Thread for logs, stories, and other miscellanea relating to Cadet Sereya Haro
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“If you can’t take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It’s not safe out here. It’s wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it’s not for the timid.”
– Q
Growing Pains
Sereya confirmed her roommate was absent before crossed the distance to her bunk and collapsed onto it. Grabbing her pillow, she let loose a muffled scream of both embarrassment and frustration before rolling sideways with the practiced movement of a crocodile dismembering its quarry. A few seconds later, having consigned herself to a vaguely human shaped bundle of fleece in the corner of her alcove, the cadet mulled over the day’s events.
Well. That was an unmitigated disaster.
On the academy campus, multiple strata of protocol and social distance had largely shielded cadets from contact with active-duty officers outside a classroom setting. Sereya had discovered to her detriment that was not the case at this posting. Starship captains and commanders stalked the halls in civilian clothes as if they were undercover SI operatives, indistinguishable from the general populace milling about. The concept of command distance seemed null and void, or perhaps that concept was simply baked into the very nature of the interaction.
Happily oblivious to these facts, Sereya had wandered into an encounter with several officers which had profoundly changed the trajectory of her day. Whether that change was to her benefit or not had yet to be fully elucidated. She closed her eyes and took stock of her situation.
“Let’s see. Your first impression on the station and your first impression with station officers is that you are a disoriented incompetent mess. Strike one.”
She sighed deeply before continuing. “Then you had to be rescued by LtCdr Zital, you were far too cavalier with the commander…and probably insulted her to boot. Strikes two, three, and probably four. So this all seems less than ideal.”
Sereya rolled on her back and contemplated the blank wall above her. The officers had reacted to her sorry display with the compassion and good humor of Starfleet officers, although she briefly mused how much easier it would have been if she had made this blunder in a Klingon academy. A swift execution by firing squad tended to leave the receiving party with few lingering embarrassments after the fact.
“That’s still not the biggest issue here…” she thought to herself. Fighting off the urge to wallow until blissful sleep subsumed the rest of her anxieties, Sereya rolled upright and gingerly extricated herself from her self-inflicted cocoon both metaphorical and physical. Seating herself at her computer terminal she began to query.
“Computer, bring up historical logs and significant event entries for 38th fleet and Deep Space Station 13. Time index current to past five years.”
Like many cadets at the Academy, she had enjoyed a certain level of allowed naivete. While it was true that Earth had come under threat far more often recently than in previous years, the incidents were still few and far between. When such incidents did occur, they did so on a scale that precluded regular recurrence. Starfleet in of itself was still an exploratory organization and her professors had done their level best to hammer home this rhetoric, painting the picture of a frontier full of unexplored and undiscovered wonders. In the past few weeks, she had intermittently fantasized about making a name for herself on the edges of known space. First contacts, rare and exotic species of flora and fauna, and the prestige that accompanied such things were all just on the edges of possibility.
Danger was a given for any prospective Starfleet officer, but in San Francisco the possibility had been either an abstract or on such a scale that rendered anxiety over the matter a moot point. Here the reality of the situation was quite literally right outside the window, as she watched the ongoing repair work on USS Midway with trepidation. Sereya had pored over the technical specs for dozens of starships with gusto and was aware of the terrifying forces needed to cause damage on that scale as well as the likely casualty numbers from such an event.
She had listened as the officers blithely conversed about engagements both past and present with the sort of banality one would possess when talking about a particularly interesting breakfast, cementing in her mind their status as veteran officers. The Borg, Cardassians, the Terran Empire, and the Confederacy of Azed, the latter of which she had never heard of before were rattled off in passing and the discussion had then moved on to various tactics and damage reports. With every statement, the gulf which existed between her and them seemed to widen until it rivalled the space between galaxies. On some level it seemed to her that she had been judged, measured, and found lacking.
Sensing her growing unease, both Serris and Commander LaSalle had attempted to lift her spirits which served to both comfort her and hammer home the reality of her situation. She was not only unprepared but woefully moreso than she had anticipated.
The beleaguered cadet sighed for the umpteenth time that day, “Well Haro, the 38th has something like thirty odd ships with an average complement of five hundred or so. The Starbase has several times that plus civilians. Statistically speaking, my chances of running into Serris, Commander LaSalle, or Captain Vel again are near zero.”
That ray of hope sustained her as she considered her future. To flee from adversity was anathema to her nature. She relented, however, that perhaps she had been premature in her decision to transfer.
“To say all is lost is a definite overreaction. But maybe completing my studies on Earth is more suited to the current me. I mean… the frontier will always be here.”
Sereya yawned and shifted in her chair, and as she did, she felt a foreign object in her uniform pocket. She reached in to remove the offender and produced Captain Vel’s trinket. She vaguely recalled the officer handing it over to her amidst a speech that was drowned out by the storm of uncertainty she had been feeling at the moment.
What had she called it? A challenge coin?
As she turned the coin around in her fingers, the bright emblazoned USS Midway emblem seemed to taunt her.
I just lost a nacelle to the goddamn Borg and I’ll be up and about in a week. You’re still sitting around like a Gul with a bruised ego.
The cadet huffed as a surge of indignation buoyed her spirit. “I won’t run. She’ll get her damn coin back with my signature on the back.”
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