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Meeting over lunch, Erica and M’Benga watched Spock and Pasalk as they met, Erica imagining the conversation that must have been happening across the room. “Mr. Spock, I do hope you understand why I have to throw your friend in jail simply for being who she is. Of course, Mr. Pasalk. It is only logical. Shall we play a round of Kal-toh this weekend. Yes. That would be enjoyable.”
M’Benga leaned toward her across the table, “You don’t see the tension there?”
“What tension? They’re all, like, buddy-buddy. Vulcan bros.”
M’Benga turned toward the pair. “Vulcan’s may not give much, but you can read their body language.” Erica looked across the cafeteria at the two of them with a critical eye, as if scanning an asteroid field for a path through. “And those two…hate each other.”
“Are you messing with me right now?” She asked, seriously.
Before M’Benga could stand, Spock stood up to leave. Erica and M’Benga busied themselves with their plates in front of them. Walking over to the two of them Spock paused and then apologized, “I regret that you had to witness that outburst.”
Erica and M’Benga gave each other a look. “We won’t say a word,” M’Benga promised. Erica shook her head, motioning that her mouth was sealed.
“Thank you, Doctor. Of all of my father’s former colleagues, Pasalk truly brings out the worst in me,” Spock explained before walking away.
As soon as he left the space, both Erica and M’Benga leaned in together with a chuckle.
“I guess I’m used to reading the ship. Not people,” Erica admitted.
“You don’t have to read people,” M’Benga said gently. “You read situations. Threats in space. That’s a kind of instinct of its own.”
She hadn’t thought of it that way. She’d never trained herself to parse the tiny shifts in someone’s expression or tone. The ship always told her what she needed to know. She spent her days reading the sensors, the hum of the warp core, the way the Enterprise herself wanted to move. Space had rules, expectations. But people? People were unpredictable.
She drummed her fingers against the table, restless before speaking, "I do wish there were more we could do for Una. This is someone…Starfleet really, attacking one of our own. Someone who deserves better.”
Someone who mattered.
Erica didn’t say the last part out loud.
M’Benga didn’t need her to. “You care,” he said gently. “But you’re used to caring through action. Through response. Through instinct. None of that helps when the danger sits behind a desk and regulations.”
Erica let that settle in her. It felt too accurate. The fear of losing someone who made the bridge feel right. The fear of not being able to fix it, to fly away from the threat because it wasn’t tactical. It was political. Personal.
“Yeah,” she said quietly. “Guess I’m figuring that out.”
The conversation drifted. But the unease didn’t.
—-
After months of waiting, repairs, the return to Starbase, and Una’s entire trial, it was thrilling just to be back on the bridge, ready to leave all of it in their wake.
It felt right.
Sure, she’d joke that the ship basically flew itself, but piloting her was a dance. Erica could feel the Enterprise shift under her fingertips, sense changes before the readouts caught up. Out there, she felt free.
People were not as predictable. The trial had made that abundantly clear. But somehow, in the end, they were back together. The crew was whole again.
As Pike and Una stepped onto the bridge, she felt like she could finally really relax and enjoy the ship again.
She missed being out in space more than she’d ever said out loud, but she could admit she missed the people just as much. Missed the sense of being part of a whole, everything clicking back into place. Una’s precise voice beside Pike’s steady one. Missing being part of a crew who ran toward the problem because fixing things was just who they were
Yeah, she could fly a ship on instinct alone.
But flying for people, for a crew, for the possibility of a better tomorrow, that was what made the stars worth anything.
The bridge wasn’t just operational again.
It was home.