The ready room aboard Cheiron was not nearly as grand as some other vessels whose commanders were used to luxury and actual room to breathe. Small and awkwardly shaped to make room for the vast aft lounge that took up much of the top deck’s rear aspect, the jagged floor plan barely had enough room for a stubby desk and a pair of metal-framed chairs. Its confines were small, but sufficient and exceedingly more expansive than Preth’s XO office a few decks below, which made this small room look like an opulent palace. It had been a blessing when Shubri had quietly informed her XO during a daily briefing that she was welcome to use the marginally larger office as her own should she ever need.
It was an unnecessary kindness, but Preth had slowly come to see within it something quieter. It was an excuse for Shubri not to sit in the room herself. She liked to think herself a Captain who trod the corridors and crawled into conduits; and an office, whether tiny or vast, seemed to be an anathema to the aged officer. It was another oddness that Preth was beginning to realise was her captain’s signature.
“I take it your visit to the Enclave went as you expected,” Preth announced from the desk as Shubri entered, leaning slightly to the left to avoid the awkwardly placed curving bulkhead that had caught out more than one unobservant crewman.
Shubri replied with a quiet grumble that was more noise than words as she loosed the clasps on her jacket and let it fall aside before levering herself into the small metal seat across the desk.
“Lieutenant Commander Wren reports that the engineering team has almost completed the antimatter transfer. All of the other supplies have been accounted for.” Preth announced, her attention still lingering on the desk’s tiny square screen where rows of data shuffled silently across the surface.
“How soon can we leave?” Shubri muttered, a shard of something close to childlike urgency slipping between her lips.
“The final antimatter capsules will be transported within the next ten minutes,” Preth replied without checking.
“I want to be at warp before the stopwatch gets to eleven.” Shubri scowled.
“Then your meeting went worse than you expected?” Preth paused momentarily in her work, offering the scowling Ferengi woman a quizzical look.
A vision of Dav’s smug face danced again across Shubri’s mind, carried on an ornate golden platter in the hands of the barely clad Lionella. She had expected to butt heads with the man, to be dismissed as another interfering Starfleet captain, or, at worst, as some stupid woman. It was part of the reason she had taken Tallard with her; she thought it would be harder to brush them both off.
She had expected to see a small man, with small thoughts, doing small things.
She had not expected an outpost filled with a world she had tried to forget.
‘You knew what was waiting on that base; don’t pretend otherwise,’ the voice within her smirked with a mocking tone.
“Tallard was partially correct when she suggested pirates,” Shubri confirmed with a sigh. “What she didn’t surmise was the cargo.”
A tang of bile crept up from her stomach, sitting at the back of her throat and burning her voice at her unconscious choice of phrasing.
‘Cargo.’
Those women were not cargo. And whilst Shubri might believe them better off having been spirited away rather than folded into the Enclave’s twisted world, they had still been people. And people are abducted, not stolen.
‘Possibly,’ the voice within her whispered.
“The ship was transporting passengers to the Enclave. A half dozen women who had booked passage on the ship.” Shubri clarified, realising Preth’s attention was still on her.
“Then they were abducted?” Preth’s hand was already reaching for the console’s small keyboard, no doubt to prepare instructions for a rescue mission.
“Maybe…” Shubri held up a hand, causing the woman’s slender fingers to pause in the air.
An old twinge in her back caused Shubri to shuffle in her seat uncomfortably. The situation was already problematic, and Tallard had only thickened the fog in her mind when she planted a seed whilst the pair shuffled through the outpost’s corridors after being dismissed from Dav’s sanctuary.
Perhaps this abduction was actually a rescue.
“Dav said these pirates were under the impression they were ‘liberating’ the passengers,” she finally finished.
“Liberating them from what?” Preth’s hand had returned to her lap; the quizzical look, however, remained on her face. In the stark overhead light of the ready room, the sharp angles of her face took on an ever greater semblance of an unimpressed governess.
“A life of oppression.” Shubri could feel her heart beginning to beat faster. Between the room’s small confines and the unabating focus from the woman on the other side of the desk, she might finally have to make the decision she had been uncomfortably wrestling with.
“And do you believe that these ‘pirates’ are rescuing them?” Preth raised a single knife-like eyebrow.
‘Time to make a decision, old woman.’ The voice within Shubri sneered.
“I think they think they are.” Shubri sighed deeply as she reached behind her to massage the twinge in her back.
‘Coward,’ she hissed at herself.
“If this is an abduction, we need to report it to Starfleet for instruction,” Preth announced formally as her head tilted slightly back, dissipating the vision of an unimpressed governess as the shadows slipped from her angular cheekbones. “We must report the facts available to us.”
“I’m not sure of the facts.” Shubri leant forward over the table, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, as if the ears of Starfleet Command were woven into the smooth metal surface of walls themselves. Verbalising her own doubts felt like an admission more suited to the shadows of the confessional than the bright lights of what should be her sanctuary.
“A merchant vessel was attacked and passengers removed,” Preth replied evenly without faltering. “Those are the facts we have established. Anything more is supposition.”
“What if they wanted to be removed?” Shubri insisted, her voice barely audible lest the imagined surveillance catch her misgivings.
“Do you have evidence of this? Or are you assuming they wished to be ‘rescued’ because you would have, Captain?” Preth’s brow furrowed again in genuine confusion.
Shubri shrivelled as Dav’s words echoed behind Preth’s honest query. Only minutes earlier, the smug man had accused her with pure vitriol of putting her own bias onto these women’s choices. Now her XO asked the same question with complete objectivity.
Without bile.
Without the sneering smirk.
Without any ulterior motive other than establishing facts.
The cruel voice that perpetually whispered from the corner of her mind fell silent. It did not need to say anything; Preth had made the accusation on its behalf.
In the silence, Shubri could see Lionella looking back from the shadowed corner of the room, her body bedecked in gold and jewels, her voice so honest and gentle, her eyes so full of gratitude to the man who had stabbed at Shubri’s heart simply by existing.
It was true. Shubri would rather be dead than in the girls’ place.
But that was her choice, and one that, in her hatred, she assumed everyone would have made.
“Report it,” Shubri whispered as she slumped bodily into the chair.
“If it is of any comfort, Starfleet is likely to assign another vessel to investigate this matter; we are not prepared for such a mission,” Preth confirmed quietly, as she gathered her PADDs and began towards the doorway. “I will update you when I have a response.”
Shubri mustered enough energy to offer a slight nod.
Seconds later, the doorway hissed closed, leaving Shubri to sink deeper into a dark swamp of self-loathing she had long thought herself washed clean of.
