She reached out and touched his face, gently tracing his sharp jawbone up to his ear. She let her hand linger there as she gazed at him in his peaceful dream state. It made her happy. Everyone needed a moment of peace, even Jake Lewis.

Elyssia Rel lowered herself alongside him and rested her head on his chest. She could hear his heart beating in a slow, deliberate rhythm. That heart gave so much for them, for everyone really. He poured his soul into his calling, a calling of greater purpose. He’d give anything, his life even, to protect those who didn’t understand what he did. She just wanted to give a little bit back.

Commander Lewis felt the light pressure on his chest. It was a strange sensation as he lay there on the cot in the utilitarian rear hold of their Type 11 shuttle deep in Dominion occupied territory. But it was nice too. He kept his eyes shut and savored it for just a moment. Wait, they weren’t alone, were they?

He sat up abruptly, looking around nervously. “What about the others?” he whispered as he made eye contact with the beautiful young woman who, for reasons he did not understand, seemed to be interested in him. “We can’t do this here.” He wasn’t sure if they should even do it at all.

“Relax Jake,” she offered lightly, her hand lingering on his face as her piercing blue eyes looked straight through him. “Jace is at the conn, and Ayala is buried in intelligence reports. We’re all alone here.” It didn’t seem to bother her one bit that they were separated from Lieutenant Morgan and Chief Petty Officer Shafir by little more than a thin duranium door.

“Still, what if they decide to come back here?” He was embarrassed. This was not appropriate. What would his team think if they saw it? He was their leader. “I can’t be seen cuddling with a team member.” Even if it did feel strangely soothing.

“Why? Because then they’d want a piece of this?” she teased as she grabbed his bicep playfully. “I couldn’t blame them if they did. It’d all just be one big snuggle then. Ayala’s a pretty girl, and I’m sure Jace could use some cuddles too.”

Commander Lewis shot her a glare. Elyssia was totally going to get him in trouble. He didn’t care about the regs, but he did worry that, if he let this go on, it might bias a command decision someday. If Nasera had shown anything, it was that a leader needed to be willing to sacrifice any member of their team for the mission. Could he do that with Elyssia, or with himself, if this went anywhere? He wasn’t sure, and that wasn’t fair to them, or to the Federation.

“Okay, I’ll make you a deal,” Elyssia offered deviously. “I’ll leave you alone to the pleasures of this cold cargo hold if you join me for dinner when this is all over?”

That didn’t address the root of his concern, but then again, when did concerns ever stop him? Life was full of concerns. “Alright, deal,” Lewis relented, giving in to a desire for human closeness that he didn’t know he had before that night with Elyssia on the Serenity.

The Commander stood up and walked over to the replicator while Elyssia just sat there staring at him. “Coffee, black,” he ordered. While he waited for it to replicate, he turned back to her, trying to keep things all business. “Any update from Serenity?”

“Nope, not so far. I really hope they’re ok.”

“Oh trust me, it’s going to take far more than a few cruisers for them to stop Allison,” Lewis laughed. “That woman has been through hell and back twenty times over with these bastards. Do you know her history with the Dominion?”

Elyssia shooker her head. She knew very little about Allison Reyes. She was but a junior flight controller just a few years out of the academy, while Reyes was a Fleet Admiral commanding a sixteen hundred person heavy explorer and managing the Advanced Science, Technology and Research Activity. They simply didn’t have a lot of interactions, besides the occasional speech or overlapping time on the bridge.

“Back before the Dominion War really even started heating up, Reyes was on patrol when her ship got ambushed by two Jem’Hadar ships,” Lewis explained as the coffee finished replicating. “The CO got killed, as did a third of the crew, but that madwoman led the Jem’Hadar on a wild goose chase through the Badlands. Obviously, she managed to pull it off and escape.” He took a seat next to Elyssia. “And she’ll lose them again and come back for us,” he promised. He had not a doubt in the world of that.

“From the way she talks, there seems to be more than just that though,” Elyssia observed. “Like she hates them. I’ve never seen such fire in an admiral’s eyes as when she talks about the Dominion.”

“Oh yes, there’s a lot more. After that run in, Allison went hunting for a way to get in on the fight. Eventually, she linked up with a team from Starfleet Intelligence Special Operations that one could only describe as a kill squad. Let’s just say what we did on Nasera was clean in comparison to what they did.”

“I’ll be honest, that surprises me,” Elyssia admitted. “She seems so normal and put together.” While Admiral Reyes had quite a fire in the way she talked about the Dominion, Ensign Rel had always seen Admiral Reyes as the pinnacle of a Starfleet officer, the sort of person that young officers aspired to be. She didn’t seem the sort of person who’d throw in with what was described as a kill squad. That seemed more the territory of Commander Lewis and Dr. Hall.

“Starfleet during the Dominion War was nothing like the Starfleet you’ve grown up with. We were in our darkest hour back then,” Lewis continued, forgetting that Elyssia Rel was not as unaware of the war as her twenty five years of age suggested. “And Reyes was in the darkest part of it. You’ll never hear her talk about it, but she spent most of the war behind enemy lines, doing what needed to be done. I know some of the people that worked with her during that period. They were stone cold shooters, infiltrators and interrogators, hardened by the treachery of the enemy. They’d cross any line to ensure the Federation survived.”

Elyssia Rel had her own memories of the Dominion War, courtesy of Jaxon Rel, a prior host who had died in the Second Battle of Chin’toka. Those memories were chaotic and gruesome. They were what drove her to sign up for Lewis’ covert mission onto the streets of Nasera. Still, what Commander Lewis was describing sounded like something else altogether.

“In many ways, people like Reyes and that team she worked with, they are my inspiration,” Lewis admitted. “I was just a goodie two shoes strategic operations officer during the war. I had no idea what they did behind the shroud, but knowing what I know now, if they hadn’t done what they did, we might not have won the war. And that’s why I never hesitate to do what needs to be done.”

She looked at him with a stunned expression, trying to process it all. “Thank you,” she said with the utmost sincerity, touched by how open Lewis was being. He was usually so closed and guarded, and she felt honored to be let in.

“For what?”

“For sharing. You really look up to her don’t you? That’s why you came back to Starfleet huh?”

Commander Lewis nodded silently. There was no other reason he’d put the pips back on except that she had asked him to. It would have been so much easier to make a difference just staying on the outside unencumbered by Starfleet regulations and protocols.

“I had no idea, but it’s really incredible really,” Elyssia remarked. “It’s why she gave us free reign down on Nasera to do what needed to be done, isn’t it? And why she hasn’t jumped down our throats even with all the allegations that Commander Drake is leveling at us?”

“Exactly,” Lewis confirmed. “She knows time was of the essence. Our people were dying minute by minute, and if we’d done things by the book, many more would have died. She can put two and two together. I mean, she totally knows Dr. Hall’s specialization. But she’s not going to ask explicitly what we did because she knows I won’t tell her. Plausible deniability and all tha…”

Commander Lewis was cut off by the sound of the door opening. Chief Shafir stepped through, excitement across her face. “Serenity is back!” Lewis and Rel followed Shafir back into the cockpit, where Lieutenant Morgan was tracking their approach.

“I didn’t see them until they were almost upon us,” Morgan admitted from the conn. “Couldn’t detect the warp signature, no obvious emissions, they really are darker than dark. Pretty impressive, I must say. The Polaris could never sneak around like this, that’s for sure.”

“I wonder if we get to keep her,” laughed Commander Lewis. “Can we hail them yet?”

“Yep, let me get them on the line.”

“Lewis to Serenity, do you read?”

“Loud and clear Commander,” came the response from Admiral Reyes. “How’d it go?”

“No thanks to my inability to even spell LSTM or all those other acronyms Chief Shafir and Lieutenant Morgan were bouncing around, they pulled it off,” Lewis reported. “We have a clean and clear side channel piggybacked on the Dominion carrier wave that we can exfil their comms chatter across. How’d everything go on your end?”

“Well, we took the Jem’Hadar for a bit of a goose chase through the ion storms and spacetime fissures of the Minara Nebula,” explained Reyes. “Took some real sharp flying from Lieutenant Selik, but now here we are.”

“Reliving your glory days huh Allison?”

“Pretty much,” Reyes laughed. “Surprised you remember that Badlands story.”

Lieutenant Morgan relinquished the conn to Ensign Rel, and she began to warm the systems back up to take them out. 

“Well, clear us a spot in the docking bay, because we’re on our way back Serenity,” Lewis said as Ensign Rel pulled the shuttle away from the communications array. “And brew us a fresh pot of coffee because we’ve still got a half dozen more of these relays to hack.”