest ship in the graveyard, as such she had the most advanced technology—which made her the most likely target of scavengers. DuMont was on the New Orleans-Class Christchurch, Baxx was onboard the largest ship, the Ambassador-Class Zet, D’Kehra was on the Akira-Class Tamerlane, and Ramirez was on the Excelsior-Class Kollani.
She headed for the engineering computer core, to check up and help the team that was recovering bio-neural gel packs, her inspection of main engineering revealing nothing of use—an overload in a plasma conduit had fried most of the other key components and fractured the warp core. Had it not been for the fact the core was off-line at the time then the ship would’ve been all but vaporised. She rounded a corner and found herself looking out at space. A weapons blast had gouged into the hull and exposed the entire stardrive section to vacuum—only those in airtight compartments would’ve been saved from the explosive decompression. Who knew how many bodies would be floating outside the ships.
Her older brother was a minister for the Faith of the Guiding Light, and a deeply spiritual man. After she’d joined Starfleet and immersed herself in so much science and technology, whenever she returned home to Rigel VI and met up with him again they would debate the merits of his path against hers, neither one wanting to relent to the other. She had never believed in any of his ‘superstitions’, unable to hand over her life, fate and potential happiness to some higher power (just as how he could never live a life without the belief in something greater than themselves); but at that moment, she found herself wishing she had some words for the dead, for the bodies they may never be able to find.
“Lieutenant Lanali, respond,” Jachim snapped over the comlink, not for the first time by his tone.
“Lanali here, go ahead.”
“What was the status of engineering?”
“Main engineering is a write-off, sir. A series of explosions and overloads took care of anything that may be of use. I didn’t see anything of note for the other teams. Eleven tagged for transport.”
“Understood. I’ve heard back from Petty Officer K’Prra, she’s had about as much luck from the secondary computer core—only a handful of gel packs that haven’t been compromised. The main core was in better shape, as were the impulse engines and primary deflector. D’Kehra should be able to get something from the weapons array. Though I’d say for us there isn’t much else we can do here.”
Still looking out at the emptiness of space she nodded. “Agreed.”
“Very well. We’ll move onto the next ship.”
“Sir,” she spoke up, turning away from the belly wound the Infinity had suffered, “that will be the Evanescence.”
Though Jachim wasn’t the most sociable among the crew, with less than a hundred onboard the Orion, people got to talking about everyone else, so everyone knew he’d been in Volnar when the battle had taken place. He’d been one of only eighteen survivors from his last ship, the one they were about to head too.
“I’m aware of that, Lieutenant,” he replied, his tone as level as it always was. “Return to the beam-in site, I will meet you there.”
“Understood.”
A moment later he called all the team back to where they had materialised. She slowly headed back the way she came, the route now a little more familiar to her. As she clumsily walked (she’d never been very graceful during EVA training at the Academy, and the same was still true) she couldn’t help but wonder what the prospect of returning to his old ship might do to Jachim. Despite her best attempts, he had shown no interest in being friends, their relationship was, at best, colleagues, though was often more superior and subordinate, so she couldn’t judge just how badly affected he might be. It was an area she herself had little experience to draw upon, having only been in one ‘battle’ during her three years of service, and even that was just against a pair of Maquis raiders. He had been through much more than she had and survived it, though seemed emotionally cut off or distant. As much as she looked like one, he did a far better impersonation of a Vulcan.
She just hoped that he was a resilient as he appeared to be, as he’d soon be facing the remains of old friends.
* * * * *
It had only taken a couple of days for Lieutenant j.g. Myza to realise just how desperately a counsellor was needed on the Orion. She hadn’t even had a single appointment in that time, wanting to read through the last batch of psych assessments they’d had. What she’d read had been eye opening and a little daunting. This was definitely a troubled crew, from a Captain promoted very quickly (some might even have said too quickly) through the ranks, an XO who’d failed to impress pretty much ever superior she’d had, a Security Chief who’d been demoted for some ‘incident’ no one onboard had clearance to know, a senior non-com who’d quit Starfleet to join the Maquis, not to mention the sheer number of rookies, or crewmembers with some serious reprimands against their names.
Some may have questioned her own sanity for accepting such a posting, but it was easy to help the well-adjusted and mentally strong individuals on the bigger or more important ships. This was where a counsellor was well and truly needed. Though her orders were only on a short-term trial period, her own reports to Starfleet Medical would hopefully show that she would be needed onboard for longer than they had originally intended.
For now however, she had to leave her counselling duties to one side, and focus on being an officer first and foremost—seeing that over half the crew were off the ship, working amidst the ruins of the Volnar task force. She couldn’t help but feel a little concerned for Jachim and just what he would be going through; though she had tried to talk with him about it, he’d shut her down pretty quickly. She could only help if the person suffering wanted it, trying to force therapy on others didn’t work, some would fight it and the sessions would hit a duranium bulkhead, and he was definitely one of those people. So she had done all she could, telling him she was there is he needed to talk.
It was one of the platitudes she hated dispensing, but sometimes it was also effective. When people reached the point where they needed to unburden, they would seek her out and start babbling. It took time, patience and training to cut through all the waffle, until she could get to the route cause and begin to address that. Some patients came to therapists to go through things they wanted to talk about, it was a good counsellor who got them to open up about the things they didn’t.
She just wasn’t sure that Aleksander Jachim would ever be one to unburden himself on her. The comm system chirped and she looked at who was contacting them. Speak of the devil, she realised before turning to the centre of the bridge.
“Captain, incoming signal from Lieutenant Jachim.”
Reihyn looked across at her and nodded. “Put him through.” She tapped in the sequence and nodded at him. “Orion here, go ahead.”
“Sir, we’ve finished out check of the Infinity. There isn’t much we can get from here, though D’Kehra might have a little more luck.”
“Understood, I’ll inform her.”
“We at the beam-in site. Requesting transport to the Evanescence.”
The Rigellian-Enex paused, shooting a look at Myza, the concern evident on his tattooed, canary-yellow face. “Are you sure about that, Lieutenant?”
“Of course, sir, we have sufficient air supply and transporter tags for a second inspection.”
It wasn’t lost on Myza or Reihyn that the human had deflected the real source of their shared concern. Of all the crew, Jachim was definitely one of the mentally strongest, so if he said he was alright to continue she had to give him the benefit of the doubt. Though she doubted he’d ever show any of them that he wasn’t.
The Captain’s expression asked her the one question he’d been dwelling on: was Jachim ready for this? She gave him a slow nod in return.
“Understood. We’ll beam you over in a few moments. Orion out.”
When the channel closed, he rose from his seat and moved over to mission ops, where Myza sat and perched on the edge of the console, arms tightly folded across his chest, looking at her intently. “Are you sure, Counsellor?” he asked quietly. “I don’t know if I could handle going into a situation like that.”
“Jachim’s psych profile is one of the strongest among the crew, even when he was assessed after the Evanescence survivors were recovered there was a slight deviation, but nothing drastic. He’s not the kind of person to admit he can’t do something, but I do think he’s the kind of person who can compartmentalise and work through whatever ghosts may be waiting for him over there. You’d have a bigger problem from him if you tried to pull him from this one.”
Reihyn paused and thought for a moment, before he ultimately nodded. “I’d have to agree with you on that. Signal transporter bay one to beam them to the Evanescence.”
“Aye sir.” Reihyn pushed off the console to return to his seat, when she placed her hand on his forearm, stopping him. He looked down at her. “For what it’s worth, Captain, I think you’d be just like Jachim in this situation.”
He gave her a weak smile. “Thank you, Counsellor.”
As he headed back to his place on the bridge, she relayed his orders to one of the large emergency transporters they were using for the salvage mission, then alerted the team to prepare for transport. As she worked she silently hoped that she was right about the mental fortitude of the Ops Manager.
* * * * *
Jachim had thought he was ready for returning. He wasn’t.
They beamed into the hangar bay on deck six, being a wide open space from which they could set forth, gather together parts to either be beamed back to the Orion or brought over by shuttle. It was two decks above them, in main engineering where he’d been found by the rescue ship. In the middle of the battle both the chief and assistant chief engineers had been killed, so he’d headed below to take charge, his relief, Ensign McAllister, taking his place on the bridge. From there he had done everything he could to keep their shields up and weapons firing, at the expense of everything else, including warp drive and life-support—just like the other seven ships assigned to safeguard the evacuation convoy.
But for all his grafting, for all he had given, it hadn’t been enough. The Evanescence had fallen, her hull punctured with multiple breaches, her power all but depleted, torpedo magazines empty and most of her phaser emitters either burnt out or targeted by the Jem’Hadar, whilst only twenty-three of her two-hundred and three crew had survived—though five of them would die of their injuries before the Britannic arrived and saved them.
He had lost so much on this ship. More than he’d wanted to think about. Standing on her once again brought it back, hard. His breathing was shallow and he found it hard to pull air into his lungs, his heart thundered in his chest, his legs felt weak (made worse by the lack of gravity), whilst tears blurred his vision.
He had failed them all. They had been relying on him to get them through and he hadn’t managed it.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry, he repeated to himself, over and over.
Pressure on his bicep made him look around. Lanali stood beside him, her hand place on his arm, her big, blue eyes looking up at him and on seeing his expression through the faceplate, they welled up with tears of her own. She opened her mouth, as though to speak, but no words came. The Rigellian-Tomal was only twenty-four, but in that moment she looked like even younger. This was his burden to bear, not hers.
Clearing his throat, he kept his back to the rest of the team, not wanting them to see his moment of weakness. “We took heavy damage during the battle. I doubt D’Kehra will find anything of use here. Our warp core was off-line during the battle but intact, the antimatter pods were also in good shape. Environmental systems were a different story. The deflector dish took a little damage, though I never did ascertain just how much and the computer was fully functional. We’ll start with those systems and work from there.
“Rhodes, T’Ven and Prr’ke, make your way to the deflector pod. You’ll have to use the crawlspace through the nacelles, run a cursory check of the warp coils as you go. K’Prra and de Haan, you’re with me, we’ll take the computer core. Everyone else with Lieutenant Lanali, check over the warp core and also check what can get from the other systems, see if there’s anything else we can get.”
He looked over his shoulder and saw them all milling around a little uncomfortably. Before he could snap at them, Lanali stepped forward. “So what are you waiting for? Let’s get to it!”
That got them moving, picking up their toolkits and pattern enhancers, before heading for the exits. He sought out the engineer’s face and gave her a faint smile, thankful that she was stepping in to help him—even if she didn’t need too.
“We’ll report in every fifteen minutes, sir,” she told him, even though that was standard procedure, before heading after the rest of her team.
He looked at the remaining two and signalled for them to follow him, leading them deeper into the crypt where many of his friends floated in endless rest.
* * * * *
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