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You’re taken to the bridge deck and shown to the Captain’s ready room. Large metal doors react to your presence, hissing open and you tentatively step inside his domain. Your security escort remains outside the doors, and you walk almost autonomously through the room, approaching a stern-looking, middle-aged man with thinning, grey-black hair. The poor man’s Captain Pike. You can’t help but compare any other fleet captain with your own, and few could ever match Pike’s morality, honor, intellect, compassion, or good looks.
The man is behind a chrome desk, devoid of anything except a large viewscreen which he deactivates, hiding whatever he was working on from your curious gaze. You concentrate on maintaining the most confident, collected expression you can muster, yet inside you’re on red alert. Your peripheral vision takes in the ready room, which is sterile and dominated by chrome surfaces and uncomfortable looking furniture.
“Lieutenant [Y/L/N]. We meet at last. I’m Captain Forster of the USS Venaris. I can’t tell you how relieved we were to find you and your captain,” he states, coming around his desk and outstretching his hand. You return his gesture, shaking his hand, and something in his grip lets you know he is not someone to be trifled with.
“Thank you, Captain. I’m also… Relieved,” you state, and he gestures for you to take a seat. You comply, and you sit across from each other on grey chairs with cushioning as hard as rock. Captain Forster leans back in the chair, bracing himself on the chair’s arms, sizing you up. This isn’t going to go well for you…
***
The next hour is a whirlwind of information and inquiries, and you try your best to keep up but Captain Forster is a master interrogator. His questions seem standard, yet you can tell there’s more going on than he’s letting on. You try to ask what happened after you and Captain Pike had picked up the containment pod from the research station, and he allows you some information. You start piecing things together.
There was a leak in Starfleet, and someone on the station had sold you out to a criminal organization. A terrorist group, intent on destroying the Federation and all it stands for. The informant was apprehended, and is currently on a penal planet, awaiting a trial that will take far too long to commence. The system is flawed, and there is corruption, subterfuge, and suffering. But you truly believe in the Federation. In Starfleet. In what it stands for, what it is at its best. It’s not just an ideal. It’s a reality, and people like you bring it ever-closer to the prosperous, flourishing alliance of multiple races and cultures that it will be one day.
“I’ll ask you again, Lieutenant, what is in the containment pod?” Captain Forster reiterates, his brow furrowed, the look on his face dangerous, testing. You’re positive he knows about Omega. All fleet captains are briefed on the particle, the Omega Directive, Chris told you that much. You’re perceptive enough to know that Forster suspects you have knowledge of Omega, too, and he’s trying to trip you up.
You don’t know what to do. What will happen to Chris if they know he told you about Omega? The punishment for its disclosure is dismissal from Starfleet, or worse. This is serious. You can’t lie. But you can’t sell Chris out. You’re so drained, exhausted, you can barely keep yourself upright in the chair… Maybe this was their plan all along. To have you weak, vulnerable…
“Talk to Captain Pike,” you state, your voice unwavering, intentional.
“I asked you a question, Lieutenant,” the captain growls, and you feel the heat in your cheeks again. You’ve had enough. This isn’t right. You have rights.
“Why are interrogating me?!,” you demand, your cool fading with each passing moment. “We followed orders! We kept the pod safe! You have it now, so why are you treating me like a criminal?!”
“These are standard questions, Lieutenant. Nothing personal,” he quips back shortly, and you can tell from his expression he’s pleased to have gotten to you. You yearn for your own Captain, the man you know so well, who would never treat you, or any officer, like this.
“I’m not saying any more right now. You need to talk to Captain Pike,” you tell him, straightening your back, squaring your shoulders slightly, letting him know you will not be pushed around. You’ve been through interrogations before, and have been trained to handle intense scrutiny and dire conditions.
The Captain backs off, calling your security escort back in. He instructs them to show you to your crew quarters, and you get up wearily, refusing to look the man in the eyes as you follow the crewmen out of the ready room and back through the winding corridors of the Venaris.
You’re taken to one of the vacant quarters, which will be yours until you arrive back at… Earth? Will they take you to Earth, to Starfleet Command? Or are they going to throw you in a penal colony, too! The doors to the quarters hiss shut behind you and you’re alone at last. In more ways than one.
Your room is standard and starkly furnished, with a sofa, coffee table, double bed, and night tables. A faux window on one side shows stars outside, but you know it’s just an image on a screen. A tray of cold food rests on the coffee table, and you walk to the sofa, slumping down on it. You have no appetite right now. You feel just awful. For months now you’ve imagined the day you and Chris would be rescued, and hoped so badly it would come. This is nothing like you’d imagined.
You force yourself to get ready for bed, using the bathroom and letting the cleansing acoustic wavelengths of the sonic shower remove any last traces of the planetoid you spent the past few months on. You put on some Starfleet-issue sweatpants and a t-shirt and trudge over to the bed, pulling open the covers and climbing in. The mattress is new and stiff, but much more comfortable than the cot you’ve been sleeping on lately.
You think about turning the lights off, but decide to leave the bedside lamp on, needing comfort in your unfamiliar surroundings. You lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, your heart wrenching as you miss Chris so badly. You cry yourself into an uneasy slumber, passed out from exhaustion for several hours, until a beep at the door prods you awake…