Breathe

Posted on Wed Apr 22nd, 2026 @ 11:55pm by Commodore Kovich & Captain Wilkan Targaryen

1,599 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: Homecoming
Location: Ready Room, U.S.S. Sulaco
Timeline: 3190-11-01, 09:00

The Ready Room door hissed shut, severing the bridge’s abrasive frequencies and the carefully crafted discord Karys had left in her wake. Inside, the silence was immediate and profound, a heavy, pressurized quiet. To a man who had lived nearly a thousand years across three distinct biological heritages, silence was never truly empty; it was a canvas upon which the subtle vibrations of a starship and the frantic rhythms of a human heart were painted in vivid detail.

The room, situated on the starboard side of the Sulaco, was a stark, clinical vault of brushed matte bulkheads and recessed amber lighting. It was a space belonging to a man who had stripped away everything but the mission; there were no artifacts of a nine-century life here, no tapestries from the orange sands of New Aur, no echoes of the family lost in the Great Separation. Through the wide, transparent viewport, the view was not of the blue-white marble of Earth, but of the cold, indifferent stars of the outer system. The Sulaco held its position with its port side toward the planet, leaving the Ready Room to face the deep black of deep space.

Wilkan moved to the center of the room, standing as a pillar of shadow against the starlight. Behind him, Kovich stood like a silent sentinel by the door, his presence as dry and unobtrusive as the ship’s own air filtration.

The silence was broken by the sharp, ionizing snap of a high-security transporter. A shimmer of blue light cascaded through the center of the room, and suddenly, Ahlam Sahimi was no longer a lattice of light. She was flesh and blood, her physical presence carrying a gravity that the Bridge hologram could only simulate. The scent of ozone and Earth’s atmosphere trailed off her garments, a sharp contrast to the sterile, recycled air of the Sulaco.

She didn't wait for a formal greeting. Sahimi immediately began to pace the length of the Ready Room, her boots making a sharp, real clack against the deckplates. Her hands were clasped tightly behind her back, her shoulders rigid. She moved like a leader who had been running on adrenaline for far too long, her eyes tracing the lines of the clinical space as if searching for a fracture in the reality of her situation.

"I have spent the last six hours convincing the Parliament that your arrival isn't the first wave of a Federation annexation," Sahimi began, her voice dropping into a register that felt dangerously raw. She reached the edge of the room and turned sharply, her gaze finally locking onto Wilkan's, "but the 'Purists' have moved faster than my intelligence reports predicted, and the casualties are mounting in ways we can no longer hide. If I cannot control my own borders, Captain, this entire endeavor - this 'Homecoming' - is over before the ink is dry."

She stopped her pacing, standing just a few feet from him. The exhaustion in her eyes was startlingly human, stripped of the presidential mask.

"The Oort relay station, Vanguard-9, has gone dark," Sahimi said, her voice barely a whisper. "I told your Bridge it was a power failure, but that was a lie. It was a silent boarding action by a splinter cell of the United Earth Defense Force. They’ve seized the high-yield arrays and they're sitting on the edge of the system like a dagger held to the throat of the Parliament. But that is only half of the nightmare." She took a shaky breath, her hand momentarily hovering over the silver emblem of United Earth on her chest, "There is a sickness, a fast-acting respiratory plague is tearing through the megacities. We believe the DMA evacuation was the catalyst because of the millions of people crammed into transit hubs, their immune systems shredded by the stress of the near-end of the world. It was a perfect breeding ground and our quarantine zones are crumbling."

Wilkan stood motionless. He could sense the jagged, uneven vibration of her pulse and the subsonic tremor in her hands, but beneath the rhythm of her fear, he caught a faint, rhythmic static in the room’s ambient hum. It wasn't Sahimi. It was the ship's own internal systems, a minute hitch in the life-support processing that shouldn't have been there.

"You have a mutiny at the gates and a ghost in the blood," Wilkan observed, his voice a steady, subterranean anchor.

"The Parliament is fractured," Sahimi continued, her voice hardening with a desperate edge, "and you know the Charter as well as I do: if Earth cannot maintain a unified planetary government, if we descend into civil war over this plague and the 'Purist' uprising, we are no longer eligible for Federation admission. We will be left in the dark again, and this time, we won't have the strength to survive it. If I lose control of Vanguard-9, or if the plague forces me to declare martial law across the continents, we will be legally abandoned by the very alliance we are trying to rejoin."

Kovich moved then, a small, precise step forward, his spectacles catching the light, "The President is correct. Reintegration requires a stable, singular sovereignty. The Federation cannot, by its own laws, intervene in a domestic uprising of a non-member world. If Vanguard-9 is being used to broadcast dissent and the plague is being used to destabilize the cities, Earth is being systematically disqualified from the very alliance that could save it."

Sahimi turned her gaze directly to Wilkan, her expression heavy with the weight of her next words. "President Rillak didn't just send you as a tactical observer, Wilkan, you are the Federation's designated negotiator for these talks. The people of Earth don't trust the Federation or Starfleet of today, but they remember the name Targaryen. They need to see you at the table in San Francisco, brokering the final terms. If you are missing from those sessions because you're out hunting ghosts in the Oort cloud, the 'Purist' factions will claim the Federation has already abandoned us again."

Wilkan looked past the President, out into the starboard blackness where the relay lay hidden in the debris of the Oort cloud. The hitch in the room’s ventilation became more pronounced, a microscopic lag in the environmental computer.

"The Purists didn't just take a station," Wilkan said, turning back to Sahimi, "they opened a door. If Vanguard-9 is holding the uplink, then the flaying of your world’s infrastructure and the spread of this plague are being coordinated to ensure Earth fails the admission criteria by default. My role as negotiator is a hollow one if there is no unified Earth left to sign the treaty, making my involvement investigating this incident paramount."

"Captain," Sahimi said, her voice trembling slightly, "our systems are already failing. The weather control arrays, the orbital power grids... everything is being dismantled by a logic we can't track. It's as if the world is forgetting how to stay alive. How am I supposed to sit across from you and discuss trade tariffs and administrative protocols while my cities are turning into graveyards?"

Wilkan’s eyes narrowed. "We need to look for a signature that doesn't belong to Starfleet or United Earth. If the relay is being used as a delivery system, my ship is already in the line of fire."

Kovich tilted his head, his expression as dry as ever. "I am already seeing anomalies, Captain, and Sulaco isn't immune. The ship's digital nervous system is experiencing... friction."

"We aren't just retaking a relay, Madame President," Wilkan said, his voice dropping into a cold, clinical register. "We're fighting to keep your world from being legally abandoned by the stars. We are hunting the source of Earth's deconstruction before the Sulaco becomes the next casualty of the interference." Wilkan turned back to Sahimi. "Madame President, you need to return to San Francisco to maintain the illusion that the talks are continuing. If the 'Purists' realize we know their true objective, they will accelerate the infrastructure shutdown. Let them think you are still struggling with me at the negotiating table, that the Federation's representative is buried in paperwork and bureaucracy. That way we can intervene to stop your interlopers."

Sahimi nodded slowly, the weight of her silver emblem seeming to pull at her posture. "I will hold the line on the ground, Wilkan. I'll tell the Parliament that the Federation’s negotiator is reviewing the final drafts, but the people... they are dying. Every hour we spend in 'diplomacy' is a thousand more graves for people who didn't deserve to die today."

"Then don't think of it as diplomacy," Wilkan replied, his gaze returning to the stars, "think of it as a hunt."

The President stepped back into the center of the room. With a final, lingering look at the Captain, she said, "Good hunting, Ice Pilot." She vanished in a cascade of blue light.

Wilkan stood in the silent Ready Room for a moment longer, feeling the Sulaco vibrate beneath his feet. The discord was growing. The ship was no longer in harmony; it was in a fever. He turned to Kovich with an annoyed chuckle, "The 'Ice Pilot' is a title I haven't used in centuries."

"The galaxy has a way of demanding what we have set aside, Captain," Kovich replied. "The Bridge is waiting and I suspect Commander Karys is becoming quite fond of her regulatory authority there."

Wilkan headed for the door, the clinical stillness of the Ready Room left behind as he stepped back into the storm.

 

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