“–and then on Vega Colony, we lived in the house with not enough bedrooms.  If you ask me, mom and da forgot how many kids they had!” Kellin blurted out.  His companions were already laughing by the time Lieutenant Kellin Rayco had hardly said the words.  Grinning at their reactions, Kellin knew it wasn’t the funniest of punchlines, but he had learned a little something about comedic timing from his da.  Past lovers had also told the Trill there was something comical about his emotive face.  Between his open blue eyes and a heart-shaped face, Kellin’s expressions came across as simultaneously earnest and hyperbolic.  He wasn’t always a portrait of a Starfleet security officer.

Sitting beside Kellin, Commander Taes was laughing the loudest.  Kellin always loved to see the way her Deltan poise fell away when she laughed.  Sitting at the edge of the dining table, Lieutenant (JG) Leander Nune had been the first to laugh.  Even though the engineer had been tinkering with a memory module throughout Kellin’s story, Leander’s Betazoid senses must have clued him into Kellin’s punchline before the words were said aloud.  And even sitting across from Kellin, the sharp Arcadian features of Sootrah Yuulik cracked when she snickered out a single, “Heh.”

Kellin went on, performing a vocal impression of his father’s drawl, “Da said he was teaching us a lesson.  Freeing us from the shackles of materialism.”

The smile fell away from Yuulik’s face and she pursed her lips.  Between her pointed ears, bulbous head and the sharp focus of her eyes, Yuulik’s visage resembled no one so much as the mythical Nosferatu – albeit styled with better cosmetics and jewelry.  “Education by way of bunk beds?” Yuulik asked.  The disdain could always be heard clearly through her Arcadian accent, but Kellin swore he saw a glint of amusement in her glassy eyes.

Between chewing on a strip of bacon, Kellin interjected, “Not even!”  He washed down the bacon with a sip of iced coffee before he continued his story.  “The whole time we were moving, my sisters fought over the rooms.  I couldn’t stand it.  To dodge the shrieking, I let my sisters take their pick of bedrooms,” Kellin said.  He sighed, but he loved it.  “I slept in the treehouse for two years.”

Commander Taes’ loss of poise from her last laugh was nothing to the barking laugher that came out of her this time.  (In his peripheral vision, Kellin thought he saw a spittle of scrambled egg fly out of her mouth too.)  “No!  You couldn’t have done,” Taes declared, delighted.  She waved a hand at Kellin’s 6’5″ frame and the way his uniform was repli-tailored to barely contain his shoulders.  Incredulously, she asked, “How big was that treehouse?”

It certainly hadn’t been the first time Kellin worried that everyone assumed he spent his time as a security cadet in the academy gym, rather than the library.  The though occurred to him, he noticed it, and then it passed.  Shaking his head, Kellin snorted a laugh at the Commander’s question.  “I was a daddy long-legs back then.  Skin and bones and gangly limbs.  My bed was snug enough.  And when the sun was setting, I got the front row view from that treehouse, y’know?” Kellin said.  He sipped at his iced coffee and then he asked Taes, “Do Deltan children never sleep in bunk beds or treehouses?”

The remnants of her laugher still showed as smile lines on Taes’ face.  When she looked away from Kellin, it was only to eat another couple forkfuls of scrambled eggs.  She chewed each bite at least ten times.  Taes set her fork down on her plate and then she reached out to gently pat Kellin on the shoulder.  Squinting at Kellin, Taes requested, “Ask me again another time.”

Feeling oblivious to the conversational shields Taes had raised, Kellin started to say, “What do you mean?” before he fully thought it through.  Yuulik didn’t have eyebrows to raise, but she looked directly at Kellin and her forehead creased between her two fins of dark hair.

“I owe Captain Sefton companionship on his daily tour of the ship,” Taes said, taking her social obligations to Starfleet as seriously as her duties.  Sliding her chair back from the table, Taes rose to her feet.  “While the Nestus is in for repairs, Captain Sefton was kind enough to ferry our archaeology team aboard USS Dvorak,” Taes said, gesturing to the ceiling with her raised palms.  The planetarium-styled viewscreen across the entire ceiling was a technological marvel compared to the humble dining room aboard the USS Nestus.  The lounge was also large enough to accommodate her senior mission staff and thirty archaeologists at a smattering of tables around the compartment.  

“A daily genuflection is the least I can do,” Taes affirmed.  “Captain Sefton has served Starfleet for more than fifty years.”  –Taes met Yuulik’s eyes briefly with a wry expression– “I’m sure there are a couple of things he could teach me.  Now, if you’ll excuse me,” Taes said, and she paced out of the lounge.

Only after the doors had closed behind the commander, Yuulik remarked to Kellin, “That’s suspicious.  Frigid almost.  I thought Deltans were supposed to be sex goddesses?”  –Yuulik shook her head, a theatrically glum frown on her lips–  “She must not like you very much, security boy.  Don’t you think?” she said, asking Kellin to agree with her petty accusation.

“What?” Kellin asked, startled, and his voice went high.  Lowering his timbre with more confidence, Kellin said, “Taes likes me.”  That certainty in his voice wasn’t long-lasting.  He looked over at Leander for confirmation, but the engineer only had eyes for the memory module sitting on his empty breakfast plate.  “Doesn’t she?” Kellin asked.

Yuulik tiled her large head at the door where Taes had just walked out.  “You drove her out of here with your pestering, Lieutenant.  All those questions about her childhood.  You should know better.  Deltan family and social hierarchies are complex organisms,” Yuulik said.  Like Commander Taes herself, Lieutenant (JG) Yuulik was an anthropologist, serving Taes’ team as interim chief science officer.  She spoke to Kellin with as much authority on this as she did most matters.  “Maybe Taes was sparing you the anguish of… not comprehending her childhood?”

Lowering her voice so only Kellin would hear her, Yuulik leaned across the table.  She whispered to him, “Or there were no bunkbeds on Nivoch after the colony collapsed.  Maybe she spent her sixteenth birthday sleeping on a pile of bones.”

Kellin gasped at that and he started to say, “Don’t–“

Leander Nune finally looked up from his miniature computer core.  Dumbfounded by Yuulik’s suggestion that Kellin wasn’t capable of comprehending a Deltan childhood, Nune said, “Kellin’s not a caveman in astrometrics.”

Leander’s support quickly convinced Kellin to swallow the harsh words he was about to say.  Staring down Yuulik with a challenge in his hardened gaze, Kellin bit a strip of bacon in half and he chewed it thoroughly.  He could only imagine what Yuulik thought of him after their last mission together.  He supposed Yuulik never made it terribly difficult to imagine what she was thinking.  Sharing a softer look with Leander, Kellin said, “Thanks, buddy.”

Also looking over at Leander, Yuulik said, “Keep on tinkering, Lieutenant.”  Even though she was nominally the same rank as the engineer, Yuulik spoke to him as if he were a green cadet.  “We’re not here to make friends–“

Kellin snorted a mirthless laugh at that.  Before she could finish, he echoed back the words he’d heard Yuulik say so many times before: “We’re here to get published.”

***

“Mission Log, Stardate 77110.2.

 

“Commander Taes reporting.  I log this report as a commanding officer without a starship.  The USS Nestus completed her anthropological survey to understand the emergency management needs of refugees from the Century Storm.  Although my crew identified flaws in our line of questioning, we were able to continue our ethnographic interviews to completion.  There was only a need to re-interview a small number of participants.  I wish our flight home had proven as uneventful as that mishap.  After our brief flirtation with one of the ion storms, the Nestus’ nacelles incurred damage that was overlooked by our crew of anthropologists.  We lost all warp drive systems halfway back to Starbase 72 and had to be towed the rest of the way home.  Our data remained secure and we have relayed it to the anthropology team on Starbase 72 to begin their research.

 

“In the aftermath of the Century Storm, time and tide can wait for no Nestus.  Starbase 72 has assigned me an archaeology team to conduct a heritage survey of the capital city of New Tenar: a Trill colony in the Paulson Nebula.  When ion storms surrounded New Tenar, every weather system on the planet turned to hurricanes.  Starfleet evacuated the population centres before, and during, the ion storm barrage.  Most of the population escaped and only Vrans City fell.  Vrans City had stood for centuries, dating back to the original settlement of New Tenar.  Almost every home, utility service, and office tower has been damaged or destroyed by the hurricanes.  The city lays uninhabitable.  Decimated.

 

“That’s where the science ship Dvorak comes in.  The USS Dvorak has been diverted from her shakedown cruise to ferry my archaeology team to New Tenar.  My mission’s senior staff, and our archaeologists, have been assigned to the upper deck of Dvorak’s mission module.  Dvorak’s skeleton staff will offer us operational support well beyond what a Raven-class corvette would have been able to provide.  Captain Aloysius Sefton has shared with me… at length… the devotion he’s poured into finalizing his own personal research projects in this time, while the Dvorak has undergone a lengthy refit and shakedown cruise.  Captain Sefton put his trust in his executive officer, Commander Elbon Jakkelb, to oversee the refit.  Even without a contemporary warp core or the latest technologies, this old girl keeps its crew in the sky.  

 

“Now, New Tenar’s Commissioner Gandres intends to level the capital city and rebuild with the most modern architecture available.  Before he can begin, he has invited Starfleet to help the colony identify Vrans City’s heritage sites.  In his initial review, Gandres has discovered the historical records between New Tenar, the Federation, and the Trill homeworld are incomplete and inconsistent.  I’ve been ordered to lead an archaeology team to conduct a heritage survey, identifying sites of cultural and historic value to be retained or restored — rather than paved over.

 

At least… that’s the mission we’ve disclosed to Commissioner Gandres.  Our secondary mission… that one’s for my own curiosity.”

Between his uniform boots and his heavy footfalls, Leander Nune’s every step clanged against the grated catwalk that circled the upper computer core.  In one arm, the engineer cradled a memory module –the size of a shoe box– while he tapped on its interface panel with his free hand.  He tapped in the same command twice, when the memory module’s subspace transmitter failed to connect with the mission computer core.  This was especially concerning, because said core was hardly five meters ahead of him.  Even though the dedicated mission computer core was much smaller than the one that operated the Dvorak, it had been fabricated inside the starship’s mission module using far more modern bioneural nanoprocessors.  As Leander approached the railing that circled the computer core, he slapped the interface panel on his memory module with the back of his hand and he slapped it again.  “Do it,” Leander growled.

“I have a feeling you have a headache,” Kellin Rayco said from a few steps behind Leander.  His footfalls were oddly quiet by comparison, considering the Trill security officer was nearly a foot taller than Leander.  Looking back over his shoulder, Leander took notice, as always, of how thick-set Kellin looked in his uniform.  Thick-set and well-maintained.  Kellin spoke in the higher voice he used when he knew he was telling a dad-joke.  “You’re the Betazoid, not me.  But I noticed you forgot to drink your coffee,” Kellin said, proffering a fresh mug to Leander.

Upon smelling the perfume of the coffee, Leander gently set the memory module down on the railing.  He pivoted on his heel to clasp the mug between both of his hands.  Playfully, Leander started to say, “You can’t take your eyes off–” but he punctuated his own sentence with a gasp and a “No!”  

Leander spun back towards the railing in time to see the memory module tipping over the edge and plummeting into the depths of the computer core.  Dropping the coffee mug, Leander used the spin momentum and his hips to fling himself over the railing.  He managed to just touch the memory module with seven fingertips of his outstretched arms.  At the same time he tightened his grip on the memory module, Leander squeezed out a, “whoomph,” and felt the air rush out of his lungs, as soon as Kellin tackled him mid-air.  Leander clutched the memory module to his face, as Kellin’s arms tightened around his waist.  Catching Leander before he too plummeted over the railing, Kellin whispered, “Got ya,” and he pulled Leander back from the edge.

“You really do,” Leander replied breathlessly.  As he steadied his footing, Leander put the memory module down on a workbench and he looked around for his discarded coffee.  Kellin stayed close by Leander’s side.  Apparently, Kellin couldn’t trust Leander not to do something else careless in the next five minutes.  By Leander’s own assessment, he supposed that was fair.  In his peripheral vision, Leander spotted a small DOT robot already cleaning up the spilled coffee to protect the computer core.  “So much for coffee,” Leander said.

Telepathically, Leander could sense Kellin’s emotional disquiet.  His thoughts had been preoccupied, like he was stuck in a cognitive time loop.  Kellin, himself, was caught in a loop of looking at Leander with golden retriever eyes, unsure of what to say, and then looking away diffidently.  Leander put a hand on Kellin’s wrist and he asked, “What’s happening?”

With that permission from Leander, Kellin opened his figurative flood gates.   “What she said back there,” Kellin asked intently, “what do you think?  What do you really think?  Does Commander Taes like me?”

“She clearly likes you,” Leander said, elongating a couple of vowels to stress his words as fact.  “Clearly.”

Hunching forward for a moment, Kellin whispered, “Have you been… reading her mind?”

“No!” Leander shot back, mildly annoyed.  “I listen.  When you speak, Commander Taes responds by asking open-ended questions for understanding.  When Yuulik speaks, Commander Taes asks questions that contradict Yuulik’s premise.  She expects Yuulik to prove herself.  Taes accepts you as you are.”

Crestfallen, Kellin frowned at that and he squared his shoulders, as if he were readying himself for a hit.  Kellin asked, “So you’re saying Taes expects more from Yuulik than from me.  Yuulik is right?  Taes thinks I’m stupid?”

“No, that’s not what Yuulik said,” Leander replied firmly, with a shake of his head.  He breathed out a grunt of frustration and he rolled his eyes at Kellin.  Leander teased, “Stop being stupid.”

Nodding slowly, Kellin appeared to take that in.  His lips thinned and his brow furrowed, he reconsidered everything Leander had said until he eventually shared, “Commander Taes did… confide in me.  After the hiccups in our last mission, she talked to me about leadership and about…” –Kellin pivoted the conversation awkwardly to avoid mentioning the failed colony where Taes was raised– “But now she’s acting like it never happened.  Maybe it never did?  Maybe she was coaching me to be a better officer and not a friend?”

Emphatically, Leander said, “Dummy, you’re her Trevis in the Lake of Largesse.”

“No!” Kellin blurted out, but he was clearly overjoyed by Leander’s metaphor.  “Am I?  Am I her Trevis?”

“That’s not all,” Leander mentioned.  “Your hand is still on my lower back.”

Impishly, Kellin asked, “Is it?”

***

It wasn’t only Aloysius Sefton’s words that were resonating in Commander Taes’ thoughts, his calming presence lingered with her after they parted.  The passageways through USS Dvorak looked differently to Taes, surveying the ship through the rosy lens of Captain Sefton’s stories.  He’d hardly left any space for Taes to speak while they toured the ship together.  It was like getting his words out was a necessity; a primal urge.  Since Taes had come aboard Dvorak, Sefton had shared effusive stories about leadership and loss, all of them featuring the Dvorak‘s executive officer and crew.  Captain Sefton was a man running out of time to share his wisdoms –Taes could see it clearly– given his impending retirement from Starfleet.

Finding Yuulik in the archaeology laboratory, Taes could appreciate the workspace through new eyes.  As one of the centrepieces of the Dvorak‘s mission module, the archaeology lab was much larger than most she’d seen aboard starships.  The bright compartment was configured with transparent storage cases, specialty scanners, private office spaces, and a thermoluminescence chamber. The teaming stations were laid out with the typical smooth computer panels, operating the most current LCARS, noticeable for its shades of pale blue and burnt sienna.

As Taes padded towards the workstation where Yuulik was sitting, Taes remarked, “Two-dimensional consoles after a year-long refit?  Classique.”

Yuulik continued a rhythmic tapping on the interface panel before her.  She replied, “The regional science officers say the electroplasma systems aboard Springfield-class ships are… eccentric.   You can choose between ship-wide holoprojectors or… consistent life support?”

To Yuulik’s right, Taes grasped the built-in chair beneath next workstation along.  She pulled out the chair and sat herself down, folding her hands in her lap.  “Starfleet Science hasn’t been so lady or the tiger with our mission.  Our research design for the heritage study on New Tenar has been approved,” Taes said, making no effort to hide her relief.  For just a heartbeat, her words were followed by a brilliant smile of excitement.  Not long after, Taes felt a rush of shame in her chest, given all the suffering the Century Storm had laid on New Tenar.  The emotional weight of their mission sank her expression into something more somber.  

As Taes said those words, Yuulik pursed her lips thoughtfully.  She considered Taes through half-lidded eyes and there was something conspiratorial about Yuulik’s gaze.  With none of her usual brashness, Yuulik spoke with restrained academic arousal.  She asked, “Even the… expanded research, Commander?”

“Especially the expanded research,” Taes said with some small emphasis.  “Our research team will be the first responders to New Tenar after the evacuation.  As Starfleet officers, it is our privileged duty to search for survivors and locate any bodily remains.  We will treat the dead with dignity and transport their remains to the morgue.  Amid that duty, conducting death scene investigations will be our second priority.”

“I’m sure Commissioner Gandres,” Yuulik suggested darkly, “would prefer we complete an expedited file review, an orbital scan, and then raze Vrans City with a torpedo bombardment.”

Taes shook her head at Yuulik’s critique of Gandres’ intentions.  As a commander in Starfleet, she felt a natural kinship with other Federation leadership figures.  In her own observations, Taes hadn’t noticed any intentionally ulterior motives in Gandres’ request to Starfleet.  Despite all of that being true, it was also true that Taes smirked at Yuulik’s youthful candour.  

“Commissioner Gandres has stressed the importance of haste in every communique he’s sent us, yes,” Taes said in acknowledgement of Yuuilk’s assumptions.  “However, he has always put more effort into speaking eloquently on the importance of memory to the Trill people.  Only the brightest, the most virtuous, among the Trill have the honour of carrying a symbiont.”

Yuulik snorted when she interjected, “Funny how Kellin isn’t joined then?”

Ignoring the snide comment, Taes continued what she was saying.  “Joined Trill literally carry genetic memory inside of them.  As much as Gandres is eager to transform New Tenar into the sparkling jewel of the Paulson Nebula, he has no desire to lose his colony’s history.  It’s important to him that we help to celebrate the historical sites of Vrans City.”

Yuulik spun her chair to tap commands on an LCARS interface.  On a widescreen display, a colour-coded map of Vrans City appeared.  Nodding at the map, Yuulik reported, “Our team have studied maps, geological studies, land surveys, personal logs, photographs and anything else we received from the New Tenar archives.  I’ve fed their findings into this archaeological predictive model.” –At her commands, infographics popped up in different neighbourhoods on the map– “We suspect these buildings will meet the criteria to be declared heritage sites, we suspect these were prefab structures pulled up in the last couple of decades, and we know nothing about these areas here.  Based on this, I’ve scheduled meetings with each of the archaeologists to audit their field procedure lists.”

Her eyes widening expressively, Taes visibly winced at that plan.  The way Taes looked at Yuulik, it was like Yuulik was brandishing her perfectionism like a knife, and Taes was the Final Girl in a horror holo.  As soon as she’d done it, Taes regretted her overreaction.  Back in her days as a science director on Starbase 310, Taes’ unfiltered facial reactions had gotten her in trouble more than once.  Softening her expression, Taes asked, “Would you be open to some unsolicited advice?”

“Never,” Yuulik replied.  However, she laughed harder at her own joke than she laughed at anything anyone else ever said.  Taes was starting to recognize the cadence of that laugh.

“I’m counting on you as my Chief Science Officer for this mission,” Taes said.  She was learning it could be helpful to stroke Yuulik’s ego when she needed her to consider an idea that wasn’t her own.  “You’re leading a larger team than we had on Haven.  I need your expertise focused on the strategy of the entire research design.  Captain Sefton was just telling me an old starship cap’n aphorism this morning: ‘an officer who feels she must control every action taken by her crew destroys their will to take initiative when she’s not present.  Remember, another officer who provides help to others is not an intruder, but a friend’.”

As much as Taes knew Yuulik hated a poetic turn of phrase, it gave Taes delight every time she watched Yuulik’s eyes glaze over in hateful boredom.  Spelling it out for Yuulik, Taes said, “Do you have a friend on the team you can trust with auditing field procedures?  I don’t believe they’re the best use of your skills.”

“You might be right,” Yuulik said tentatively at first, and then she doubled-down in intensity.  “This entire mission is a waste of my skills.  There is no utility in heritage buildings from scant centuries ago.  They have poor accessibility, they’re always built for smaller people than are living today, and they smell bad.  Give me five shards of broken crockery from five thousand years ago and I can model out what their kitchens looked like.  This” –and she tapped her painted fingernail on the map of Vrans City– “is work for urban planners, not Starfleet.”

This time, Taes made no effort to hide the surprise on her face.  Swaying back in her chair, Taes said, “This is exactly a mission for Starfleet.”  As she was wont to do, Taes spoke more softly when Yuulik started to raise her voice.  “Commissioner Gandres would prioritize the history he prescribes: the history of joined Trill, the history of the settler families.  Starfleet’s removed perspective will empower us to remember the histories of all people on New Tenar, perhaps even the histories for which there are no records in the official archives.”

Squinting back at Taes, Yuulik said, “I hear you,” in a patronising tone that suggested the opposite was true.  “You speak eloquently on the topic, just like Commissioner Gandres.  But we are not talking about history on this mission.  You have me researching garages and florist shops.  There is no culture inherent in this brickwork.” Falling back on an argument she had declared in many an academy lecture hall, Yuulik said, “If a sample population would prefer an entire forest be used for paper, there is no objective measure to weigh if the forest or the collected works of Surak is the cultural site of greater beauty.”

“Objective–?”  Taes trailed off with a sigh.  Only now did Taes speak with gravitas, pleading with Yuulik, “Every speck of matter in the universe contains greater depths than their mere utility.”

Yuulik had to chuckle at that.  It was a gentle sound without much gusto and she couldn’t look at Taes while she did so.  Yuulik stood up from her chair and she stretched her shoulders.  Taes could only imagine how long Yuulik had been sitting in the same position, fixated on the screen, before she had arrived.  When Yuulik met Taes’ eyes again, she said, “You let me mock security boy, but I get under your skin with utilitarianism.”  Yuulik shook her head, and she chuckled again, and then she sighed.

“Why am I here, commander?” Yuulik asked in a sober timbre.  She tilted her head to the right, as if its weight had become too great for her.  “I openly criticized you.  We failed our last mission–“

Taes opened her mouth to object, to reassure Yuulik that they hadn’t failed, that they’d collected insightful data.  But Yuulik kept talking.

“I listened to the logs you recorded for the director of social sciences on SB-72.  You lied,” Yuulik said.  She spoke slowly, choosing her words carefully, and when to emphasize them.  “You told them you made every mistake in the mission planning yourself.  But you know, and I know, that I saw your mistakes by a certain point and I did nothing about it.  And I laughed.  My director probably knows too.  He has accused me of doing the same, once before.  He… would not trust me with a mission like this.”

“I requested you,” Taes said.  “I insisted.”

“Senior Mission Officer’s Log, Stardate 77124.2.

 

“Commander Taes reporting. 

 

“USS Dvorak has entered standard orbit around New Tenar.  While the Dvorak crew begin searching for survivors, my mission team have beamed down to the decimated Vrans City.  Before we can begin field procedures to identify heritage sites, Starfleet Science has approved a research design that asks broader questions about the social and political context on New Tenar and how it may have contributed to the successes of the evacuation.

 

“Considering the entire population of the New Tenar colony has been temporarily resettled, Starfleet’s rescue operations were truly Herculean.  Only seventeen Trills were left behind on the planet.  Initial orbital scans by Dvorak have located no life signs on the planet; those seventeen are presumed lost.  In my review of the census profiles, I recognized those seventeen were all unjoined Trill.  Occam’s Razor would suggest this to be a likely statistical probability, given the relatively small population of joined Trills.  If we pause and we take a step back, it may also shine a light on other vulnerable populations among the Trill colony.  

 

“In emergency management, vulnerabilities are considered to be the conditions that make it difficult for a person to prepare for or survive a disaster — like the Century Storm.  These vulnerabilities are usually structural in nature.  Histories of oppression, which have been seemingly forgotten in our enlightened age, can still echo within our governmental policies and infrastructure.  If not a question of being joined or unjoined to symbionts, there could be other vulnerable populations on New Tenar.

 

“Perhaps the elderly or the young are the most vulnerable, or parents or the childless, or those whose skin is marked with spots versus those with noticeable forehead ridges?  Whose neighbourhoods had the easiest access to transporter hubs and shuttles?  Are hospital facilities distributed equally throughout the population?  These are the questions we’re here to ask.  My mission team will begin to examine these vulnerabilities as we complete death scene investigations.  Once our data is gathered, we will provide all research to the archaeology department on Starbase 72 to begin the search for answers.

 

“I, ah, I received notification this morning that I have graduated ATC’s command training program.  Without the Nestus, I’m only a senior mission officer.  I’m no captain, but it’s important to me I carry myself like a captain.  The mistakes I made on Haven, holding myself apart from the crew, I can’t make them again.  With Lieutenant Yuulik leading the science team, I have time to check in with every team member.  It’s important that I listen with assertive attention; make certain I can understand the mission as they see it through their eyes.  If I don’t make the effort, there could be new approaches, new innovations, we could be missing.  I don’t– I can’t remember the last time I even held a trowel in my own hands.  The most junior officers among us are just as likely to see problems in the survey as I am.

 

“At the end of the day, though, it’s another survey mission… playing fetch like a dog, carrying the bone back to the starbase team…”

* * *

Commander Taes craned her head back and she breathed out through her nose.  “Computer,” she said, “Please delete that last sentence and end log.”  Once she heard a mechanised chirp in response, Taes thumbed the switch on the holo-pod in her hand.  Her log complete, the holographic PADD interface flashed out.  Taes put a hand on her chest, instinctively, to make sure her red-shouldered uniform was still closed in the front.  She was still acclimating to the new closures of the double-breasted uniform tunic, let alone the textures of different fibres against her skin.  After deeming herself presentable, Taes stepped out from the parking garage she had used for privacy

Stepping outdoors, Taes was overcome by an ache in her chest at the state of this residential street.  The rows of houses still retained their vestigial shapes, but they offered no utility as dwellings for humanoid beings.  Many of the roofs were caved in, entire walls had been collapsed or shattered. The paved streets were littered with steelplast refuse, furniture, and abandoned vehicles.  Taes’ eyes were particular drawn to soggy diaries and tattered plush toys.  Even on her last day on Nivoch, before Starfleet had finally rescued her as a teenager, the colony hadn’t looked this bad.  Between the wind damage and the flooding, Taes found it troublesome to imagine what restoration would look like.

Rejoining members of her away team, Taes padded back to one home that had been completely obliterated.  All that remained was crumpled sheets of steelplast, snapped shards of transparent aluminum, loose wiring, and a shattered piano.  A holographic grid pattern, of one meter by one meter squares, had been projected over the entire surface area of the leveled home.  

Taes closed the distance between herself and Ensign Melchor Dolan.  Between his slim build and tentative posture, Dolan looked like his teal-highlighted uniform was a hand-me-down from a larger sibling.  The junior archaeologist was standing two metres away from a particularly deep pile of refuse in the nearest grid.  He looked like he was afraid of accidentally stepping on any artefacts.  Keeping far back from the grid, Dolan had extended his arms to their full length to point a two-pronged spectrographic scanner with his webbed hands.

“What have you found, ensign?” Taes asked, as she sidled up to Dolan.  She flashed a quick smile at the archaeologist and then she made no secret of eyeing the calibration settings on his scanner, along with the scanner result display.

“A small chest or end table, I think,” Dolan replied through a thoughtful frown.  He further contorted his upper back to tilt the scanner without letting the scanner aperture drift into a different grid.  From what he could interpret from the scanner readings, Dolan said, “The furniture contains a food product and a bottle, I believe.  I can’t see if the bottle is full of rainwater or alcohol.”

Taes suggested, “Try narrowing the aperture by one click.”  She peeked to see if that changed the scanner’s output, but she found herself more curious to watch Dolan’s reactions to his discoveries.    “What would all of that mean to you?” Taes asked, seeking out his point of view.  “Finding a chest like that in this place?”

“An alcoholic died here,” Dolan said without intonation.  Like many Zaldans, Taes knew, Ensign Dolan lived by a culture of strict honesty.  Absolutely any form of communication other than unfiltered truth was perceived as deception.  Certainly, Taes was growing a thicker skin with Yuulik’s brutal honesty for the past couple of missions.  Dolan’s shoulder twitched and his eyes cut in Taes’ direction.  He boggled at her, as he seemed to notice the way she was staring at him, appraisingly.  “You’re standing very close to me,” Dolan said in a soft voice.

“Is everything all right over there?” Lieutenant Yuulik interjected.  She was already in motion, stalking towards Taes and Dolan.  Taes would have liked to imagine Yuulik had noticed discomfort or awkwardness from Ensign Dolan, and was coming over to encourage one of her junior officers.  However, from what Taes could see, Yuulik was looking directly at Taes and Taes only.

It was practically subconscious when Taes puffed up her chest and straightened her back.  Some primordial instinct within her told her to present herself as larger than her wiry, athletic frame.  For all her physical posturing, Taes affected the soothing timbre she’d heard from so many counselors who had treated her before.  “I was about to ask the ensign what he’s learned so far,” Taes replied.

“It’s been three hours commander,” Dolan said.  “I’ve learned that I don’t want to live on New Tenar.”  Total honesty.  No idle thought left behind.  “And to narrow the aperture.”

“Mmmmmmmm, riveting,” Yuulik said, and it was a pleasureless sound.  She approached the grid reference where Dolan had been scanning and she crouched low to watch it from up close.  Without looking at Dolan, she asked, “Are you prepared to remove the debris in grid 42-G, ensign?”

“Yes, lieutenant,” Dolan rattled back, like it had been a call and response.  He submit his scanner readings to his tricorder and he set aside the large scanner.  Using his tricorder’s interface, Dolan submitted precision coordinates to the transporter hub and he ordered, “Energize.”  The whizz-bang of the transporter effect stole away a pile of construction debris, where it would be examined by a secondary team through the filtering subsystems, to ensure no artefacts were whisked away accidentally.  In grid 42-G, a small piece of crushed wooden furniture was revealed along with its contents.

“It’s chocolate,” Dolan said, a little disappointed.

“And a bottle of whiskey,” Taes enthused.  “Well spotted.”

Lieutenant Kellin Rayco kept his eyes moving, searching the landscape for novelties or oddities.  He looked for movement, for signs of threats to the away team.  An archaeologist on the west side of the city had seen an animal akin to a coyote digging through the rubble.  If Kellin could keep an eye out for coyotes, it meant he didn’t have to look too closely at the immovable threats: the rubble that had once been homes, the soggy debris that had once been personal treasures.  He wouldn’t have to look at the bodies, except–

“Lieutenant, may I request your assistance?” asked Doctor Pimpinellifolia.  The medical officer was, of course, standing directly over a dead body.  Kellin could hear the warble of a medical tricorder being waved by one of Pimpinellifolia’s prehensile vines.

“I’m not much of a nurse,” Kellin replied.

As he turned to consider Doctor Pimpinellifolia, Kellin reminded himself that they had asked him to call them Nelli.  The mission’s Chief Medical Officer was a Phylosian, covered in leafy verdant flesh, because their biology was entirely flora-based.  Although Nelli was roughly human-sized, they weren’t exactly humanoid.  The bulb that one might expect to be Nelli’s head looked like a giant fuzzy artichoke, aside from the red eye-stalks that wiggled like antennae.  Nelli stepped away from the body using four motive trunks, and closed their tricorder with one of the nine vine-extensions coming from their torso.  

“No, but you are of Trill?” Nelli asked.  Kellin could hear no precise inflection to their voice, aside from a monotonous sing-song cadence that seemed unaffected by their choice of words.  “You are of the same classification of those who populated this world?”

“That’s right,” Kellin answered.

There were no changes in Nelli’s posture or expression to suggest what that information meant to them.  They plowed on to ask, “Lieutenant, are you intimate with Commander Taes?”

Kellin planted his hands on his hips and he couldn’t hide his smirk at that question.  Narrowing his eyes on Nelli briefly, Kellin said, “I’ve served with her for a few months, if that’s what you mean?”

Two of Nelli’s vines went limp.  “I used the wrong word?” they asked.  Aside from the change in body language, their voice sounded as matter-of-fact as ever.

“Don’t worry about it,” Kellin said quickly, apologetically.  Yuulik had already lectured him about how the social interactions of beings that evolved from animals was entirely foreign to Nelli.  Kellin had read in Nelli’s service jacket that they had first come to Earth as part of a diplomatic envoy from Phylos; never before in their existence had Nelli met lifeforms evolved from mammals.  They ended up never leaving earth until they graduated from Starfleet Academy and Starfleet Medical.  Even the name they chose to go by, these days, had been pulled from a human textbook.  Kellin waved a hand in the air to dismiss the idea that Nelli had said anything wrong.  “I’m sorry, I know what you mean.  Go on,” Kellin encouraged.

“Commander Taes asked me many questions earlier,” Nelli said, relating their experiences.  “Taes asked me about the purpose of death scene investigations and my personal perspective on autopsies.  She asked me many personal questions that are not relevant to my concept of self.  I understand Deltans are highly sexual beings.”  As if they were asking Kellin to hand them a hypospray, Nelli asked, “Do you think Taes was attempting to engage in sexual intercourse with me?”

“…Oh,” was all Kellin said at first.  Reflecting on what Nelli had said to him, Kellin replied, “You did mean intimate.”  His voice cracked at the end of that sentence.  Kellin cleared his throat, and he answered, “But no, I think Commander Taes was familiarising herself with you.  You’re part of our crew now, but you don’t take meals with us.”

“I don’t eat like that,” Nelli said simply.

“The food isn’t the only thing family meal is about,” Kellin shared.

“I will consider,” Nelli said.  The style of Nelli’s red eye-stalks swayed in Kellin’s direction.  Two of their vines crossed over their midsection.  They moved on to another topic, asking, “Lieutenant, are you intimate with Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Yuulik?”

Kellin looked over his shoulder, checking to see he was out of earshot from the other away teams.  Regarding Nelli again, Kellin remarked, “She certainly leaves me frustrated,” for his own amusement, mostly.

“After Commander Taes spoke with me for seventeen minutes, Yuulik approached my person,” Nelli said.  “Yuulik said to me, ‘Intruder alert!’  Did Yuulik advise you, too, of a security issue?”

Kellin groaned.  “Bitch was talking about the commander.”

* * *

Standing watch as Ensign Dolan beamed away more layers of debris, Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Yuulik waggled a finger at the pile of clothing that was revealed by the excavation.  As the chief science officer, Yuulik ordered, “Tag it, ensign.”  Craning her neck, Yuulik searched the site for Ensign T’muse, who had wandered away from where Yuulik had left her.  “Ah,” Yuulik sighed, as her eyes narrowed on the form of T’muse.  It appeared to Yuulik that Commander Taes had taken another archaeologist aside for more inane lessons and heartfelt harassment.  Yuulik took one heavy stomp in T’muse’s direction when her combadge chirped.  She planted her feet and slapped her combadge.

“Doctor Pimpinellifolia to Lieutenant Yuulik,” came an impassive voice from Yuulik’s combadge.

“Yuulik here.  Go,” she responded.

“I have completed the examination and I was unable to identify the body.  It has been transported to the morgue aboard Dvorak,” Pimpinellifolia reported over the comm channel.  “This is now the third body with forehead ridges and no spots; it is the fifth body aged more than sixty years at the time of death.“

Even while the doctor was speaking, Yuulik palmed the tricorder off her hip and she slid up the transparent screen extension.  She accessed the doctor’s preliminary report and she said, “Thank you, doctor.  I’ll send you your next coordinates.  Yuulik out.”  She continued to read the report after the comm channel chirped its closure.

Snarling in delight, Yuulik murmured, “Maybe Taes doesn’t have the instincts of a blind razor-bat after all…”

At a quickstep, Yuulik crossed the paved street to grab Commander Taes’ attention with a wave.  She pulled Taes aside to the parking garage she’d seen Taes periodically use to hide herself from the away teams.  As they walked in unison, Yuulik asked Taes, “Would you be open to some unsolicited advice?”  She looked Taes in the eye, watching for any signs of comprehension.  She was relieved to see dawning recognition on Taes’ face, hearing her own words mirrored back at her.

“Never,” Taes said lyrically, clearly recalling Yuulik’s response from their conversation the other day aboard Dvorak.

“You’re the senior mission officer.  Commander, you’re accountable for every away team on this planet and two interlocking archaeological surveys,” Yuulik said.  She spoke reverently about the scope of this mission — especially in comparison to their fumbling around on Haven.  Yuulik lowered her voice and she looked right at Taes.  “If you’re instructing archaeologists on how to calibrate their tricorders, you might be lost in the weeds.  Respectfully.”

“I wasn’t exactly–” Taes tried to say.

“An officer who provides help to others is not an intruder, but a friend,” Yuulik said, performing Captain Sefton’s words as if they rang with sage wisdom… rather than the hoary old cliche they sounded to Yuulik’s ears.  “Let’s make a deal, commander.  You give me your orders.  I’ll direct the science teams.  I’ll gather their data and I’ll provide you with my reports.  It’s the role of the chief science officer by definition.  I’m not an intruder.”

Taes balled her fists and she flexed her jaw.  Yuulik didn’t know Taes well enough to interpret everything that was happening behind her eyes.  The way Taes’ eyes were alit, Yuulik suspected Taes wanted to punch Yuulik, or kiss Yuulik, or cry on her shoulder.  Maybe all three.  Finally, Taes said, “You’re not an intruder.  You’re my chief science officer.”

“Senior Mission Officer’s Log, supplemental.

 

“With the assistance of the Dvorak’s executive officer and crew, the archaeological excavation of Vrans City has progressed ahead of schedule.  We’ve been on New Tenar for a week and Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Yuulik’s predictive model to prioritise potential heritage sites has proven most useful.  My senior forensic engineer, Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Leander Nune, has fed the predictive model all of the additional data we were missing from New Tenar’s current computer libraries.  

 

“What continues to elude us are the colony’s oldest archives, stored in duotronic computer cores.  Over years of neglect, the computers have settled into disrepair, and Commissioner Gandres can’t tell me for certain if those records were ever backed up or transferred to newer libraries.  These final secrets locked up in the duotronic computer cores could tell us so much about this community’s memory and identity.  This mission holds tight the potential to create symbols that will represent a shared narrative for all New Tenar’s present, past and future.”

* * *

His body moved like a dancer as he swept his tricorder around the horrid little room.  Leander Nune reached his tricorder to the four upper corners, and then the four lower corners, of the forgotten server room that had become like his home for the past past week.  Leander had to reverse step around a stack of mops because this server room, carved out of the caves beneath city hall, had been converted into a janitor’s closet some decades ago.   Every now and then, the traditional dances he’d been taught as a child on Betazed came back to him, like muscle memory, even when he wasn’t thinking about it.  Leander kept his dark eyes locked on the tricorder display, watching it cycle through the whole range of Starfleet’s standard subspace and radio frequencies.

“What is that interference?” Leander murmured, as he hopped over a tangle of optical data cables across the floor.  In the past days, the engineer had lashed together portable generators and a web of connections between three different computers cores that were refusing to talk to one another.  They were like three sisters at an awkward family reunion.  The colony’s massive duotronic computer core had literally been built into the cave wall.  (By comparison, Leander’s tricorder contained exponentially more storage and computing power in the palm of his hand.)  The original duotronic computer was strung together with two other computer cores Leander had brought down from Dvorak: one was a modern bioneural memory module, and the other was a freshly replicated duotronic computer core of a similar design, if much smaller.

From the doorway, Lieutenant Kellin Rayco asked, “Should I be tipping you right now?”  He leaned a shoulder against the door frame, an amused smirk on his lips.

Leander made no effort to fix his posture to something less dramatic.  “I didn’t see you there,” Leander said.  Only then did he turn and, because of their height differences, he had to look up to meet Kellin’s eyes.  If their conversations ran long, or if he was staring at the floof of curls in Kellin’s ginger hair, Leander would literally feel a pain in his neck from the prolonged flexion.  Oddly, he was starting to like it.  It was a little reminder of Kellin.  By Leander’s assessment, Kellin was one of the most guileless men he knew in Starfleet, and the lack of cognitive dissonance between what Kellin felt and what he said was awfully comforting to the Betazoid engineer.

“How’re you coming along?” Kellin asked.  Without saying anything about it, he proffered a coffee to Leander.  This wasn’t the first time Kellin had noted Leander’s caffeine cycles and showed up just in time to prevent Leander from spiraling into tantrums when he lost track of time.

“I’m the SS Kobayashi Maru,” Leander replied and he took a long pull from the mug of coffee.  “I can’t access any of the data on the computer monitors.  I can’t transfer the data over wires.  The transceiver assemblies aboard the Dvorak know how to receive the backwater radio frequencies this computer can wirelessly transmit, if only its RF transmitters weren’t burned out.  I replaced the RF transmitters, but they still don’t work,” Leander said.  With each of his failures, the doom in his timbre grew greater.  There was a growl in a couple of his elongated vowels.  He sipped more coffee.  “I even tried disassembling one of the individual memory cartridges, to install in one of these cores, but they’re too fragile.  It came apart in my hands.”

Kellin’s eyes softened and he tilted his head in sympathy.  “The computer’s depressed from living in these caves,” Kellin said sweetly.  His mood shifted quickly, though.  “And Yuulik is going to be angry.  If you can’t get the data, she’s going to start slandering you the way she talks so poorly about Commander Taes.”

At that, Leander sensed a spike of emotion from Kellin.  It was something sharp, like broken glass.  “Why does it bother you so much,” Leander asked, “the way Yuulik talks about Taes?  Yuulik’s personality is grating, but she’s… basically telling the truth.  You’re not on this mission just to be the muscle, big guy.  I have to imagine you have… better things to worry about.”

In a sudden panic at that suggestion, Kellin whipped out his tricorder and checked in with the planetary defense systems.  If pirates were to decide the other abandoned cities on New Tenar made for an easy target, the USS Dvorak didn’t exactly possess the tactical capabilities to fend off more than a ship or two.  As the security officer’s eyes scanned through the telemetry readings, Kellin said, “The extra sentry pods we seeded in orbit are operational.  No sign of intruders.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Leander said tartly.  He never stopped smiling at Kellin through it all.  His eyes half-lidded and his posture loose, Leander remarked, “I was going to suggest you give me a scalp massage to help me think of a genius solution.”

Kellin interlaced his fingers and then stretched his arms out to crack his knuckles.  Kellin said, “My boyfriend Chareth has been teaching me everything he’s learning in massage therapy classes…”

“I thought,” Leander asked, “you were dating Emem, a flight controller?”

“Don’t be so human,” Kellin said, as he stepped closer.  “Best of both worlds.”

*   *   *

Stomping down the stairs into the caverns beneath city hall, Sootrah Yuulik noticed the change in atmosphere immediately.  The environment in Vrans City was temperate, perhaps a little too humid for Yuulik’s liking.  She had tied back her two strips of dark hair into tight braids.  As she descended beneath the city, a chill emanated from the carved cavern walls.  The stairwell led out into a cavernous space that had once served as symbiont pools. For reasons lost to history, the pools had been allowed to dry up, disused.  This, Yuulik raged, was one of the hundreds of mysteries that remained locked up in the colony’s oldest computer cores.

Turning a corner into the retired server room, Yuulik found Leander Nune and Kellin Rayco sitting on the floor, eating sandwiches and giggling about a Betazoid singer.  Talking over them, Yuulik declared, “This is intolerable, Lieutenant Nune.  I cannot wait a moment more.  The data in those archives is irreplaceable to our heritage survey.  If this task is beyond your technical abilities, I will hail the Starfleet Corps of Engineers, or even a passing ship of cadets, to find someone with the abilities to get this done.”

Leander audibly groaned.  He took another bite of his sandwich –it looked like a spiteful bite– and he talked around his chewing.  “Do you really care, Lieutenant?” Leander replied with a question.  “You’ve been telling everyone this is work for urban planners.”

Impassioned, Yuulik retorted, “This work is vitally important.  I need to prove I’m worthy of this mission.  I need my director to see I’m ready for a department head role on the starbase.  We all know I’m meant for better than this.”  She shrugged at the two men with her palms facing up in a gesture of it’s-obvious.  

Yuulik explained, “As soon as we leave New Tenar, we hand off the data to the Heads of Archaeology and Anthropology, and I may never see any of it again.  That’s why I have to identify all of the heritage sites now.  I have to finish this mission before we leave, even if have to carry it all on my back.  I’m not as easily amused as Taes.  I’m not satisfied with this brand of drive-through science.”

“If Commander Taes invites you back,” Nune said, as if to finish Yuulik’s sentence.

Kellin shook his head.  “I don’t see it happening, lieutenant,” Kellin said.  He gave Leander a meaningful look and he said, “Tell her what you found.”  When Leander hesitated and didn’t say anything immediately, Kellin raised his eyebrows at the engineer twice.

Tentatively, almost apologetically, Leander said, “I was experimenting with a way to piggy-back duotronic RF signals off the data bursts, from the archaeology teams, being transmitted back to the Dvorak.”  He put down his sandwich and he wiped his hands on his thighs.  “I found two distinctive encryptions being used for the data bursts.  Our libraries posses no encryption key for one of them.”

Yuulik took a step back, as if Leander had punched her in the stomach.  She breathed out a, “tt,” and she backed the rest of the way out of the server room.  On his feet in no time, Kellin followed Yuulik out into the wider cave system.  Yuulik strode purposefully towards the stairwell, but she wouldn’t run.  Her dignity wouldn’t allow it.

Kellin said, “I tracked the mystery data bursts to a fractal encrypted server,” raising his voice.  The strange acoustics of the dry symbiont pools amplified Kellin’s voice with an echo.  “You’re stealing half of the archaeology research, Yuulik,” he accused.

That stopped Yuulik in her tracks.  She spun back to face Kellin.  Yuulik forced out a titter of laughter, but even she could hear it sounded desperate.  “You’re overreacting,” Yuulik said.  “I’m not Tal Shiar or anything.”

Staring back at Yuulik, Kellin didn’t let up with the intensity of his staring.  “I could never catch a Tal Shiar,” he admitted mirthlessly.

“Not in a hundred years,” Yuulik replied.

“But I did catch you,” Kellin said, “sending Starfleet research to your private server.”

Yuulik waved her arms, gesturing for Kellin to slow down.  “My private Starfleet server.  It possesses all of the same data security as the main computer.  I’ve broken no security protocols, lieutenant.”

Nakedly incredulous, Kellin questioned Yuulik’s logic by pointing out, “You’ve violated the mission protocols.  You’ve cut your integrity off at the knees with your peers and with Commander Taes.  What do you think the Director of Social Sciences will think of you when he finds out you’ve been hoarding data for your own research.  You won’t get published then.”

“I lead this excavation,” Yuulik said in quiet certainty.  “I deserve to study the data myself.”

“You, you, you!  All you care about is being published!” Kellin said, clearly exasperated.  “Talk to your director.  Ask to join the research team.”

“I can’t!” Yuulik spat back.  “Imposter-in-a-red-shirt Taes keeps dragging me back to Nestus.  I could be so much more than a raven or a trowel.  I could offer Starfleet true brilliance if they would only support my growth.”  Yuulik chopped her hands through the air emphatically.  “I think Taes might be right, Kellin.  Trill emergency services may prioritize the joined or those in child-bearing ages or something.  If you give me a few weeks to steep in the data, I can solve this.  I could save the lives of your parents or your sisters in the long run.”

“That’s not what I’m doing here,” Kellin said.

Through gritted teeth, Yuulik said, “Look, I’ll stop.  I’ll transfer all of the data back to the main–“

Emphatically, Kellin said, “No.”  He shook his head and he narrowed his eyes at Yuulik.  Kellin’s expression went stone-faced.  Yuulik had never known Kellin to hide what he was feeling like this; he usually wore six hearts on his sleeve and a few more on his pants.  Kellin remarked, “My grandpa used to say, ‘the right thing starts at the beginning of the day’.  It’s too late to go back.  How about… you do your research, you find out what unconscious biases might endanger my life, and you publish your article.  In exchange, you keep Taes’ name out of your mouth.  You never, ever gossip about Commander Taes again and I don’t have to mention your secret server.”

Yuulik squinted at Kellin in disbelief.  “I keep the data?” she asked.

He sounded half-hearted, but Kellin said, “It’s a deal, buddy.”  Kellin held out a hand to request a hand-shake from Yuulik.

Yuulik looked at the floor as she weighed her options.  Kellin had figuratively, and literally, backed her into a corner in these damned caverns.  She raised her hand, she looked at Kellin, and then she tapped her combadge.  Yuulik fixed Kellin with her most vicious grin.  “Yuulik to Commander Taes,” she said.  “I want you to know, I’ve been omitting data from the mission logs to keep for my own private research.  Love you lots.”  And she tapped her combadge to close the comm link.

Looking Kellin dead in the eyes, Yuulik promised, “You keep my name out of your mouth.  You never tell me what I can say.” 

“Wait…” Kellin Rayco said, shaking his head as if that might wake him up from this bad dream.  Sputtering out the words incredulously, Kellin asked, “You’re reprimanding me?”

When Commander Taes had ordered Kellin to beam back to the Dvorak, he had imagined their conversation going very, very differently.  Lieutenant Nune had discovered irregularities in the management of the mission’s research data.  Upon investigation, and after a verbal confession, Kellin had learned that Chief Science Officer Yuulik had been stealing data from the away teams to keep for her own personal research.  In his role as Chief Security Officer, Kellin expected Taes to ask him questions about the evidence or the data.  Rather, Taes’ questions and demeanour had taken a surprising turn before they’d even made it out of the transporter room.

Taes didn’t answer his question in front of the transporter operator.  His mission commander motioned for Kellin to follow her through the open doorway.  Waiting for him in the brightly lit corridor, Taes said nothing until the double doors had slid shut behind Kellin.  She fixed him with an intense stare the whole time.  The look behind Taes’ dark brown eyes hit him in his core with classic not angry, but disappointed energy.

“Rayco,” Taes said stridently, even though she usually called him Kellin, “you admitted to blackmailing a Starfleet officer.  What else can I do?”

Raising his palms instinctively, Kellin said in a panic, “I didn’t– that’s not–”  The words came out of him haltingly, his mind in a spin.  In self-protection, Kellin held onto the only fact he knew for sure.  “Yuulik is a bully,” Kellin said firmly and he lowered his hands.  His chest puffed up, Kellin stood a little taller.  “She’s like that girl who started rumours about Imall at school and graffitied our parents’ house.  I couldn’t stand idly by then and I won’t stand idly by now.  I have my integrity.”

Taes put a hand on Kellin’s shoulder.  He couldn’t be sure if it was somewhere between the understanding look in her eyes or her Deltan empathic abilities, but his memories of his sister’s bully, and his anger at Yuulik, began to evaporate.  He saw stars for the briefest of moments, and then the tightness in his neck and shoulders began to release.

“Breathe out, lieutenant,” Taes said placidly.  “You’re deep in your feelings right now.  It’s only natural to feel that way.  In this moment, those feelings are clouding your concept of integrity.”  She withdrew her hand and she took a step back.  “We’re Starfleet.  We don’t engage in coercion.  You know that.  You shouldn’t have offered to keep her secret.  You should have come to me.”

Amid a rising sense of panic, Kellin breathed out the words, “You’re right.”  He ran his hands through his hair, dragging the heels of his palms across his scalp.  “What did I do, commander?  I’ve ruined my career!”

“Words said in anger aren’t a career-ender,” Taes said with a comforting certainty.  She took Kellin by the arm and tugged him to move forward with her.  “You’ll have a bad night’s sleep for a few nights, you’ll handle dishonest officers differently next time, and eventually, you’ll almost forget.  This will just become a story you tell, sometimes, when you’re drunk.”

“Really?” Kellin asked, padding slowly down the corridor by her side.

Taes cocked an eyebrow at him and she pursed her lips just as briefly.  “If you repeat this story, I will tell everybody you’re a liar,” Taes said, as preamble.  “When Starfleet withdrew its rescue armada from Romulan space, I became… heated in a debate with a colleague.  I can’t recall the exact words I used, but I may have asked her why she bothered to survive the Bajoran Occupation if she thought refugees deserved death…”

“Commander,” Kellin whispered in wide-eyed shock.

“Feels like a lifetime ago,” Taes said, speaking through a pained smile.  Like most conversations about her past, she didn’t linger.  Taes asked, “Why didn’t you come to me when you learned what Yuulik had done?  We could have come up with a plan together.”

Plainly disappointed in himself, Kellin replied, “You said it, commander, I got angry.  I couldn’t…”  He shrugged when he couldn’t find the right words at first.  “I couldn’t stomach the hypocrisy.  Yuulik was stealing data and the whole time she was gossiping about you with the crew, calling you a micromanager or an intruder.”

A brief laugh escaped Taes’ lips.  “She might be right, Kellin!  This is where I find myself,” Taes said, shrugging helplessly.  “I was determined to be less aloof this time.  Every away team member was given personal access to me.  I wanted the crew to feel like they could trust me.”  Shaking her head, frustration was clearly etched across Taes’ face.  “No matter my intentions, if they felt I was watching over their shoulders, I didn’t create that climate of trust.  It was Yuulik herself who took me aside when she saw–”  Taes stopped and her shoulders slumped.  Staring into the middle distance, she said, “Oh… Yuulik questioned my leadership so I would step back from the away teams.  It gave me less visibility to the data…”

“Do you see, commander?” Kellin asked emphatically  “And it wasn’t only now.  This goes back to before Haven.  There’s no reason for Yuulik to treat you with such disrespect.”

When Taes looked at Kellin then, he felt deeply seen.  He could feel her studying him, watching every movement of his face for signs he was understanding what she was trying to convey.  “You call it disrespect in Trill culture.  Human or Starfleet culture might call it the same.  But Yuulik is Arcadian.  I have to respect that as much as I respect Starfleet’s culture.  We all do.  Challenging me and testing me is Yuulik’s way of showing me the utmost respect.  Her need to be better than me –to best me, frankly– is motivating her to think smarter, more strategically.  One of the great bards of earth even wrote: ‘One never knows how loyalty is born’.”

Blinking at that, Kellin wasn’t sure he agreed, but he made a point of asking a question.  “What does that do to the rest of the crew,” he asked, “if she keeps undermining your authority?”

Taes raised her palm to stop Kellin in his tracks.  She moved around him to face him directly.  As much as Kellin felt an intensity to her eye contact, Taes spoke to him tenderly.  “Putting aside what she did with the mission data for this moment, Yuulik just likes to complain.  Complaining is good for the soul.  Security officers spar to let off steam.  Science officers back-bite.”  Unequivocally, Taes concluded with, “Kellin, only I can undermine my authority.  No one else has that power.”

As those words came out, Kellin saw Taes’ eyes shift to something over his shoulder.  Her face went neutral and she nodded briskly.  Taes said, “Commander,” and Kellin heard another voice say, “Commander,” in return.

Commander Elbon Jakkelb brushed against Kellin’s shoulder as he moved past him.  Dvorak’s Bajoran first officer was tall, but he wasn’t quite as tall as Kellin.  And he smelled good, wearing a fragrance with a distinctly Risian bite to its bouquet.  Before Elbon made it to the next intersection, he glanced back over his shoulder.  Kellin caught Elbon’s eye and he echoed Taes’ tone of voice, when he said, “Commander,” too.

Elbon offered Kellin a military nod and he tossed off a, “Kell,” in return.  A heartbeat later, Elbon had disappeared down a perpendicular passageway.

Kellin watched him walk away, couldn’t take his eyes off Elbon.  Apparently noticing this, Taes offered a playful poke in the centre of Kellin’s chest.  “Excuse me,” Taes said, her face rounding with amusement.  “Did he call you Kell?”

Kellin blinked twice.  “Who?” he asked, a little too dramatically.

“Commander Elbon,” Taes replied.

“Ugh,” Kellin groaned, sticking his tongue out.  “That’s my gross husband.”

“Your gross what?” Taes asked back, clearly stunned.

Kellin cut his eyes to the side and he chewed on his lower lips.  After the adrenaline rush in the caverns with Yuulik and the new directions Taes was trying to stretch Kellin’s mind, the man felt fatigued.  His energy levels were dropping; he could feel it deep in his flesh, as if he were in the middle of a workout.  Trying to explain his courtship with Elbon wasn’t going to be straight-forward.  His lips curled into an impish smile, and Kellin said, “You’re the one who taught me to be more mindful, to stay present.  The past doesn’t matter.” –Although when Taes told him that on previous missions, she had usually been avoiding questions about her youth on Nivoch– “All that matters is building a better future together.”

Tacitly accepting that, Taes said, “I need to be able to trust you in the future, if we’re going to continue working together.”  Her words were sober, almost solemn.  As she kept talking, Kellin saw a couple of facial ticks that showed up when Taes became agitated.  He could hear her frustration that he had put her in a position to have to discipline him.  “Why did you try to blackmail Yuulik?  I need to understand why,” Taes asked.  “It was one thing to investigate the data bursts, but it’s well beyond your role to correct her behaviour.  I’ve already spoken to Nune and Yuulik.  Yuulik took the data for her career advancement.  It had nothing to do with me, and yet you offered to let her keep the data if she would stop gossiping about me.  Her complaints mean nothing.”

“It means everything.  I had no choice,” Kellin said, feeling fully exposed.  “Taes, you’re my best friend.”

“You… Oh.  Oh!  You did this… for me?” Taes remarked.  Recognition slowly dawned across her face as she took in the full depths of Kellin’s meaning.  “Kellin, how can you say that, we’ve barely–”  She shook her head, her face going slack with concern.  Her entire posture deflated before Kellin’s eyes.  Taes looked away, she dropped her gaze to the floor, diffidently.  Shamefully, she said, “I haven’t earned that kind of loyalty from you.  I talk about you earning back my trust, but I’ve been keeping you at arm’s length.  I should be more open with you, Kellin; more honest about–“

“I don’t think you heard me,” Kellin said emphatically.  “You’re my best friend.  There’s not anything you have to do differently.  My friendship doesn’t come with conditions, because what kind of friendship would that be?  You can tell me what you want or don’t tell me what you want.  That doesn’t matter.  You’re my best friend.”

*   *   *

Commander Taes materialized on the surface of New Tenar, in among the ruins of Vrans City.  The air was damp after a gentle rainfall most of the morning.  Through the clouds, some hints of the sun were starting to peek through.  For all their excavations and antagonism, there was still work to do.  Taes took long strides to cross the paved roadway that separated her from Lieutenant (JG) Sootrah Yuulik.  Kneeling on the pavement ahead of Taes, Yuulik was examining the rubble of a wall that had collapsed beneath a building Taes couldn’t identify by sight.

Looking back at Taes, Yuulik said, “Commander, you’ll want to see this.  This cornerstone was constructed from a starship bulkhead.  Quantum dating would suggest it dates back to one of the original colony ships.  We have no records of this being here, but it’s something special.  It has a built-in drawer.”  As Taes padded to Yuulik’s side, her body cast a shadow over Yuulik.  Solemnly, Yuulik asked, “You told my director what I’ve done?” even though it wasn’t really a question.

“Of course,” Taes said.

Yuulik handed up her tricorder for Taes to take over.  “I suppose that means you should do the honours, commander,” Yuulik said, plainly defeated.

“Have you lost the nerve, lieutenant?” Taes asked, nakedly taunting her.

Yuulik looked up at Taes, squinting a bit.  “I get to keep my combadge?” Yuulik asked.  There were glimmers of hope in her voice, scattered like the streams of sunlight breaking through the clouds.

“I can’t speak to your security clearance, or your holodeck privileges, or if you’ll be assigned to anything more serious than cleaning test tubes on the starbase,” Taes said, “but you can keep your combadge.  Now open up the drawer.  That’s an order, lieutenant.”

With all of her sensor scans complete, the structural integrity of the cornerstone confirmed, Yuulik closed a gloved fist around the handle.  She jiggled the handle tentatively and then she pulled the drawer out from the bulkhead cube in a smooth motion.  Inside the drawer were a scattering of carved crystals, shards of mirror, a plek’et disc, a few dried out ribbons, and what looked like vertebrae from a symbiont.

“…What does all this mean?” Yuulik asked, her voice catching in her throat.

Taes rest a hand on Yuulik’s shoulder.  “Let’s find out.”