Convergence [1/6]

Posted on Fri Oct 2nd, 2026 @ 7:55am by Captain Jaro & Lieutenant Harinarayani Khatri & Lieutenant Commander Riaani ek'Meru

966 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Episode 1: The Fissure
Location: Deck 10 - Astrometrics
Timeline: 12 hours before arrival in the Orellia system; again

Ordinarily, when it came to tasks like the one she was currently confronted with, Raya welcomed the opportunity to fixate without interruption. She rarely vocalised the preference but one of the aspects of being Chief of Helm that she truly appreciated was the solitude that others found intimidating. Each department had characteristics that it liked to think defined it beyond comparison to others but very few argued that flight control specialists, at least successful ones, were cut from a different cloth entirely. In a ship full of moving parts, their role was to remain anchored to one spot, which was a little ironic when you considered what their primary purpose was. Responsible for the combined momentum of the entire crew and the ship they served on but only whilst tethered to a single chair in the middle of an otherwise bustling bridge. Raya enjoyed the contrast, she'd never been particularly motivated by the prospect of swimming upstream with the rest of the fish.

Accepting responsibility for this ship had never come with the assumption of ease or predictability. For all the wealth of prior experience the Federation had at its beck and call, not to mention the viability of applying known principles to new situations, uncharted territory demanded vigilance. Not only for the obvious reason of ensuring immediate safety and success but because the decisions made now would inform those who followed and, over time, the endeavours of those on the frontier became the standard for future travel. That had been the challenge that had appealed most to Raya, the opportunity to be part of the first discoveries, and the decisions that defined how to interpret them for posterity. A chance to be part of something from the very start rather than simply enjoying the product of someone else's brush with the unknown.

It wouldn't have been fair, therefore, to start complaining about the drudgery that came with countless hours of analysis prior to those decisions being made but there was no denying that the solitude she was rather fond of had started to chaff. Clarity was elusive, a taunting echo bouncing off the walls of a ravine that refused to give up its secrets without a fight. Just when she thought she'd settled on the best of her best-case-scenarios, a niggling concern had tempted her to run just one more speculative test. There were patterns in the chaos if you stared at it long enough but there was also a lot of, well, chaos. Her mind was full of it.

All this to say, she hadn't expected to appreciate ek'Meru's input quite as much as had turned out to be the case. The Kodaaj'ek had a way of listening that was unusual, at least in Khatri's experience, in that she seemed to manage to engage with the conversation without actively taking part in it. More than once, Raya had paused mid-explanation, instinctively waiting for the response she'd been conditioned to expect, only to be greeted by silence and a pensive frown. There was no doubt the Commander was paying attention, however; Raya had never had someone centre their attention on her with unwavering intensity that still somehow managed to avoid being overly aggressive. The pair of them stood either side of the projector, staring at each other through the digital star-scape that was currently riddled with dozens of flight paths, colour-coded and each about as imperfect as the next for various reasons that refused to coalesce into one actionable front-runner. Raya would have liked to say she'd come a long way since she shared a similar debrief with Jaro but, despite hours more spent on refinement, she was starting to suspect all she'd really achieved was to inch herself full circle, one fractional adjustment at a time.

"We've been able to pull enough information from long-range scans to build a modulation sequence that should allow us to blend into the turbulence. Avoiding detection is no longer our greatest point of potential failure; staying in one piece and maintaining any momentum is difficult to account for ahead of time. Our response is going to be situational, any preparation at this point is subjective. We've done what we can."

"We?"

It took Raya a moment, startled as much by the woman's decision to speak at all as by her query, to realise that ek'Meru's expression hovered somewhere between intrigued and amused. The pilot wasn't entirely sure how she knew; the woman's features had barely shifted, but her eyes were a masterclass of emotional expressiveness. Raya faltered, not usually one to be lost for a formal response. As she hesitated, Riaani finally smiled.

"It seems much of the credit belongs to you, Lieutenant." Turning her vibrant gaze to the projection, ek'Meru considered the implied effort and then added, "This is a considerable responsibility for one person to assume."

All it would take was a slight change in inflection and it could have been her father standing there. Now the one left to stare, Raya raced to interpret the Commander's intent, fueled by the suspicion of a lifetime's worth of backhanded compliments and was left with another inconclusive result to sit atop her pile of uncooperative data. It's probably just a translation issue, she chided herself, squaring her shoulders in an effort to rise above the sting of assume.

"The Captain has deployed personnel to best meet the demands of the mission," Khatri replied and desperately hoped she didn't sound as defensive as she felt.

The double pneumatic swish of the Astrometrics doors sliding open shattered the brittle atmosphere before the conversation could continue.

[TBC]

Captain Jaro
Captain
USS Amazônia

Lt. Commander Riaani ek'Meru
On-loan Executive Officer
USS Amazônia

Lieutenant Harinarayani Khatri
Chief Flight Control Officer
USS Amazônia

 

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