Steady in the Noise

Posted on Tue Sep 22nd, 2026 @ 10:37am by Vaelira Daro & Captain Wilkan Targaryen

2,088 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Flashpoint
Location: Main Engineering, U.S.S. Enterprise
Timeline: Shortly after departure from Federation Headquarters

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Routine had done something to Main Engineering that the emergencies never had.

It had made the place feel larger.

Without alarms cutting across conversations or half the department crawling through open access panels, Vaelira had finally started noticing the people rather than simply what they were repairing. Faces were becoming names. She knew which engineer drank something that smelled vaguely medicinal through an entire shift, who talked to the diagnostic computer when they thought nobody was listening, and which pair had quietly developed an ongoing argument over whether the older Glenn architecture was brilliant or simply stubborn.

She was still learning the department. They were still learning her.

That was getting easier.

Vaelira stood beside the main propulsion display with one hip against the edge of the console, reading through the latest figures from the spore-drive assembly. The system had settled properly since Titan. The ugly little fluctuations she had spent hours chasing were gone, power transfer was behaving itself, and the mycelial interface had stopped giving her reasons to stare suspiciously at it in the middle of the night.

There were still scars.

Not dangerous ones. More the sort engineers remembered after everyone else had stopped talking about the battle.

She had already sent the Captain a short message asking him to come down when he had a few minutes. Nothing urgent had been added deliberately. The man had enough people summoning him with disasters without Vaelira contributing to the habit.

When he arrived, she finished what she was doing before turning from the console. There was no hurried attempt to stand straighter or manufacture military formality she did not possess. She was a civilian standing in her own workspace, and somehow that made meeting Wilkan Targaryen considerably easier than doing it across a bridge full of people.

“Before you ask, nothing’s broken,” Vaelira said. A small smile appeared. “I thought I should open with that. Apparently Engineering calling the Captain personally makes people nervous.”

She moved aside and brought up a simplified image of the propulsion system, stripping away most of the information until only a handful of readings remained. One section around the spore-drive assembly sat fractionally outside the pattern of everything surrounding it.

“This is from Titan.” She touched the relevant part of the display. “It’s stable now. I’ve checked it enough times that even I’m getting bored of checking it.”

Vaelira glanced back at him.

“But that jump sequence left its mark. Nothing we can’t handle, and nothing that stops us doing it again if we have to.” She paused, considering her next words rather than arranging them too carefully. “I suppose what I actually wanted to know is how often you think have to is going to happen.”

Her attention returned briefly to the ship around them, to the quiet pulse of the core and the machinery that had stopped feeling quite so unfamiliar.

“Because I can keep her doing remarkable things, Captain. I just need to know whether you’re planning to make remarkable the normal setting.”

Wilkan stood in the center of Main Engineering with his hands loosely interlocked behind his back, focusing his full attention on the simplified display Vaelira had highlighted. He listened to her question without an immediate response, allowing the silence between them to settle like a heavy weight. His perpetually furrowed brow remained unchanged, his face a wall of unyielding, clinical calm.

"I don't design missions around 'remarkable,' Chief," Wilkan answered softly, "I design them around survival. In my experience 'remarkable' is a metric historians use when a system is pushed beyond its intended tolerances and manages not to shatter." He stepped forward, his eyes tracking the residual trace from the Titan jump. "The Spore Drive is a tactical asset, but it's not a crutch. I won't treat this ship as an experiment; when we use it, we use it with absolute precision when left with no alternative."

Vaelira stayed quiet while he answered, her attention drifting back to the trace on the display. There was something reassuring in the distinction. Not that Wilkan intended to avoid risk, she doubted any captain could promise that with a straight face, but that he understood the difference between using what the ship could do and simply seeing how far it could be pushed.

“That’s fair,” she said eventually. “And probably close to the answer I was hoping for.”

She touched the edge of the Titan trace and let the display fold back into the wider propulsion model. “I can work with necessity. It’s easier when I know the person making that decision understands there’s a cost attached, even when the machinery survives it.”

Her eyes settled on him again, and she hesitated briefly before adding, “And Captain... Vaelira is fine.” There was no challenge in it, only a slight awkwardness around a title she still hadn’t quite grown into. “I know what you mean by ‘Chief’. I’m just not used to being one yet.”

"Titles carry weight because they define responsibility, Vaelira, not because they offer comfort," Wilkan explained softly, keeping his broad hands interlocked behind his back as he looked at her with a steady, clinical focus. "You manage the heart of this vessel. Whether you wear a uniform or not, the crew looks to you to keep us moving. That makes you the Chief, regardless of your familiarity with the term."

"However," he paused, his tone carrying a quiet authority that cut through the low thrum of the Warp Core, "if Vaelira is what anchors you to your work, then Vaelira it is. Keep monitoring those stress points. I intend to hold you to your word regarding necessity," his focus shifting back toward the Propulsion display for a brief second before settling on her once more.

Vaelira held his gaze for a moment, then looked past him toward the main engineering floor. A few of the crew were close enough that anything more personal would carry whether she intended it to or not.

“Could we move somewhere quieter?”

She nodded toward the small office set back from the main compartment and crossed to it, leaving the propulsion display behind. The difference once she was away from the open floor was immediate. The warp core was still there beneath everything, a low vibration through the deck, but the voices and console alerts had fallen back enough that she no longer felt as though half the department might accidentally become part of the conversation.

Vaelira rested one hand against the edge of the desk rather than sitting.

“I don’t mind the responsibility,” she said after a moment. “I think that’s the part I’m still getting used to. That it’s actually mine.”

She stopped there briefly, her eyes dropping to her hand.

“With Ruon, I had responsibility. A lot of it. Sometimes more than I probably should have.” The smallest crease appeared between her brows. “But it was always his work in the end. His laboratory. His theories. His name on whatever we were trying to prove. Even when I was the one keeping some of it from coming apart.”

There was no bitterness in the way she said it. If anything, that made the admission harder to place.

“I wanted him to think I was good enough to be there. For a long time that mattered more to me than I’d like it to have.”

Vaelira glanced back towards the engineering floor through the partition, where people she was only just beginning to know were moving around a ship that somehow already expected her to know what to do.

“This is different.” Her voice softened. “People come to me because they think I have the answer. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I’m standing there hoping nobody notices I’ve never run an engineering department on a starship before.”

A faint smile appeared, more embarrassed than amused.

“But it’s mine. Not the ship, obviously. I’m not developing delusions of ownership.” She looked back at Wilkan. “The work. The choices. When something goes right down here, I don’t have to wonder whether I’m allowed to be proud of it.”

She was quiet for a beat, then added more simply, “I think I like that.”

"Pride is a dangerous metric, Vaelira, if it relies on external validation," Wilkan answered, his hands interlocked behind his back as he spoke. "Ruon built a laboratory to serve his name, while you're running a department to preserve a crew. The two are fundamentally incompatible. A true leader doesn't know every variable before it presents itself, they need only the certainty to act when the variable changes. The crew don't look to you because they expect perfection... they look to you because when the primary systems fail, your voice is the one that remains steady in the noise."

"You don't need permission to own your work," Wilkan concluded, his tone returning to its familiar finality, "You've already earned it. Keep my ship intact, Vaelira; that's all the proof anyone requires."

Vaelira watched him for a few seconds after he finished, the faintest warmth settling into her expression. There was something almost impressive about the way he could offer reassurance while sounding as though he were issuing maintenance instructions.

“You don’t make it especially easy to tell when you’re being kind, do you?”

There was no tease behind it, only a quiet observation. Her gaze dropped briefly to the desk beneath her hand before she looked back at him.

“Ruon taught me more than anyone else ever has. I don’t want to diminish that just because some of it was difficult.” She paused, finding the next part less easily. “But I spent a long time measuring whether I was good enough by whether he thought I was. I’m only starting to realise how much of that I carried with me after he left.”

The steady vibration of Enterprise remained beneath her feet, familiar now in a way it had not been when she first came aboard.

“So... thank you.” Vaelira gave him a small, genuine smile. “I know you probably intended that as an expectation rather than reassurance, but I think I’ll take a little of both.”

Her attention shifted towards the engineering floor beyond the office partition. “And I’ll keep your ship intact, Captain. I’m becoming rather fond of having somewhere that needs me.”

"Expectation and reassurance serve the same function, Vaelira, if both keep the ship moving," Wilkan said softly, having listened to the subtle resonance of her relief. "Don't waste time measuring yourself against ghosts. After all, you have a department to run."

Vaelira considered that for a moment, then gave a small nod.

“I’m working on the ghosts,” she said quietly. There was no humour in it this time, but neither was there any particular sadness. “Some are easier to ignore than others.”

Her eyes drifted through the partition towards Main Engineering. One of the engineers had appeared at the propulsion console with a PADD in hand and was very deliberately pretending not to be waiting for her attention.

The sight brought a faint smile back to her face.

“But you’re right. I do have a department to run.”

Vaelira pushed away from the edge of the desk and headed for the door, pausing before she crossed back onto the engineering floor.

“Thank you, Captain.”

Nothing more elaborate followed it. It didn’t need to.

She stepped back into the familiar noise of Main Engineering, accepted the waiting PADD and was halfway through its first page before she reached the propulsion console.

Wilkan remained standing in the quiet doorway of the office, his imposing frame silent against the low hum of the Warp Core as he watched her step back out into the department. Through his El-Aurian "Listening," he tracked the subtle shift in her frequency: the fragile, lingering echo of old insecurity giving way to a steady, operational focus. He didn't call after her, nor did he allow his expression to betray the small measure of satisfaction that came with seeing the structure hold. She was integrated. The department was hers.

With his hands remaining interlocked behind his back, Wilkan turned and began his slow, deliberate walk toward the turbolift. His broad shoulders held their rigid alignment, his deep-set eyes fixing on the corridor ahead as Main Engineering continued its quiet, uninterrupted thrum behind him.

 

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