Editor’s Note: The events of
this story take place at the same time as the events of the story “FTL.”
Stardate 62451.9
The two women
made for an unlikely pair of traveling companions. One appeared Vulcanoid and the other was Betazoid. However, no one aboard the transport paid attention
to the two Starfleet officers.
Looming before
the viewing port that Ensign Charissa Xaran and Rear Admiral Val’ri Raiajh
stood before was the newly constructed Starbase
719 which stood at the edge of the Typhon Expanse.
There were still several
months before the starbase was to become operational. Raiajh decided that this would be a good time
to do an informal inspection and tour of the base as she was scheduled to
become assume command of the station in a few days time.
Raiajh chose to
take Charissa along not just because she wanted to spend some time with her
now-adult adopted daughter, but because Starfleet HQ insisted that she bring
along an engineering officer, and Ensign Xaran was a diagnostic engineer who
was currently assigned to the Utopia Planitia Fleetyards.
For many years
Charissa was the only child that Raiajh and her husband, Sylvan Xaran, had cared
for. Charissa’s older brother Jonathan had
remained on Betazed after the accident that had killed his and Charissa’s
parents, and he continued to reside there still. Over the years many Betazoid and Vulcan
doctors have been unable to help him out of the catatonic state that was
brought on by his parent’s tragic deaths.
Then, over the
last fifteen years, Sylvan and Val’ri, the help of Sylvan’s friend Dr. Julian
Bashir of Deep Space 9, had added four
biological brothers and sisters to the adopted Charissa and Jonathan.
Doctor Xaran and
the four younger children would be joining Raiajh on the starbase in about six
months as more areas of the station becomes operational and more staff and
their families were permitted on board.
After the
transport docked within the station, Raiajh and Ensign Xaran made their way to Operations,
where the admiral’s office was located.
Since the starbase was still under construction, it was quiet except for
the work crews finishing the interior areas of the structure. Walking through the corridors, it was evident
to see there was still a lot of work to be done.
It was still more
than six months before the base would become fully operational. Once it was, it would serve as home base for
the USS Dauntless, USS Sarek, USS
Besiege, USS Bellerophon, and the USS
Triton. Raiajh had served aboard the
Sarek as one of her crew fourteen
years earlier and aboard the Besiege
as its first commanding officer several years later still, and it was in large
part due to the admiral’s influence that both ships had been assigned to the
new base. The five ships that were to
become the reactivated Federation Fifth Fleet were embarking on new missions of
exploration of the Typhon Expanse and beyond. Starfleet and the Federation had begun to resume
missions of exploration in earnest again after many years of war with the
Dominion, the Borg Collective, and several other adversaries.
When the pair had
finally reached Operations, the control center was quiet. This part of the starbase was among the first
to reach completion. There was already a
skeleton crew on duty, responsible for monitoring systems and directing traffic
to and from the spacedock.
Lieutenant Gregory
Korolov noticed Raiajh and Xaran’s arrival in Ops and immediately snapped to
attention. “Admiral on deck,” he
exclaimed.
“As you were,”
was Raiajh’s reply. “Ensign Xaran and I
are here on an informal inspection of the starbase. The station is yours for a few more days,
Lieutenant.”
“Understood,
Admiral,” was the lieutenant’s reply.
Raiajh and Xaran
crossed the deck and entered the office overlooking Ops, the doors slowly
closing behind them.
The office was
only slightly larger than the office Raiajh had used back on Earth, and contained
similar amenities, though it was plain and undecorated.
Xaran sat on the
couch which lined part of the interior wall and looked out into space through
the window that dominated the far wall.
Raiajh sat down in
the chair behind the desk and grimaced as she found the chair to be extremely
uncomfortable. Xaran noticed her
mother’s reaction and inquired, “What’s wrong?”
“It is not like
my chair in the office on Earth. I’ll
have to have it shipped here with the remainder of the belongings your father
and I are bringing here,” Raiajh replied.
Xaran laughed.
“I’m sure the
Admiralty will find that request amusing.”
“They probably
will, Charissa.”
Space,
the Final Frontier…
Star Trek:
Fifth Fleet
“Inspection” by Nadine B. Bach
After a good
night’s rest Raiajh and Xaran started the next day walking around the
station. With no set agenda in mind,
they chose to just meander around the station and stop in different areas along
the way, assessing progress.
One of the mess
halls was the first place they stopped.
Most of the personnel who would be assigned to the starbase who were not
married or had a family preferred to take their meal in the mess as opposed to eating
alone in their quarters. The mess was
the perfect place to stop, as it was one of the first areas completed and most
likely to be occupied. Raiajh knew there
would be a private dining room for the commanding officer and other
high-ranking officers on the station, and she and Ensign Xaran would normally take
their meals there. But while the crew’s
mess was completed, the commanding officer’s private mess was not. The crew was still at work there, installing
bulkhead panels when Raiajh and Xaran stepped in.
“Carry on. We will dine in the crew’s mess,” Raiajh told
the work crew. One of the chiefs
supervising the installation replied.
“Sorry,
Admiral. I promise that we will be
cleared out and have this space functional by the start of Beta shift.”
“That’s fine,
Chief. Don’t rush on our account. I’m a few days early and evidently caught you
off guard. I have no objections to
eating in the crew’s mess.”
Raiajh and Xaran turned
and left the room, headed for the larger crew’s mess. Once there, they ordered breakfast, consisting
of mixed fruits, and moved toward a small table in the corner away from the
rest of the crew who were eating their meals.
As the pair
started to eat, the admiral’s communicator chirped. Pressing it, she spoke.
“Raiajh, here”
“Lieutenant
Korolov, ma’am. There’s a subspace communiqué
coming in for you from Admiral Janeway.”
“Lieutenant, is
the viewscreen in the commander’s dining room operational?”
“Let me check, ma’am.” Then after a quick pause, the lieutenant’s
voice returned and said, “Yes, ma’am, it is.”
“Patch the
communiqué through to there. Raiajh,
out.” She then looked at her daughter an
said, “Continue with breakfast. I’ll be
back in a moment.”
Xaran nodded and
continued eating while Raiajh left the table, several eyes of the crew at other
tables watching her as she walked into the private dining room.
“Everyone please
take a break,” Raiajh ordered the work crew.
“I have a personal message coming in.”
The chief petty
officer ordered the work crew out of the room.
When Raiajh was alone she activated the viewscreen and the image of Admiral
Kathryn Janeway appeared.
“Hello, Kathryn.”
“Hello,
Val’ri. How are things on 719?”
“I’ve been here
less than 24 hours. I haven’t even had a
chance to tour the entire base yet. But
somehow I don’t think you called just to see how I like things on a starbase at
the far reaches of Federation space.”
“Actually, I’m
calling about Ensign Xaran. If the Besiege is going to be assigned to your
starbase like you requested, she’s going to need a full crew compliment again, the
Chief of Operations wants Charissa for the engineering staff.”
“She joined
Starfleet knowing what to expect. She
will go where she is assigned. I’m not
here to see that she is not put in harms way.
However, I do appreciate being notified.”
“I know it wasn’t
necessary. I just wanted to keep you in
the loop.”
“Thanks for the
heads up, Kathryn. I’ll inform Charissa to
expect the transfer order. As she’s
already here, should I have the quartermaster assign her quarters aboard the
station until the Besiege arrives?”
“I’ll have her
assigned to Starbase 719
temporarily. She can help you get your
station up and running until her ship gets there. Janeway, out.” The screen then flashed to the image of the
Federation emblem before deactivating as Raiajh returned to the mess hall.
*
* *
Raiajh returned
to the table where Xaran had just finished her breakfast. The admiral decided that she had enough of
her own breakfast and returned the remainder to be recycled before continuing
wit htheir tour of the base. The pair
had decided to start their inspection in the reactor spaces. With the news that Raiajh had received from
Janeway, it was actually the perfect place to start.
The reactor
spaces comprised the center of two lowest decks of the first habitat section of
the space station. While there were
similarities to a starship’s engineering section, the one main difference was
the absence of a warp core. In its
place were a number of large fusion reactors that supplied power to the
station.
Raiajh took her
time inspecting the space, stopping at each control station and spending a few
moments talking with the engineers assigned there. Once the tour of the space was completed, Raiajh
and Xaran moved on. As they walked
toward the nearest turbolift, Raiajh decided to use telepathy to speak to her
daughter.
“What did you think of the reactor spaces?”
“Everything appears to be in order, and is
well run,” Xaran replied.
“Would it be someplace you would like to be
assigned?”
“It is definitely a choice assignment. However, I would like to earn such a
position on my own merit.”
“I totally understand. That communiqué I
received from Admiral Janeway was actually about you. The Chief of Starfleet
Operations has assigned you to the Besiege.”
“Will I be meeting the ship here, or do I
have to return to Utopia Planitia.”
“You will remain here until the ship arrives. You will have to have your belongings shipped
here from Utopia Planitia.”
“Understood.”
Their
conversation ended, the pair continued on in silence to their next destination,
which was the astrometrics lab. The lab
was almost complete, but unstaffed. This
area of the starbase was still about six weeks from completion. The technicians installing the equipment continued
to work as Raiajh and Xaran walked through the space before continuing on to
the hydroponics bays.
*
* *
Later that day, Xaran
and Raiajh were back in the quarters that had been assigned to the admiral. Their tour that day had covered half of the
station. They would tackle the
remaining lower levels tomorrow.
During their stop
at billeting, Ensign Xaran was assigned quarters that she would eventually share
with another member of the crew when the Besiege
was docked at the station. Since it
would be several months before the ship would arrive, it would be some time
before Xaran would know who her roommate was.
In a few days, Raiajh
would officially be taking over command of the station as prospective
commanding officer, and Xaran would be assigned duty shifts with the
engineering staff until Besiege
arrived.
The two enjoyed a
meal together in Raiajh’s quarters, plomeek broth, a salad, some spaghetti
squash and other vegetables. The meal
passed quietly. It was a reprieve for
both of them from sitting at a table with four kids all under the age of
fifteen. The oldest one was showing
signs of wanting to follow Sylvan’s path into
Not that Raiajh
did not miss Sylvan and the kids, but sometimes it was nice just to have some
peace and quiet while enjoying dinner.
When they were together, Raiajh made it a point to at least to try and
enjoy dinner with the family. Most
nights she was successful, especially back in
Xaran noticed
that her mother seemed a million light years away, and commented, “I miss them
too, Mom.”
“You are perceptive.
I do miss them. I wish they could join us sooner than six
months, but until the base is up and running…
You know as well as I do the dangers of space exploration. Remember all that time your dad spent with
Dr. Julian Bashir on Deep Space 9
working to get his memory back. What he
lost seemed so random, but his being able to remember Julian was something that
I believed helped with his recovery.”
“I remember those
days all too well. It was hard, as I was
just a few years older than Corrine is now when it happened. I was extremely happy when Dad actually
remembered who I was.”
“Same here. It was hard knowing he was alive, but not
remembering either of us. It was a bit
weird when we would take leave from the Sarek
when the ship was docked at Deep Space 9
to go visit him. At first he would just
call me Commander, then it was Commander Raiajh when he remembered. I still remember the day that we walked into DS9’s infirmary to go visit him and I
saw that look of recognition on his face. It wasn’t like when he saw ‘Commander Raiajh.’ His expression said that he remembered that his family was coming to visit.
“I remember.”
“We were all
extremely happy. It meant that the three
of us were going to be a family again.
It was shortly after that we decided to add to our family. It took a bit of time because of the Dominion
War, but with the help of your father’s friend Julian, we were able to see that
dream become reality.”
“Why don’t we
call Dad? I’m sure everyone would
appreciate it.”
“They certainly
would,” Raiajh replied before tapping her combadge. “Raiajh to Ops.”
“Korolov here,
Admiral.”
“Lieutenant, can
you set up a subspace transmission to Lt Commander Sylvan Xaran back in
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll let you know when I have the Commander
on the line.”
*
* *
A
few days later, with the inspection tour complete, Rear Admiral Raiajh stood in
Ops, alongside several of the crew that would make up some of the permanent
compliment of the starbase. Today was
the day Raiajh officially assumed command of the station.
“Effective
immediately, I am assuming command of Starbase
719,” she said to the assembled crew.
“You will find that I am a fair and easygoing commanding officer when
its business as usual. However, during
times of alert I expect you to perform at your best. Life at the edge of final frontier is not the
same as life in the heart of the Federation.
We will be facing challenges out here wilder than you can probably
imagine. You would not be here if I felt
you were not up to this challenge. Let us
make Starfleet proud of us every day.
Thank you.” Raiajh took one last
look around the space, noting how young and eager everyone gathered there
seemed before finally saying, “Dismissed.”
The
End
Return to 2385.
Return to Stories Archive.