The transition to wakefulness came easily.  It hardly required more than a couple of blinks.  The nothingness of sleep was replaced by the twinkle of stars through the viewports over his bed.  The slope of the hull meant the shape of his sleeping compartment felt akin to a hug from the starship herself.  The green glow through the viewports, from the Jengelen Nebula, was even more pronounced than when he’d laid down.

Holmgren sleepily reached for the blanket that was draped over him in awkward bunches.  His hand closed around one edge and he felt hard metal in his hand.  Dropping his chin to his chest, Holmgren could see he was blanketed in the black and red uniform jacket he had taken off.  And further along, he could see something else.

Beyond the foot of the bed, there was a red-brick fireplace set against the bulkhead.  The fireplace’s mantle was decorated with green candles and red stockings, hung with care.  Squinting hard at the fireplace, Holmgren reached a hand out to the space beside him on the bed.  His palm came down gently on nothing but the mattress.

Jeffrey Holmgren’s Personal Log, Stardate 77980.3: I swear.  I only closed my eyes for five minutes.  I couldn’t have fallen asleep.  The first thing I noticed was a chill in the room.  It was far cooler than I preferred my environmental settings.  The second thing was the glow, that flickering glow.  I thought it a reflection from the Jengelen Nebula, but it was a fireplace with an open flame.  Now, I know my quarters aboard the USS Olympic haven’t been equipped with a fireplace.  My mind wandered; I thought this could be my family quarters aboard Deep Space Seventeen, but my wife wasn’t in bed with me.  These were my quarters on the Olympic and yet there was a fireplace.  A fireplace with an open flame, and yet it felt like it was emitting cold rather than heat.  Open flame.

Bracing both palms into the mattress, Holmgren pushed himself into an upright position.  He scrabbled back into the headboard of his bed, pulling his knees into his chest, retreating from the fireplace as quickly as he could.

“Computer!” Holmgren ordered.  “Erect a fire-suppression forcefield five metres away from–“

“Belay that order,” came another voice beyond the foot of Holmgren’s bed.  That voice was deep.  It was so deep the voice reverberated as though the compartment were an echo chamber.  The voice belonged to a plump man of a certain age wearing a red boiler suit, trimmed in white fur.  Under his conical red hat, he had curly white hair and a bushy white beard to match.  He laughed at Holmgren with a, “Ho, ho, ho.”

“Calm down, little guy,” said the man with the white beard.  “There’s nothing to worry about.”

“Huh– whuh–” Holmgren sputtered at the older man.  “Who are you?”

“Don’t be silly; I’m Santa Claus,” was his reply.  “Who else could be visiting you on Christmas Eve?”

Holmgren hugged his knees to his chest even tighter.

“How did you get on board?” Holmgren asked.

“Rudolf brought me!” Santa excitedly answered.

To Holmgren’s left, he saw a reindeer shuffling in the cramped space between the bulkhead and his bed.  The red-nosed reindeer dropped his head and began to chew on the bed’s top sheet.

Holmgren scoffed.  “You travelled through space on a reindeer?”

“Don’t be thick,” Santa said gruffly.  “He’s a time-travelling reindeer.  How else could I be everywhere in one night?  Look at his nose so bright.  Doesn’t it make you want to rub it?”

This is bad.  My thoughts feel sluggish, like trying to run through deep snow.  I know there’s something else I’m supposed to do, supposed to say, but I only have questions.  No answers.  His clothes, his words, his mannerisms; I don’t understand any of it.  I think I saw Christmas Eve in a couple of holo-novels as a kid?  Maybe?  I don’t recognize the references.  This is like a First Contact gone wrong.  I must be dreaming.  Or something worse.  Did I never wake up from the coma?  After the agony of the body swap with Doctor Nelli on the starship Dvorak, did I never wake up?  Was taking command of the USS Olympic just another cruel dream like this one?

A blinding green light flashed from one end of the compartment to the other.  It came on so suddenly, Holmgren hardly had time to squeeze his eyes shut.  When he opened his eyes again, Santa Claus was still standing there, watching him.

“What was that?” Holmgren asked.

Santa waved a mitted hand at a fully decorated Christmas tree.  The tree was something else that Holmgren had never seen in his quarters before.  Judging by the spiky green leaves on the branches, it looked like a noble fir, and those pine-like leaves looked awfully sharp.  Baubles and tinsel and flashing lights had been hung in every open space between the branches.

“Your eyes caught a reflection from the Christmas lights,” Santa said in a patronising fashion.  “If you’ve been a very good boy this year, I brought a gift to leave for you under the tree.  Now tell me, have you been a good little boy?”

Holmgren answered before he thought about it.  “I tried to be.”

“Go on,” Santa encouraged, “tell Rudolf your secret wish for Christmas this year.  Whisper it in his ear.”

I’ve seen that pattern of light before.  Christmas lights?  I don’t think so.  The hue, the pattern, it’s too familiar.  I’ve usually seen it emitted from a probe or a trident scanner, but a starship’s internal sensors can generate it too.  My compartment was scanned with a high-intensity transphasic sensor!

Stretching his arm across his chest, Holmgren reached for the companel set into his bedside table.  Before he even got halfway, Rudolf chomped in the air over the companel.  Holmgren immediately recoiled from those razor-sharp teeth.

Boisterously, Santa cried out, “Let’s sing a Christmas carol together!”

“What?” Holmgren spat back, making no effort to hide his confusion.  “I don’t know any Christmas carols!”

Sighing, Santa said, “C’mon, everyone knows them.  Think back to when you were a child.  You can rub Rudolf’s nose if you want, lil’ guy.  That always helps me remember things. There’s Jingle Bells!  There’s All I Want For Christmas Is You!  And who can forget: Could You Help Out a Forty-Niner?”

“What?” Holmgren asked, even more perplexed.

Santa sneered.  His voice got deeper.  In annoyance, his jolly façade slipped for the first time.

“Oh wait,” Santa said.  “That was someone else.”

Through the bulkhead, Holmgren heard a muffled voice scream: “Captain, get down!“

The door panel between Holmgren’s bedroom and the living room began to glow orange and then white-hot.  Holmgren shoulder-rolled across his bed and dropped onto the deck, utterly gracelessly.  Still, Holmgren managed to position himself on one side of the bed, while Santa and Rudolf were on the other.

As soon as the door panel vaporised, Santa and Rudolf growled in the direction of the new opening.  The sound was unearthly, like their vocal cords were vibrating in a fifth dimension.

Barging through the open hatchway was Holmgren’s chief engineer, Draia Theroh.  The Cardassian woman looked far too comfortable brandishing a phaser rifle in her captain’s quarters.  She thumbed the settings toggle without looking at them and she blanketed the room in a wide-beam phaser blast.

Santa and Rudolf were hardly jolted by the stun beam.  They weren’t even knocked back by one step.  They certainly didn’t lose consciousness as Holmgren had expected and hoped.  What happened instead was their skin went slack, as if it was about to melt off, and then their bodies shifted in form.  Santa Claus, the Christmas tree, and the fireplace all melted into vaguely humanoid forms that were blindingly bright silver in colour.  Each was between two and three metres in height and they were largely featureless except for four limbs and the orifices where their foreheads might have otherwise been.

Rudolf, meanwhile, was nothing other than a red-nosed snake.  His body condensed, revealed his true form to be that of a glowing, silver ophidian.

Simultaneously, Draia snapped her phaser rifle to her shoulder, pointing the emitter at the compartment’s overhead.  She snatched up a fistful of something grey from her belt clip, it looked only half-assembled.  It certainly wasn’t standard-issue.  Draia twisted the hand-made attachment onto the emitter of her rifle.  Once her left hand was free, Draia aimed the phaser rifle at the ophidian and shot it with five field bursts.

The ophidian opened its mouth in a silent scream.  Instead of any noise, it produced a white vortex: a tear in the spacetime continuum.  Given the cramped quarters of Holmgren’s bedroom, the span of the vortex immediately consumed the beings that had once appeared to be Santa Claus, the Christmas tree, the fireplace and Rudolf the ophidian too.  As soon as the ophidian fell through the vortex, the vortex winked out of existence.

“Devidians on Christmas,” Draia remarked contemptuously.  “Nasty business.  They’re shapeshifters who exist out of phase from the rest of us, sir.  They only risk coming into phase because Human neural energy is their favourite meal.”

Draia pointed her rifle at where the reindeer had been.  “If you had touched the ophidian, they would have drained your neural energy and left you for dead.  I suspected they were hunting you for a week, maybe more.  There were some strange sensor readings, but the science department thought it was only the elevated triolic waves emanating from the Jengelen nebula.”

“He said he was a time traveller,” Holmgren offered, sitting himself on the edge of the bed.

“Brilliant scheme,” Draia said with an impressed nod.  “They thought they’d catch you unawares on your gluttonous Earther holiday by appealing to your childhood nostalgia.”  

Draia’s eyes widened when she evidently saw something surprising in Holmgren’s facial expression.  She stopped and she cleared her throat.

“I read up on it when I was assigned to the Olympic,” she explained.

Holmgren smiled weakly.  He shrugged at her.

“Draia, I never celebrated Christmas growing up,” he admitted sheepishly.

“Ah,” Draia vocalized awkwardly.  “My mistake.  The Devidians’ too, I guess.  I assumed it was your favourite holiday, sir.  Don’t tell them I told you, but the whole crew has been planning a surprise Christmas party for you.”

Draia’s eyes dropped to the deck between her feet.  She pointed her phaser rifle down at the deck too.

“Your wife, sir,” Draia said tentatively, “She told me she was playing Christmas carols for you when you awoke from your coma.  I thought that meant Christmas meant something to you…”

Holmgren smiled gently.  “It will now.”

The impatient chiming from an incoming hail were already waiting for Holmgren when he stepped into the ready room.  On this morning, that noise sounded like a crying baby and, just like a crying baby he knew to be safe and well-fed, the sound gave Holmgren no impetus to hurry.

Holmgren puttered around the small compartment to replicate a glass of Altair water and make himself comfortable behind his desk.  He smoothed down the front of his red and black uniform jacket and he picked off a thread of lint.  Through the wide viewport beyond his desk, Holmgren thought he spotted the tail-end of a passing runabout.

When he was about to accept the hail, Holmgren became disturbed by a soft noise behind him.  He looked back over his shoulder and all he saw were the closed door panels separating him from the USS Olympic‘s main bridge.

“Computer,” Holmgren said, “Remind me not to forget to put in a request with engineering.  I hate the layout in here.  Having my back to the door makes me think someone is sneaking up on me.”

“Yes, captain,” the computer replied.

Holmgren cleared his throat.  He said, “All right, computer, accept the runabout’s hail.”

A holographic LCARS frame projected from Holmgren’s desk.  Over the subspace communications channel, a runabout cockpit appeared in the frame, with Lieutenant Junior Grade Annikafiore Szerda sitting in the pilot’s chair.  She was all freckles and side-swept red hair.

“–repeat, this is the runabout Acheron, requesting landing approach,” Szerda said blandly.  Her grey eyes lit up, evidently noticing that she had a real-time audience one again.  

“Oh!  Captain.  I didn’t expect it to be you who would–” Szerda said.

Holmgren locked eyes with Szerda.

He insisted, “You’ll set course for the USS Sarek and take to the stars if you know what’s good for you, lieutenant.”

“Uhhhhh?” Szerda intoned.  “Pardon me?”

Jeffrey Holmgren’s Personal Log, Stardate 78009.0: I shouldn’t have welcomed Szerda like that.  I’ve always looked up to Captain Taes as my leadership role model. On my first day as her Head of Archaeology on Starbase 310, Taes replicated a cake based on a recipe my mother had crafted.  On my first day as her Chief Science Officer aboard the USS Dvorak, Taes nearly killed me.

“I don’t know who lied to you, lieutenant,” Holmgren said, “but somewhere along the way, someone lied to you about this assignment.”

Szerda smirked back at Holmgren.  “Those lies I loved, captain,” she remarked.

“This is the job, Szerda,” Holmgren said.  He spun his index finger in a circle through the air.  “The last fifteen minutes of your life.  That is the job.”

“I’danian spice latte?” Szerda sardonically asked in clarification.  She raised her transparent mug within range of the comm’s visual sensor.

I died.  For a minute, technically speaking.  Almost a year ago, I died.  On my first away team mission as Chief Science Officer of the USS Dvorak, I was subjected to an accidental body swap.  My Human mind was unprepared for living within the non-humanoid body of a Phylosian.  I lost my way in a comatose state, even after Taes managed to swap me back into my own body.  I was shipped back to the infirmary aboard Deep Space Seventeen.  My wife and daughters watched my goodbye holo-message.  I shouldn’t have told them which one of them was my favourite.  Cringe.  But then I got better.

Holmgren raised his eyebrows at Szerda’s image.  As if it held the same import as Szerda’s pilot certification, Holmgren asked, “How are your tablescapes, lieutenant?”

“Uh, perfunctory?“

“Ah-ah-ah,” Holmgren sing-songed in a chiding tone.  He waggled a finger at Szerda while he said it.  “Hospitality is our game.  Tablescapes are a top priority!  Starfleet classifies the USS Olympic as a research cruiser, but we’re a cruise ship at heart.  We don’t do the glamorous science: no time loops or stellar nurseries.  You’ve accepted the role of chief operations officer aboard a fully-automated Olympic-class starship.  That means most of your days will consist of venue management for an academic conference centre in space.”

After taking a breath, Holmgren added, “You’re joining us after serving as the USS Sarek‘s chief flight controller.  There are no navigational challenges aboard the Olympic.  Since I began our shakedown, we fly the same ferry route between the Romulan Free State border, Deep Space 17, the Federation border onto the Typhon Expanse and back again.  Once we’re fully operational, I’m told to expect no different.”

Captain Taes is to blame.  Starship command hasn’t really appealed to me since I was a fourth-year cadet.  Through the eyes of a child, I coveted the mythological combination of the Science Officer and First Officer roles.  It’s all I ever wanted.  I studied to be a bridge officer at the academy.  I did all that training, but once I got in the uniform, it was the scientific research that spoke to me.  I didn’t really want to leave my archaeology department aboard Starbase Three-Ten, but Captain Taes needed me.  She was nervous.  The USS Dvorak was her first starship command.  She was nervous and I got killed.  Does that seem fair?

Szerda shrugged at Holmgren.  She retorted, “I’danian spice lattes sounds about right to me.  I’m looking for an assignment on thrusters-only.  I could use a minute to breath and think about my career without worrying if I’m going to wake up to–“

But Szerda snapped her mouth shut, plainly deciding not to share that thought.  Then her eyes widened, unable to hide as another haunted came to mind.

“If you wake up at all,” Holmgren said, referring to his coma.

“I’m glad you did,” Szerda emphatically said.  She had served with Holmgren briefly, during the body swap crisis aboard the USS Dvorak.

Holmgren smiled at Szerda’s affectionate comment, but he didn’t know what to say in reply.  He sipped at his water instead and looked at the ceiling.

Before the silence became prolonged, Szerda said, “I appreciate you taking a chance on me, captain.  I worked in starbase logistics for a spell and I managed starship operations on a Raven-class, but nothing like all of this.  You called the Olympic a cruise ship, but even that will be an all-new challenge for me.  I don’t know if I’m ready, if I’m honest.“

“Don’t doubt yourself, lieutenant.  I hand-picked you for this role,” Holmgren said.  “When Task Force Seventeen was preparing their diplomatic strategy with the Romulan Free State, the Olympic‘s captain was promoted to an explorer and took her senior staff with her.  The ship underwent a refit of its deflector and holographic systems.  Task force commanders Mek and Kohl took the opportunity to re-assign the Olympic to a new formation.  They paired up the newly-commissioned USS Sarek with the USS Olympic as Sarek Squadron.  

“While the Sarek works with their Romulan crew members to solve imminent science mysteries in the midst of diplomatic and humanitarian crises,” Holmgren continued, “the Olympic is a joint effort with the Romulan Free State to work together in all of those quiet moments in between.  Once it’s time to communicate and publish the findings of Sarek Squadron, our mission is to discover if Starfleet and the Free State agree on an article’s contributor taxonomy.

“Taes nominated me to command this starship,” Holmgren said, drawing a comparison between them.  “I didn’t think I was ready.  Task Force Command didn’t think I was ready.  Although I offered leadership to the social sciences department on Three-Ten, I had little starship command experience, especially given my rank.  Taes fought for me.  She told me she wished someone had fought for her dreams earlier in her career.  She promised to mentor me.  Besides, how much trouble can a fully-automated Olympic-class cruiser get into?  We hardly leave Federation space.  The crew is a glorified science and hospitality department anyway.”

There was something I never told Taes.  When she found me working in the first contact department on Deep Space Seventeen, she said she was going to fight for me, fight for her dream.  She was prepared to lay a path for me, if I wanted it.  I told her I wanted it, but I didn’t tell her why I had changed my mind.  I didn’t tell her what had changed within me.  Would she have fought for me, if she had known?

Szerda said, “Taes was always telling us the work of the Olympic is the real work.  This is the work she misses.“

“Isn’t it funny,” Holmgren asked, “In our four-month shakedown, Captain Taes hasn’t visited in person once?”

The dress uniform did something to him.  Lieutenant Commander Ache almost didn’t recognize him until he approached within ten metres of her.  Something about the red and black formal-wear gave Lieutenant Calumn an extra sashay to his hips as he closed the distance between them.

Given the Olympic‘s recreation deck was two decks high and covered the entire circumference of one of the sphere section’s decks, Ache briefly wondered how Calumn had even managed to locate her.  She had thought she was being sly by backing into a short passageway connecting the open reception area to the bowling alley.

“Pardon the intrusion, commander,” Calumn remarked in what sounded like a transparent performance of politeness.  Ache considered it a performance because Calumn didn’t pause to allow her the opportunity to excuse herself from said intrusion.

“I’m terribly curious to hear what you think of the food?” Calumn asked.

Ache left his question hanging between them as if it were a disappointing magic trick.  In truth, Ache couldn’t even try to respond because the finger-mouths on one of her hands were chewing a briny and fibrous delicacy on her plate.  Ache’s silence was made all the more pointed when she moved her finger-mouths to bite into another few mouthfuls of the food.

Plainly uncomfortable with the silence, Calumn nattered on to say, “I know I should care about if the Romulan contingent judge the food to be authentic, but it’s really only our captain’s opinion that ever matters.  To that end, I’ve noticed he always asks for your perspective first in staff meetings.”

When he spoke, Calumn’s voice sounded reedy with an unpleasant rasp.  Ache supposed that came from Calum’s improbably narrow Betazoid physiology or the way his perspective was narrowed by working as Olympic‘s chief diplomatic officer.  At times, perception mattered more than reality in that line of work.

Drawing out the silence a moment more, Ache set aside her plate on a darkened LCARS workstation.  When she answered Calumn’s question, the sound resonated from her majestic, six-lobed Osnullus skull.  Ache’s speaking voice sounded like a pitch-perfect chorus between her cavernous nostrils and every mouth on each of her fingers.

“Romulan cuisine isn’t to my taste,” Ache admitted.  “Too sour.”

Raising a finger, Calumn pointed to the empty plate Ache had abandoned.

“You say that,” Calumn remarked, “but it hasn’t stopped you from eating it.”

“I’m hungry,” Ache shot back defensively.  She nodded to the reception area behind him.  “Shouldn’t you be mingling with our guests?”

Lieutenant Commander Tichee Ache’s Personal Log, Stardate 78015.7: The USS Olympic is hosting a reception for Command Cokitha and her crew from the Romulan Free State warbird Vishatha.  They’ve returned from the blood dilithium fiasco in the Delta Quadrant and we are escorting them through Federation space to where our border meets the Typhon Expanse.  Evidently, even the Romulans are curious about the shift in energy emissions coming from stellar phenomena across the expanse.

Commander Ache watched as Calumn scanned the reception hall with his eyes.  As the Olympic‘s chief security officer herself, Ache recognized something methodical in his visual inspection.  She suspected Calumn had security training at some point in his career.

Finally, Calumn answered, “The guests are entertaining themselves.” His words trailed off dismissively. “I reprogrammed the holographic games to better resemble Romulan cultural amusements.”

As Ache completed her own visual inspection of the dozens mingling across the rec deck, she noticed the Starfleet uniforms and the Romulan civilian attire outnumbered the Romulan Free State military uniforms.  As soon as her assessment accursed to her, she shared it out loud.  In the short time she’d known Calumn, he had never been one to shy away from criticism.

“You’ve made a mistake in catering to the visiting crew from the Vishatha,” Ache remarked.  “Our combined science department has the deeper need for this reception.  We may limit the risk of back-stabbing and murder between our Starfleet and Romulan Free State scientists if they can build camaraderie out of this…” –She waved a hand at the reception hall– “Awkward small talk and sour food.  It’s been scientifically proven that misery loves company.”

Calumn didn’t hesitate.  In a deadpan delivery, he said, “Then the captain is going to love you.”

“Say less,” Ache replied.

Calumn said, “You’re about to make the captain miserable.”  

Ache folded her hands over her heart and the tentacles beside her nostrils began to wiggle in distress.

“What did I do?” Ache asked in a mild perfectionist panic.  “Did I offend our Romulan Liaison Officer?”

Through a self-satisfied smirk, Calumn said, “I’m starting to be able to anticipate your objections and protests.  I can imagine what you’ll say once you find out: Commander Cokitha is meeting with our captain right now, formally requesting the USS Olympic escort the warbird Vishatha to the planet Ullho.”

Ache scoffed at the very suggestion.  “But we don’t have the means to defend ourselves in unfamiliar territory.”

Calumn squinted back at her.  “Isn’t that what the deflector system refit was for?”

“You want to put the shake in shakedown cruise, huh?” Ache mirthlessly said.

“It’s a question of resource allocation,” Calumn said, all matter of fact.  “Until the Olympic‘s operations and science departments are at full capacity, we can’t schedule any academic conferences. We might as well take a looksee in the wild if it’s a goal we share with the Romulan Free State.”

There’s a common myth on my planet about communities expelling those who had reached an advanced age.  This tradition wasn’t borne of malice; it was intended as a sign of respect.  Centuries ago, my people believed it selfish to contain the wisdom of the elderly to a single community.  Their wisdom deserved to be celebrated by all.  The elderly were encouraged to wander, offering their expertise to be cherished by all and belonging to none.  When I shared this myth with Captain Holmgren, he thought it was a metaphor for the Olympic.  We walk alongside explorers, sharing stories as we walk our path, and then we step back as they jump into adventure.

Ache surprised even herself by how easily she dragged Lieutenant Commander Holmgren into a reading lounge.  Even in his flowing dress uniform, Holmgren looked sturdily built in the legs and shoulders.  Ache supposed his Human physiognomy was naturally inferior to her Osnullus form.  What was even more surprising was how little verbal or physical resistance he offered to being manhandled by Ache.  She wouldn’t have immediately guessed he was a good Starfleeter in his soul, eager to obey a stronger opinion than his own.

As soon as the automatic doors offered them privacy, Ache unloaded her anxieties in one long strident whisper.

“Must I remind you, Captain Holmgren,” Ache asked rhetorically, “the starship Olympic‘s mission parameters are clear?  Our theatre of war is solely within Federation space.  The planet Ullho is located in the Typhon Expanse.  Beyond Federation borders.”

With the pads of his fingertips, Holmgren brushed a stray hair back into his side part.  His first response was only to offer Ache a sheepish smile. He shrugged apologetically, but Ache saw a glimmer in his eyes, like he thought his naughty schoolboy act would be seen as roguishly handsome.

“I hear you, commander,” Holmgren said patiently, “and it’s also true that Commander Cokitha asked for us to join them very politely.“

Ache drooped her massive head.  “I understand I haven’t served as your chief security officer for long enough to–“

“Don’t,” Holmgren said.  He closed his eyes and shook his head at Ache.  After taking a breath, he looked Ache in two of her largest eyes before he said anything more.  “I trust your perspective, commander.  You don’t have to question that.”

With greater conviction, Ache said, “Then believe me when I say the Olympic doesn’t have sufficient tactical defences for what you’re proposing.”

“The Vishatha is a warbird; they can handle the defence,” Holmgren said dryly.  “They want us for our minds.  The Olympic‘s lateral sensor arrays offer far more expansive sensor coverage than their own and our crew boasts an entire archaeology department.  The Vishatha crew wish to circle back to an abandoned Romulan outpoust the USS Sarek located on Ullho; that site was over two centuries old.  The Sarek crew had barely begun a survey when they were called away to the Blood Dilithium campaign.  Didn’t I trust you when you explained the forty-seven reasons why the Delta Quadrant was no place for the Olympic?”

Ache nodded.  “You did, captain.”  When she blinked, she noticed Holmgren taking a step back from her.  She had to assume Holmgren was scared of her dragging him to a second location where she could prepare a holographic presentation.

“The USS Sarek is investigating a flare up of subspace anomalies,” Holmgren said, “which means the USS Olympic can team-up with the Vishatha to finish the job the Sarek left half-done.”

He took another two steps back.  All of a sudden, Holmgren shook his fists in the air, as if he were cheering at a public sporting event.

“Sarek Squadron to the rescue,” Holmgren said.  His movement triggered the sensors in the doors and they opened an escape route for him.  

“Now if you’ll excuse me, commander,” Holmgren concluded, “Doctor Laken was in the middle of a terribly dull story when you puled me away.  If I don’t get back soon, he may start again from the beginning!”

Holmgren wasn’t listening closely enough when I told him the myth of the aged wanderers.  I wasn’t talking about the Olympic.  I trust the Olympic is going to do meaningful work for our understanding of the universe and the Romulans.  No, the outsider I was referring to was myself.  A security officer aboard a science ship, and not even an explorer at that.  I’m a valued part of the crew, I know, but I’m apart from the crew too.  My priorities are very different from theirs.  They all have such reverence for Sarek Squadron’s commanding officer, Captain Taes.  The first time I met Taes, I raised my phaser to her and threatened to detain her.  I was a security officer aboard the USS Gheryzan and Taes had stolen a shuttle for the purpose of radical diplomacy.  Protocol didn’t matter to her; shuttle safety didn’t matter to her.  The mission was all she cared for.  I can’t ever allow my crew to be so careless.

Lieutenant Commander Ache had timed it so that she would be waiting for the same turbolift as Holmgren when he made a quiet exit out a side corridor.  She had observed the way his eyes had started to droop, the way his conversational flow was flagging.  The medical department had made every assurance that Holmgren was fit for duty, but Ache could see with her six eyes that Holmgren’s recovery from the coma was a road he was still walking.  Even his pace in striding to the turbolift was a slower than usual for Holmgren.

When his eyes locked on Ache, Holmgren raised a palm in a preemptive gesture of surrender.

“There’s no need, commander,” Holmgren said.  He sounded hoarse from an evening of glad-handing the crew and guests.  “It’s already decided.  Long-range sensors have picked up unprecedented solar winds in the Ullho system; we expect to find spectacular auroras around the planet.  The Romulan Free State has also promised us full access to their abandoned outpost, unlocking a time period when the Federation had little contact or knowledge of Romulan culture.  When we arrive at the Typhon Expanse, we’re going in.”

“When you have the time, captain,” Ache formally said, despite Holmgren’s protestations, “I have prepared my proposal to transfer key Starfleet scientists to the Vishatha for their journey while we return the Olympic to her port at Deep Space 17.”

Holmgren stopped in the middle of the widely spaced corridor.  He chuckled.  Tilting his head back, he stared up at the overhead.  Ache couldn’t make out Holmgren’s expression exactly.  The lights had been dimmed to 60% illumination to approximate the time of night it was for the crew.

“Taes warned me about you,” Holmgren said.  There was no accusation in his words.  Only exhausted acceptance.  “She told me about the first time she met you.”

Ache coughed.  “When I tried to shoot her?”

Holmgren looked at Ache and he blinked at her drowsily.  “Uhh, maybe it was the second time?”

“Ah. Yes.”  Ache nodded deeply.  “The remote command training course.”

“That one,” Holmgren said and he offered a thumbs up.  “She said you asked the professor to re-assign you to Taes’ project team.  You joined the team late and you still convinced every team member that their away mission strategy was wrong.  And you proposed twelve improvements.  And the project got the top score in the class.  Captain Taes… is never easily convinced to change her mind.  You did that.”

Ache stood taller.  “Then you’ll consider my proposal?”

“Me?  No, I’m stubborn,” Holmgren said.  “Even when I know I’m wrong.  You’re going to have your hands full with me, commander.”

The countdown had begun.  On the holographic LCARS display projected from the curved workstation, numerals began to count down from ninety.  In the systems monitor room, especially, the red and grey holo-interface was eye-catching in its brightness.  Beyond the workstation and holograms, the cramped semi-circular compartment was only notable for the racks upon racks of isolinear chip arrays that controlled a mere fraction of the computer core’s FTL nano processors.  Synchronised with the visual representation, the computer said aloud, “Ninety-second countdown has commenced.  Eighty-nine, eighty-eight–“

Seated alone at the workstation, Lieutenant Junior Grade Szerda jolted in her chair at a hooting sound that transpired behind her.

“Oh!  Whoa!” was the first thing Lieutenant Theroh hollered as soon as she set foot in the compartment.  As soon as Szerda spun in her chair to see what was happening, what she could see was the way Theroh was struggling to set foot.  Theroh tapped the heel of her left boot on the carpeted deck experimentally, but her weight never shifted onto that foot.

“Have I been drinking?” Theroh asked, presumably rhetorically.

Szerda clapped her hands together, her grey eyes widening at Theroh.

“Computer, halt,” was the first thing Szerda said and the countdown on the hologram stopped in response.  Szerda’s eyes remained locked on Theroh all the while, and Szerda enthused, “I’m so sorry, lieutenant.  I expected to be alone in here.  I reduced the gravity to take a break.”  To emphasize the point, Szerda tapped on a black metal band on her right arm; it was one component of the anti-gravity exoframe that offered the Elaysian greater mobility in the M-class gravity levels of the USS Olympic.

Theroh shook her head at Szerda.  Szerda had observed there was something about the glassy impenetrability of Theroh’s eyes –or the shape of the cranial rides that indicated her Cardassian heritage– that twisted Theroh’s resting face into a haughty pout.  Far more self-possessed, Draia stepped into the compartment with a deft stride.

“Don’t mind me,” Theroh said gruffly.  “I’ve worked on a refuelling station so old, half the compartments were low-G.  Only paying customers were entitled to gravity, the boss would say.  Beyond the Federation, one isn’t assured a life of comfort.”

Szerda raised her brow ridges at Theroh in a puzzled expression.  In her short time since joining the Olympic crew, Szerda had already heard about how Theroh had been raised on the Federation side of the DMZ, due to a twist of diplomacy in her youth.  By no account had Theroh even lived through the fall of Cardassia firsthand.  Despite her confusion, Szerda decided against questioning how often Theroh had lived without comfort, while Theroh settled into a chair beside her.

In the end, Theroh didn’t leave any room for inquisition from Szerda.

“When our Chief Operations Officer,” Theroh went on, indicating Szerda with a gesture, “announced she was planning a diagnostic shut-down of one of our computer cores, I assumed you would require the company of our Chief Engineer,” and she placed the flat of her palm over her own chest.

“I’m sorry,” Szerda said; “I didn’t think of you at all.”  The twin computer cores of an Olympic-class starship ran in parallel clock sync with each other, providing absolute redundancy.  The catastrophic shutdown of one computer core would, as designed, have no effect on starship operations because either core was capable of assuming the total primary computing load for the ship.

Theroh’s lips thinned as she squinted at Szerda.  “Mightn’t it be overkill to crash a computer core?  We have the power.  Our warp core is any flight controller’s dream; it was designed for starships twice our size.”

Annikafiore Szerda’s personal log, supplemental: I’ve heard all the jokes before.  Retreating at warp speed.  Putting my career in full reverse.  When awkward people don’t know how to make small talk, they treat you like your job is your entire personality.  In requesting a transfer to the Olympic, I became a chief flight controller running from her life aboard the USS Sarek.  No one understands why I gave up a state-of-the-art Sutherland-class starship to serve on the Olympic.  

 

But it’s not the ship I’ll miss.  The ship hardly matters.  I gave up my best friend, Kellin Rayco.  I gave up the show of Yuulik blowing up her life and department.  I broke up with my boyfriend; to hell with long distance.  Starship gravity is enough of a challenge for me. I don’t want to be tethered by subspace too.

“The computer cores haven’t been tested, pushed to their limits,” Szerda emphatically said, “since the new holography systems were installed.”

“I can assure you,” Theroh said, blinking twice, “every engineering diagnostic was run after the refit.”

Szerda returned her hands to the LCARS interface on the workstation.  Despite her split attention, she said to Theroh, “The computer cores are impressive to keep up with the sheer coverage of sensor pallets across the sphere section and secondary hull.  The cores are large, even for a larger starship.  But the Olympic is nearly forty years old.  She was never designed for ship-wide holographic interfaces.”

“They can handle the load,” Theroh said resolutely.  “I joined the refit team in their final phase of the–“

“Take your ego out of it, lieutenant,” Szerda said.  Although she didn’t physically roll her eyes, she was sure she sounded like it.  “You could tell me you hand-crafted this deck using artisanal Gamma Quadrant duranium.  Your word doesn’t mean anything as soon as I’m the one maneuvering a saucer section through a star’s corona to avoid the Devore.”

Shocking her own self with where that sentence ended, Szerda gasped softly under her breath.  She kept her eyes locked on the LCARS frame ahead of her, avoiding Theroh’s gaze.  It had been equal parts cathartic and embarrassing to unleash that anxiety in a torrent of words.

Clearly understanding that Szerda’s hypothetical had taken a turn for the literal, Theroh gently asked, “Did they… did they catch up to you?”

Maybe I am running.  Maybe I am the proto-typical evasive pilot.  I’m not too proud to admit the blood dilithium campaign was too much for me.  Nune and Taes were basically possessed by ghosts.  Ensign Laola was, too, when she tried to kill me.  I stopped her from sabotaging the ship and she tried to crack my skull open in return.  I remember it too well.  My memory is eidetic.  I just about put in a transfer to a garbage scow when the operations manager position became available on the Olympic.  My predecessor here left the crew because the Olympic was too boring.  Too slow.  Thrusters only.

Szerda kept her eyes on her LCARS interface.  She didn’t look at Theroh, when she said, “No.  The Devore weren’t the greatest danger.”

Theroh remarked, “The Olympic wasn’t equipped for a mission in the delta quadrant, but we followed the reports closely from our twin sister in Sarek Squadron.  The greatest danger was your telepaths then.”

Szerda nodded slowly.

In a hushed tone, Theroh asked, “Did that ensign really take a swing at you with a phase coil resonator?”

“Laola wasn’t the only–” Szerda started to say and then thought better of it.

All Szerda could hear was the soft hissing of the life support systems and the undertone rumble of the computer core all around them.  It sounded like Theroh was holding her breath.

“Huh?” Theroh asked, plainly ignoring Szerda’s discomfited silence.  “What were you going to say?”

I’m sure it looked like the perfect life.  Captain Taes held us close like we were family, her surrogate family.  Placeholders for her family that died.  She would prepare buffets for our liking and schedule social duty after our duty shifts.  It was a nice story.  But I always felt like the parallel computer core.  Kellin and Yuulik were like Taes’ duty children.  I didn’t get a party when she promoted me to Lieutenant Junior Grade, not even a drink.  She didn’t notice when I broke up with Lieutenant Tagaloa.  

 

That’s not a complaint.  There’s a certain relief in being the parallel core.  Starfleet duty requires an awful lot of us.  Frankly, I’d rather not spend my evenings with my senior staff out of a sense of obligation.  It’s too much.  Blood dilithium was too much.  I’m better off without it all.  The primary core can take the full computing load without the parallel core.

Szerda sliced her hand through the holographic interface, activating a red LCARS command.  For half a second, the overhead lights went out, the holographic projections flashed out, and the shimmering light behind every isolinear chip went dark too.  The hum of the computer core all around them went silent.  With only the hiss of the life support system, suddenly Szerda could hear her own breathing.

Half a second later, the lighting returned as did every LCARS control panel.  Everything on the holographic interface was exactly where Szerda had left it.  Szerda began tabbing through the wheel of ship systems in front of her and, at first glance, everything was in the green.  No catastrophic errors or failures.  The crash test had been a success.

“The Olympic may be heading into her middle age,” Szerda remarked, “but that just means she’s more resilient.”

Dashing out of his retreat in the captain’s ready room, Holmgren was still brushing crumbs out of his goatee when his boots were trodding across the purple carpet.  He held a small espresso cup and he slurped the last of its ambrosia, hoping not to burn his tongue in his haste.

Urgently, Holmgren asked, “Did I miss it?”

From their stations around the widely-set command centre, the bridge crew offered Holmgren a combination of polite headshakes, raised eyebrows and confused expressions.  Holmgren supposed they were either surprised by the way he worded the question or how much vocal heft he had placed upon it.

The first to answer was Lieutenant Calumn, Holmgren’s chief diplomatic officer.  While research vessels like the Olympic rarely parlayed with foreign governments, the large Romulan Free State contingency aboard ship had quickly proven Calumn’s advice would be invaluable to Holmgren.

“No, sir,” Calumn said.  Cheekily, he added, “That is to say: we’re not there yet.”

“Someone call Commander Ache to the bridge,” Holmgren requested.  “She’s not going to want to miss this.”

Holmgren navigated the ring of railings that separated the perimeter bridge consoles from the three chairs in the central command well.  Calumn was already seated in his typical posting to the left of the captain’s chair, and Holmgren’s Number One was stationed at tactical, rather than the chair to the captain’s right.  As soon as Holmgren sat in the centre chair, he discovered Calumn had prepared another cup of espresso for him already.

Captain Holmgren’s Personal Log, Supplemental:

 

They say leadership is one of those competencies that comes to you gradually, and gradually, and then suddenly.  When the Olympic first set course for the Ullho system with our Romulan Free State escort, Vishatha, I was still chaffing against the captain’s seat.  I don’t think I even noticed when the tipping point happened for me.  I know– I remember there were weeks when every decision I made was agonising.  The weight of the potential outcomes was too heavy and my scales were uncalibrated.  I don’t remember when I stopped thinking about it so much and just started doing it?

 

It’s getting to the point… I almost can’t remember my life as a science officer.  I think I had lost my way towards the end there.  When Taes started pushing me towards the command track, I can’t say I was running towards a career in red.  Rather, I was running away from science.

Stationed at the forward Operations console, Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Szerda poked at a small holographic LCARS pop-up that projected above her station.  She swivelled her chair to look back at Holmgren.  The uncertainty in her eyes was more pronounced than when he’d questioned the bridge crew moments earlier.

“Captain,” Szerda reported, “We’re receiving a hail.”

Holmgren crossed his left ankle over his right knee and he tentatively raised his new cup of espresso to his lips.

Before he took a sip, Holmgren asked, “Is Commander Cokitha getting as impatient as I am over on the Vishatha?”

“No, sir,” Szerda haltingly said.  “It’s text-only, coming from the Ullho system.”

Straightening his posture at that, Holmgren planted his boots on the deck and set aside his cup.  He winced the way he might when he would read two sets of sensor logs that were incompatible.  

“From the uninhabited Ullho system,” Holmgren remarked.  “This better be good.”

“Three words,” Szerda explained.  “And I quote: Ullho is extraterritorial.”

Calumn scoffed. “According to whom?”

“Sirs, I regret interrupting–” Ensign Aloyye spoke up meekly from the flight control station by Szerda’s side.  By the time he said that much, the streaking starlight on the viewscreen flashed away.  The Olympic’s position in space left a green planet dominating a third of the screen: that and the relatively stationary view of stars beyond.  Moments later, the warbird Vishatha flashed into view as it dropped out of warp too.

Moments later, bright orange beams of directed energy flashed across the viewscreen.  Each beam evidently struck the Olympic with strong nuclear forces, because the deck rocked as if they were a sailboat in a storm.  Concurrently, three EPS conduits exploded around the bridge and the Olympic’s superstructure groaned.  More orange flashes across the viewscreen sent the deck shaking violently.  The transparent MSD behind the tactical station exploded, launching polyduranide and crystal membrane shards in all directions.  Holmgren looked back to see a structural pillar come crashing down.

When I recovered from my coma, I didn’t crave holonovels or sleep or my daughters doting on me as if I were two-hundred years old.  I went back to work.  Deep Space 17 was expanding its first contact department and I thought that would excite me.  How wrong I was.  That role chaffed against me and it never got gradually easier.  Something was different; something had changed.  I think… I think I lost something when I was in that coma.  I lost my spark.  Preparing a team for first contact didn’t excite me; in fact, forming my own hypothesis and logical leaps was getting harder.  I didn’t have the spark.  After my trauma in the body swap with Doctor Nelli, I came back wrong.

In the days to come, Holmgren would struggle to remember what happened next.  His field of vision narrowed to a sliver and his hearing became just as muffled as if he were on the other side of a door.  His mind seized up; it felt awfully similar to the agony of being trapped in Nelli’s body with no faculties to interpret the sensory input.  He thought he heard someone call for red alert; god, he hoped someone raised the shields.  As more phaser blasts came, Holmgren believed the Olympic had tried to fight back, to defend itself.  Maybe.  Maybe medical personnel reported to the bridge.  Someone got in his face.  Someone did.

Absolutely frozen in indecision, Holmgren waited for the battle to reach its end. 

To Be Continued in

USS Sarek & USS Shepard

Illogical Flock