Surefoot 59: The Burning World

*

He wasn't.

Zir heard him speaking with someone, and the urgency in his voice stirred her awake. She sat up on her elbows, squinting in the illumination of the communicator set on the nearby table, where Peter sat, the handset pressed against the side of his head as he spoke with someone on the other end. "But can't you tell me anything? There has to be more than that! I have to get there! You-" Frustration and anxiety creased his features. "Thank you. Please let me know if you hear anything more."

Zir sat up and brought up the room lights. "What's happened?"

He stared at the text on the screen. "The transport that was scheduled to stop at Gault has been cancelled, indefinitely. Something about a security incident in the system."

"Incident? What incident?"

He slammed the handset down into its casing. "They wouldn't tell me! Damn civilians!"

She knew what he meant, having grown accustomed to working on a Starfleet vessel, with instant access to sensors, communications, weapons, medicines... She moved to change into other clothes. "Come on, finish getting dressed. We'll go get some answers."

*

Alpha Squad's shuttle, like all the other shuttles used by those who arrived here from the Fleet on shore leave, was stored in the Claridon's voluminous Hangar Bay. Zir and Peter now sat in the cockpit, listening in disbelief to the words from the image of the Surefoot's First Officer T'Varik. "The intelligence on the details of the incursion into the Gault system is incomplete; several civilian freighters confirmed the arrival of Dominion vessels, and a communications blanket over the immediate area."

Zir glanced over at Peter, without wanting to be too obtrusive about seeing his reaction to the news, before responding. "Commander, why would they want to take over Gault? It's remote, not strategically important, there are no Starfleet bases or facilities there-"

The Vulcan frowned. "Starfleet Intelligence, and Captain Hrelle, believe that the Dominion will be aware of the increased importance of Gault as a source of food, in the midst of the massive refugee crisis and the shortage of replicators and base matter. Their seizing the planet will inevitably have a significant impact on us."

"What about the people on Gault?" Peter asked, his voice cracking. "What will they do to them?"

T'Varik's image drew in. "It is suggested that, being civilians, the inhabitants of Gault will not necessarily be treated as Prisoners of War, but will be seen as... Citizens of the Dominion. Mr Boone, I am aware that your daughter is there, and it would be pointless of me to advise you not to react with anxiety-"

"What's Starfleet going to do?" he snapped. "We're here to protect Federation citizens, not let them become... 'Citizens of the Dominion'!"

"Captain Hrelle is currently in communication with Admiral Tattok, and other... sources. We will do everything we can to ensure the safety of your daughter, and the other inhabitants of Gault. I must counsel patience."

"We'll pack up immediately and return, Commander," Zir suggested.

"Negative, Ensign. There is no point in your returning. You are on Mandatory Rest Leave following your duties on the Surefoot, and you can do no more here than you can there."

Peter leaned forward, his face taut and red and his voice rising the more he spoke. "God damn it, I've seen first-hand what those Jem'Hadar can do! I've felt it! I'm not gonna sit around a pool drinking cocktails while my little girl's in danger! DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?"

Zir reached out, took his hand, but looked back at the viewscreen. "Please excuse the outburst, Commander, he's still in shock over the news."

The Vulcan raised an eyebrow. "I choose not to recall any outburst, Ensign Dassene. Mr Boone... Peter... having no children of my own, I can only imagine what you are experiencing now. I can only offer you our assurances that we will do everything possible to assist not only your daughter, but the rest of Gault."

Zir nodded. "Thank you, Commander. Please keep us up to date."

"We will." The screen went black.

Zir turned to her friend, tightening her hold on him. "It'll be okay, Pete. Abby'll be fine, you'll see."

He wouldn't look at her, the earlier anger now lost, leaving only a blank bleakness. "No. I don't see, Zir. I should never have left for the Academy. What the Hell was I thinking?"

"You were thinking that you would work hard to provide a better life for yourself and Abby than what you had on Gault. And if you've stayed there, you'd be trapped there as well-"

"But at least I'd be with her!" he shouted, tears welling down his face. "I'd be with her- I'd- I'd-"

Zir drew him and held him, letting him get everything out. Like T'Varik, she could only imagine what he was experiencing now; certainly if her little brother Haikv, still back on Orion and unlikely ever to be reunited with her, was in a similar situation, she would be overcome with anguish over not being able to do anything for him.

When he had finally calmed down, she drew back, still holding onto his hands. "It's going to be okay, I know it. Captain Hrelle will come up with something. I have faith in him. You have to, too."

Peter's head was low, but he reached under his T-shirt and drew out the gold chain with the hololocket, clutching it, slowing down his breathing.

Then he put it away, his voice more fragile now. "I'm sorry, Zir. Didn't mean to lose it."

She nodded, squeezing his hand supportively. "You're entitled, under the circumstances. Come on, let's get back to the others and tell them what's happened."

He shook his head. "You go. I need some time alone to pull myself together."

She nodded, rising and departing, hurrying along deeper into the interior of the massive ship, needing to get back to their friends and enlighten them.

Twenty minutes later, the five of them were gathered in Zir's and Peter's cabin, most of them waking up quickly as she filled them in on the news.

"Invasion?" Urad noted. "Why have we not all been recalled? Surely the Thirteenth Fleet will be sent to liberate the sector?"

"Not necessarily," Stalac opined. "If it's not judged vital enough at this stage to risk us. We haven't yet fully recovered and refitted."

"That doesn't matter now," Astrid pointed out, sitting near a silent, hungover Tori. "If we're recalled back, then that's that. Until then, Peter needs us. He thinks about us all the time, worries about us. He'll need distractions."

Zir nodded with approval. "We're in the right place to do it. The Claridon has a wide variety of activities over the coming days."

"He will most certainly benefit from a morning feast in the Starjammer Cafe," Urad suggested. "He is far too skinny to support himself."

"I will be happy to teach him the intricacies of Rigelian Hold 'Em," Stalac offered.

"Sounds rude," Tori muttered, nudging Astrid, "Surprised you didn't think of it."

Zir looked to Tori, almost ready to resume admonishing her for her behaviour last night, having forgotten it in the distraction over the news about Gault. Settling for a general, "Astrid's right: Peter does so much for us, let's focus on him." She reached up and touched her combadge, pinned to her blouse. "Peter? Are you on your way back? Meet us in the Starjammer for breakfast."

No answer.

She tried several times, as confusion rose among the Squad members, Astrid suggesting, "Maybe he's on his way back already?"

"I established a comlink with the shuttle in case any further transmissions came in from the Surefoot. He should have his badge with him, I should still..."

Her breath caught in her throat, and she moved to the desk communicator, accessing the Claridon's Hangar Bay directory. "No... Please, Peter, please don't-"

The others drew closer, Astrid leaning in, jaw dropping. "Our shuttle's gone!"

"Reported launched five minutes ago," Zir confirmed, clutching the edges of the desk, her heart triphammering. She smacked her combadge again. "Ensign Dassene to Shuttle Littlepaw! Peter! PETER!" Gods, Peter, please come back, please come back...

"He's gone?" Stalac exclaimed, rumbling in disbelief. "When did he even learn to pilot?"

Zir was pacing now, her anxiety galvanising her limbs. "He told me he used to pilot flyers between the communes, or to go check on the remote automated farming stations."

"And being Deputy Squad Leader," Astrid added. "He would have the authorisation to take the Littlepaw out."

"Look, it doesn't matter how he learned to fly!" Zir exclaimed. "He's gone off to get himself killed!"

"Hardly, Comrade Squad Leader," Urad noted, between bites of his second breakfast. "He is on a crusade to save his child. It is worthy."

"It's fricking stupid!" Tori snapped, animated now. "Farmboy's gonna get himself killed, heading out there on his own in a fricking shuttle with only one set of phasers and good intentions!"

"We need to contact the Surefoot, Zir," Stalac advised gravely. "They can intercept him before he gets too far."

Astrid looked to Zir again. "You can't do that, they'll court martial him for stealing a shuttle!"

"But at least he'll be alive at the end of it!" Tori pointed out. "Better that than getting the shit blown out of him!"

"He's in no immediate danger," Astrid opined, "It's a Type-7 shuttlecraft, Warp 4 maximum. Should take him about 8 days to even get there."

"We'll have to report back to the Surefoot long before then." Stalac noted.

They all looked to Zir. Even Stalac, who had no eyes. There it is, she realised, the Burden of Command made flesh.

Gods, what should she do? She would have to ask the Claridon to contact the Surefoot, or maybe get one of the other teams onboard having shore leave to use their comm systems. But then she'd have to explain the situation to them, contact their superiors, and-

Superiors...

*

The Claridon's Solarium, warm and quiet and lush with greenery around chairs, tables and deck chairs, was quiet that time of morning, but the bubbling of the unoccupied jacuzzis still muffled the sounds of Lieutenant Sasha Hrelle shuffling through, eyes barely open, clothes dishevelled as she scratched under her pits and wished her mouth didn't taste like one of her dirty socks... and also wishing she didn't have memories that verified that taste.

"Who was it?" asked a familiar voice.

Sasha ignored the question, but gravitated towards the table, where two figures sat watching her approach. She plopped down into an unoccupied chair, hunched over the table. "Coffee."

Sitting opposite, Lieutenant Giles Arrington, the new Chief Helmsman of the Surefoot, stopped tucking into a fruit salad breakfast to glance at Chief Nurse Eydiir Daughter-of-Kaas, smirking. "You think it's medically safe to give her coffee?"

Beside him, the tall, sturdy, coffee-skinned Capellan woman was busy savouring a tall, chilled glass of pineapple juice, never looking up as she replied, "We have insufficient information to offer a diagnosis." Now she looked over at the new arrival. "Who was it?"

Sasha ground her teeth. "Coffee. That's an order."

"We are all Lieutenants here, and you are no longer our Second Officer. Who did you rut with? We await an answer."

Now Sasha looked up, glaring beneath her tangled blonde hair. "Lieutenant Leslie Morgenstern, Engineering, USS Puget Sound."

Eydiir and Giles looked to each other, before the latter asked, "Male or female?"

Sasha frowned in thought. "Female." She paused in thought, and added, nodding to herself, "Yes, female."

"And how was she?" Giles asked, grinning now.

She winced with memory. "Toothy. Now give me my fricking coffee."

Eydiir suppressed a smile of her own as she rose and walked over to the wall replicator. "I suppose Giles should not feel too cuckolded this morning, given you have not chosen another man to satisfy your base desires."

Giles laughed, forking some melon slices in his bowl. "Oh, I'm fine, Eydiir. I'm long over this walking laundry hamper."

Sasha sneered at the both of them. "Where are the others?"

Eydiir returned. "Jonas and Neraxis should be joining us shortly from their cabin. Kit went to see that purser who promised him some Tellarite lacewing beetles they employ for natural pest control in the ship's gardens. Apparently this particular species are potent intoxicants to insectivores like himself.

Sasha grimaced at the notion... and then again as she tasted the coffee. "Not enough sugar."

"I programmed four portions," Eydiir informed her.

"Not enough!" Sasha screeched, holding out the cup.

No one accepted it, Giles looking to Eydiir. "She's got Papa Cat's sweet tooth."

"She's going to acquire his hips and rear end, too."

"She's halfway there in the aft department already."

"Yeah! Did you see her barely squeezing into that chair?"

She brought the cup back to her mouth. "Oy vey, I can't wait to get back to the Ajax and leave you annoying putzes behind."

"Good Friends!"

The three of them turned to see the cheerful, lime-green reptoid in a Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts approached, webbed hands carrying a clear container of writhing black objects, which he set down next to Sasha as he took a place opposite. "Is it not a beautiful morning?"

He looked to Sasha. "Best Friend Sasha, you appear almost as green as me." He reached inside the container and grasped a wriggling beetle between the claws of his forefinger and thumb. "Perhaps you could benefit from one of these? They're best if you crunch down on the carapace and let the juices and viscera run down your throat."

Sasha felt queasy. "Kit, I thought you knew by now that we don't eat-" She paused and glared at him. "You're a nasty little bastard."

Giles and Eydiir chuckled, and Kit himself wheezed with laughter before shooting his tongue out at the beetle and swallowing it. Sasha braced herself and took a swig from her coffee, washing it down as she washed down the past, the more pleasant memories of her evening partying onboard the Claridon, and getting to meet some other members of the Thirteenth Fleet... some better than others. It was refreshing. Certainly more refreshing than having nightmares about impaling Jem'Hadar with her Kaetini sword and crashing shuttles into other ships. She rubbed her eyes.

"Hey, Sash."

She looked up at Giles, waiting for another dig.

Instead he asked, with genuine concern, "You okay?"

She smiled weakly now. "Yeah. Yeah, I am." She looked around at her other friends. "You think we're gonna get to the stage where weird crap like space battles and interdimensional graverobbers and super spies is seen as a weekly occurrence?"

"I believe that for our profession," Kit opined, "'Weird crap' is a relative term."

"Speaking of which," Giles ventured, adjusting the controls on the kettle to produce some chilled orange juice. "While we wait for Mr and Mrs Ostrow, how about another round of Kirk: Bullshit or Not?"

Sasha grunted, Eydiir shrugged, but Kit nodded and replied, "Yes, please, Best Friend Giles! It is most entertaining!"

Giles grinned and winked at him, before popping some grapes into his mouth and beginning. "Okay, Bullshit or Not: Captain Kirk once had to go looking for aliens who stole the brain of his first officer, Commander Spock, to use as a living computer on their planet. He found it, and had it returned intact."

Sasha shook her head and attempted another swig of coffee. "I call Bullshit on that."

"I must agree," Eydiir countered. "A brain transplant? It is the height of absurdity."

Kit looked between the two women, before concluding, "I cannot imagine. Perhaps I need some beetles to help stimulate my brain-"

"Morning!"

They looked in the direction of the Solarium entrance as two figures appeared: a tall, slim, pale-skinned Terran male with silver hair, and a shorter, stockier Bolian female, both of them in casual clothes, holding hands, the Terran grinning.

Giles smiled at them as they sat down. "I didn't expect you two to show up at all. You were up pretty late, from the sound of things."

Kit nodded, swallowing another beetle before elaborating, "Very true, Best Friend Giles. I must consider seeing if we can switch cabins to one not adjacent to theirs. We will get no sleep otherwise."

Neraxis Ostrow reached out and playfully smacked the reptoid's arm. "Hey, we're a respectable married couple! We're allowed!" She snickered in Sasha's direction. "Unlike certain dirty strumpets out on Bumper Calls. Who'd you find to grind, girl?"

Sasha slumped down again. "Can't remember."

"It was a Lieutenant Leslie Morgenstern, Engineering, USS Puget Sound," Eydiir offered helpfully. "The woman is apparently toothy. No doubt later in our cabin I will see all the toothmarks."

Now Jonas frowned. "Leslie? You bedded Leslie? I know her! Thanks, Sash, now I'll never be able to look at her the same way again!"

Neraxis looked to him with mock suspicion. "How well do you know her?"

He turned his frown on his wife. "We've exchanged retrofit manuals."

"I hope that's a euphemism," Giles quipped.

"Lieutenant Hrelle!"

Sasha rose to her feet at the sound of the urgent voice, blinking as she saw several figures entering the Solarium, the one in the rear a huge grey golem she recognised, while a smaller disc-shaped figure slithered along in the rear. She knew them all, but focused on the Orion woman in the lead. "Ensign Dassene? What's wrong?"

Zir skidded to a stop at the table of Old Alpha Squad members, catching her breath before replying, "Lieu-Lieutenant! I- We need your help!"

Sasha downed the rest of her coffee; in the days since her return to the Surefoot following the Battle of Khavak, she had worked with Zir, and was impressed by her... that her Dad had made the decision to give them all field promotions in recognition of their actions against the Dominion was an obvious factor. The others she had less contact with, but she had heard nothing but praise from the likes of Eydiir and Jonas and the rest of her own former squad. "Okay, Ensign, what is it?"

Beside her, Eydiir looked to the new arrivals. "Peter- Ensign Boone. Why is he not with you?"

Zir glanced at her hesitantly, and then back at Sasha. "Lieutenant, can we- can we-?"

Sasha handed her emptied cup to Giles and motioned to the younger girl. "Come on, I need to clear my head."

The two women walked away.

The two Alpha Squads looked to each other.

Then Giles gestured to his left. "Better pull up a table and some chairs and maybe get yourselves some breakfast while we wait."

*

"Jesus," Sasha breathed out, sitting at the opposite end of the Solarium. "What was he thinking, taking off like that? Fricking idiot."

Zir had been relieved to explain the situation to the other woman, confident that she would understand. Now she frowned, wondering if she made a mistake. "He's not an idiot! He's a father! Would your father have done the same if he heard you or your brother or sister were on a planet taken over by the enemy?"

Sasha gave her a look... but didn't argue the point. "I'm guessing you want me to take my ship, collect him and bring him back, without reporting it to T'Varik or my Dad?"

"Yes! It's not fair that he gets into trouble for this! If we can just get him back here, talk to him, convince him-"