Speaking of someone (or two someones?) who was there...
Recommended theme song for Samhaya Mrr'shan's more difficult moments (among others'):
Hymn to Breaking Strain
DREAMS, Ch. 5
USS Enterprise
Captain's Quarters
Samhaya Mrr'shan sat wearily on her bed, finally able to stop for the night and say to herself, "I'm getting frazzled."
The sheer
tension of the raid right before Celos had never really dissipated for her. Not even now, almost two years later. Her crew had overcome every challenge the galaxy had thrown at them, with all the poise and dexterity she could reasonably hope for. But it was a hard thing, to be ever watchful, ever perfect, to never let them see you shed.
Watching the Seyek empire on the edge of falling apart into civil war, just as the Federation was really getting to know the enigmatic snake-beings and their- associates- the Fiiral, hadn't been an easy thing either. Knowing the Licori were,
literally, on the edge of setting half the trailward frontier on fire made for rough nights and endless worry.
And somehow, the little mystery with Ensign Neroth had just- tipped her over. She'd seen a lot of implausibilities over the years, that came with the
Enterprise, but this seemed like an
impossibility. She'd heard the Indorian humming the notes that had stayed stuck in Nash's head for
at least eight and a half years that she could vouch for. But from where? She could believe that the tune had gone viral after all that time. But wouldn't she remember hearing it more often?
It wiggled away in her brain, and she reached out with her wits to grasp the mystery and unravel it. Only for it to reappear atop her faculty of reason,
taunting her. She searched left and right for justifications, the mystery flickered and danced, then twisted-
THERE! AH-HA! But no, that couldn't be it either, and she found herself crashing up against walls of doubt, pillars of certainty.
She sank back to the pillows and sighed.
So help me, it's a psychic laser pointer... I am truly, deeply beyond frazzled, aren't I? Her mind, adrift from its moorings, slipped off into stranger seas as she fell most of the way into sleep.
She awoke, retaining a strange, detached near-consciousness. But not aboard an explorer. She drifted, alone, in the deep heavens- watchful, vigorous, curious. Her eyes singled out stars that she
knew, somehow, held promise. Or danger. Or, best of all, both.
Part of her was aware enough to question this peculiarly lucid dream. She'd felt like this a few times, and always shrugged it off as a side effect of time at Hophos, so near the start of her first five year mission. She'd had brain scans done, even a telepathic probe, once. It wasn't anything that threatened her fitness for duty or her long-term health, so she didn't worry about it.
But it had been thirteen years, and Samhaya Mrr'shan had never been a woman to surrender control of her fate. So she'd learned, over that time, to control it, at least a bit. Even to harness the lucid dreaming as a productivity trick, once in a while. Or simply to relax. To observe the absurdity of her dreams, and appreciate them.
An impulse struck her. Every ordinary tool of reason and analysis had failed her, on the most trivial of mysterious, nagging details. She was no monk, to shave her forehead and fold up on a mountaintop chanting "Mrrrr...." every five minutes. But perhaps she might get somewhere through meditation, or whatever this sleepy trance was? At this point, that would feel like a victory over the chaos of her emotions. An exploration of inner space, instead of outer space.
Besides, she was curious. She was
always curious.
How could an echo of Nash rebound back to her, after more than three years? With the woman herself dozens of light-years away? What
was that song? So she focused every fiber on her being on the strangeness of that... tune... trying to
summon to herself its nature and origin.
The universe swirled into black chaos, then green chaos.
She was in the ship's arboretum, back in the engineering hull, the one Nash had made Bazeck clear space for. That had been... around the time the Betazoids joined up. The huge compartment had once been an underused spares storehouse. Now, it was green and lovely. With no memory of crossing the compartment, she found herself seated in the middle of it, her back to one of the transplanted trees, legs and tail spread across the grass at its base. The Betazed meta-linden was flourishing now, five years after their planting.
Then she heard the slow, deep intake of breath beside her and looked down. An enormous Terran lioness, bigger than she'd thought the species grew, maybe close to half a tonne, lolled on the patch of grass beside her, eyes closed as though half-asleep.
During her Academy days, when she'd been young and still prone to occasional, kittenish frivolity, she'd taken the time to visit the San Francisco Zoo. Earthlings didn't appreciate just how exotic the flora and fauna of their world could be. Lions were
fantastical creatures, like all the myths of men and women with the bodies of beasts had come true under an alien sky.
Intellectually, she'd known before entering the Lion House that the Earth felines were non-sentient. Even so, Samhaya looked at their faces and couldn't help but imagine the caged lions were looking back at her, aware, thinking. She'd wondered what they might have to say.
And so nothing could
possibly be more natural, in this dream, than when the great cat twisted slightly and turned her head to speak to Samhaya, her eyes still shut.
"I was hoping you'd come visit some day. You wind yourself up a little too tight- you remind me of Chris, only without the kinks..."
Then the lioness opened her eyes. They shone, and not with the natural, steady, reassuring reflection of the tapetum lucidum. These eyes glowed with faintly pulsing, uncanny blue, like Cherenkov radiation off a warp core at standby power.
The golden beast stretched, and she didn't look like a flesh-and-blood thing. This not-quite-lioness
thrummed, somehow. She looked as though she could outrun the dawn, tear down the mountains. Like there was a cry in her lungs just
waiting for the right instant to come roaring out and shake the stars in their courses.
But there was something of that fierce-hearted power that Samhaya
knew. As though, should the lioness make her earth-shaking pounce, the timing would be a thing as close to Samhaya as her own heartbeat. As though the grip of those mighty jaws would be as much a part of the Caitian officer as her own fists were. She felt, with an odd calmness, as though she'd seen through this powerful creature's eyes, struck with her claws, almost
been her nerves and muscles and spirit.
The moment of liminality passed.
The lioness seemed- familiar. Approachable. Perhaps a bit smaller, somehow. She rose, gave Samhaya an affectionate, gentle headbutt, then curled up again, within arm's reach of the Caitian. The lioness let out a low, rumbling purr, in a deep, throaty version of an
old, familiar tune. One Samhaya had heard many times, over the years, mostly from her former captain. But never on the
Lightning, and not that she could recall in these past three years aboard
Enterprise. Until now- once, lately, in a broken turbolift.
So, having waited long enough, the captain turned to reply to the talking lioness, with just a touch of stiffness. "Where am I visiting? And you seem to have the advantage of me...?"
The huge creature shifted again, a great shoulder nudging Samhaya's hip. "Sorry, captain. I'm... the short answer is, I'm the
Enterprise. And you're asleep, but you called to me- and so I answerd."
Samhaya paused, it always being her nature to think about the dangers of any situation. She'd wanted answers, but hadn't expected what she might find.
Was this what she'd been looking for, when she made a decision to explore inner space? Yes, she decided. Yes, it was.
Samhaya desired answers to her questions. She desired clarity. So she'd gone off in a lucid dream, looking for the object of her desires. Aaaaaand found a giant talking lioness who claimed to be a spaceship.
It followed, quite simply, that giant talking spaceship-lionesses must be bound up with the nature of her desire. The strangeness was simply- entertainment, she decided firmly. If the giant spaceship lioness wanted to speak with her, she would keep talking back.
She'd just have to watch out for any voices in her head until she could talk it over with Jolna.
First, her inner tactician advised her, the indirect approach. Always best to begin that way, given the chance. "An Indorian ensign
did tell me, lately, that the ship had a spirit. A 'clear' one. I wondered what he meant." She tilted her head, looking at the creature out of dream.
"Well, that was sweet of Neroth! That's the nice thing about Indorians. They're even better than Betazoids- and could you talk to Jolna when you wake up? I've been trying to get her attention for
months now and I'm not sure she's noticed me yet, so much for telepathy. Anyway. When you get down to it, the most Indorian thing in the universe is to just sit down and watch how something works. No preconceptions, no theories, they just...
watch and learn. I like that about them. I'm glad we met them. Thanks!"
Samhaya gave a rolling shrug of negation at the gratitude. "It's not like I can take the credit. That was on Nash's first five years. Right around the end."
The lioness stretched, and without even thinking about it Samhaya read the body language as 'teasing friendliness.' "Hey, you were there too,
Guns. Do you think I
only remember my captains? How far do you think we'd have gotten back then, without you to keep the Cardies off our backs? I could tell
such stories... some of them even you don't remember. Next time we meet, maybe."
She filed that away as something to think about. The thought tantalized her. Nash had always acted-
strange, in the last years of their mission. Samhaya knew she must be holding a few things back. Experiences she'd had, that related to the ship, but that was entirely her own possession. Especially after Fujit 33. But her friend and captain wouldn't be doing that without a reason. Samhaya respected that. She hadn't made an issue of it, even though she
knew, somehow, that it involved her.
Could she learn by meditation what pride wouldn't let her ask about? Maybe, but that was a thought for another time. She'd made her way to this state once. She could do it again, now. But first, the question she'd started with. She was beginning to see how the giant talking spaceship lioness could factor into this, assuming she was real.
Or not. This was where she'd come, so this must be where she needed to be. If it didn't make sense, that was just another thing to be curious about!
Samhaya leaned around, looking at the great lioness. "So, the song I thought was from Nash, and was worrying about how Ensign Neroth could have heard it..."
"That's me." The lioness' slow, modulated purr once again recalled the slow, melancholy, yet inspiring tune she'd heard before.
Samhaya thought that over. Half-experimentally, wondering what the being embodying her ship would say, she spoke. Again, letting intuition guide her, somehow sure that the result would be
right, even if it was strange.
"You know, the first words she said when she laid eyes on you in drydock- she was just staring,
staring, and we already late coming aboard. So I got her attention, and she said to me, 'Can you really blame me, Sam? She's quite the looker.' "
The fantastic creature stretched out on the grass beside her shivered slightly. "I... I
didn't know that."
"...Nash loved you. Everybody jokes about her and all those women- but she
really loved you. You know that, right?"
The golden creature radiated a pure, delighted satisfaction. "Better than
anyone, sister. I loved her, too."
Samhaya paused, for a long moment, trying to take that in. Partially failing. "It showed. It- showed." She felt a tear trying to crack through her practice-hardened armor.
Nine years of her life she'd spent, on
Enterprise with Nash in the chair. By the time it was over and she left for
Lightning, she'd spent a quarter of her life on the big explorer. And any month of all that time, pulled from the mass of it at random, would be a marvelous month of her life, one she'd never forget, and one she'd never want to.
It hadn't all been
Enterprise, for all that she'd been so staggeringly proud to return to the explorer's bridge. And so proud of all the things her crew had been and done these past few years.
And it hadn't all been Nash, either, for all that it had been a privilege and a joy to serve with her aboard the escort
Lion, now lost to time.
It had been both of them, together. Something that she'd fought so hard to recapture, ever since she took command. Had she succeeded?
Maybe the Indorians were right, and ships had shades that spoke to their captains when the captains listened, whether that made any sense in a logical universe or not. Then again, maybe this wasn't real. It didn't matter. Either way, she'd come here, so she must have
meant to come here. That, she decided, was certain.
And in that case, this was a question she could ask here, if nowhere else, not aloud, not when bound by the chains of command. Not even to friends.
"How am I doing?"
The lioness slid forward and nuzzled Samhaya, then pulled back a bit. Blue shine met gold, slit-pupilled eyes. "
Well."
The Caitian felt lightning course down her spine at that- whatever she'd expected, she certainly hadn't expected it to be only one word.
"Thank you." As always, when Samhaya Mrr'shan was at a loss, she fell back on dignity, and simplicity. Then, only then, did the golden creature continue.
"You're a fireball at heart, but you watch everything, and weigh everything carefully, and you find the balance when almost no one else could. It's a good combination. I- Nash made me happy, and she'll always be special to me, but I don't think I've ever felt, in all my lives, as
strong as I have with you. Remember that Seyek battleship? For just those last seconds before she powered down the lance?"
"Mm." Samhaya nodded. There'd been a long moment after the first Seyek corvette had blown up, when she really had expected she'd have to take
Enterprise in and duel the battleship into submission.
"Nash would have had me looking at her and thinking 'You want to start something? Let's go!'
You had me looking at her and thinking something more like... 'You know? I could take her. Giant cannon or not, I could take her. Hope I don't have to, it wouldn't be easy, but I could.' There's a difference and- I miss Nash
so much sometimes, but I
like that feeling. You're a good captain, sister mine, and I love you for it."
She... for a long moment she didn't know what to do. It was an honor, but she didn't know how to-
What would Nash do? Probably change the subject and tell a joke. Hm. "Come to think of it, when you first spoke, you
did compare me to Captain Pike, didn't you? Should I be flattered?"
"Um. No, I don't think so, you really are pretty good. Chris was kind of like you, really. Very, very serious. Tried to do things by the book. But- he blamed himself when things went wrong. Harder than usual, for captains. And he kept a lot bottled up. Too much. So much he could never
quite be all he could have been. He was good, even so- but when I wonder what it could have been like- well, now I don't have to!"
"Don't you?" Samhaya slumped bitterly.
Again, the friendly headbutt as the lioness shifted. "Don't underestimate yourself. You've taken everything Nash built me into, and made it
solid. Something that wouldn't just fold up when she went away, the way I..."
"Hm? What do you mean?"
"After Jim left the first time- this was just before you were born."
"You mean
Kirk?"
"Well yes, of course. After he left, I went into a slump. I'm not sure I ever pulled myself together all the way after that, not in that life. Even when he came back to me, I wasn't the same. I was... afraid of something like that happening again, after I knew Nash couldn't stay any longer. Until I found out it was going to be you. Then I knew I didn't have to worry, and I was right." The lioness purred. "Keep believing in yourself, sister. You've got your own magic, and it
works. They need you.
We need you."
Samhaya sat up a little straighter. That was something she could understand. This
was what she had come looking for, the reward for running with the strange.
But if the reward had come to her, then she surely owed the spirit of her command a promise in return.
Samhaya nodded. "You have me. If the Licori try to blow up the quadrant, or the Cardassians invade, or the Fiiral and the Seyek start strangling each other..." She squared her shoulders. "I don't know what else we'll have. But you'll have me. I won't let you down, and I won't let you be anything
but strong. You'll be able to handle whatever comes at us."
"I know- and thank you, captain." The lioness finally stood up, stretched her mouth in a yawn. "Let's have a run." And at that, she
roared. A roar that was not heard with ears, but
felt, a shivering from the tip of her tail up her backbone. The sense of liminality came back, for a moment.
The greens of the ship's arboretum blurred and twisted, reversing the transformation that had brought her to this mental space beyond space. Once again she floated in the void, her will as free of physical needs as it was of gravity, the stars unfolding around her.
But this time, the golden lioness was with her, peering into the distance. "Where next, captain? I think that binary off to our left might have a co-orbital gas giant, which would make for a beautiful ring formation- but the view into that nebula below us would be just
magnificent if we go on this way instead." The spirit of
Enterprise twitched her head.
Samhaya smiled. "Straight on, until morning."
