All Ahead Full
Like so many times before Davin sat before his computer. He had traded in his Logistics green jacket traded in for s'Lhaihtrha blue, but aside from that things were much the same as they always were aboard the Warbird D'Ishae.
"I... have nothing to report," Davin said flatly, offering his upturned hands to the camera. "The Iconians are staying quiet, in spite of the best efforts of our 'friends' in the Klingon High Command... The Mirror Universe is playing nice, the Delta quadrant is quiet, we haven't had so much as a sighting of a crystalline entity." Fingertips rapped on the hard top of the SubCommanders desk. "I don't want to go throwing around the word 'peace', but if the Iconians really were the ones orchestrating all of this trouble for us, all these years..."
Faced with that implication Davin could only shrug. "Maybe this is it. Maybe we're safe for a while. No one has all that many ships to spare anymore. Even the Klivam are playing the defensive right now. All that's really left now is..." The thought held in the air. In the silence the camera could only catch the flicker in Davins plasma green eyes as thoughts unwound inside his head.
Civil Blood, Civil Hands
The camera came on when Davin was dropping into his ready room chair, dark olive jacket draped over the back of his seat. He took a moment to run a hand through his hair, and a few moments to open his flask and take a fortifying sip of its contents.
"Why do I agree to go on missions on Federation ships?" The sound he made was somewhere between a groan and a growl; pure auditory frustration. "Why do I not always insist on bringing D'Ishae?" Davin counted off on his fingers. "Cannons, fighters, and proper cloaking device. If there is even a chance of danger, we should be bringing a Warbird. My Warbird."
Davin sighed. He tapped out a few quick commands on his console, and a holographic map of an M class world flickers into being. "Terix. An independent Romulan colony that seems to be in the throes of a violent insurrection, if not outright civil war." The world spins slowly in holographic facsimile. "Hundreds dead, if not more. Starfleet and Rihannsu. The rebels even have a few warbirds, though they don't seem to know how to work them."
Davin stared down at the holo-globe, at the oceans and continents, plains and mountains and the faint markings of civilization. "D'Ishae could have made short work of them, even if they did have a D'Deridex. Instead we brought a Starfleet ship and a Starfleet crew, and we came uncomfortably close to being killed by a gang of wanna-be pirates."
The SubCommander chuckled, but the sound dripped bitterness. "How am I surprised that we are the ones to break the peace?" He leaned back in his seat, cast his eyes up to the ceiling. "Aithaen, sehhae faiihr."
No Win Situation
The freighter drifted dead in space. Not far from it a trio of impossible warships drew closer. From the far side of the Iconian Exclusion Zone rescue was impossible without plunging the galaxy into an unwinnable war. The ships refused to answer hails, and the freighter could only drift further from safety as it's impulse drives sputtered.
The captain's voice was solemn, his expression hard as a gravestone. “If you can hear me out there, know that your sacrifice is not in vain.” In one stroke he closed the comms channel. In another he gave his silent order. The tactical officer nodded, and set his hand on his command console. A single torpedo flew out across their viewscreen. The angry red orb crossed the threshold, the gulf of space ahead of them, and slammed into the freighter. The ship erupted into a burst of blinding light as it's antimatter core exploded.
In an instant the view screen went blank. The bridge crew dissolved save for the captain, and in strode a red headed officer in yellow. Her expression was one of utter shock.
“Davin! What the actual hell?!”
The captain blinked. “I just-”
“You blew up the Kobayashi Maru! YOU BLEW UP THE KOBAYASHI MARU!”
The captain rose to his feet, starting to look a bit green. “The Iconians-”
Lir talked right over him. “LITERALLY NO ONE HAS EVER DONE THAT. EVER!!!” She turned in place, paced the holographic deck, turned about, played with her ponytail. “WHYWOULDYOUDOTHAT?!”
Davin took all this in with that special sort of surprise he saved for Lir. “They would have been killed any-”
Lir raised a hand to silence him. “But you didn't have to torpedo a defenseless cargo ship! And you know what you did?”
“I torpedoed a defens-”
“YOU TORPEDOED A DEFENSELESS CARGO SHIP!”
Davin put a hand to his face, pinching at the bridge of his nose. “If I tried to rescue them it would have been war with the Iconians.”
Lir circled the bridge to put herself in front of the captain's chair. “You could have just done nothing!”
“But the Iconians would have just killed them anyway.”
“But then YOU wouldn't have killed them!”
Grimacing, Davin tried to step around Lir. She moved on front of him, blocking him with her arms. He stepped left, she countered. He stepped right, she followed him. He frowned, and she just glared back at him.
Davin feigned left, and when Lir moved to counter he pivoted in place and put a boot on the seat of the captains chair. Now all he had to do was vault the chair and-
“Computer end program!”
In an instant the chair under his boots ceased to exist and Davin slammed onto the bare holodeck floor, muttering curses. He didn't need to look to know Lir was grinning.
“Cheap shot,” he grumbled as he hauled himself up off the floor.
Lir made no move to assist. “And who do you think I picked it up from?”
“Remind me to stop teaching.” With a giggling Lir in tow, Davin limped his way out of the holodeck.
The Next Generation
Davin had been drinking. Not the sort of casual, calculated consumption he usually engaged in, but rather in the privacy of his ready room the SubCommander had truly indulged himself. An empty bottle framed the camera shot that showed him nursing a much less empty bottle on his couch, duty jacket thrown across the armrest.
“Parenthood,” he blurted after a long period of silence. “Shouldn’t be a dicey subject… right?” Staring down into the contents of his colored bottle Davins eyes seemed to use the glass and the liquid within to lose his eyes’ focus as much as his mind. “Nethali… Now Aurelia and Jack… Basic biological drive, right?” He scoffed and took a pull from his bottle.
“So why don't I wanna think about it?” A moment of silence fell as he pondered. “Well. Anthony, for one... Heh. No chance of continuing the species there.” Another sip cut off his chuckle. “He'd prob’ly see the logic in continuing the species though… Something about heritage, or diversity, or…” Thoughts unraveled in his head like a knot coming undone, twisting this way and that, tugging him down tangents that led nowhere. His ready room fell silent once again, and save for the occasional sounds of sloshing liquid and lips on glass it stayed that way for a long while.
“…Don't remember much about Dad.” Davin leaned toward the camera, his elbows propped on his knees, bottle hanging between his fingers by the neck. “Mostly just feelings and Si’s stories. But if I try to picture his face…” He held a fist up to the camera, fingers curled tight, and slowly unfurled them above his upturned palm. “The picture just slips through my fingers.” The last of his drink poured down his throat, and the empty bottle was discarded on the empty cushion beside him.
Suddenly his eyes flared, flickering in the dim like the embers of a plasma fire. “What if I try?” Davin threw his arms up at his sides. “What if I do it, and I end up like her? Lose myself, put a child through that… No one deserves that! What… chance do I have of giving a kid a normal childhood? I'm a soldier, not a fvadt nursemaid! Not, not…” The fire in his eyes burned out, and left behind nothing more than an orphan trying to comprehend the upbringing he had been denied. Not years on a refugee ship watching the stars pass, not life in a cramped apartment learning repair work while his caretaker learned how to be a parent.
Davin reached under the couch for another bottle. “...Aithaen, faiihr sehhae.”
Repetition
Davins jacket lay across the arm of his sofa, but aside from that the SubCommander still wore his rugged duty uniform. And that included his sidearm and his command saber, secured on opposite sides of his belt. He moved from one end of his ready room to the other, caught up in the motions of stress in its purest form: running fingers through his hair, fussing with his uniform, and sighing out at uneven intervals.
"An Andorian just smashed a mug into the face of the Vorta at the bar earlier." Reaching the wall Davin turns a quick about-face. "Not terribly shocking in itself. I mean, who hasn't wanted to do that?" A beat passes in silence. "I mean, probably not Lir, but she hasn't exactly made great strides in earning friends. Especially not after she uploaded a sociopathic mass murdered into her head."
Davin turned, once more coming to an expected dead end. "But the officer that attacked her didn't seem to be aware of what he was doing when he was doing it. So, considering what happened to me last time something like this happened, I'm just going to camp out on D'Ishae for a while. Maybe do some actual work. Put some time in on my..." The thought slowed along with the speaker, and in a rush Davin dove to his desk. His hands roamed the cluttered tabletop amid a faint stream of curses.
"Fvadt, virka... Dhat, hnaev! Don't tell me left it at the bar! Ugh!" A pair of reversed steps put Davin in range to fall back onto his sofa, both hands gripping fistfuls of his hair. "And I didn't back up the schematics... Uuuuugh!" Slowly the SubCommander began to list, until he toppled onto his side and sprawled across the cushions. "I spent four hours working on that exosuit prototype! And now it's... Rrrrr. Fine. I'll start over. Aithaen, bring up the engineering readouts of all known Voth exosuit configurations and launch a new holo-engrammatic simulation, engram name Davin Personal Zero Four Six Beta."
Rather than the expected chirp the computer intoned a grating, dissonant tone.
Aid And Abet
Davin sat in front of his desk, his duty jacket draped over the back of his chair. The sleeves were dark with dust and soil, with a matching dusting of grime in his spiked locks.
"D'Ishae arrived in orbit of the Kiivar colony earlier today. Republic SigInt forwarded their distress signal while we were on a supply run, and we diverted to assist. It seems they've had some unexpected seismic activity. Casualties were low, but the infrastructure damage was... well. 'Crippling' seems to get the point across."
The SubCommander breathed a sigh, and after a moment he began to smile. "It's nice to see that the crew can do more than just fight. We've been sending a steady stream of replicated rations and supplies to the surface since we arrived, and I've tasked engineering teams to assist on the surface. Zazris is thrilled, naturally," he said in a sardonic deadpan, "but Sevius is having the time of his life playing sheriff.
"It's nice not to be fighting for once. Refreshing. Makes me think I might be able to leave a mark on this galaxy beyond just a plasma burn. We'll probably be tied up here another few hours before the Republic can get a proper and convoy out here, but D'Ishae's not going to slack off. We've got a good ship here, and a good crew.
Upward Mobility
"Riov Mandukar." Davin turned the words over in his mouth, and from his expression found they tasted sour. "Riov Davin." That seemed a much more palatable fit, though from the pauldrons hanging on the wall behind him the same could not be said for all the trappings of his rank.
"It's strange, sort of. I'm still Captain of D'Ishae, still stationed with the Federation, but... Riov?" A smirk came over the man. "I honestly expected to die a SubCommander. And if I'm being completely honest even that felt like a mistake sometimes." Pale fingers rapped on the surface of his desk. "Some colonial spanner-sehlat gets off a lucky shot on an Imperial cruiser, manages to save his own skin, and they just hand him a Warbird? I understand desperate times and all that, but still."
The Romulans focus drifted back to the banner above his ready room couch, and the immortalized triumph of a battered soldier driving a sword into the face of a Borg Queen. "Hard to see how anyone made it this far... The Tal Shiar, the Elachi, Borg, Undine, Iconians... And now Rellir has me overseeing the Exchange while she's on Mol'Rihan."
Back to the camera, Davin can only shrug. His motions are obscured, but the sounds of gently scraping metal and sloshing liquid can only mean the Commander had his flask out. "Ah well. Lir's always telling me not to 'look into the mouths of gifted horses'. Besides, if the universe wants to throw a bit of good fortune my way I'll hardly refuse.
Where Warbirds Dare
Davin stood before a shifting blue hologram, a backlight fit for the hangar bay ready room. Shapes flickered and flitted behind him, playing out a slowed down simulation of some dozen fighters in flight around a Federation starbase. Ahead of him his pilots sat in no particular arrangement, save that the trinaries of his squads bunched into unit-groups amid empty seats. Bridge officers lined the walls and back of the room, standing with their Commander.
"The next phase will deal with pinpoint strikes to the superstructure. The command decks are too heavily defended for a single ship to overwhelm, so hits will focus on lower levels, ideally engineering areas. The goal will be cutting power to the upper decks, neutralizing their defensive capabilities and forcing the surrender of the starbase with minimal losses. Any questions?"
Sevius chimed in. "Aren't we supposed to be defending DS-13?"
Audible sighs followed, from the pilots as well as the ships Commander. "The first drill is base defensive maneuvers, the second drill is counter-starbase ops."
"Right, but they're our allies. Why do we need to run drills to fight allies?"
Davin pinched the bridge of his nose. "Would anyone like to tell our tactical officer why we're running drills against an allied base?" The fighter pilots chimed in in no particular order.
"Because preparation is key."
"The skills are pretty universal."
"How many D'Kera's are over there?"
"Fed's've lost control of that station like two, three times now, right?"
"That Vorta, what's-her-name..."
Davin took a step forward. "And allegiance is never guaranteed. So we'll run our drills, log a few sim-strikes, and if we do ever have to run a one-ship strike against a Federation starbase for whatever reason, we'll know we can."
Sevius nodded, and yet Davin could swear he heard wind whistling between the bald mans pointed ears. "Alright, Commander. Should I amend the notification to the Starbase that we'll be running counter-Federation drills, Sir?"
Davin, for his part, tried to stay stoic. "No, Centurion. No you should not."
That Old Familiar Feeling
Davin lay sprawled across his ready room couch, as demanded by tradition. A smattering of PADDs covered his desk, his personal terminals open on the usual post-battle engineering reports from D’Ishae’s varying systems.
“Why am I surprised the Klingons couldn't keep it in their scabbard?” The Commander scoffed, looking up at the ceiling off-screen. “Sure, it was a 'rogue house’, but when was the last time their council reined in an aggressive outlier? I swear, they must be doing this so they have someone to fight.”
Davin shrugged. “Two Klingon battlegroups, one fighting to stop the other in the name of the Empire? I'd bet one of them is already writing the opera.” The thought unwound in his head, and his grimace became a scowl. “Ihhuein, my reputation is in the hands of a Klivam playwright. Isn't that a consoling thought.”
With a kick of his legs Davin rolled from his sprawl into a more proper posture, sitting on his couch with his elbows rested on his knees. “Then again, at least it was Kargas. For Klingons, they're… tolerable. I didn't recognize their Commander or the cat, but I know I've met the Orion before. D’nog, or something. She seemed reasonable enough before, at least.” For a moment Davin was quiet. “D’ver? D’naan?
“This is why I'm not in Intel. Aithaen, sehhae faiihr.”
Technical Difficulties
On the frontier worlds of the Neutral Zone, multitasking was a necessity. And on the Republics warbirds, colonial habits proved hard to break. That was why Davin had his wrist comms laid out in pieces across his desk, filling in the spaces between his usual reports.
"If it's not one thing, it's another." The commander waggled a tool at the isolinear circuit boards in front of him. "Not like these fvadt N-5's need any help bricking themselves. I know I should suck it up and requisition a set of N-6’s, but these use all replicator ready components and I’d rather give up kali-fal than beg the Floatilla for parts.”
The deconstructed wrist comms were a puzzle, tangled pieces that weren't arranged quite right. A screen propped up on a bit of loose casing and attached by bare optical fibers scrolled its diagnostic logs as Davin prodded the jumble of technical viscera. “Not bad enough I've got a mole hunt going on. Some virus crashed D’Ishae’s computers, and we’ve been running on the backup core while Aev dissects the code they used.”
A tap of his implement brought bright life to a fiberoptic line, and a rush of text scrolling across the diagnostic screen. “Hm, so it's not the optical relays… Maybe it's a power supply issue.” Twisting in his chair Davin scooped up a thin Romulan power cell, and the dissected power coupling he had torn out if his wrist comm. “I guess it's not as bad as it could be. The fleet lost three ships to some invulnerable dreadnought out on the frontier, sounds like they couldn't put a scratch on it. So of course they ask us nicely to go out under cloak and see if we can observe them. Well, they asked the other Republic warbirds, D’Ishae’s still sitting here with half a computer for now.”
Idly turning over the power coupling in his hand Davin pressed his little photon prod to a port, and immediately dropped both with a surprised yelp. “Fvadt! Ajoi, well, that's one problem solved at least… Computer, open the schematics for these N-5 couplings, I need to do something about this capacitor array.”
The computer chimed, and Davin huffed. “Right, still recording. Aithaen, sehhae faiirh.”
Home Away
D'Ishae's hangar bay ready room was packed. The flight teams filled in their usual spots, but the empty chairs around them were packed with engineers, the rough and tumble mechanics easy to discern from the ever-precise fighter pilots. And at the front of the room, in front of a pale blue holographic map, stood Davin.
"First Team, you'll deploy to site one, here at the inner coast of the bay. Gyr One, Gyr Two, and Seram One will carry Engineering Group One-"
"Team Thrai!" came a cry from one of the engineers.
"Engineering Group One," Davin corrected, "to the surface. Mind your weight limits, we're only cleared for one industrial replicator and whatever kit is absolutely necessary."
One of the Scorpion pilots, Aealha, stood up. “What will the fighters be doing?”
“Drills,” Davin answered pointedly, drawing groans from the squadrons. “When you can leave the hangar without clipping the bay doors I might authorize some sim strikes, but for this deployment you're going to be escorting erei’Arrain Aev on a flyby of the outpost grounds.”
Aeahla balked. “And which fighter is he going to fly?” With a wicked grin Davin pointed at her, and the other pilots snickered quietly as she sat down, green faced.
“Moving on. Second Team, you will be taking Gyrs Three and Four to site two, on the far end of the bay, with Seram Two supporting. Once you've got boots on the ground, link up with the Federation teams on the ground and see what they need.” The Commander paced in front of the holographic map, the patch of land flickering in pale blue simulacrum. “We’re going back to basics with this op; infrastructure, resource assessment, establishing a presence on the far end of this wormhole. It's been a while since we did anything other than plant explosives, think you're up for this?”
“Ie Riov!” The cry rose up from the crew, but Davin merely folded his arms across his chest.
“Vah, nvialmn’na?”
“IE RIOV!”
“THAT’S more like it!” The Commander clapped his hands, just once, and as the lights came up the holo-map faded into nothingness. “Now get to it, we’re planetside in one hour. Dismissed!”
It was hard to see past the scars. The green fields were overgrown and wild, save for the crescent shaped patches where nothing grew. There were a lot of those patches. They seemed to cross the field, running on a narrow track parallel to the river from the barren slag heap to the crumbling towers tucked into the distant plateau.
He could not bring himself go back to the city. Even the wreckage of the spaceport seemed like too much. Instead he guided his Kestryl to a stretch of field in the verdant canyon, touched down in one unremarkable patch of grass, and walked a few meters to another unremarkable patch of grass. His shuttle blocked the view of the city behind him, but he could see what was left of the old spaceport scaffolds ahead of him.
In his memory it seemed so far away, harsh floodlights over oil stained hardpack and aged starships, but it couldn't have been more than a kilometer away. Davin sat down in the grass, near a barren patch of dirt. The grass almost blocked his view of the wrecked scaffolds, but he was done with them anyway. A hand dipped into his pocket and a flick of his wrist opened the cap of his battered old flask. The scent of flowers was immediate, and almost overpowering, and yet Davin could pick out the familiar notes that he'd become so accustomed to. He took a quick swig, and poured a bit of the deep blue liquid into the dirt beside him.
“Hey, Si.”
Si said nothing.
“It's been... quiet. Good quiet.” Davin leaned back in the grass and stared up at the sky, letting his flask rest propped up in his chest, steadied by a practiced hand. Rough grass fibers poked at his ears, but his jacket shielded him from the worst of it.
“No Tal Shiar, and the Feds and the Klivam are playing nice. You know, for now.” He chuckled and slipped a sip from his flask, sure to pour a little more into the dirt. “You oughta see Mol’Rihan. I stopped in a while ago on a supply run. It almost feels like home. Rellir... I've told you about Rellir, right?”
Si said nothing.
“You'd like her. She's got a plot picked out by some ruins, right on the edge of an old crater. It's got an amazing view.” Another sip, another dash poured into the barren dirt. “Scenic, out of the way... You'd hate it. But it's nice. Peaceful.” Davin stared up at the clouds passing overhead, fluffy, white, and indifferent, just carrying on wherever the breeze took them. Looking up he could almost forget the scars in the dirt around him. But as his flask got lighter he never forgot to pour a bit of his drink into the dirt whenever he sipped.
After a time Davin rose. He brushed the rough bits of grass from his jacket, and bent down to swipe away most of what had gotten snagged in his loose fitting cargo pants. Ahead of him the skeletal bits of scaffold loomed in the distance, their shadows stretched across the oil stained hardpack. It couldn't have been more than a kilometer away.
Si said nothing.
Davin poured the last of his drink into the dirt, capped his flask, and crossed the field back to his shuttle.