Shadows Beneath the Surface

Posted on Tue 24th Nov, 2020 @ 8:36am by Commander Paul Graves PsyD & Lieutenant JG Artyom Mikhailov

1,306 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: Denouement
Location: Chief Counselor's Office, Deck 83
Timeline: MD-6

Meeting one of the counselors inhabiting Starbase 109 was something which Artyom Mikhailov had unconsciously made an effort to put off since coming aboard. He of course had expected that to mean that someone would eventually reach out to him in order to schedule an appointment, but when that hadn't happened, Artyom had little inclination to argue the matter.

After all, he'd already managed to bottle up most the trauma he had experienced a few years upon crash landing on that nameless Class-L world, even if at the time only to ensure that Matthew wouldn't lose two parents during such a fragile period of his existence. By the time the Vestavia had arrived after detecting their faint distress beacon in orbit, those experiences on most occasions felt as though they belonged to a past life.

It had been a necessary approach given the circumstances. He had almost let the creacher (creature?) devour him along with Rees when he realized she'd been killed by it. It had only been due to Matthew's crying from within the runabout that Artyom changed his mind and vaprorized the beast. But in the days, months, and years following, Artyom couldn't afford to dwell on Rees's death, or the reality of the time in that Matthew would likely grow old without ever knowing anybody but his father without questioning whether just surviving would be worth it in the end.

Not when the chance of rescue had been so slim...

And yet here they were. Rescued. Seeing Matthew be able to play with other children as well as experience the benefits of the 24th century had been worth every sacrifice. Artyom looked forward to seeing him continue to grow. And in the meantime, he was back at work tending to his duties as a newly minted lieutenant. Life seemed to return to normal, at least on the surface. However, Artyom was beginning to feel the mental buffer between he and his trauma begin to crack. The occasional nightmares were manageable, while Artyom knew himself well enough not to find solace beneath one of the many kinds of libations available throughout the station. He was also accustomed to only a few hours of sleep a night, so the insomnia by itself wasn't much of a factor.

There had been something else nudging at him beneath the surface.

And then what should have been a routine shuttle mission to a point only a few hours from the station brought it all out. Confined within the near-suffocating interior of the shuttle cockpit, Artyom experienced what he could only describe as a panic attack before they could even make the jump to warp. With Artyom's survival instincts telling him that he needed to get off the shuttle as soon as possible, he aborted their mission under the premise of an alignment issue with their warp field. It might have been a trivial matter under normal circumstances. But for Artyom, there was no such thing as being too careful.

The person outside his door was filled with an unusual sense of purpose and determination, Paul noticed as the door chime sounded. He left his desk to invite his new patient in. It was a refreshing change to have someone who wanted to solve a problem rather than avoid it and him. He pressed the button to open the door and looked at the slightly younger, bearded man who stood in the doorway. "Lt. Mikhailov? Is that the correct pronunciation? I'm Counselor Graves. Come on in."

"Thank you." Artyom replied as he stepped inside. "It is."

"Come have a seat at my desk, and we can get started," Paul said. "Would you like a beverage before we begin?"

Artyom's first inclination had been to decline out of politeness, but it was likely that he'd want something to keep his throat from getting dry during what was unlikely to be an easy conversation. "Um, yeah. Water please." He requested as he found a seat at one of the chairs Paul had indicated.

Paul ordered two glasses of chilled water from the replicator and set one down before Artyom and took his own seat. "I don't believe I've ever met you before, Lieutenant," he said, "but I see from your records that you're new to the station. Welcome! How can I help you today?"

Artyom nodded. "Eh, yes. My son and I were... rescued, from a Class L world where I and his mother had crashed several years earlier. We were taken here, and I learned that an application for direct commission that I'd long forgotten about had been accepted... making me an officer." Artyom stopped there, realizing that if he didn't take a second to collect his thoughts that he'd push that tangent. "I am here because..." he shifted in his seat uncomfortably. The whole thought of talking to a shrink felt off. While it wasn't taboo in Starfleet, it had been when he was a service member on Saga-Prodigy. "... I believe there are aspects of that incident I spoke of earlier that are carrying through into my duties now."

Paul gazed at Mikhailov for a moment and then searched his memory. "Saga-Prodigy--There was some sort of armed conflict on that world, correct? I'm afraid I don't know the details. What happened there, and how were you involved, Lieutenant?" He took out a PADD and stylus and wrote 'Saga-Prodigy' on the screen. The PADD would convert his handwritten notes to print at the end of the session and store the information in Mikhailov's file.

It seemed like an odd direction to go, but Artyom agreed to fill in the details. "At the time, I was part of the defense forces. The indigenous population, the Amnoron, had grown frustrated with Starfleet's meddling and voted to secede from the Federation. It was... not a peaceful transition. Many Federation citizens managed to evacuate before things got out of hand, however." A flash of a long-forgotten memory appeared before Artyom, involving his final moments on Saga-Prodigy in which he had assisted a number of Starfleet officers in getting off-world. It had gone poorly, of course. Their transport was forced to crash, and it was only because of a daring Starfleet pilot that they managed to escape interment or death. "I was injured during the evacuation. The Starfleet personnel whom I was assisting took it upon themselves to bring me with them, fearing that I would not receive proper medical attention otherwise."

"Is that how you wound up on the Class-L world?" Paul asked. "Did their attempt to rescue you go sideways?"

Artyom shook his head. He realized where the confusion was now. "Ah, no. Saga-Prodigy was a separate incident long before I joined Starfleet. Crashing on that alien world occurred several years later. It was... a fluke. We lost power on our return trip and were forced to crash there." Memories of the incident came to mind that felt all too familiar to how he'd felt during his attempted mission earlier today.

"Ah," Paul said and nodded his understanding. "So the disquiet you feel now is related to your memories of the Class-L world. What started to bother you today--What set it off?"

Artyom thought about that for a moment. "I don't know how to explain it because I know the odds of something like that happening again are so small. But just being in a runabout again... all I could think of was that crash."

"This was the first time you'd been in a runabout since the crash?" Paul asked.

Artyom nodded.

"It's not surprising, then, that you had this reaction. It may have looked the same in some way, felt the same, even smelled the same as what you lived through before. Do you remember at all what thoughts were going through your head when you began to feel afraid?"

(To be continued)

 

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