Cressida Brennan had come home to Colludia to escape Starfleet. She’d come to Colludia V specifically for solitude.
Then the Colludean Assembly had agreed to host the Fourth Fleet’s shore leave, resulting in both plans being foiled, and Brennan, unsurprisingly, wasn’t having the best of days.
“It’s a three person cabin”, the woman with the stern expression and the calling to oversee optimal usage of the cabins, said. “You can share.”
“If I were big on sharing, I’d have rented a commune. Not a cabin.” Brennan folded her arms to continued arguing, but didn’t get to it. What stopped her was the sound of the sound behind her opening.
“Captain…” Simmons announced with a breathy gasp of surprise.
He looked different than the last time Brennan had seen him, not that it would be difficult to look considerably better than their last meeting aboard the dome ship they had visited aboard Spartan. That young man had been caked in mud and draped in a wound wrought from an unexpectedly cruel universe, entirely far less happy than the brightly decorated board shorts that now billowed about his willowly legs.
“I’m just trying to get to my cabin,” he apologised, motioning towards the lone door at the end of the corridor with a hand whilst playing Jenga with the precariously stacked books and garishly packaged snacks that were piled in his arms.
The hotel manager’s face suddenly lit up gleefully, even as Brennan’s became more overcast.
“Excellent, you already know each other! That should make sharing so much easier.” With a satisfied clap, no doubt intended to punctuate the sentence, the tall woman wafted on the spot and began to push past the pair of officers.
Brennan rolled her eyes, which was the only form of protest she had left. Once the woman had disappeared from view, she turned to Simmons.
“Not-…” she hesitated. And eventually decided against disclosing her current career status. Instead, she picked one of the books off Simmon’s stack and turned it over in her hand. “That’s very… vintage of you, Mister Simmons.”
The golden letters that adorned the spine bore the signs of a decade or more of flexing and pressing but the title was still clear, and the word COSMOS flickered in the warm lights of the corridor.
“I know it seems a little basic, Captain. But I enjoy reading it before deployments,” Simmons replied coolly, his face suddenly rigid at having his favourite book lifted from his arms without invitation. “It inspires me.”
A flash of something danced across the young man’s eyes. Excitement perhaps? Or regret? In either case, it was gone as quickly as it had arrived as Simmons pushed past Brennan towards the sole doorway.
Brennan gave a quiet shrug and followed him. “I didn’t say that was a bad thing”, she said, fully aware she had absolutely made it sound like one.
“I didn’t realise you were taking your leave on Colludia, Captain. I was sure you had gone on to bigger things after…” he paused as he fumbled at his hip for the slender card key whose tip poked out from his pocket. The stack of books twisted awkwardly, sending the heavy-sounding bag atop them sliding to balance precariously over the edge.
“After the mission aboard…” The words ‘NEW AND IMPROVED’ teetered back and forth, as Simmons continued to grasp at his pocket.
Brennan considered her words carefully. “My family lives on Colludia II. It made sense to come back when the opportunity arose.”
For a moment, she watched Simmons try to balance the stack of books and the bag, waiting for him to open the door. “How about yourself? What brings you here?” she asked, finally took mercy, and the keycard off him.
The door creaked as it opened – either a bug, a feature, or just poor maintenance on a door that had no business making anything but the SWOOOSH sound doors were supposed to make – and stepped inside.
“Typhon is here before heading out to the Shackleton Expanse,” Simmons muttered from the doorway as Brennan swept inside a cabin that he was strongly confident was his own. “Deep space assignment, a nice long jaunt on the frontier.”
Simmons lowered the pile of books onto the nearby sideboard, securing the precarious pile next to the crumpled uniform he had cast aside an hour or so earlier. A number of small trinkets were already spread out on the sideboard, minute reminders of home. A tiny golden lion caught mid-roar, a strange curving wood puzzle of oak and pine, a small orb containing mottled green sea fan that wafted gently in the container’s clear blue water.
“I’m looking forward to some exploration; I won’t lie.” Simmon’s face turned downward, a glum air wafting over it as his mind floated away from the Colludia’s pleasant atmosphere. “It’ll be nice to see something new.”
He laid a hand onto the glass orb, his calloused fingers and thumbs gently caressing its smooth glass surface, causing the fans’ fronds to swell towards the warmth of his digits.
“A dome-ship with murder plants was… plenty new for me.” Brennan said before she could stop herself.
Simons visibly shuddered as he grasped the orb, sending the frond recoiling at the sudden impact of his palm against its transparent sanctuary.
“But I agree. I had considered the Shackleton Expanse myself,” she said. After all, whatever they encountered would be nicely tucked away. Elsewhere. Not waiting for them in the shadow of their own homes.
Silence descended on the cabin, the air quaking with a nervous stillness.
“Have you…” Simmons swallowed awkwardly, his throat emitting a noise as loud as any thunderstorm through the uncomfortable silence.
For a brief moment, Brennan could swear she heard a distant wail echoing against the grey walls of the room, wholly inhuman and blood-curdling. Simmon’s twitched, and she noticed his fingers turning the glass orb against the metallic surface.
No scream, no wound, no regret. Just glass against metal.
“Have you heard from Hey’xet?” He finally finished as he turned to face her, his eyes red and heavy like gigantic stop signs plastered across his young face.
He was so young, and the wounds unrelentingly raw.
“I have not.” Brennan shook her head. “But then, I also wasn’t looking. What I was looking for was peace and quiet. Then half the fleet showed up in the Colludia System.”
She walked to the nearest seat available and took a breath, regaining her composure. Or whatever counted as such. “Is this your emotional support rock?”
“A little,” Simmons released his tight grasp on the orb, allowing the delicate frond to once again waft lightly in the liquid. “A reminder of a promise, I suppose.”
“So it’s relevant because…?”
“Because even though you haven’t gone looking, I have.” Simmon’s voice was as sharp as cut glass. “I’ve tried the med centre on Tynora V, I’ve tried Starbase Bravo, I even tried contacting the central government on Xelata. No-one seems to know where they are.”
A small well of tears was growing in the corner of his eye and was quickly turning into streams down his cheeks, the shallow folds of his skin woefully ineffective at holding back the swelling reservoir of salty water.
“I thought they might be here on Colludia, they might be taking Shore Leave,” he sighed, a frustrated energy building up in his extremities.
Brennan froze. No, she hadn’t gone looking, and she couldn’t pretend the thought had ever crossed her mind. Because no one had checked in with her.
Because their return from the Briar Patch had coincided with the disappearance of multiple ships and individuals into alternate realities.
She’d been busy. Then she’d left.
And while the weight of it once more came crashing down on her, her expression remained unchanging.
“Maybe they don’t want to see me,” Simmons whispered. “Maybe they’d rather forget. Maybe I should do the same.”
“Have you… talked to anyone about this?” Brennan asked.
Wrong question.
Simmons suddenly grabbed a large kit bag from the floor and began shovelling his strewn belongings into the open top, old books and garish packets of food and discarded uniform all tumbling down into the grey container with growing speed and desperation.
“I have things I should be doing before we ship out,” he muttered as he flung the worn copy of COSMOS into the bag.
“Briefings I need to read and preparations I need to make.” The neon bag of chips was pushed in with a gentle pop as the seal buckled under the force
“This was a stupid idea.”
His hand hovered over the transparent orb, his fingers twitching as his heart and mind waged a war within his chest. The bag’s fabric groaned under the stress of its sudden load.
“Mister Simmons….” Brennan started, but never got to finish her sentence. Not that she had a plan on how to end it.
“I don’t want to intrude further on your peace and quiet.” Simmons hissed as he withdrew his hand, leaving the orb on the side. “Enjoy your shore leave, Captain.”
Brennan could – perhaps she should – have said then and there that she wasn’t on shore leave.
She didn’t.
And moments later, the doorway gasped closed with relief, and Brennan was left alone in the silence.
