[Coda] - The Khitomer & Ronin Command Teams - The Many Flavors of Victory

[Quentin Beck]

It's been a day for @Randal Shayne, @Nolen Hobart, @Connor Dewitt, @Karrod Niac, @Toryn Raga, @Alieth, and @Kali Nicholotti and their respective crews. Thank you for this lovely coda.

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((Deep Space Thirty Three, Commercial District, Three Hours After the Battle))

 

The frantic intensity of the last few hours had finally settled and the weary survivors of the Siege of Deep Space Thirty Three were gathering quietly, covered in dermal patches and with limbs in a variety of slings and braces, to try processing all that had occurred over the last day.  

 

Slumped in a chair at the head of the table was the station's CO, Commander Agatha Stergis, slowly chewing a Hasperat Harry’s roll she’d found in a vacuum sealed package a few meters away from the bombed out storefront.  She chewed automatically and her gaze was distant, a combination of powerful painkillers and combat fatigue dominating her every exhausted thought.  A solitary maintenance bot which had somehow avoided destruction tried to push shattered plexi out from under her chair, but it booped sadly when she simply wouldn’t move her fractured leg to allow it access.  The bot moved on, somehow robotically dejected, bouncing between debris and obstacles it had no capacity to move or repair.  Agatha glanced at the pitiable thing between crunches of her pleasantly spicy sandwich as more officers slumped, shambled and staggered towards the table.  

 

With the Ronin towed in by the Excalibur, Captain Karrod Niac was bracing himself against a cane as he made his way across the wreckage strewn deck, one arm in an osteo regenerator-brace and the side of his face covered in dermal patches.  The areas not covered in bandages or blinking medical gear were battered, distorting the spots running down his head into a continuous bruised morass.  He grunted as he bent down to right an overturned chair and grunted louder still when he sat but from a small duffle he’d thrown across one shoulder he retrieved a bottle of saurian brandy and deposited it, along with several metal cups from a survival kit, on the table.  He abandoned trying to straighten his beard almost immediately and instead focused on popping the cork and pouring silently, sliding an overfull cup to the station's commander with an exhausted nod.  No words were shared.  None were needed.  The sounds of the station were muted, and the only thing to be heard above the rhythmic chewing was the sad warble of the now trapped cleaning bot.  

 

There was a surrealness to the place as the First Officer of the Ronin, Commander Toryn Raga strode through the battle marred promenade of the commercial district. His right arm was held against his chest by a regenerator brace that covered his shoulder nearly to the nape of his neck. Minute scratches and shadows of recently healed burns pockmarked visible parts of his skin in places. Not half a day earlier the Al-Leyan had been in this very locale along with tens of dozens of his fellow Starfleet officers and crew, fighting hard and desperately for every breath, every meter, every second. Everywhere he passed the memories seared into his mind by battle popped up. The large scorch mark on the wall a few meters from the plant store was where a Sheliak plasma grenade had disintegrated two crewmen and an Ensign from Ops. He hadn’t realized he’d stopped until a somehow sad cleaning bot that was oddly intact bumped into his boot and let out a despondent warble. A quick glance around and he caught the sight of the station's Commander and his own CO at a table. There were no working replicators, so a brief detour led him to a recently familiar ice cream shop. Every step, mindful of the fallen.  He briefly thanked the Winds the establishment had survived with only moderate damage to the storefront and helped himself to one of the prepackaged containers and joined the two commanding officers. He gave Karrod the slightest of tilted nods as he sat down in a backwards facing chair and leaned exhausted over the back of it, small plastic spoon in hand and the second pint he’d grabbed set on the table in front of him. 

 

Commodore Kaliana Nicholotti of the Excalibur paused as she stepped onto the deck and tried to absorb every detail of what she could see.  Pools of bright, crystalline blue light from the scanners of search and rescue personnel fell upon one pile of debris after another, cataloging the devastation and making solemn attempts to chronicle the battles fought here. Echoes of her own history reverberated through her mind and she was reminded once again that war was hell, and while its location might change, the horrible symphony was ever the same. There were still bodies strewn across intersecting points where they had fallen in defense of whichever side they had been on, with just as many Tholian exosuits littered around as bloodied Starfleet uniforms. It would take some time before all were found and identified, leaving families panicked and worried for who knew how long.

 

Kali felt decidedly out of place as she made her way through the wreckage, feeling like some arrogant ambassador there to tour the ruins in her perfect uniform and spit-shined boots. Perhaps that was half of the reason she’d shrugged off the Starfleet uniform jacket and left it behind somewhere along her path, slinging the messenger bag across her body and moving forward. Plasteel, various metals, isolinear chips, and mystery components crunched under her boots as she made her way eventually to where the others seemed to be gathering. The silence spoke louder than any words could, even in their injured state. It didn’t surprise her, save for the fact that there was but a single bottle on the table. That was one thing she could fix.

 

A nearby crate would serve as a good enough seat, and she slid onto it and set the bag on the table. With an almost practiced flair, the raven-haired captain slipped out two bottles of bright blue, and a third a darker shade. She wasn’t sure how Genkos would feel about her sharing the wine he’d fallen into after his own scrape with trauma, but it seemed like as good a moment as any. 

 

Now there were four bottles; two of Romulan ale, one sapphire wine, and the nearly empty bottle of saurian brandy that had been there when she arrived.  

 

As the bottles were placed upon the table Toryn stared at them hungrily, the not quite cold enough ice cream melting too quickly on his tongue. Traditionally, Al-Leyan’s did not consume anything that provided an altered state of mind and yet, for the first time in a long while he considered it. Able to draw his gaze from the bottles he resumed his dessert, the previous joy he’d had from partaking in the Warp Stone Creamery muted behind the dull shroud of the aftermath of battle. 

 

At the Commodores' approach they all tried and failed to rise, slumping back heavily on whatever chairs they had as a cup materialized in front of Nicholotti  already filled.  There would be time enough for speeches and declarations of thanks later…for now gratitude was a slow nod, a thankful smile and a heavy pour.  

 

Setting aside the cost in lives, destruction, chaos, loss, horror, damage and catastrophe that was left in the wake of their desperate, almost pyrrhic hold over the Alpha Isles, Captain Randal Shayne knew the surest sign that hell had visited their little nook of the cosmos was his undershirt being comprehensively and decidedly untucked. On any other day, it would’ve been a capital violation of his sense of order in the universe.  Today, his personal grooming standards were just another casualty, one among a thousand on the eye watering butcher's bill they all had paid.  

 

Damage control was underway for the most traumatized regions of the Khitomer’s structure- enough patch jobs to get her to a better repair facility and nothing else. Once they reached that location, he knew that his normal workload would pale in comparison to the probable mountains of PADDage and information he’d need to be ready to wade through. But so long as his crew was consumed in their own work- repairs or healing, with very little besides that- Shayne was temporarily without a purpose. He knew the “get out of the way, please, sir” look well enough, and had obliged wherever possible, eventually finding himself on the station, looking like he’d just made love to a rabid Caitian, and generally helping out as much as his bruised body would permit. Here’s a hand, there’s a hand, everywhere a ha- oh, that’s an actual hand. He moved on. 

 

Turning a corner, his eyes caught sight of numerous slow movements and shifting colors. He squinted, his brain processing ineffectively. Captain Niac, and his Al-Leyan XO; Commodore Nicholotti, the station’s commander… what was her name… something fishy… were all gathered together, somberly munching on discarded food products in the afterscape of a detonated store front, and drinking with heavy deliberation. 

 

Shayne approached and bent down to pick up scattered hasperat packages, spread unevenly a dozen or more meters from their former locale.  By the time he reached the table he’d collected a small, slightly scorched, armful. He dumped them unceremoniously onto the table, then dragged a battered chair upright and groaned into it. He reached for the nearest bottle on the table- a blue one- and a cup. Carefully, thoughtfully, he poured a small amount of liquid into the cup, then placed the cup in the middle of the table and took a worryingly long swig from the bottle. 

 

Connor's body felt tired in a way it had never before. He had forgotten the PADD he had intended to bring to the meeting, but at this point, he did not care anymore. Things on the Khitomer looked dire. They had lost crew members, people he cared about. But the station they had fought for did not look any better. Walking the halls and the decks, counting bodies, changed something deep inside him. It had been mere hours that the Lattice Alliance had needed to destroy what was so dear to him, to take so much from a community that wanted to live in peace and explore. It was not the first time that Ginny's words echoed in his mind today.

 

Talia had applied dermal patches to his head wound and worked some magic on his foot. Now that the adrenaline wore off, he still felt the pain and walked with a slight limp. But it was not his body that hurt the most. It was the fatigue his mind experienced. Everything felt dull, as if he were experiencing it through a big ball of cotton. Connor's eyes looked down at the piece of debris in his left hand. It was a piece of bulkhead painted in blue - a white star in its center. The Khitomer's second officer did not even know why he took it. A piece of a shattered Starfleet insignia was not exactly a happy keepsake. But at this point something inside him wanted to keep it.

 

As he approached the bunch of officers around the table, their appearances perfectly resembled Connor's state of mind. A couple of bottles were at the center of the table. Connor took a mug and held it out to Shayne so he could pour some of that blue liquid inside. Connor just nodded slightly before putting his back against the wall and letting himself slide towards the ground. He took a sip. It was strong. But it was the best thing he had had over the last hours.

 

It had taken Lt. Commander Hobart the better part of an hour to cut his way out of a sealed compartment. After Private Jones died on Deck 1, he gathered his handful of Ensigns and meant to make for Ops, just down the hall. Only the blast doors shut on both ends of their compartment, which at first seemed like a trap, and only moments later felt like a blessing. A few decks down, somebody had blown up a warhead inside the station, and it had knocked him from his feet again, which had knocked him on his broken ribs, again. He badly needed a break. The other kind.

 

Nolen hardly noticed the others, at first. When he did, in light of the high ratio of pips to pip-bearing necks, he half-expected that this would be where they got dressed down by some far-off Admiral who’d missed all the fighting and was there to tell them all the different ways they’d screwed up. But, no, this was a reprieve. He wondered exactly which forms he needed to file, and the priority in which he should select them. Nolen settled in after a time, lost in thought, near his best friend who’d come over from the Khitomer. He tried sitting down next to Dewitt once or twice, but the pain in his sides persuaded him that standing was better.

 

A time passed in which there were only glances that were filled with understanding, sips of drinks that were designed to liquify organs and that slow, ruminating chewing of someone who no longer had any energy left in them and tried, by any means possible, to get some of it to keep their eyes open.

 

A light flickered. Behind them, a voice rang out, warning of something. A laugh. A happy meeting, perhaps.

 

Then silence, and, of course, a new swig.

 

In the weary silence that followed, a small figure stepped in, gracefully dodging the debris, the holes and the desperate robot that was still trying to perform the Sisyphean task that cleaning up the station had become.

 

The tiny form was clad in blue, the gait confident, purposeful. The uniform she wore, impeccable, perhaps with the slightest hint of a trace of soot here and there, or a slight stiffness in the sleeves that had been promptly fixed and subjected to the levels of correctness and perfection that only a Vulcan could attain.

 

And so, amidst the ruins of what had been the brass of the two ships and the station, Alieth had arrived, flawless, pristine, perfect, her hairstyle so neat and tight that the ponytail seemed to pull the skin of her face even more tightly to the point of tilting her already heavily slanted eyebrows. She looked at all present sternly, with the inquisitive gaze of one who has been a medical professional and only saw patients disobeying whatever recommendations they had been given to keep their bones together and their organs in place.

 

Upon inspection, she shook her head faintly with that indignant disapproval that only a serenely unruffled face could deliver. The locks of hair that used to frame her face escaped their confinement, shattering just a bit her image of Vulcan perfection.

 

Looking all around, she spotted a box, and with a controlled tap of her foot, pushed it next to the Ronin sector of the gathering.

 

Then, she sat down dignifiedly on the makeshift seat, as if she were sitting in Chi-ree's finest teahouse and, just for a moment, slung the satchel she had been carrying over her shoulder to her lap.

 

She pulled open the zip and, little by little, began to pull out containers from inside. Hot food, simple but rich dishes for weary bodies, candy to sweeten the sadness, and a little plomeek soup for the katra. And, strangely, a little mountain of gummy bears.

 

She didn't eat, since it was taboo to eat with her hands, as her companions and friends did. Neither did she drink the alcoholic beverages, for there was no need to try to intoxicate her body with substances that were not going to get her inebriated anyway.

 

But she poured herself a single cup of tea, and tucked a disheveled lock of hair behind her pointed ear, the only sign of the adventure she had had.

 

Afterwards, she made sure that everyone ate and drank, that they found comfort in the food and the companionship. And that everyone returned to their temporary quarters as the hours grew short and hearts, heavy.

 

Eventually all that remained active in the commercial sector of the station was a solitary cleaning bot who, at last, chirped merrily to itself before returning to its charging dock.

 

[End]

 

=======================

 

Representing the U.S.S. Khitomer

 

Captain Randal Shayne

Commanding Officer

USS Khitomer

NCC 62400

G239202RS0

 

&

 

Lt. Commander Nolen Hobart

Executive Officer

USS Khitomer (NCC-62400)

A240001NH3

 

&

 

LtCmdr Connor Dewitt

Chief Engineer & Second Officer

USS Khitomer

A239901CD

 

Representing the U.S.S. Ronin

 

Captain Karrod Niac

Commanding Officer

USS Ronin - NCC-34523

V239509GT0

 

&

 

Commander Toryn Raga

First Officer

USS Ronin - NCC-34523

Writer ID: A239410TR0

 

&

 

Lieutenant Commander Alieth

Chief Science Officer & 2O

USS Ronin USS-34523

E239702A10 

 

With Special Guests

 

Commodore Kalianna Nicholotti

Commanding Officer

USS Excalibur - A

R238605KN0

 

&

 

Commander Agatha Stergis

Starfleet Liaison Officer

Deep Space Thirty Three

V239509GT0

 

((OOC:  My sincerest thanks to all involved for your absolutely incredible contributions to this epic adventure!))

 

Edited September 18 by Quentin Beck