Future's Fate

Posted on 10 Jan 2024 @ 6:51pm by Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm & Commander Scarlet Blake

2,599 words; about a 13 minute read

Mission: Episode 19 - Tomorrow's Galileo
Location: USS Galileo-A - Deck 2, First Officer's Office
Timeline: MD 01, 1705 hrs

[ON]

Blake tapped her padd anxiously against the desk as she waited for Lirha to join her. She'd asked her previous Captain to join her, so she could catch her up on what had happened with the Praxis. Which would be a hard task, considering she hadn't fully processed it herself. Either way, it was a considerable turn of events, losing the protection they could have offered. Even if they had not been a part of her original plan, Lirha would need to know.

USS Galileo-B's captain and flag officer was still aboard the antiquated Mark II Nova-class when her PADD chirped with a notification from her long-past first officer. Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm was still aboard the -A for the evening following Commander Warraquim's dinner invitation and had now found herself aimlessly wandering through the corridors of her old command while experiencing a heavy dose of nostalgia and intrigue. Yes, the ship still appeared like she remembered and the sights and smells were familiar, but...something about it was a stark departure from what she remember of her tenure here.

A quick glance at her PADD was enough to put a sense of urgency into her motions, and Saalm found the closest turbolift then ascended to deck 2 where the first officer's office was located. A rapid press of the chime followed to indicate her presence to the XO.

"Come in," Blake called out, finally letting the padd settle flat onto the desk, consciously pulling her hand away. She stood as Lirha entered, nodding with a weak smile, motioning her further in. "Thank you for coming."

It was still so very uncanny to see Blake again and listen to her once-familiar voice speak - like a resurrected metaphysical manifestation from the past, yet entirely real. Saalm had spent years of her career around the first officer and had witnessed her rapid rise through the ranks of Starfleet following her transfer from the long-defunct Starfleet Marine Corps. But time had erased many of those memories, which the rear admiral now attempted to suppress to focus on the mission at hand. "What is it, Scarlet?" She had the feeling a social call wasn't the primary reason for requesting her presence.

Blake let out a long, tired breath as she moved to retake her own seat. She could have come up with a dozen ways to sugar coat it, but she had neither the patience or stomach for it. Besides, somethings were better just...said. "The Praxis is gone," she said quietly, sitting back to watch Lirha, her eyes sincere even if her features were neutral. "As is Rice. They left, to seek out more intel and options."

The rear admiral's breath caught in her throat and her light green eyes widened with a mixture of incredulity and trepidation. "...Gone...? With Aria?" Her gaze shifted across the room while attempting to process this new devastating information. "How? Why?!"

"She was tasked with updating the Captain on our...circumstances," Blake said quietly, motioning with a hand, as if to indicate the ship. Her voice was subdued as she reeled off the facts, because they were easier to deal with. "As you'll remember, she had strong feelings about our situation. It seems the Captain may have shared them. They have travelled to Klingon occupied space, to try and find answers...and perhaps solutions."

Unconscionable. That was the only word Saalm could use to describe what she was hearing. After everything she'd explained to this crew from the past during their briefing - about the threat of Klingon and Romulan forces in the immediate vicinity along with the critical need for obscurity and discretion - Rice had apparently disregarded all of the warnings. "Strong feelings?" repeated the Orion. "I had strong feelings when my homeworld was destroyed, then when we lost Vulcan, then Earth." She brought a green hand up to her face to hide her features and conceal her mounting anger. "Did any of you attempt to stop her? Do...you understand what she's done? To us, here?"

"Did you truly expect a Klingon ship to stay here with us and stand against their own people based on our word alone?" Blake asked quietly, shaking her head slowly as she watched her. Hand in front of her features or not, the other woman's anger was palpable. "That....was never going to happen."

Ever so slowly, the Orion walked to the chair in front of Blake's desk then plopped herself down with resignation. It was another defeat in a long list of failures, this time of a personal nature. Saalm wanted to violently strike something or someone; or cry until her tear glands were completely depleted. But neither were an option right now, and that realization made it so very difficult to continue on in what she knew were the final days of she and her crew's life. "...Three days was all I asked, Scarlet. Three days for us to conduct repairs and allow your crew to look through our timeline calculations. But now...that Klingon ship's warp signature will be detected by any other hostile forces in the sector grid. We'll be lucky to have 24 hours."

Scarlet nodded silently to her estimation, leaning forward on the desk to be closer to her. She watched her with regret and pain, for all that she must have been through. "Then we'll do what we always do. Make do with what we have," she said softly.

"Scarlet," Saalm started while now accepting the very real possibility that her mission here with the Galileo-A would fail, "you need to prepare yourselves with a contingency plan to take shelter and refuge somewhere. Our two starships, even together, cannot repel any meaningful front-line warship the Romulans or Klingons command. It is only a matter of time until we're both discovered, and time is our enemy." She swallowed a hard lump in her throat as the realization percolated, then forced a painful smile across her lips. "The irony, yes? Of being able to create passageways through time but unable to alter our own."

"Lirha, we're not going to hide and leave your ship to stand alone. You know that, right?" Scarlet replied quietly, but with meaning, her hand reaching to cover her friend's. "They're working on it, and they're not going to stop. We have less time now, but it doesn't mean they stop."

The Orion looked down at the the first officer's cream-skinned hand now set atop her own fingers' emerald epidermis. She slowly pulled it back from Blake, the ghost of the past whose funeral she personally attended roughly a decade ago. "Rice already left," she spoke, "and from what I saw during our joint-briefing, the rest of your crew are not too far behind. If you mean what you say...that your crew will help us...it seems you have a lot of work to do to convince them." It wasn't a rebuttal said out of anger or malcontent, but instead an acute observation. "If you stay here with us, our fates are decided together. We either succeed in our mission and send you back to your time period to prevent this from happening, or we all die here and our timeline ends prematurely."

Blake sat back in her chair at the way Lirha pulled her hand away, taking it as a signal she needed some space. "None of us know what the future holds," she said softly, the irony intended. "Rice may return with the Praxis. Our science team may find a more tangible solution. The Klingons may not feel the need to investigate a fellow Klingon warp signature. A hundred and one things could happen...we'll have to wait for the cards to be dealt, and then play them the best we can."

It was too many variables, now. Too many 'ifs' and contingent sequences of events which needed to take place in order to execute what should have been a simple mission evolution. "You were always the measured optimist between us. The voice of caution," Saalm quietly spoke after a short moment's pause. "I've...missed you and your company," she admitted, her eyes still moisturizing with private emotion. "As much as I always valued your opinion and guidance, you must do the same with me now - we cannot afford to operate on hunches or deviations. We, Starfleet, have an actionable plan, and no margin for error exists. For once in our careers...I need you and this crew to simply follow orders. Can you do that? There is too much at stake."

Blake let out a long, tired breath as she shook her head, looking down as she considered her position. She made it sound so simple, but it wasn't. It really wasn't. "This might seem simple to you, because you and your team have been working on a single mission plan and goal to get to this point, but it's more complicated from our side of the timeline. You're asking us to disobey one of the highest orders of Starfleet. You and your team - who have had time to come to terms with that judgement call - might see this as the only option and the only goal here...but our crew, from our timeline, have a duty to question an instruction to disobey Starfleet's prime directive. We're the ones who will have to go back and break that order, not your people. We have to be sure we're doing the right thing, or at least that there's not another option. I don't expect you to appreciate that, coming from a place of desperation as you do. But I had hoped that you would understand it."

"Nothing about this is simple," replied Saalm with a mature, aging edge in her voice. "We didn't come to this decision lightly or without the same ethical conflict you and this crew are experiencing. Many lives were sacrificed to get Galileo-B to this point in space to rendezvous with you across time. Each crew member within our diversionary task group willingly understood what they were volunteering for and made a selfless decision more difficult than any your crew has faced. They are our heroes. Not yours or mine...ours."

The Orion turned her head to look out of the small office's windows and stare into a beautiful nebulae-spotted cosmos she's always dreamed of exploring in her later life. "The prime directives - all of them - were never designed to be unquestionable orders; that is why they are termed 'directives'. Every captain, officer and crew member must understand this nuance...because not every situation we find ourselves in can be managed by a simple rule of law." She slowly shifted her eyes back to Blake.

"It is your right and duty to question my orders and those of Starfleet," Saalm continued, "but the burden isn't solely on you. We were the first to break the Temporal Prime Directive by conducting our research and bringing you here. I understand the consequences and risk of our decision, and accepted it. I wish I could give you and this crew more time but that is not possible right now."

Scarlet watched this version of her Captain in silence for a long moment. She believed what she was saying...or more...how she was saying it. It was the first thing she'd been able to truly relate to since the whole nightmare had begun. "I've missed you, Lihra," she suddenly said, chuckling weakly at the simplicity of the words amongst everything else that had been said. "None of us can promise each other a happy ending here. But there's one thing I'm certain of...at the end of the day, this crew will do the right thing. Wherever that falls. It's what they do, and it's what they do brilliantly."

Saalm wanted to smile in return; to reciprocate the comradery she once shared with the first officer and perhaps even reminisce upon past adventures they'd shared together. Mentally, however, she was incapable of such a feat. More than a decade of ongoing war and horrible casualties had withered her conscious mind down to a sharp blade, one which did everything in its power to focus on the mission at hand knowing the enormous stakes at hand. She'd become razor-focused, not by choice, but of out necessity.

"I," Lirha paused ever-so-briefly, "have missed you too. Seeing you and this crew...even this starship, again, is a gift from the spirits I'm thankful for. Even if it's just a fleeting moment in our histories." Her facial expression then became more solemn. "Our future is now in your hands. Whether or not you asked for this responsibility does not matter. As you Humans are fond of saying, you've been dealt a 'bad hand'. I don't envy you or Commander Tarin for the decisions you now have to make. But they are yours, and you have a duty to uphold the values of the Federation and protect its integrity and the lives of its population at all costs."

Scarlet was motionless as she allowed the words to just sink in for a moment. Hearing them. Feeling them. So much had happened that she wasn't sure how much more she could absorb. But she found Lirha's words almost grounding. She finally nodded, her features sincere with it. Not that they were often otherwise. "We'll do what we must."

The most subtle indication of a smile tugged at the corners of Saalm's gold lips before it quickly disappeared. She stood up from her chair then pulled the fabric of her red-torso'd uniform down to smooth out the creases. "Thank you, Scarlet, for listening and understanding. If and when Aria returns to our location...contact me immediately. I'm as interested as you to learn what she might have discovered during her journey. Is there anything else?"

"Of course. That was all...although..." Scarlet stood with her, letting out a soft breath as she glanced to the door with a small smile. "If you find a spare moment, you'd be welcome to visit my quarters whenever it suits you. You would find a familiar snuffling friend there. If...that appeals," she left it as an open invitation. Looking to the past could bring some people comfort, but others pain.

The Galileo-B captain contemplated the offer in silence. Blake was referring to Snuffles, her long-lost creature companion who was yet another among those lost when the -A was destroyed. Memories of their first adoption meeting at the targ farm on Rigel VII when he was a mere pup flashed into her thoughts and tore at her emotions once again. This was all becoming too much for the Orion to process, and so in a rare act of selfish preservation, Saalm fiddled her green fingers then turned away from the first officer to exit the room. "I am not the same Lirha you once knew. For that, I'm sorry." The door hissed open then she disappeared into the corridor.

Scarlet watched the door close behind her, letting out a long tight breath with the emotions and fatigue that had settled in her. And she had a horrible feeling that things were only going to get worse from here on out. "I understand," she said softly to the now departed Admiral, looking absently out to the stars.

[OFF]

--

CMDR Scarlet Blake
First Officer
USS Galileo-A

RADM Lirha Saalm
Commanding Officer
USS Galileo-B
[PNPC Tarin]

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