Who Says You Can't Go Home - Part 1

Posted on Sun 12th Jan, 2025 @ 6:48pm by Commander Mikaela Locke & Captain Andrus Grax
Edited on on Sun 12th Jan, 2025 @ 7:42pm

867 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: The Phoenix Gamble
Location: USS Falcon - Spatial Location: Classified
Timeline: Fifteen days, twelve hours and forty-one minutes ago (Give or take...)

“The data upload is complete, sir,” Mikaela Locke reported, turning away from the screen in front of her to address the captain, who was sat in the middle of the Falcon’s bridge.

“Thank you, Commander,” Grax replied, giving the slightest of nods, but otherwise not looking up from the console on his right-hand side.

The USS Falcon had been away from Starbase 109, on a mission, for a little over eighteen months, gathering intel from a number of the unaligned planets in the Triangle Region – not only on the Klingon and Romulan Empires, but on the unaligned planets themselves. The mission had been operated under extreme covert conditions, so as not to be seen to be influencing neutral systems they were visiting. It had been a challenging time.

The mission had been led by Andrus Grax, Starfleet’s director of intelligence for the Triangle Region, and Mikaela’s long-time friend and mentor. Given that the Falcon herself had been rebuilt at Starbase 109, she didn’t have a permanent crew assigned. This meant that the command crew and the operations staff had to be sourced from among the assigned staff of 109. Also on the Falcon, among others, was Hannah Sawyer, the station’s assistant operations officer, Ra’Cho, the Judoon security officer, and Jason Fisher, Grax’s right-hand-man, head of research and analysis for the Triangle Region, and her ex.

When Grax had approached Mikaela with the option of joining him on the Falcon’s mission, she had been hesitant. Eighteen months was a long time, and she knew that Starfleet was not going to allow a Starbase the size of 109 to be without an executive officer for that length of time. Joining Grax on this mission would mean giving up her posting, knowing that she might not ever get it back.

And then there was Paul. Her relationship with Commander Paul Graves, the base’s second officer and senior counsellor finally seemed to be progressing smoothly. To leave for eighteen months on a covert mission where communication was going to be limited at best, was risky. It could derail everything they had spent the last two years building. There was the added complication of her spending eighteen months on a very small spaceship with her ex-boyfriend and there was even the possibility that Paul wouldn’t even be stationed on 109 when she returned.

But in the end, her allegiance to Starfleet, and to Grax – who had gone out of his way to convince her that she was the best person for the job – had prevailed. And it had been proven so. Her skills as an interpreter and an intelligence operative, as well as a command-level officer had proved invaluable on the mission, and, indeed, had potentially saved them several months.

But now she was looking forward to going home.

‘Home…’ she thought to herself, with a strange sense of unease. It had been a while since she had called anywhere ‘home.’ 109 had proven to be so, over the last few years, but she couldn’t help but wonder whether the place she was returning to was really the home that she had left.

“Ms. Sawyer,” Captain Grax said, finally looking up and snapping Mikaela out of her reminiscing. “Time to Starbase 109?”

Hannah Sawyer didn’t bother to consult her instruments; instead, she immediately turned her chair, away from her console at the front of the bridge, in order to face the captain, “Assuming a cruising speed of Warp 6, and no interruptions or delays, fifteen days, twelve hours and forty-one minutes,” she said, before adding a quick clarification of, ‘Give or take.’

“Give or take?” Grax asked her, with mock incredulation, given the exact nature of her answer.

“Allowing for a little leeway with the calculations, sir.” Sawyer replied, her sweet smile partly hiding the dryness of the comment.

Locke exchanged a glance of both amazement and bemusement with her captain. This was not unusual in the least, and yet Hannah Sawyer’s capacity to perform complex mathematical functions in her head, and at speed, never ceased to amaze her. Despite her own not inconsiderable gifts, she couldn’t help but feel slightly jealous of the young lieutenant’s incredible aptitude with numbers.

“Then let’s get moving,” Grax said, moving on as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

“Aye, captain,” Sawyer replied, turning back to the combined ops/conn station at the front of the bridge. “Course laid in, warp six standing by on your word, sir.”

Locke noticed Grax hesitate just for a fraction of a second. Almost certainly, no one else on the bridge would have picked up on it, but she had known Andrus Grax for too long not to spot the small tells of her captain. Whatever had given him that momentary pause, however, soon passed. He quickly straightened himself in his chair and looked directly forward at the main view screen.

“Let’s go home, lieutenant,” he said, “Let’s go home.”

“Aye, sir,” Sawyer confirmed again, tapping the last couple of manual commands into the console, before the Defiant-class ship reoriented itself in space and leapt to warp.

 

RSS Feed