She felt a tinge of trepidation before she entered the captain’s ready room. Truth be told, it was an altogether new feeling for the young Tenerian who was undeniably the captain’s closest confidant and friend for many years. But ever since their mission to Ligos IV months earlier she had spent much less time with him alone.
It was easily explained. After all the war kept them all busier than usual. Personnel shortages had forced many, including herself, to pull double shifts and the little spare time she had was usually best served by partaking in combat and readiness drills.
The other reason was a lot more complicated however. DeMara Deen was scared that she may have been in love with Michael Owens.
She had only admitted those feelings to one other person. And Eugene Edison had been perfectly willing to discuss them and maybe help her make sense of those confusing emotions. Michael Owens was her friend and mentor. Had been since she had been a child. He had been the first official alien visitor to her home world and he had been the man who had begun to train her as a Starfleet Officer. He had continued to be there at the Academy where he had been her academic advisor and after she had graduated she had served under him first on the
Columbia and now on
Eagle. It was difficult to imagine a life without Michael Owens. And perhaps Edison would have told her that being so close to another person for as long as she had been it was only natural to develop feelings beyond friendship. She would never know what Edison’s advice would have been as he was killed before he could give it.
She did her best to ignore these feelings for now. She had been ordered to report to the captain and she had already put if off longer than she should have done. Besides, he needed her. As a clear-headed advisor, as his conscience and as his moral anchor. Especially know after all he had been through.
“
Come in,” his voice invited her.
She entered the ready room with such a serious expression on her face, she didn’t even realize how awkward it looked to the captain.
“Dee, are you alright?”
She walked up to the middle of the room and squirmed uncomfortably.
The captain frowned. “What’s going on?”
“I’m here to express my regret for the manner I spoke to you earlier.”
He smirked at her official tone. It had always been understood that behind closed doors they were friends first and Deen had always enjoyed the privilege of speaking her mind, no matter how blunt. Sometimes even in front of the crew.
“Is that so, Lieutenant. And may I ask what you are apologizing for?”
She shot a quick look at the Botticelli painting which still adorned the ready room.
Owens followed her glance and then looked back at her. She avoided direct eye contact. Deen was a remarkable woman of that there was no doubt. Beautiful–spellbinding even, thanks to the enigmatic aura of her people–incredibly smart and surprisingly wise for her young years. And yet, apparently, apologizing was not one of her strength. Owens took a small bit of pervasive comfort in realizing this. Even DeMara Deen was not perfect.
“My tone and behavior during the mission briefing was not appropriate as I failed to show you the proper respect that you are entitled to as my commanding officer,” she said in what sounded like a carefully planned speech.
“Yes,” he said, “now that I think of it, you are right. You didn’t.”
She frowned. “Could you try not to make this more difficult for me than it already is?”
He leaned back in his chair with an easy smile. “Please continue, Lieutenant.”
She took a deep breath. “I assure you, sir, that this will not happen again and I sincerely hope that you will accept my apology,” she said and locked eyes with him, remaining ramrod straight.
He let her stand there for a moment. Then after a few uncomfortable seconds had passed he said: “Apology accepted. Take a seat.”
She did, obviously relieved.
“So what brought this on?”
“A certain Vulcan officer approached me after the meeting and in his stern voice –and his stern voice is pretty intimidating by the way – he told me in no uncertain terms that I had been out of line and that I needed to apologize to you. In fact I was ordered to. His exact words I believe were: “your relationship with the captain does not entitle you to forgo Starfleet protocols or show a lack of respect for your commanding officer.’”
“Well said.”
“I am genuinely sorry if I sounded disrespectful in front of the crew.”
“Well, seeing you squirm like that almost made it worth it.”
Deen crossed her arms in front of her chest in a defiant posture. “Everybody’s happy then,” she said and after relaxing she found the painting again. She felt her eyes always being drawn to it. It was a beautiful sight of course but to her it’s presence here was also an exotic clash between the modern sterility of a Starfleet starship and the imaginative and artistic vision of a bygone era. “I thought you wanted to put it up in the Nest,” she said, keeping her voice free of any hint of accusation this time. “Give the whole crew a chance to appreciate it.”
Owens nodded thoughtfully. “That was the idea. I had two crewmembers here earlier who were going to take it down.”
“What happened?”
“They nearly dropped it. So instead of risking to leave it in the care of butterfingered ensigns to carry it halfway across the ship I told them not to bother and leave it where it was. I’m glad you weren’t here to see it, I almost lost my temper.”
Deen knew that Owens hardly ever lost his temper. This admission alone meant that he had truly been concerned. “You could always beam it there.”
“You know, this painting has never been beamed as far as I’m aware. My father was very strict about that. He may have trusted the transporter to pick him apart molecule by molecule but never his prized painting. Ever since he inherited it, it has always transported manually. And now that I’m in charge of it, I can’t really get myself to do it either,” he said as his eyes remained locked on the artifact.
She had never quite heard him talk like that. There was concern in his voice, of course. But there was something else there as well and she couldn’t quite place it. “I guess it is quite a burden. But you are a starship captain. The responsibility of an entire crew rests on your shoulders and you’ve never let that fact stun you into indecision before.”
“But being a starship captain is what I do. What I’m trained for. I’m not a museum curator. And while a life, any life, maybe more significant than a piece of art, no matter how old or how significant, I wouldn’t want to be the one responsible for losing it. It is just so … fragile.”
“Lieutenant Commander Xylion to Captain Owens.”
He looked towards the ceiling as he heard the Vulcan’s voice. “This is Owens, go ahead, Commander.”
“Sir, I wanted to make you aware that the De Gaulle
has just cleared the ship. The shuttle is carrying Major Wasco and thirty-two of his marines. They will secure the landing area in the city of Al Tre Nek and set up pattern enhancers to allow our landing parties to beam down.”
“Very good, Commander. When do you expect to beam down?”
“The first team is scheduled to leave Eagle
at 0800 hours.”
“Understood. Will the interference allow you to remain in contact with the ship once you are on the surface?”
“The background radiation from the twin pulsars interferes with our sensors and transporters. Additionally much of the local area is laced with kelbonite and fistrium deposits which may also interfere with communications. However the subspace transmitter on the De Gaulle
will prove sufficient to maintain a communications link with Eagle
,” Xylion continued.
“Very well. Report back once you are on the surface. Owens out.”
“If I were a superstitious person I’d say the planet itself does not want us to be here,” said Deen and gave the captain a meaningful look. “And doesn’t it strike you as odd that we need to use marines for a purely humanitarian mission?”
“They are merely a safety precaution. Every aid mission needs to be protected especially if it is in unfamiliar territory. And the Tiaitan government has made us aware of a few minor security concerns. This isn’t a Federation world. There’s bound to be some crime and delinquency.”
“I guess what worries me is that we have signed a treaty with a world we know so little about.”
“It isn’t an ideal situation,” he said. “But you’d be hard pressed to find any of those these days. We’ve lost so many people in this war already and right now it looks as if it could get a lot worse. We owe it to them to make sure that their deaths were not in vain.”
“And you think that Schwarzkopf’s plan might be able to do that.”
“I honestly don’t know. But if there is even the smallest chance that this might lead us on a course to victory do we not owe it to those who have already died and those who surely still will that we try our best to make it work? It might seem like grasping at straws but maybe it’s all we have left.”
And then Deen saw for the first time what had really been on Owens’ mind. It was the sacrifices of Eugene Edison and Jana Tren and all the others. It had been the fear that they could all have died for nothing in the end if they didn’t win this war. He wanted to believe more than anything else that they could win. Even if he needed to trust a plan he wasn’t entirely convinced of himself.
Deen prayed that believing was going to be enough.
T’Ser arrived at
Eagle’s transporter room ten minutes before eight and was not surprised to find that Xylion on the rest of the away team had already assembled.
Introductions were done quickly and efficiently. T’Ser found most of
Eagle’s officers either cautious or reserved. She hadn’t expected a warm welcome, fully aware that she was the unknown outsider and that besides Xylion nobody had met her before.
Doctor Ashley Wenera offered a small smile but said little. She seemed entirely preoccupied with last minute reports about the city they were to visit, the medical facilities she wanted to tour and the coordination of the thirty-five men strong medical and support team which would follow the away team moments later.
Nora Laas was the
Eagle’s chief of security and like many individuals she had met over the course of her career, she found the Bajoran as uninviting as was to be expected from the person in charge of security. T’Ser was sure she saw something else in the woman’s intense eyes. If she had been a counselor or an empath she may have been able to identify what it was. Without those special skills there was no way to know for sure.
Lieutenant Lif Culsten was a Krellonian, a race she knew very little about. His fine silver hair and the lack of any ears on his smooth head took a moment to get used to. Otherwise the young man seemed very quiet and the Vulcan was sure he was studying her suspiciously.
Rounding up the team were two marines, both of which were strongly build human males. They barely even acknowledged T’Ser and didn’t interact with the Starfleet officers. They wore full combat gear and heavy assault rifles which could not be confused with the Starfleet phaser carbines which looked like toy guns in comparison.
She had learned that the two marines were but a small part of the detachment which had already made planet fall by shuttle earlier to secure the beam-in sites. She questioned the need for that much security until she remembered Bane’s unsatisfactory warning which had set her on this course in the first place.
Wenera had raised some concerns over the military presence as well but Xylion reiterated that it was a necessary precaution. Neither Major Wasco who was already on the planet, awaiting their arrival, nor the first marshal in charge of the local security forces expected any trouble.
But even T’Ser understood that not expecting trouble was commonly the first step to getting into some.
As she stepped onto the transporter platform, flanked by regular fleeters and marines, she realized for the first time that all three main branches of Starfleet would be represented on this mission. It would fall to T’Ser alone to represent the Border Service.
* * *
