Doors Open From Both Sides

Posted on Sun Jun 21st, 2026 @ 3:02am by Captain Wilkan Targaryen

1,758 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: Homecoming
Location: Ready Room, U.S.S. Sulaco
Timeline: 3190-11-01, 10:45

The low hum of the Sulaco’s primary power grid vibrated softly through the beige bulkheads of the Deck 1 Ready Room. It was a rhythmic, mechanical purr that did little to ease the suffocating, silent tension inside the cabin, situated just steps away from the Bridge of the Crossfield Class ship.

Commander Karys stood near the double window bays on the starboard wall, her posture intentionally rigid, her Denobulan brow tightly furrowed. Out in the black, the expanding debris cloud of the destroyed United Earth warship was still visible, a shimmering field of shrapnel where a predator had just been completely obliterated by Zim's manual Phaser strike. Karys kept her face locked in a mask of defensive, ladder-climbing arrogance, but internally, her mind was in a vice.

She had just stood on the Bridge and publicly questioned Wilkan’s intuition, aggressively pushing for a fallback plan under the guise of protecting her own career. It was exactly what Admiral Vance had ordered her to do: act like a hollow, self-serving bureaucrat to trigger Wilkan’s protective instincts so he wouldn’t abandon the Sulaco. But now, the dust had settled. The "convincing corpse" tactic had worked perfectly, the enemy vessel was scrap metal, and Wilkan had just sent her off-bridge to run a security sweep with Zim.

Before heading out, she had ducked back into the Ready Room to secure a high-clearance tactical PADD. She hadn't expected to find company.

Across the room, entirely detached from the workspace, Commodore Kovich sat near the long blue sofa. He remained an enigmatic, stoic fixture in his sharp, gray suit, adjusting his spectacles and watching her with an unreadable glare. He hadn't spoken a word during the entire engagement, but his silence felt like an interrogation.

"You wanted to see me in here before the sweep, Commander?" Wilkan asked after having walked in a moment later, the high collar of his command tunic slightly dusty from the Bridge's sudden atmospheric shifts.

"I’m just securing the localized firewall protocols, Captain," Karys said, injecting a thin veneer of dismissive impatience into her tone. She tossed the PADD onto the desk with a practiced carelessness. "I want to expedite this isolation sweep so my Engineering teams can get back to the launch schedule. I don't care to have our mission delayed by anymore 'intuitions' or legacy baggage."

Wilkan didn't react. Instead, he reached forward and tapped the desktop terminal, bringing up the localized sensor telemetry Elara had just pulled from the debris field. "Your caution on the Bridge was noted, Karys, but look at this: the Earth ship didn't open its primary torpedo tubes when we played dead. They prepared for boarding. They wanted the Sulaco intact."

"A tactical gamble that paid off. Congratulations," Karys countered, crossing her arms and leaning back against the viewport, intentionally playing the part of an officer out of her depth. "But if your 'listening' had been wrong, Sir, we would have been a cloud of dust. I’m interested in results, not mystics. When Earth signs this treaty and your formal role concludes, I expect to have a fully functional ship handed back to me. I don't intend to let its reputation be tarnished by reckless theater and the failings of an ancient Captain."

"Until that treaty is signed, Commander, this ship is my responsibility," Wilkan said, having picked up the deliberate, abrasive friction she was manufacturing. He leaned over the desk, isolating a specific sub-routine embedded in the destroyed warship’s black box telemetry, "And you need to understand exactly who we are dealing with. The encryption on this data bypasses modern Starfleet protocols entirely. I went back through the Sulaco’s historical registry from its time mothballed at Starbase J19-Alpha..."

Karys stepped closer, her pragmatic instincts momentarily overriding her arrogant facade as she looked at the monitor. The Denobulan interrupted, "The security perimeter was absolute when I took over the refit. The mainframe was isolated."

"Not from everyone," Wilkan said flatly. He brought up a historic Starfleet service record on the display. The name on the file hit Karys like a physical blow, threatening to shatter her carefully constructed mask.

Captain Ridan Tua.

Aethelgard. The nightmare of the outer ridge. It had been Karys’s job to stand on that very Bridge, defy the chain of command, and personally relieve Tua after he nearly ignited a quadrant-wide war. Seeing that name linked to the rogue United Earth vanguard changed everything.

"The record says they refused psychological evaluation after you relieved them, threw their badge on the table, and vanished," Wilkan murmured, a profound, sudden grief anchoring his words.

"They're good," Karys said, her voice dropping its arrogant edge for a fraction of a second before she caught herself and snapped the mask back into place. "But they're ancient history. If Tua is leading this vanguard, they're a rogue element."

"They're a rogue element who knows this ship's baseline architecture better than anyone in this century," Kovich’s dry, clinical voice cut through the silence from the corner of the room. He didn't look up from the physical notepad resting on his knee, his pen scratching lightly against the paper. "If I recall the historical addendums correctly, Captain Targaryen, you and your wife sponsored Bezru Tua for their first officer's bars centuries ago. You were their mentor on Deep Space 9."

Wilkan didn't turn to face Kovich. His eyes remained locked on the scrolling code, watching the ghost of his past twist his own tactical doctrines into a weapon against him. "I taught them how to look at an asymmetric threat and neutralize it completely. They aren't trying to destroy us, Karys. They're trying to take her back."

Karys snatched the PADD off the desk, her expression tightening into a look of cold, ambitious defiance. "Then it’s an exceptionally good thing I’m going down to run this security sweep, Captain. If your former student thinks they can slip a digital ghost past our Engineers just because of a legacy connection, they're sorely mistaken. I'll ensure the isolation protocols are airtight." She turned sharply toward the sliding blue exit door, her boots striking the tan carpet with deliberate, aggressive intent. "With your permission, Sir. I’ll take Zim and ensure my ship remains secure."

The sliding blue door hissed shut, sealing out the ambient click-and-hum of the recovering Bridge and leaving the Ready Room in a heavy, contemplative quiet.

Wilkan remained standing behind the dark executive desk, watching the threshold where Commander Karys had just exited. The echo of her sharp, ambitious parting shot still vibrated through the room - a discordant, jarring frequency that grated against everything he knew about the harmony of a well-ordered crew. The Captain toward the viewports, where the silent, shimmering expanding cloud of the Vanguard warship was slowly drifting out of view, "She's lying. There's friction in her words, an impatience that borders on reckless careerism."

Commodore Kovich slowly lowered his notepad onto his knee. He adjusted his spectacles with a single, precise finger, his cold, unblinking glare fixing onto Wilkan, "Commander Karys has an exemplary record regarding the mechanical stability of this vessel, Captain. She spent two months systematically scrubbing Ruon Tarka's unauthorized architecture out of the primary systems. One might argue her possessiveness over the Sulaco is merely the byproduct of meticulous craftsmanship."

"Meticulous, perhaps, but short-sighted," Wilkan countered, stepping around the desk. "On the Bridge, she viewed a tactical crisis through the lens of her own promotion schedule. She accused me of playing a 'blind gamble' with her ship. When a First Officer is more concerned with how a tactical maneuver impacts their standing with the Federation Council than the immediate survival of the crew, it creates a dangerous vulnerability." He paused, resting a hand on the edge of the desk near the desktop terminal. His El-Aurian lineage wasn't just tracking the physical debris field outside, it was processing the structural integrity of his team.

"She wants me gone, Kovich. She didn't even attempt to mask it just now. She expects me to hand over the keys the moment the ink dries on Earth's treaty."

"And does that surprise you?" Kovich asked, his tone entirely level, completely devoid of empathy or judgment. "You are a relic of a bygone era, dropped into the center chair of a modern prototype by political mandate. To a contemporary careerist like the Commander, you are a temporary bureaucratic hurdle. A ceremonial figurehead holding her chair."

"I don't care about the chair," Wilkan said flatly, his jaw setting into a rigid line. "I care about the vessel. If I step away to chase the ghosts of my past the moment this diplomatic assignment concludes, I leave a Crossfield Class prototype with an uninhibited Spore Drive in the hands of an officer who values the trophy more than the responsibility."

Kovich tilted his head slightly, the light from the viewport catching the edge of his lenses. "A compelling tactical assessment. If the Commander’s resonance is as hollow as you claim, your instinct to protect the service would naturally dictate that you remain aboard. To ensure the Sulaco doesn't fall into... inefficient hands."

Wilkan looked at the other man, contemplating the coldness behind Kovich’s words. There was a subtle weight to the Commodore’s observation, a quiet verification that felt almost calculated, but Wilkan’s mind quickly pulled back to the broader, more immediate threat. "There's another variable," Wilkan said, tapping the terminal to bring Ridan Tua’s encrypted service profile back onto the screen. "Tua. They targeted our auxiliary systems with a precision that required intimate, historical knowledge of this ship. They knew exactly how Starfleet would react, and they certainly know how Karys operates. If Karys is hunting for digital ghosts with her eyes fixed on her next rank, she'll miss the nuance. She’ll look for a standard virus loop while Tua slips through a back door I taught them how to build."

Kovich picked up his pen again, hovering it over the paper. "Then it seems your hands are full, Captain. You are caught between a former student who intends to steal your ship from the outside, and a First Officer who intends to claim it from within."

"Then we'll have to change the equation," Wilkan said, his voice tightening with an ancient, unyielding resolve. He turned back toward the sliding blue exit door. "Let's see what Elara’s scans found near that transmitter. If Tua is waiting in the dark, I intend to hear them coming."

 

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