To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)

Leila Hann said:

Captain's Log, Stardate 28140, USS Odyssey - Captain Enad Rebin
(EC Excelsior-A)

We've discovered the source of that large number of warp signatures. It's an entire Dreamer town, and they're towing Courageous in the middle of the group.

I am in contact with Commander Sharizz and they inform me that Courageous engaged a Breen warfleet in the Neath Nebula located between Breen and Romulan space.

Sharizz informs me that the Dreamers are insisting on escorting us to the nearest Federation medical facility to see to Courageous' treatment immediately.

[USS Courageous crippled. 90 br, 75 sr repair costs; repair time 3Q (reduced from 4 by T'Lorel). Crew casualties: O1 E2 T3]

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Captain's Log, Stardate 28168.2, USS Odyssey - Captain Enad Rebin

It has been nearly a month since we found the Courageous and her Dreamer entourage. The experience has been fascinating, even if it meant that I and the other psi-sensitives among my crew have been sacrificing our sleep cycles in the interests of diplomacy.

However, I regret to report that our ability to communicate with the Dreamers is still stymied by unrelatable concepts. Even now, having passed the borders of Federation space, we still have yet to convince them that Courageous would be safe in our hands. In particular, I believe the Dreamer that Captain ka'Athnon called "Doc" has been the most...vocal, in insisting that Odyssey, as a lone vessel, is not sufficient escort.

By contrast, agreement from Starfleet and Federation authorities on what to do with our cosmozoa visitors has been accomplished much more easily. Betazed is the closest world that contains both long term medical facilities, as well as a large telepathic population. My homeworld's government was happy to approve a close-up approach of our starborn visitors.

In the two weeks time until we arrive at our destination, I will attempt to explain to our Dreamer companions that the individuals making up the crew of the Courageous will be disembarking at Starbase 12, while only the empty ship hull will be towed elsewhere for repairs. Hopefully, they will not try to follow the high speed tugs all the way to Andor.


--She was a dancer, twirling through the void, a rainbow of exotic particles scattering about her in a celebration of light and dark. The stellar winds, pulsing under the EM waves of the nearby star, were her dance floor. The light touch of gravity, pushed and pulled under the orbits of local planets, were her rhythm. The alien system and alien minds that reacted to her dance with wild abandon, they were her inspiration--

--She was a guardian, one entrusted with the protection of the all. First to enter conflict, the last to leave. The fragile youths of a generation were entrusted to her protection. And so too, has the adopted child, that bumbling stranger, too curious for its size and lacking in good sense of numbers, also been given to her care--

--She was a singer, one voice among many and many voices as one. Her voices were the passions of hearts, rising and falling in joy and grief, hope and fear. Her lyrics were the ancient history of stellar bodies as they circled one another in ordered chaos--

--She was a lorekeeper, an elder of ancient knowledge, of guarded wisdom. Guiding the paths of the whole--

--She was a provider, foraging into the wilds of deep space--

--She was a watcher, senses sharpened in synesthesia--

--She was--

"Lwaxana! Lwaxana, wake up! We're going to be late to the meeting!"

Lwaxana Troi grunted as she struggled against the grasp that pulled at her blankets and shook her by her shoulders, feebly trying to cling to the last dregs of sleep and those wonderful dreams. At last, exasperated, she grabbed her pillow and flung it against the smaller body on top of her.

"Anha, get off!"

The young telepath shoved her younger cousin roughly away as she finally sat up on the bed. The two girls were only distantly related, but both had been chosen by their aunt, a diplomat empowered by the Betazoid government, to accompany her to her current assignment at Starbase 12. Officially, it was under the theory that telepaths bound by family ties were more likely to register well with their macro-cosmozoa visitors. More practically, both girls knew they were being groomed by their family for a future in the diplomatic corps.

Anha Taiban returned the grumpy glare of her older cousin with a defiant pout. "Lwaxana, I'm beginning to think you like the Dreamers better than you like the rest of us mere mortals."

"Well, they certainly aren't as needy as some," Lwaxana shot back with a roll of her eyes. "Aren't you old enough not to need to be escorted everywhere by an adult? If you want to go to the conference room early to look over the breakfast options, go by yourself."

Anha resisted the temptation to make a face in response. She was supposed to be mature now, or so the adults all kept telling her. Not all impulses should be acted on, she repeated to herself. Still...

"At least I'm not the one indulging in fantasies of leaving with the Dreamers," Anha shot back with a huff. "What are you going to when they actually do leave?"

Lwaxana gave her a flat, unimpressed look. "I'll become a diplomat to the Dreamers and go visiting them, of course," she announced with an imperious toss of her head.

"Seriously?" Anha threw herself across her cousin's bed again, nearly crushing the other girl's legs. "You know being a diplomat isn't just going to be getting the interesting assignments you want, right? You're also going to be spending days and days of time stuck in a room with annoying stupid people. Or worse, annoying boring people."

"You have to take the good and make do with the bad," Lwaxana shrugged, prodding at the other girl until she had enough room to withdraw her feet from the bedding. "Then again, someone like you who can't even spell 'patience' would never make it."

Anha groaned and wrestled herself into the mess of discarded sheets as Lwaxana left the bed, her grumbled complaints muffled by the fabric. "I swear, I'm going to run away and join Starfleet someday, just like Kipei." She was referring to her older brother, who was starting his first term at Starfleet Academy that year.

"They won't take you if you can't spell 'patience' either," Lwaxana told her mercilessly while she leisurely dressed herself.

"I'll run away and join a Yrillian work gang then," Anha grumbled under her breath, then finally disentangled herself from the sheets.

Lwaxana rolled her eyes at the other girl's melodrama. Personally, her bet was on Anha trying to run away to Risa one of these days. Though whether she could make it out of the system with that flighty head of hers before being caught is anyone's guess.


A sudden intake of breath was the only sign that Lt. sh'Yukim was awake. However, that slight movement was all it took for her partner to jump to his feet in response, waving over a nearby nurse.

"Easy, Genio," sh'Yukim teased her companion with a slight smile as she patiently waited for the nurse to disconnect her from the medical equipment. "You'd think this was the first time you monitored me through a Dreamer session."

Lt. Sanat frowned in mild rebuke at the flippant response, before realizing that his partner couldn't see the expression, having inherited extremely weak eyesight from her two Aenar parents. Instead, the Amarki officer let the emotion flow freely to his surface thoughts, knowing that sh'Yukim would be able to sense that.

"Safety procedures are there for a reason, Seich," Sanat insisted. "You take too many risks."

"And you see too many dangers where there aren't any," sh'Yukim shot back in familiar banter. Shaking her head, she let levity fall away and a business-like demeanor take over. "You have the recordings?"

"All here." Sanat immediately reported, following her lead as usual. "Were you able to get any coherent intelligence this time?" He asked the question perfunctorily and without expecting much in response. With the current state of communications with the Dreamers, or rather, a lack of clear comprehension on both sides, no one really expected much from these sessions. However, it still behooved Starfleet Intelligence to check all avenues in an investigation.

That just made the response sh'Yukim gave him this time all the more surprising. "Yes, actually." The Andorian smiled again; this time it was a smile of satisfaction.

"Oh?" Sanat looked at the other curiously, wondering if she'd lucked into a breakthrough.

"Hm, not what you're thinking though," sh'Yukim amended. "It wasn't from the Dreamers that I was able to get information, but from Captain ka'Athnon."

Sanat blinked. "The captain of the Courageous? Isn't she in a coma?"

"Physically, yes," sh'Yukim confirmed. "But it seems that her unconscious mind is currently active as part of the Dreamer collective consciousness. Disjointed as her dreaming mind is, it is still at the core the mind of an Andorian, and that is much simpler for me to bespeak."

"You were able to debrief her unconscious mind," Sanat stated. It wasn't a question this time, as he was quite familiar with his partner's tendencies.

"Yes," sh'Yukim confirmed again. "No one makes it to Explorer Corps captain without quick thinking and the ability to make the right calls. Captain ka'Athnon may not offer more raw information than the sensor reports of the Courageous, but her insight on the entire conflict with the Breen fleet and its aftermath cannot be discounted."

Sanat nodded in agreement. He was more inclined to trust the judgment of a fellow Starfleet officer to the nebulous impressions of some space whales himself. It seems their mission at Starbase 12 wasn't going to be a waste of time after all.

"Come on," sh'Yukim told her partner as she slid off the biobed. "We might as well have a word with the good captain's doctor too. I'll bet you a bottle of Vin du Andor that whatever is keeping ka'Athnon's mind in the Dreamer consciousness is connected to her current comatose state."

"You think we can wake her up through the Dreamers too?" Sanat mused. He wasn't a telepath himself, but he was a good hand at reading his partner without the ability.

The Andorian nodded absently as she headed for the door. "It's certainly worth a try."


Author Notes:

Yoinking the Odyssey for M1 and maybe part of M2. Still have room for its regular Captain's Logs entry in M2/M3.

Lwaxana Troi is of course a canon character. I've always felt "Troi" sounded more appropriate as a Betazoid surname than a human one. So my headcanon is that Deanna's dad took her mom's surname when he married into nobility, so to speak. Certainly, it fits Lwaxanna's dominant personality and her constant harping of her inheritance.

Before reporting in to her new office, the Admiral took a stroll through her new domain. She started from the air car landing platform, naturally. Though a separate facility from Headquarters, the Academy was close enough that using a transporter would have been a waste of an energy budget. Dumping her luggage onto a passing drone, she stepped into one of the busy pedestrian pathways that criss-crossed Starfleet Academy and began walking. Often, as often as every thirty seconds or so, there would be a hushed whisper as she passed, a cadet poking another cadet in the side and pointing. "Is that...?" they would ask themselves.

Nash ka'Sharren flattered herself that an above-average amount of time the whispers came from Amarki, from Apiata, from the other species she had personally helped usher into the Federation. It certainly was more diverse than the days when she had been a cadet, when it was nothing but Humans, Andorians, Tellarites, Vulcans, and maybe the occasional Caitian looking for adventure. All that said, she ignored the whispers, walking with a well-practiced body language of 'I am busy; do not disturb unless important'.

The first landmark she passed was a ziggurat that marked the primary above-ground entrance to the Academy's vast underground training facility, a controlled environment where you could simulate nearly any type of away team mission. After passing by innumerable buildings holding laboratories, classrooms, and sleep-learning medical facilities, she found the large circular building with mirrored windows that was the Academy's administrative center, where her new office was located. That wasn't her destination, though. If it had been, then with her new commandant's privilege she could have simply had her air car set down on the landing pad on the roof (a privilege she expected she'd be using most days from now on).

Taking yet another turn, ka'Sharren stepped into the Academy Gardens. It took a little while to find the brick she wanted among all the others. That was all right, she had given herself plenty of time and all the bricks deserved her regard. Finally though, ka'Sharren found the red brick (red for KIA) with "Demora Sulu' written on it. She touched it and listened to Demora's last message, something about cooking funnily enough. Despite herself, a tear formed in one eye before she wiped it away.

The S'harien was lost with all hands. It had been decades since that had happened to an Explorer Corps ship on duty. Too, it had happened on ka'Sharren's watch as Chief of Staff for the Corps, number two at the department that was supposed to prepare explorer corp crews for what couldn't be prepared for and give them the support they needed to make it home. That was her job... which she hadn't even been doing, since if ka'Sharren's math was right the S'harien had died while she was playing with Romulan terrorists in the Neutral Zone.

Intellectually, there was probably no difference she could have made. Ka'Sharren knew it. That didn't keep her from wondering over and over if she had been there, if she would have had some instinct, some foreboding warning Sulu to be more careful. That wasn't even getting to what had happened to the Courageous, how it could easily have been the second destroyed EC ship in the same quarter if not for the heroism of the Dreamers. If ka'Sharren felt guilty, she knew Vice Admiral Ainsworth had been devastated. Rachel had been on track to move on anyway, but what a terrible way to go. Nash ka'Sharren had never shirked a duty in her life, but was grateful that Ainsworth had taken on the responsibility of contacting old man Sulu and letting him know.

All of that, and ka'Sharren had been so ready to leave Earth. Just find me a space command, she had asked Personnel. Instead Shey ch'Tharvasse had personally reached down from the lofty heights of Starfleet Commander to appoint her as Starfleet Academy Commandant, and ka'Sharren found... she didn't much mind at all. Of course it was an honor, one of the most prestigious positions in Starfleet. It was more than that, though. If she had a penance to serve for the S'harien, this was the way to serve it. She'd teach these cadets what they needed to know to survive in space, give them that extra edge that might just make the difference between life and death one day.

She swore she would. K'sharren touched Demora's brick again and mentally apologized to her.

Besides, now ka'Sharren could make that class on not touching things an official part of the curriculum.

***

Taking an elevator up in the administrative building, ka'Sharren rounded a corner and arrived in the antechamber to the Commandant's office. The bosun's desk was empty, but there was a human woman sitting in a visitor waiting chair. She was dressed in civilian clothing and had her hands behind her head as she leaned back, relaxed.

Ka'Sharren glanced at the woman curiously, then shrugged and for what would likely be the only time for the next few years, triggered the entrance request chime on the office door. She had arranged to meet Thuir here just before he vacated the office for good. Shake hands, get any last minute advice from him, that sort of thing. There was a pause of a few seconds, then a few seconds more, but the door didn't open and there was no chime of invitation. Ka'Sharren frowned. The panel beside the door indicated that the office was occupied...

The woman in the visitor's chair spoke. "Oh do give Michel a moment, Admiral ka'Sharren. He just got some unexpected news and hasn't quite registered your chime. Less than a minute I'm sure."

Ka'Sharren turned and gave the woman a second look, her antenna twitching. Something was off about the woman. "Who are you?"

"I've been an instructor here at the Academy, but alas we won't get to work together. Just as with Michel, it's time for me to move on. I popped in here to see him on his way. When you go in, just let him know it's cutie time."

Just as ka'Sharren was about to inquire further, the office door slid open. Giving the woman a sidelong look, she went inside. "Admiral Thuir, do you-" She stopped before saying anything else. Thuir was sitting behind the commandant's desk in an office already completely cleared of any personal possessions. He had a PADD clutched in one hand and a grim expression on his face.

"What's wrong?" she asked, an irrational part of her wondering if it would be the Odyssey or the Sarek this time. Please not the Enterprise.

But Thuir shook his head and exhaled. "Sorry, was a little distracted. No, nothing wrong. Just an unexpected assignment."

"You were going to Rethelia Sector command, I heard."

"That's still my official post, but I'm not going there any time soon. The old man picked me for a new Task Force up around the Horizon Border Zone. I'm supposed to somehow prevent the war that's brewing up there. Task Force Unity they're calling it. I admit I was looking for a challenge in space after so long on Earth, but this is something else."

"Lucky," the word escaped ka'Sharren's lips before she could catch it.

"'Lucky' isn't the word I'd use, Nash," said Thuir.

Ka'Sharren laughed and sat on top of the desk next to Thuir. "My last assignment in space, they sent me to fight a war. They're sending you to stop a war. I repeat, lucky."

The corners of Thuir's mouth turned up, and his habitual air of gloom lightened. "Well... I suppose you have a point. It's not going to be easy, though. In fact, the Commander let me know that in President Okaar's political judgement it's impossible, and she has no real expectations of success. You can't stop a war that all sides want."

"Tell that to the Eminians," countered ka'Sharren. "You and I have both seen war, Michel. The Arcadian conflict for both of us, and then I had more than my fill of it in Gabriel. Ships and crew vaporizing when warp cores go up. Those were short wars, too. Lucky wars, that burned out mercifully fast. I recently met one of the Romulan admirals who commanded their terrible slaughter of a war, and I've never seen anyone so haunted. It takes a special cause to justify something like that, and from what I've heard this business coreward doesn't even come close. Pirate attacks? They're going to have their ships killing each other over something that should be handled with diplomacy and police actions?"

"Maybe ch'Tharvasse should have sent you," said Thuir.

Ka'Sharren shook her head sharply. She put a hand on Thuir's shoulder. "No, he's sending the right person. I've pulled off a lot of stunts over the years, but this situation doesn't need someone charging in with a crazy plan. It needs a methodical, careful commander with the best trouble trouble sense I've ever seen to carefully weed through all the lies and justifications and get to whatever terrible truth lies at the heart of this war."

"And then fix it with a crazy plan," said Thuir.

Ka'Sharren removed her hand and leaned back. "Well of course. If the President says resolving this is impossible, then no non-crazy plan is going to cut it. But you've got the patience to do all that tedious set-up work first."

She was laying it on a little thick, and they both knew it. Still, it seemed to have done the job and gotten Thuir into problem-solving mode.

"Sorry Nash, here I was supposed to be giving you some last minute-advice about being Academy Commandant, and you're the one giving me a pep talk."

She waved a hand, "Write me a letter when you get your head straight. Oh, I forgot for moment. There's a woman waiting for you outside. Said she was here to see you off and that it's 'cutie' time. Is this someone special?"

"Cutie? Oh... 'cutie'. Q.T." Thuir mumbled, looking somewhere between distressed and embarrassed. Ka'Sharren recalled that Thuir had always come across as fairly private. She'd never heard a whisper about his personal life.

"Yes, that's 'someone special'... Nash, I need to get going. Thanks for the advice," replied Thuir. He slipped his PAAD into a small box of possessions, picked it up, and exited the door.

Ka'Sharren watched him go, then several seconds later noted he had left a knick-knack on one of the shelves. She grabbed it and exited the office, "Admiral Thuir?!" But he and the woman were nowhere to be seen. Must have headed straight for the elevator.

Nash ka'Sharren went back inside the office, her office now, and sat in the commandant's chair. There was work to be done, but just for a minute she allowed herself the luxury of looking out the window and across the bay.

It was a great view.