If he hadn’t already suspected something was wrong, he knew it the moment the doors of the briefing room opened. If it was an operational meeting, Lieutenant Commander Grace Ellander wouldn’t have been sitting there. He could feel it too, raw pain and grief slamming his Betazoid senses, not just from the counselor, but from Commander Cora Lee and Fleet Admiral Allison Reyes, who sat flanking her on either side. Something had gone very wrong.

“Please have a seat,” Lieutenant Commander Ellander asked gently of the hazard team as she gestured to the chairs liing the opposite side of the table. She felt for them, and what they were about to hear.

As Lieutenant Commander Ekkomas Eidran took a seat opposite Commander Lee, he noticed wet lines running down her cheeks and the redness under her nose. She’d been crying. He wanted to reach out, to comfort and to hold her, but that wouldn’t be right. Not in front of all these people. Plus, there was something more going on. “What happened?”

“War is hard,” Fleet Admiral Reyes dove straight in, knowing there was no point in small talk. In moments like this, you just had to say it as it was. “Your team, the Ingenuity and the Serenity, achieved the mission, ensuring our victory, but sometimes victory comes with a price.”

A pit began to develop in Lieutenant Commander Eidran’s stomach.

“The Serenity did not make it home.”

Those seven words sucked the air out of the room, and for a moment, there was only silence. The Serenity was their home, and its crew, they were far more than just a crew to him. Stranded in dark and lonely places on the far side of the galaxy, they had become his family.

They couldn’t be gone. They just couldn’t.

“What… what happened?” Lieutenant Commander Eidran stuttered. 

He couldn’t believe it. He just couldn’t.

The others too, those from the hazard team,sat there in shock. They’d returned in what they thought was triumph, especially after seeing the Polaris and the Ingenuity in orbit of K’t’inga.

“The last thing we saw as we retreated back into the aperture was the Serenity…” Commander Lee shared, struggling to get the words out. “The Serenity exploding.”

“What do you mean ‘as we retreated’?!” Lieutenant Commander Eidran asked.

“He told us to,” Commander Lee cried, her face falling into her hands, her eyes stricken with guilt. “He ordered us to pull away.” Captain Lewis had saved them, and then he’d turned back into the fire.

An odd mix of emotions came over Lieutenant Commander Eidran, a mix of his own and of hers. There was despair and grief, but there was anger too. “We leave no man behind. That’s what he taught us. He never would have left us behind.”

“I know, Ekko,” Commander Lee cried, the tears beginning to flow. “I know.” She knew better than anyone – or at least better than anyone but Elyssia Rel, Captain Lewis’ lover, who’d been the one at the conn, the one that’d actually turned the Ingenuity away from the fight.

It didn’t matter that Commander Lee was his girlfriend. Not now. This went beyond that. Eidran felt betrayed. Everything they’d said to each other, the promises they’d made, but then she’d turned and fled when Captain Lewis and the others needed her most. “What if you could have done something to save them?” There had to have been a way.

“I’ve asked myself every minute of every day if there was something I could have done differently,” Commander Lee sobbed, unable to lift her head from her hands. She hadn’t slept. She hadn’t eaten. She hadn’t done anything but cry in her ready room. Not since that moment.

“But there wasn’t anything you could have done,” Fleet Admiral Reyes interjected firmly. That much she knew. “The Ingenuity had breaches on a half dozen decks with a failing EPS, failing shields, and failing structural integrity. Your ship was done. Lewis made the right call to order you back. If he hadn’t, or if you hadn’t gone, we’d be mourning three hundred and forty instead of two hundred and fifty.” They were big numbers either way though.

“That does not make the emotions you’re feeling any less real though,” Lieutenant Commander Ellander counseled. “Grief takes many forms.” She even had her own survivor’s guilt she was going to have to unpack, having been on the Ingenuity at the time of the battle, but that would have to wait. The others, they needed her now.

The admiral’s description and the counselor’s normalization began to soften Eidran’s emotions. He looked over at his girlfriend. “How bad was it?” On their own sortie, they had the advantage of a trojan horse, a Manasa class gunboat they’d commandeered that let them slip past the enemy without resistance. The Ingenuity and the Serenity had no such luxury.

“It was bad, Ekko. Real fucking bad,” Commander Lee explained as she looked up at him with eyes broken by trauma, reliving that desperate moment and wishing he could understand. “We were one barrage away from the end. They even lined up that last shot, but Serenity took the hit for us, and then Captain Lewis ordered us out, saying there was nothing more we could do.”

“And he was right,” Fleet Admiral Reyes added firmly. She’d seen the logs after the Ingenuity had returned. She and Captain Vox had reviewed them, dissecting every moment of the battle. The attack had been a hail mary from the outset, the Pathfinder and the Duderstadt facing off against an Astika battlecruiser and three Manasa gunboats – and that was before the Gaul dreadnaut arrived. Given the stakes though, to go for it was the right call. And she had no doubt that when they did their final analysis, Fourth Fleet Operations would agree too.

That didn’t make it any easier to process though, except that Lieutenant Commander Eidran’s anger towards Commander Lee had begun to cool. “Is there any chance anyone made it off? The escape pods, maybe?” It was an illogical question, given the tenor of the conversation, but logic was to the wind, his mind so mixed up.

“I’m afraid not,” Commander Lee frowned. “As they raced towards the array, a dreadnought emerged from an aperture. Serenity went for it anyway, even though they had no chance.” A Duderstadt class fast cruiser could do nothing against a kilometer and a half long Gaul class juggernaut. “Right before the Serenity came apart, they blew their warp core, taking the array with them in that conflagration of matter and antimatter. An escape pod would not have survived the blast, even if one had been deployed.” Just a blinding bright explosion.

“A hero to the end,” Lieutenant Commander Sena offered, envisioning that moment in her mind. “And a star born temporarily in a warrior’s salute.” The Romulan might not have been one of them, even after six months among them, but she and Captain Lewis were kindred spirits.

“He did always warn us in training,” Lieutenant J.G. Delaney Brewster mused. She’d always thought Lewis was a bit over the top with his fatalistic view that there would come a day that each of them might have to give their life for noble purpose. “I guess he really did live his truth.”

“That he did,” Fleet Admiral Reyes agreed somberly. It made her wonder, though. They’d watched so many fall all around them, but she and Lewis, they’d been two against the galaxy. They’d always survived. Until now. Was this the war that would finally undo them all?

“So what happens now?” Petty Officer Priyanka Dhawan asked. She was less taken by death than the others. Death had been a part of her life during her hard early years on the rim, and if anything, she’d just learned to avoid clinging too hard to the lives of others.

“Standard practice would be that you all would be placed on bereavement leave,” Fleet Admiral Reyes shared, looking over at Lieutenant Commander Ellander. “But we, unfortunately, don’t have that luxury. We have to get back in the fight, and right now, your colleagues need you.” The counselor had warned against this, cautioning that these survivors – and the Ingenuity‘s crew too, for that matter – would be too emotionally compromised, but she couldn’t just leave good material on the sidelines. Not with the Vaadwaur still out there, terrorizing the galaxy.

“But we don’t have a ship…” Lieutenant Commander Eidran began to say.

“Yes, you do,” Admiral Reyes said, looking over at Commander Lee. “Ingenuity lost eighteen, including Lieutenant Commander Allen, and it could dearly use the extra hands if you all can muster it?” Otherwise, there were other assignments too, losses sustained across every ship in the squadron, especially the Diligent, but she saw advantages in keeping this group, one that’d been forged during their trials stranded in deep space, together. “It’s also okay to say you’re not in fighting shape, though.”

“I’m in,” Chief Petty Officer Kevin Abedayo nodded. He’d seen the bodies all around them in the cargobay aboard the Manasa, their five teammates that had not made it home, and he was strapping for revenge. Lieutenant J.G. Brewster and Petty Officer Dhawan nodded in concurrence. They were in too. They understood they were needed, and while shocked, they’d find a way to carry on. The frontier, back before their time in Starfleet, had taught them that.

Lieutenant Commander Eidran, though, looked over at Commander Lee. There was a problem there. “I want to, ma’am, but there’s something you should be aware of…”

Admiral Reyes raised her hand to stop him. “I am aware. Cora shared what has blossomed between you two, but unless it’s going to be a problem for you, I’m okay with it until we get on the other side of this war. We need an experienced first officer on the bridge of the Ingenuity, and that’s you.” It wasn’t like they had spare ones lying around out in the far reaches of Klingon territory, and besides, he already had relationships with the Ingenuity‘s crew, and there was strength in that too. “Just remember, your duty comes first.”

Lieutenant Commander Eidran looked over at Commander Lee. “Cora, you good with this?” He would presuppose that she was. It would be all that more complex, the two of them serving in a direct chain of command. There was a reason Starfleet had rules against that.

“I’d love you by my side, in all ways,” Commander Lee nodded. Especially now. She knew that she had a lot to work through, and so did he. She’d rather that they did it together.

“Then I’m in,” Lieutenant Commander Eidran assured the admiral. “Let’s go get our galaxy back.” And get a little revenge while they were at it, he thought to himself.

“I will be returning to the Ingenuity with you all as well,” Lieutenant Commander Ellander offered. It had been her condition to Fleet Admiral Reyes in throwing her support behind the plan. Being there, she’d be able to keep an eye on them, not just the command couple, but frankly an entire crew that, under normal conditions, should have all been put on trauma leave. “Grief is a complicated creature. It takes many forms. It will pop up at inconvenient times. Please know that my door is always open, and I will also be setting up regular sessions to check in with each of you.”

Around the room, they all nodded. Her support would genuinely be appreciated.

Admiral Reyes’ combadge suddenly chirped to life. She’d been clear she wasn’t to be interrupted, and that meant whatever it was, it couldn’t wait. She tapped it. “Reyes, go.”

“I’m sorry to interrupt ma’am, but you need to get up here.”