* * *
Leo was awakened from his deep sleep by the gentle chime of the door announcement system. With a lazy effort, he opened his eyes and experienced the stiffness and soreness in his muscles as he tried to stand up from the bunk in his stateroom on Reykjavík. He sniffled deeply and cleared his throat as soon as the second chime sounded. Afterwards, his voice, raspy from sleep, inquired, "Who is it?"
The reply came through the intercom, "Chief Zenn, sir."
"Enter," he said automatically. Zenn had traveled with him on multiple investigations in the past and had seen him in states worse than this. When she walked in through the door, he strained his eyes to see her amidst the glaring light from the ship’s corridor. He mustered a short greeting of "Morning."
With triteness, she informed him of his sleep duration of over eleven hours. "The team grew concerned."
"‘The team.’" His use of her words came with a pointed tone behind them. "I guess I should not expect your personal concern," Leo noted with amusement.
Zenn shook her head. "No, sir. My concern is limited to ensuring that you attend to your duty, and nothing more." She faced away from him, but he could see that her words did not match her body language.
He smirked. "Understood, Chief." He got to his feet and reached upward to stretch out his muscles. His chosen sleepwear consisted of the Greenwood Royal Naval Academy t-shirt and boxer briefs that were given to him by the Queen. He twisted his midsection back and forth to alleviate the discomfort from a prolonged period of rest. While he did that, he observed her moving about his stateroom and commencing her usual organizing routine, which they often did when working together.
The memories of the previous day flooded his mind. He lost his energy and his joviality vanished.
"Lara?" he called to her softly.
The mention of her given name broke through her professional facade. "Leo?" she replied, concerned. "What’s wrong?"
He sighed. "While I was on Repulse, Maria decided to break up with me. I read the message right before I crashed."
Zenn moved closer and wrapped him in a tight embrace. "I’m sorry," she said. "Did she say why?"
Leo nodded. "She, uh… found someone else. Her last assignment took her to a colony world and one of the agricultural administrators there caught her eye. To say that the feeling was mutual is an understatement. I guess she’s really smitten because she’s talking about moving there to head up their news service."
She glanced at him and inquired, "Didn’t you have plans to meet up later?"
"After the conference. However, we got sidetracked here, and she ended up being assigned a new feature. She shipped out when I told her I wouldn’t make our planned trip to Pacifica," he explained as they parted. "Them’s the breaks, I guess."
Zenn offered lamely, "Bex always says that absence makes the heart grow fonder… for someone else."
He snorted. "Bex is a cynical person by nature. But… in this case, I guess she nailed it."
"She is a woman of rare talents," she noted. "So… do you need anything?"
Leo shook his head. "I’m a big boy."
"Um… are you going to reply to her in any way?"
After contemplating for a few minutes, he settled on the words, "I will wish her all the best and hope for her happiness."
She peered at him, wordlessly pressing him for more.
"The fact is that if Maria’s found someone that she feels so strongly about that she’ll upend her life to be with…" As he completed his sentence, his tone took on a resigned quality.
"Yeah, that part of the story really caught me off guard."
He chuckled while nodding. "Yeah."
Zenn noted, "It stings like hell, though."
"It does. I would never have asked her to sacrifice her career for me, but…"
"It hurts to hear that she did it so easily for this other person," she finished the thought for him.
He responded with a silent nod. He lifted his index finger in the air, a clear sign of his emphatic agreement with Zenn’s assessment. In the dimly lit stateroom, they sat in silence.
"Would you take an order from me, sir?" she asked him.
He smiled. "In all our time together, I’ve always taken orders from you."
She giggled at that. "Go clean up, Leo. You stink. And you’ve got a meeting with the Commodore later."
Leo lifted his arm and sniffed to confirm his odor after almost half a day in bed. He gave a wince before nodding. "Aye, aye, Chief."
* * *
Trujillo, Leo, and Captain Tarrant from Starfleet Intelligence sat in her ready room, each of them with a glass of whiskey in hand.
The commodore raised her glass in a toast, “To the starship Repulse and all her crew who fell in Gorn space.”
Raising his glass, Leo closed his eyes for a moment before knocking it back in one motion. When he recovered, he nodded. "To Repulse."
Trujillo gave him a sympathetic look. “It’s never easy to lose people, Leo. It doesn’t matter if you were only in command for a little while, it was your ship and they were your crew. I’m sorry for your loss.”
"Thank you, sir," Leo replied in a soft tone. He set the empty shot glass down on the desk and wrapped his arms around himself.
Tarrant cast a glance towards the narrow viewport, the transparent aluminum and composite window three times thicker than aboard most other starships. “So, does anyone in Command know if we’re at war with the Gorn or not?”
Trujillo shook her head with evident distaste. “Nobody seems to know. They’re still gathered along the border, but damned if I know why they haven’t attacked yet. We’ve got a full diplomatic team on their way with Vice-Admiral Abwao, who’s taking command of the combined fleet they’re assembling from Task Forces Lacertus and Truancy, along with another five ships the admiral’s bringing. Reykjavík is being re-tasked to take Keller to the nearest starbase, after which… who knows? I just hate leaving this whole mess unresolved; it offends my sense of order.”
She refilled her glass from the bottle of cask-aged New Scotland Single Malt, produced on Alpha Centauri. “I wish we knew who or what was responsible for hijacking Repulse and Gol. The fact that anyone, let alone a potential foreign power could exert that kind of control over our ships of the line is absolutely terrifying.”
Tarrant dipped his head, appearing pained for a brief moment, before raising his gaze to meet Trujillo’s eyes. “Sir, I’ve been giving that some thought. I must reluctantly admit this may have been an inside job.”
Leo shot Tarrant a look, but said nothing.
Her eyes widened. “Intel you mean?”
“Not… precisely,” he said, followed by a reluctant sigh. “Once upon a time, there was an agency, an adjunct of Starfleet Intelligence, that used to specialize in just this sort of thing. Skulduggery and dirty tricks were their raison d'être. They reportedly went rogue sometime in the late 2250’s and were supposed to have been shut down, but rumors persist to this day that they’re still out there, somewhere, plying their trade in fanatical defense of the Federation.”
Trujillo took a long sip from her drink before being struck by a proverbial lightening bolt of realization. . “Wait… you’re talking about Section 31, aren’t you? That’s a real thing? That was always the sort of bullshit midshipman’s tales we passed around at the academy, ghost stories about a super-secret black-ops intel outfit that ran around the quadrant assassinating people and blowing things up.”
"Back on Starbase Eight, the very first case I got involved in there was some kind of… conspiracy," Leo told them, though his gaze settled on the far bulkhead. "It was an odd case, but I know that when I started digging deep, my suspect went from having none-to-weak evidence to strong evidence in the course of hours. It dropped right into our laps without any effort. It felt almost like a frame job. Janeera and I got him to agree to an administrative discharge, because we both felt there was something more that we didn't see." He added, "He ended up dead in his hotel room on Risa later in the week."
Trujillo looked from Tarrant to Leo and back again. “I hope to hell you’re both joking, but I know you’re not. Something like this actually exists? An organization that can send a starship on a suicide mission into enemy territory under false and completely fabricated pretenses?”
"The mechanism clearly exists, though you and I both know that the prefix code is supposed to be a fail-safe against enemy capture," Leo intoned, now looking at Trujillo. "The entire system was subverted for a specific goal. That cannot happen without access."
She pinched the bridge of her nose, fighting back a headache fueled by utter disbelief and dismay. “Good God, how do we defend against something like that? If that’s who was behind this, they clearly had no compunction about sacrificing an entire starship crew to destroy that Gorn weapons facility, not to mention the likelihood of starting a war between our two governments.”
“That was supposedly their mission statement, Commodore,” Tarrant offered. “They would do what had to be done, regardless of the cost in lives or treasure, to defend the Federation against threats both foreign and domestic.”
“How the hell do I sell that to Command as a possible explanation for this whole fiasco? Sorry, folks, it looks like a covert intel cabal that hasn’t been seen or heard from in sixty years decided to blow up the Gorn isolytic weapons station by playing Captain Keller for a fool. When that plot fell apart after the fact, they attempted to destroy the ship and the evidence of their crimes by hacking its prefix codes and driving it headlong into a Gorn fleet.”
"You don't," Leo said with a start. "Do what I did. Write two reports."
Trujillo’s confused expression begged elaboration.
Leo tossed a quick look to Tarrant before explaining. "My official report had nothing but the facts; dry, hard evidence to support the conclusions that he violated the civil rights of his prisoners based on what they framed him with. He was a bad guy, either way. I didn't lose sleep over this conviction." He paused, then continued, "I wrote a second report, same evidence, but I also included all the hinky stuff that happened during the investigation. Janeera has a copy of that report in her private archives, so if anything happens to me…" He trailed off, leaving the rest unsaid. "As far as our antagonists are concerned, we know nothing officially."
Her expression hardened. “You really think they’d kill line officers to protect their secrets?”
“Almost certainly, sir,” Tarrant replied guiltily, looking morose.
"They already have," Leo added quickly. "They most definitely killed my suspect. No way he died in his sleep. He was a healthy marine company-grade officer."
“Goddamn it,” Trujillo seethed. “Very well, then. I guess I’ll be writing two reports, one for Command’s general consumption, and one for Admiral Saavik.”
Leo nodded in approval. "Yes. If there's any admiral I would trust, it's her." Then, a quick, sheepish amendment, "I mean, outside of my parents…"
“Damn it,” she said again, this time with less heat. “This isn’t the way Starfleet or the Federation are supposed to function.”
Tarrant reached out to pour himself another glass, then raised it towards the others. “Here’s to living up to our ideals, an increasingly risky proposition these days.”
“I will, reluctantly, have to drink to that, Captain,” Nandi said, topping off her own glass.
Leo allowed her to top him off, and he raised his glass before downing his shot. "Salud."
* * *
Trujillo pressed the annunciator, chiming Leo’s cabin.
"Enter," Leo shouted from within. "Though, I'll be changing addresses in the next fifteen minutes!"
She stepped across the threshold, smiling wistfully. “Your chariot awaits, Leo. Hathaway’s just come alongside.”
Patting a packed duffle on the chair's seat next to the table, Leo nervously grinned and told her, "Ready to go. Hey, did all of the Repulse folks make it on board, okay?"
“They did, and I was assured that Hathaway’s carrying three trauma counselors to assist with the crew’s adjustment after the loss of their ship. The same will be afforded them at the starbase.”
He agreed with a chuckle. "The therapists on base are some of the best," he assured her. "I'm sure some of them are heading back to Earth for new assignments, though, right?"
“Most of them, or so I’ve heard, after a generous spell of shoreleave.”
Leo sighed. "I'm a bit concerned for the bridge crew. Commander Vara, especially. She seemed to be struggling once we beamed off of the ship. I was planning on talking with her on the long trip back to the base."
“Everyone handles stress and trauma differently. I’m sure talking with her might be helpful, but it’s also a good bet she could use a bit of professional assistance.”
"I started therapy, myself," he admitted. "Four years ago, when I got back from Sigma Serpentis - Greenwood. I, uh… it was a traumatic mission. And after this, I'm pretty sure I'll be visiting him frequently."
“Greenwood?” Trujillo suddenly remembered. “Oh, God… the Kzinti, wasn’t it?”
"Yeah," he nodded solemnly. "Task Force Seventeen, Operation Castle Wall. I was an exchange officer on one of the Royal Navy ships when we got boarded. A lot of people died, including this young midshipman who had her whole future in front of her. I, uh… had a lot of baggage after that. But the talking's help a lot."
She nodded empathetically. “I’ve had… similar experiences. Fortunately, I’ve availed myself of counseling services as well. I think that’s the only way any of us can last in this career until retirement.”
On top of the table next to him, sat his captain's rank insignia. "Speaking of lasting to retirement," he said, picking it up and handing it to her. "I should give this back. My career as a captain is over."
Trujillo took a moment to examine the rank pin in the palm of her hand. “Not so fast, Mister Verde.” She cleared her throat dramatically. “Attention to orders.”
The Pavlovian response to the order reflected immediately in Leo's straightened posture. He waited wordlessly for the next drill order, as he had since entering the Academy.
She stepped forward reaching up to unclasp his shoulder flash, replacing the commander’s insignia with the captain’s pin. “By order of Commodore Trujillo, you are hereby awarded the brevet promotion to captain as of this time, stardate blah-blah-blah. It’s official, by the way, I processed the orders with Command two hours ago.” She re-fastened the clasp, smoothing it out and stepping back to look at him. “You get to keep these until the promotion is confirmed as permanent or someone of a higher rank than me decides otherwise. Seeing as I’ve written a very complimentary letter about you to Admiral Saavik, I say the chances of the latter are slim to none.”
He balked, though respectful in tone, "Sir, I failed. I got so many people killed. Keller was right…"
She blinked, genuinely surprised at his admission. “Leo, give me your eyes.”
Leo met her gaze without hesitation. "Yes, sir."
“You took a shattered crew, a crew that Keller had beaten and scolded into submission, and you provided them both leadership and hope in their moments of greatest need. Your plans were the best that anyone could have come up with given the circumstances, especially since you had no idea that Reykjavík was in pursuit. The freak accident that damaged the second shuttle isn’t your fault, it was just… bad luck.” She gestured in the general direction of Hathaway. “Those people over there gave you that pin because you earned it. Despite everything going on, you stepped into the power vacuum on that ship and you saved as many of them as you could. That’s why they’re waiting for you right now. Captain Sheinbaum says the Repulse survivors have formed an honor guard outside the transporter room.”
He blinked silently at the mention of an honor guard. Finally, he found his voice, though at a high pitch, commented, "Honor guard?" Leo sputtered, "I.. er, uh… I didn't do anything special…" He sighed loudly, a blush settling on his cheeks at the news. "Can I be honest with you?" he asked flatly.
“Always.”
"When I was on that bridge and everything went sideways… I asked myself what you would do in my place," Leo admitted, dropping his eyes to the deck.
She smiled. “I'm flattered. I still do that myself. Ask myself what Captain Bryce or Captain Vosluk would have done in whatever situation I’m facing. Usually, after it’s all over, I hear one of them in the back of my head saying, ‘Holy shit, Nandi, I’d never have tried that in a thousand years!’”
Leo chuckled. "Well, thankfully, the Nandi in my head seemed to be in lockstep with me. Which was great, until it wasn't. When we were watching Commander Dini on that screen, my muscle tension was so high, I thought I might break my bones just from standing up."
“Watching when there’s nothing you can do to affect the situation is the worst part,” she confirmed. “It’s one of the sacrifices the captain’s chair demands of us.”
A slow realization of the truth altered Leo's expression to one of understanding. "I'm… yes. That's a painful lesson to learn. I can't imagine how much worse it gets when you take a flag rank and have to watch from a great distance."
A shadow seemed to cross Trujillo’s features, a darkness comprised of dozens of ships, thousands of lives. “Exponentially worse,” she murmured.
Leo stole a quick glance at his shoulder before returning to meet her eyes. "Well, for what it's worth, sir, you've literally been an inspiration. And I appreciate you taking the time to set me straight. Part of me wishes that I could stick around and learn more, but I'm sure my boss wants me back."
“Your boss, and those people over on the Hathaway,” Trujillo replied, pulling herself out of her dark reverie. She gestured towards the door. “Shall we?”
Grabbing his duffle and slinging it over his right shoulder, Leo nodded. "Yes, sir." He preceded her out the door and into the corridor.
* * *
Starbase 8, in geosynchronous orbit of Memory Alpha
Seeing the seal of the Starbase Operations branch of Starfleet on the inner airlock’s far bulkhead set Leo at ease as he returned to his home of five years. The starship Hathaway conveyed him and his team from Reykjavík back to the core worlds of the Federation, along with the rest of Repulse‘s surviving crew. Upon their return to Earth, they would potentially transfer the survivors to other assignments.
"So," Lieutenant Alejandro Martinez placed a hand on Leo’s shoulder as he followed him through. "What’s next, jefe? The next case on the docket?"
Leo sighed. "Yep," he replied, turning his head halfway toward the younger man.
Sergeant Angela Torres and her investigative partner, First Lieutenant Marie Collins, held up short to allow the two officers to hold their discussion in private.
Martinez nodded toward Leo’s shoulder. "You keeping that on?"
"I tried to give it to Commodore Trujillo, but she told me to keep it," Leo explained softly. "I guess now that I’m back, I shouldn’t wear the insignia of a rank I haven’t truly earned."
Torres stepped forward and shook her head. "I think you’ve definitely earned it, Leo."
Collins agreed. "No doubt."
"Hey!" Chief Lara Zenn’s voice called from inside the airlock. "Who’s holding up the damn gangplank? Some of us have to report back in, you know?"
Everyone stepped clear and allowed the NCO to step through until she came up to Leo. Handing over a PADD to him, Zenn said, "Read through and sign this, Captain. It’s the final draft report for the boss." With nothing further or waiting for a dismissal, she proceeded past the inner doors and disappeared around the corner.
Leo looked down at the PADD’s screen and noted that she had finished putting together the team’s final report for them. He deactivated the screen and saw his reflection. He brought the face of the device against his maroon chest and asked, "Should we get back to the office?"
Following Zenn’s led back to the turbolift, the discussion between the long-serving team fell silent. Leo glanced around, assuring everyone he was fine. The smiles he received were just as convincing as his own.
* * *
