The Weight of Stars

[nynik]

'A New Banner, the Same Sky'

Aboard the U.S.S. Tykera: Captain’s ready room. Currently docked at Deep Space 13

The orders had arrived.

Kyhid Zohl, Captain of the Tucker-class starship U.S.S. Tykera, sat alone in its ready room. One hand held the PADD flat against the desk, the other pressed against his temple, index finger tapping slowly in a controlled, repetitive rhythm. His eyes, pale and alert, skimmed the words once more though they had long since been committed to memory. The PADD read:

=/\= STARFLEET COMMAND – PRIORITY TRANSMISSION =/\=

Authentication: 5-Alpha-Epsilon-Tau-1-9
Encryption level: Sigma-Rho-4
Received: Stardate 101532.1
From: Vice Admiral O. Kane, 16th Fleet Liaison
To: Captain Kyhid Zohl (CO), NCC-98701, U.S.S. Tykera
Cc: Commander Thira Netal (XO), Starfleet Personnel Command, 38th Fleet Command
Attn: Argo Operations - Deployment Orders

Subject: Redeployment and attachment orders – U.S.S. Tykera

Captain Zohl,

Pursuant to your standing request dated Stardate 101498.1 and following strategic consultation conducted at Deep Space 13 on Stardate 101510.6, Starfleet Command has authorised the reassignment of U.S.S. Tykera, NCC-98701, from its current provisional patrol route under 16th Fleet to the Fleet Orientation Program of 38th Fleet Argo, under the authority of Vice Admiral Aluk, Commanding Officer, 38th Fleet Argo.

Effective immediately upon receipt of this transmission, the U.S.S. Tykera will be detached from 16th Fleet jurisdiction and placed under Argo operational command. Your authority as Commanding Officer remains unchanged. Your orders are as follows:

---

1. Assignment
You are hereby assigned to 38th Fleet Argo, chartered with joint Starfleet and interstellar exploration, colonial stability operations, emergent contact scenarios, and high-risk anomaly response within the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, as determined by sector command.

2. Operational staging
Your initial station is to remain Deep Space 13 pending final clearance, general ship readiness reinspection and signoff, and all due associated Argo integration briefings. Upon completion, you will proceed to staging coordinates per Argo’s designated patrol framework, or as otherwise directed by 38th Fleet Command.

3. Personnel coordination
Command personnel currently assigned to the U.S.S. Tykera will remain in post unless otherwise directed. Note that Commander Thira Netal, Executive Officer, is hereby notified of fleet transition. No personnel changes are pending at this time. However, Argo Personnel Review may initiate additional evaluations at their discretion.

4. Fleet integration requirements
You are to liaise with Argo Operations Liaison for data synchronisation, communications re-routing, and asset tagging protocols. Tactical and Science briefings are to be scheduled aboard DS13 at the earliest.

5. Status reporting
Update logs to Starfleet Command will transition to Argo reporting channels effective immediately. Your first mission brief will be issued via Argo Command following initial processing.

---

Starfleet Command recognises the unique circumstances surrounding this redeployment and the service of your crew. Your prior field record has been noted with distinction. The strategic need for adaptable, technically capable assets in frontier-lateral assignments is high, and your ship’s capabilities are considered well-matched to ongoing Argo requirements.

Captain, we trust that your experience, discretion, and leadership will continue to serve the Federation in this new deployment.

Stand ready,
Vice Admiral Oliph Kane
Strategic Operations Command – 16th Fleet
Deep Space 6

He read it again.

And he read it one more time, though the words had not changed.

The orders bore the seal of Command; the routing included the expected pathways… and, as he suspected, the copy to Commander Thira Netal sat not as a courtesy, but as a consequence.

Of course it had gone to her.

A low ambient hum throbbed in the bulkhead behind him, the life of the ship, distant but constant. Through the viewport, Deep Space 13’s frame loomed, lit with motion as craft busied about. Beyond that, stars glittered faintly in the void… indifferent, immutable.

Zohl exhaled through his nose, a soft, controlled breath. He could already feel the tremors of unrest trickling through the crew. Senior officers would have read the signal routing header. There would be questions, speculation. No formal announcement had yet been made, but word would travel via glances, hesitations, the subtle gaps in routine that only those aboard a long-serving vessel would recognise.

Especially her.

He leaned back, fingers steepled in front of his chest.

Thira Netal. His Executive Officer. His wife. No, he couldn’t say that anymore. The two had been married straight out of the Academy. That was 22 years ago. But they’d been divorced for 14. Soon it would be nearly double the time they were married. His former wife… now his Number One.

She had not been consulted. Not in the decision, not in the timing, not even in the tone of it. That had been deliberate. Not out of malice, he felt, but necessity. He had known what she would say. He could already imagine the expression on her face, the sharp turn of her voice when she arrived to confront him.

He tapped the PADD off and leaned back in the chair. The air felt too still. He adjusted slightly, as if that would help. The silence stretched.

He had known it was coming. He had asked for it. The recent conversation with Admiral Bishop had been frank but not unkind. Zohl had presented his case with clarity and without flourish. He had offered the tactical rationale, the strategic detachment, the readiness metrics. The Admiral, to his credit, had not pressed into the personal. He had simply studied Zohl for a long moment, then nodded once and said, “We’ll make the arrangements.”

Now it was real.

His ship, his crew, his command, had been reassigned to 38th Fleet Argo. The Tykera would no longer patrol the familiar border routes of the 16th Fleet. They would be operating in unfamiliar space, among new command structures, new protocols, new eyes.

And new scrutiny.

The orders were professionally worded, as always. Phrases like “joint exploration initiatives” and “strategic redeployment objectives” stood in sharp contrast to the quiet reality of the decision. This was not just a change of banner. It was a relocation of everything: duty, crew, memory. A clean slate by design, or perhaps escape by another name.

… silence.

Then came the chime.

Right on time.

“Enter,” he said, his tone quiet but clipped.

The doors slid open with a muted hiss, and there she was.

Commander Netal stepped into the room with the sure-footed poise that had always marked her: on the bridge, in the field, in argument. Her pale eyes, not so different from his own, locked on him at once. Her arms were folded tightly across her chest, uniform crisp, expression composed. But the tightness in her jaw betrayed the storm beneath.

“You received the orders,” Zohl said, stating the obvious.

“As did you,” she replied, her voice cold. “Though I assume you had the courtesy of seeing them before they arrived.”

He said nothing.

She stepped closer, the door hissing shut behind her. The silence between them expanded, dense with unspoken years. The last few months since her ‘directed’-appointment had done little to close that gap.

“You made this decision unilaterally,” she continued, eyes narrowing. “No command staff briefing. No consult. Not even a mention. Do you have any idea how this looks to the crew?”

Zohl’s antennae shifted slightly, not forward in aggression, nor back in retreat. Just… listening.

“Yes,” he said simply.

“Then explain it,” Netal snapped. “Explain to me why I had to read about the future of this ship, the future of my career, in a copied header tag.”

Zohl looked at her. Not at the rank, not at the uniform. At her. The person who had once stood beside him when he had been commissioned an Ensign. The person who had grown apart from him, then returned under orders, and here now out of duty. Or guilt. Or both.

“Because I couldn’t ask,” he said finally. “Not you. Not them. Not anyone.”

That gave her pause. Just for a moment. Then the anger returned, sharpened now with something more dangerous: understanding.

“So this is about Vos.”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.

Netal stepped closer, her voice softer now, but colder. “You don’t get to run from ghosts by redrawing the map, Kyhid. You take them with you.”

“I know.”

She stared at him, hard.

“We’ll be operating in new space,” she said. “With a crew already uncertain. You need to address them.”

“I will.”

“Today.”

He gave the faintest nod.

She lingered another moment, then turned to go. At the threshold, she paused.

“They’ll follow you,” she said without looking back. “But they’re watching. And they know something’s broken.”

The doors hissed closed.

Zohl sat alone again, both hands now resting flat on the desk.

Outside the viewport, the stars did not move. He preferred it when they did.

He rose, slow and deliberate, as if standing marked some sort of threshold.

In a few hours, the crew would look to him for certainty. For purpose. For the kind of presence they believed still lived beneath the uniform; that still lived in the man wearing it.

He turned to the console, keyed in a command, and began to draft his words.
Words that he would need to steady the crew… and, to convince himself.

[nynik]

'The Ship Moves'

USS Tykera — Main Cargo Bay

The main cargo bay had been cleared hours prior. Crates had been shifted, grav pallets secured, and portable lighting adjusted to illuminate the temporary staging platform set near the forward bulkhead. In a ship where space was precious, the cargo hold offered the only area wide enough to accommodate over two hundred crew at once, and even then, not all would be physically present (upward of another hundred would be either asleep or on duty).

Although word had filtered through that the Captain was to address the crew, and so many more had delayed their sleep cycles and were now arrayed along catwalks, perched against support rails, and standing in the upper gantry accessways to observe first-hand.

Zohl stood behind a repurposed logistics podium, elevated half a metre by a transporter pad ring fitted with an audio pickup and signal relay to the internal comm system. Roughly eighty percent of the crew was present; the rest listened in from duty posts across the vessel. Even medical and engineering had rotated skeleton coverage so their teams could attend in person.

The air was unusually still. A silence not born of expectation.

Zohl waited, hands clasped behind his back, eyes calm but alert. His uniform was crisp, immaculate. His bearing, unshaken. He looked every inch the ‘Captain’, though it had been a long time since he actually felt himself.

He let the stillness settle… then began.

“Crew of the Tykera. Officers. Shipmates.”

He let the words settle for a breath before continuing.

“As of this stardate, by order of Starfleet Command, the USS Tykera is now formally assigned to 38th Fleet Argo. Our time under the 16th Fleet is concluded.”

A few shifts of posture passed subtly through the assembled crew. There was some surprise and some murmuring.

“This is a change in fleet, not in purpose. We remain what we have always been: a Starfleet vessel committed to exploration, duty, and the principles of the Federation. Our mission endures, only our sector changes”.

He allowed that to sit with them.

“You were not briefed in advance. That was by my choice. The decision, though authorised above, began with me. I judged it necessary, and I stand by that judgement.”

A pause.

“I won’t belabour strategic language. This redeployment brings us into a more fluid region of operations, where the Federation’s presence is lighter, and our role, more pronounced.”

He scanned the faces in the crowd. Tech officers. Security. Engineers. Scientists. Some new, some veterans of crises he didn’t name.

“No fleet can promise you certainty. No new command structure can offer comfort by default. What matters is the crew. You. Each other. What we build together. And that hasn’t changed.”

A subtle shift in tone.

“There will be questions. I welcome them. There will be challenges. We will meet them. You’ve all stood steady through complexity before. I expect nothing less, and trust in far more.”

A breath.

“This ship is not just equipped for the unknown. It was made for it. And so were you.”

He stepped forward once from the podium.

“Your department heads will begin integration briefings tomorrow. We await further orders from Fleet Command. In the meantime, you are to maintain standard readiness and watch protocols. Any personal matters or concerns may be routed to Commander Netal or myself.”

He nodded once, firm.

“This is Starfleet. We adapt, we advance, and this ship carries its banner forward, precisely, and without pause.”

Another brief pause.

“That is all. Dismissed.”

Zohl stepped down from the platform. The crew remained largely silent, not out of surprise or uncertainty but rather a quiet acceptance that something had shifted. Something which they knew they didn’t yet fully understand… but they trusted him… still.

As departments broke formation and returned to duty, the sound of footsteps on deck plating mingled with the ambient hum of the Tykera’s core systems. Somewhere, an ensign began relaying updates over a combadge. The ship was already moving forward.

He lingered at the edge of the platform, gaze following no particular face. He didn’t need to see their expressions to feel the weight of them.

He remained at the platform’s edge, unmoving, until most of the cargo bay had cleared. The murmured exchanges of officers faded into the corridors, and the overhead lighting dimmed back to standby.

Only one figure remained.

Commander Thira Netal stepped from the shadow of a support pillar, arms folded. She had not been among the front ranks, Zohl hadn’t looked for her. He hadn’t needed to.

“You could have told them more,” she said, not sharply, but with controlled restraint.

Zohl didn’t look at her immediately. When he did, his face was unreadable.

“They don’t need more,” he replied. “They need direction.”

She took a few steps forward, her boots striking lightly against the deck. “And do you have it? Direction? Or is this just motion for motion’s sake?”

His expression did not shift. “We’ve been reassigned. The crew understands what that means.”

Netal’s voice cooled. “Don’t give me protocol. I stood and listened. You told them everything except why. Why this ship? Why now? Why without your command staff even briefed?”

Zohl exhaled through his nose. “I made a command decision. I will answer for it in the proper venues.”

“Not to me?”

“You already know the answer.”

That stopped her. Her eyes narrowed slightly.

“You’re still running,” she said. “You’ve just changed the banner.”

Zohl stepped down from the platform fully, the distance between them now narrow. “You can believe what you like, Commander. The orders stand. The ship moves.”

“And you?”

He hesitated, then walked past her without looking back.

“I move with it.” he said.

The cargo bay lights dimmed behind him as the door hissed shut.

Netal remained in the silence.

[nynik]

‘The Last Rotation’

USS Tykera – Captain’s Quarters
02:18 Hours, Shipboard Time

The lights were low. Not for ambiance, but from neglect. The automatic dimming cycle had taken effect an hour ago, and Zohl hadn’t noticed. His desk was cluttered with active PADDS - departmental briefings, Argo compliance checklists, ship-wide readiness logs, all in various states of completion.

He wasn’t reading any of them. Not anymore.

His chair creaked softly as he shifted, stylus in hand, eyes fixed on a single display. The screen wasn’t one of the priority briefs. It was an archived duty roster, final week of July 2423. The last one submitted before the incident.

He hadn’t opened it in months. In fact it was nearly a year to the day now.

The schedule looked unremarkable at first. Division leads rotated through standard shifts. Beta teams filled out the gaps. Commander Jalen Vos, Zohl’s former XO and close friend, had done the final pass, just as he always had; methodical, clear, precise. Zohl scrolled idly, knowing the pattern, anticipating each assignment before he saw it.

Then he paused.

There, next to his own name in the alpha rotation block, was a brief, handwritten annotation:
“Rotation ends on my watch, make sure Z gets sleep.”

The handwriting was unmistakable. Jalen Vos never used dictation. He claimed it made a man lazy.

Zohl sat back slowly.

No one else would have seen it. It hadn’t been copied to the final compiled schedule. It was a margin note, maybe meant as a joke. Maybe not.

His gaze drifted to the edge of the desk, to the reflection in the dark viewport. A faint silhouette of himself stared back. Not the Captain. Just the man. Tired. Stubborn.

Vos had always known how far to push him, how late to linger before making him step away. Not with orders. Never with orders. Just presence. A sideways remark. A hand on the shoulder.

That week had been like any other. Until it hadn’t.

Zohl turned the stylus over in his hand, then tapped the console.

He deleted the annotation from the archive. The official copy would remain clean. But he opened his private planner, pulled up the empty log for tomorrow, and transcribed it exactly:

“Rotation ends on my watch, make sure Z gets sleep.”

He set the stylus down.

The ship hummed around him, steady and calm. Systems at night-cycle. Bridge staffed but quiet. Orders in motion.

Zohl rose, powered down the console, and crossed to the small alcove where the bed waited unmade. He sat on its edge for a moment, head bowed, then swung his legs up and lay back, boots still on.

As the lights faded fully, he whispered into the dark:

“All right, Jalen. You win.”

Sleep took him.

And for the first time in a long while, he didn’t dream of what had happened to Vos, or his hand in it.

[nynik]

OOC This entry ties into a live-rp session held a few weeks ago that featured a 'General Readiness Ship Inspection' request. The following entry is not a recap of that session per se, but draws from it as part of Zohl's current arc in this story. Thanks again to Nimitz for responding to my request, and to Carter who joined in.

General Ship Inspection Transcript Here

‘Clearance’

Deep Space 13, Deck 11, Event Horizon Lounge

Deck 11 was never quiet, but in the hour before the planned general ship readiness inspection that he’d been ordered to facilitate, Zohl found himself standing near the expansive viewport in the Event Horizon Lounge; watching a slow drift of diagnostic drones flit across the Tykera’s hull. They moved with a patient inevitability, swarming in careful arcs, each one leaving behind a lattice of faintly glimmering sensor trails. His antennae angled toward the glass, but his thoughts sat elsewhere.

From behind came the sound of a mug settling onto a table. Zohl turned, his gaze catching a human captain alone near the seating just past the bar. The uniform was lived-in, not lax; the sort of creases that came from use rather than neglect. A Captain ‘Carter’ ( @ServerHamster ), he would later learn, of the USS Opportunity. They exchanged the polite friction of professional small talk, but it never quite stayed small. Ships, crews, the way duranium alloy in the hull wore its years. Carter had the look of someone who enjoyed the work of breathing new life back into an older ship, despite its weight. Zohl respected that.

By the time Argo’s Strategic Operations Officer Captain Nimitz ( @Nimitz ) arrived, older than Zohl expected, and Romulan at that, the moment had settled him. The inspection would be thorough, but not hostile. And besides, he had work to do.

The Tykera’s decks felt sharper somehow under inspection, like a dress uniform. The turbolift hummed through its stops, bridge, engineering, sickbay, each department bending subtly to the presence of visitors. Officers stood a little straighter, voices clipped to regulation, but there was no performance. Zohl had made it clear in the morning briefing: no rehearsals, no staged displays. What Nimitz and Carter saw would be the ship as she was.

On the bridge, he took them through the forward stations without hurry, letting the room breathe. The conn officer rose from her seat to explain their navigational presets for station approach, her tone crisp but with a quiet pride Zohl knew came from hours of unbroken runs. At tactical, his Lieutenant offered a short, efficient outline of the ship’s readiness posture, fingers never far from the console even as he spoke. For science, tucked slightly off-centre, an Ensign, whose clear explanation of sensor calibration gave away the fact she had been running the array at a higher resolution than protocol required. Zohl did not interrupt, did not fill the silences. He let their words carry the picture: a bridge crew that could function without glancing to him for every confirmation, because the trust had already been earned.

In sickbay, his CMO met them with calm precision, their report delivered like a scalpel cut, clean and without wasted motion. Zohl let his officers speak. It was part of the point.

In engineering, he stood slightly apart while his Chief, ever blunt, explained the ship’s heart in the gruff shorthand of someone who would rather show than tell. The Chief spoke with a certain pride about the “miracle core”, as he insisted on calling it, the system’s adaptive rhythms and its ability to coax more out of the ship than the schematics ever promised. It was the kind of talk that impressed inspectors, perhaps Carter more than Nimitz, yet Zohl knew that no inspection could measure the one thing that mattered more than any innovation in the hull: the crew who kept it alive.

They had kept the Tykera running through more than scheduled refits and hazard zones. They had held her together while her captain had fractured under the weight of his XO’s loss. And they had done it without letting her slide into the kind of quiet neglect that seeps in when a crew loses faith. Whatever skill his Chief claimed for himself, Zohl knew the truth… it was the crew he and Vos had moulded together, each department shaped by years of shared work and earned trust, that gave the ship her edge. A core of people, not hardware, was what kept her from becoming just another well-built hull on a station docket.

As they moved between decks, Carter’s questions had an easy warmth to them. Speaking as an engineer, he seemed very interested in the Tykera’s many ‘novel’ qualities. Nimitz, by contrast, took notes with an economy of motion that suggested he saw more than he wrote, and perhaps was equally weighing not just the ship, but its crew… or perhaps just its Captain.

Occasionally, Nimitz would glance at Zohl for a beat too long before continuing. Zohl knew the look. It was the same one senior officers had given him after Vos’ death, a subtle measure of what might be broken, and whether it could be trusted.

He kept his replies professional, measured. But in the quieter corridors between compartments, he let the smallest hints of candour through. Not about Vos, it hadn’t come up… or at least, he hadn’t allowed it to. Just enough to remind them, and perhaps himself, that the crew’s readiness was not only a matter of systems and solutions, but of skill and ingenuity.

When the inspection closed in the briefing room, they did not leave at once. At Nimitz’s request, Zohl had brought up a set of combat mission reports on the wall display… recent patrol actions along the Tykera’s former route, including a skirmish with Nausicaan raiders and a joint rescue with a Klingon bird-of-prey. He summarised each engagement with the same concise detail he used in his log entries, noting how the crew had improvised under pressure, redirected resources mid-engagement, and turned narrow advantages into decisive outcomes.

Nimitz observed that the adaptability shown in the reports was what he expected to see from a ship entering Argo’s operational theatre. Carter added that not many crews could manage that level of coordination with a ship that possessed such unique systems-engineering factors. Zohl gave a small nod at that, though his expression remained measured, his eyes briefly fixed on the tactical overlay before shutting the display down.

Carter pushed to his feet, resting a hand on the back of a chair. “She’s a fine ship,” he said. “Crew seem steady. That counts for more than most reports admit. Still think you’d give the Opportunity a good fight, if you ever wanted to test that in a simulation.” Zohl allowed the faintest smile, though it was gone as quickly as it came. “We’ll see, Captain.”

Outside the viewport, the drones were peeling away from the ship’s hull, dispersing into the station’s traffic lanes. A soft chime from the wall console cut through the quiet, and Nimitz glanced over from his PADD. “Clearance will likely be granted Captain, I say this informally to you of course,” he said simply, the closest thing to a pass he would give. It would be official in due course, after the routine checks and rechecks all concluded… the Tykera and her crew would be deemed ready for active deployment.

Zohl stayed where he was, watching the inspectors depart. Alone again, he looked out at the stars beyond the station’s frame. They were still there, patient as ever, waiting for the ship to move. He hated standing still like this. Though he hadn’t always been like that… Soon, the Tykera and her crew would meet their renewed mission without hesitation. Whether he would be able to do the same… that was a question he could not yet answer.

[nynik]

OOC This entry ties into a live-rp session held recently, which can be read about in the associated AAR (link below). Thanks @Sam for coming along!

Relevant Links: Initial Mission Hook | After Action Report | Transcript

‘Hazard Run’

USS Tykera, stationed at Deep Space 13

The view from DS13’s upper traffic lanes was as impersonal as always: ships drifting against the cold geometry of the docking bays, lights winking against the black. Routine. Predictable. Zohl had always valued that kind of order, until it became a screen for the quiet churn under his skin.

The USS Endeavour was already holding position when the Tykera moved into the slot beside her, impulse drives humming in patient readiness. Captain Mirazuni’s (@Sam) voice came across the comms with clipped assurance, a tone Zohl found agreeable. She seemed to be the kind of Captain who wasted neither words nor momentum.

Their mission was straightforward on paper, to escort a transport into the Briar Patch, collect sealed intelligence cargo from Station Delta-Six, and return without incident. The problem was that the Briar Patch seldom cared for such straightforward plans.

Since Vos’ death, Zohl had found himself measuring every mission against an impossible yardstick. How many moves ahead could he plan before the variables tore the shape of that plan apart? How many lives was he holding in the gap between what he hoped for and what fate would allow?

---

Their departure was clean and transit time to the Patch allowed for inter-ship sharing of relevant data. But it was all business. The convoy soon formed up at the Patch’s perimeter, meeting with the transport ship. Its unassuming frame sitting between the Endeavour and the Tykera.

Once inside, the haze closed around them like a slow tide, amber and violet curls distorting the light. The first sensor glitch was minor, a ripple in the data feed, nothing the crew couldn’t correct; but he felt the familiar pull of doubt, the reminder of how quickly small degradations could compound into something lethal.

The Patch had a way of tightening its grip the deeper you went, and it wasn’t long before a flare broke through the haze. Shields bristled white across the convoy, sensor clarity vanishing into a storm of static. He could hear the edge in his own voice as he ordered power rerouted from secondary deflectors and a recalibration of the sensor grid. It worked. The picture cleared. Still, the fact they had stumbled so early gnawed at him.

They pressed on, Endeavour shifting to the rear guard. Such hazards in the Patch could be anticipated but never wholly predicted; it was the living embodiment of risk in layers, each one waiting to peel back under the wrong pressure.

Time passed and the convoy made steady progress toward the rendezvous coordinates. Station Delta-Six… Starfleet Intelligence had been typically vague about its purpose, and Zohl didn’t expect more. His years running operations for them had taught him the futility of asking the “why” of an assignment. You were there to do a job. Protect the asset. Protect your crew. And, in this case, for his part, ensure the Endeavour and the transporter could do the same.

The haze thickened as they pressed deeper, particulate clouds twisting in sluggish currents around the formation. Readings shifted with each kilometre, graviton eddies and particle blooms forcing the helm to work in constant corrections. The tension on the bridge settled into something quiet and disciplined; a crew tuned to the knowledge that every stage of this approach was another chance for the Patch to turn on them.

---

It was in that stillness that the an unknown sensor contact appeared. Small. Fast. Erratic. The computer couldn’t resolve an ID before it moved, angling in from the convoy’s port quarter. Zohl’s eyes flicked to the transport’s icon on the tactical plot just as the contact broke from the haze: a compact, angular vessel, hull bristling with antennae, no transponder, no hesitation. His best guess was that it was a drone ship being remotely piloted.

It went straight for Sierra Echo One, the transport.

For a moment, Zohl saw the USS Ban Salan in his mind’s eye… saw himself too slow to pull the lower decks before the breach, too determined to hold the fight when he should have let go. But this time, he didn’t hesitate. The lack of a transponder told him enough; the speed and angle of approach filled in the rest. Hostile. Purposeful. “No lifesigns aboard” came the confirmation for what he’s already guessed.

He’d been in enough intelligence operations to know that classified cargo attracted predators, and the most dangerous weren’t always the ones broadcasting their presence. The drone’s movements were sharp but not random… it had picked its prey, and that prey was now under his protection.

“Helm, bring us hard to port,” he ordered, the words landing in the measured cadence of habit, not panic. “Get between it and the transport. Tactical, prepare suppressive fire to drive it off. Coordinate with the Endeavour.”

The Tykera surged forward, cutting a new line through the haze. Zohl felt the faint pull of inertia even through the dampeners as the ship took the turn, shields flaring under the drone’s first burst of particle fire.

At the edge of the LCARS tactical display, the Endeavour was already manoeuvring to reinforce the transport’s aft quarter, Mirazuni was reading the situation with the same speed he was. It was the kind of coordination that required no explanation from experienced captains. Two ships with one shared objective, closing ranks without debate.

The drone darted again, looking for an opening, but Zohl wasn’t interested in giving it one. His job was simple: hold the line, and in doing so, hold together the chain that connected the transport, the Endeavour, and his own crew.

“Lock tractor beam,” he said. “Full power. Let’s clip its wings.”

A lance of blue light leapt from the Tykera’s ventral array, catching the drone mid-turn. It fought, thrusters flaring, but momentum bled away under the beam’s grip.

“All phaser banks… fire.”

The barrage cut through the haze, beams striking home and burning through plating. In his peripheral vision, Zohl watched damage bloom across the hostile’s hull. The instinct to finish it was there, sharp and certain… but so was the awareness of the environment they were fighting in. The Briar Patch had a way of turning your victories into fresh threats.

And as the drone broke loose, diving toward an unstable gas cloud, he knew what would happen before it did.

The drone vanished into the turbulent crimson mass of the gas cloud, its hull sparking from the last of the phaser impacts. Zohl’s gut tightened. He’d seen this pattern before. Cornered prey seeking cover, unaware or unconcerned about what that cover contained. The Patch’s clouds were never inert.

The ignition was instant. A blossom of light erupted where the drone had been, swelling into an expanding fire wave that rolled outward with violent speed.

“Brace,” Commander Netal called from his right, though the word was almost redundant. His crew had already locked themselves to their stations, eyes fixed on the surging mass ahead.

There was no time to disengage. The convoy couldn’t outrun it; the station might have the defences to weather it… but might wasn’t good enough. This was a choice made for him before the thought could even take shape.

The Tykera and the Endeavour moved as one, sliding into position between the blast and the assets they guarded.

Impact came like a hammer blow. The Endeavour had just enough time to face into the shockwave. As a result it’s shields held firm, flaring brilliant white as they absorbed the energy more equally. The Tykera however was not so well positioned.

Her port quarter buckled under the strain, shield harmonics collapsing in a flash that left bare hull exposed to the energy wave. Zohl felt the deck shiver under his boots, the low thud of structural fields straining to keep the breaches contained.

“Seal those sections,” he ordered, his voice raised above the sound of the structural stress, “… and…”

Another voice interjected, “Reroute integrity fields. Damage control teams three, four and seven get to those sections now”, said Netal barely a heartbeat later, as if finishing Zohl’s own thought.

It struck him in that moment, for the first time since she’d come aboard, that she was more than simply a capable commander. Their years together, both on and off duty, had created a rhythm between them… even if it had been on ice for decades. She could still read the slope of his thoughts before they reached his mouth, and in the press of combat that was an advantage no tactical manual could teach. But there was a knife-edge to this as well: was she anticipating him because she trusted his judgement… or because she didn’t? Had this been why Command had forcibly assigned her?

---

There were no casualties. The station stood untouched, the transport was shielded under their protection. On the surface, that was success. Yet the Tykera’s port quarter was bleeding atmosphere, and the smell of burnt duranium was already creeping into the bridge vents.

Damage control reported within minutes. The breaches were sealed, structural fields rebalanced, and secondary systems brought back online. It would hold for now, but the scars would need drydock attention.

Zohl acknowledged the report, his antennae dipping once before lifting to the forward display. Station Delta-Six now hung in the haze ahead, its trussed framework and laboratory modules lit in the muted glow of the Patch.

---

Approach and docking were swift. The transport slid into position against the station’s berthing arms, cargo locks sealing as teams began the transfer manually. The station crew were efficient but silent, eyes down, movements precise, Starfleet Intelligence in every detail.

No one spoke of the drone. No one asked about the breach. The work was finished in under half an hour.

Once the last of the cargo was aboard Sierra Echo One, Zohl gave the order to form up. The Endeavour took point this time, the Tykera falling back to rear guard.

The return run was harder in some ways, easier in others. The Patch seemed to resent their departure, currents shifting unpredictably, pockets of interference sparking against shields. Yet the extraction route brought them through; plotted with care and guarded with equal discipline. A small crack of black ahead grew steadily until the haze began to thin and starlight bled through.

When they emerged into open space, the Endeavour reported no further damage, the transport was intact, and Station Delta-Six had long faded into the mist behind them. The threat was gone, the cargo secure. On the record, it would read as a clean operation.

For Zohl, it was another reminder that “clean” in Starfleet terms was never the same as “untouched.”

Breaking free into clear starlight should have felt like victory. Instead, Zohl caught himself studying the scorched lines along the Tykera’s port quarter on the damage report, thinking of what it meant to be the ship that holds the line. Not glory. Not clean triumph. Just standing where you have to stand, no matter what it costs you. He was glad to have the Endeavour there standing with him, and he knew the crew would be feeling that way too.

---

When they eventually made berth at DS13, Mirazuni’s debrief was crisp, factual, the kind of report Command would sign off without a second thought. Zohl agreed with every line.

Still, in his own supplement, he knew he would write it as it had felt: the weight of risk pressing at every stage, the choices made not because they were perfect but because they were necessary. And behind it all, the quiet knowledge that each time he stepped into a mission like this, he was trying… whether he admitted it or not… to prove to himself that Vos’ death hadn’t broken his ability to keep a crew alive… … … well, maybe he wouldn’t write all that.

The Tykera was in drydock now, crews moving like clockwork over her wounds. She would be ready again soon. And so would he. Or at least, that was what he told himself.