04-30-2026, 02:44 PM
Riley had just sent the corrected failure-point package back to Holodeck 2 when the Bridge relay advanced across the Security Complex’s main display.
For half a second, she simply looked at it.
The main display had been carrying the holodeck telemetry: corridor schematic, lifesign tags, weapons discharges, lane integrity markers, reserve response timing, surrender-point flags. It was the cleanest way to make the whole room see the same problem at once. Now it was showing a Bridge update.
[Chertstone: requested registry details for vessel listed as 'Disreputable Damsel’]
Riley felt the smallest tightening at the corner of her jaw and did not let it become anything else.
That was the main board.
Some part of her wanted to be annoyed. A very practical part, actually. She had been using that screen to keep the drill anchored, and losing it meant the holodeck telemetry would have to be compressed down to consoles and auxiliary boards where everyone would work harder to see the same pattern.
But she did not say that out loud.
She did not know who had routed the relay there, or why. She did know that the main display was not something people casually hijacked in the Security Complex without a reason, a standing protocol, or someone’s authority behind it. In the middle of a border crisis, assuming incompetence first was a good way to become the least useful person in the room.
So Riley adapted.
She shifted the holodeck telemetry down to her console and pushed the corrected failure-point overlays to the nearest auxiliary board. Not as clean. Not ideal. Usable.
Usable is enough. Keep moving.
That still left Janet Guerrero at the receiver station, working the Bridge feed as it came in. Riley did not take the station from her. She did not reach over her shoulder, did not start issuing corrections, and did not ask for a report Guerrero was already in the middle of building. That was how officers turned useful NCOs into annoyed ones.
Instead, Riley moved close enough to see Janet’s console and the main display at the same time, one hand still near her own controls as the Holodeck 2 sim continued to run in compressed form on the auxiliary board.
It was, Riley realized, hovering.
Controlled hovering. Professionally restrained hovering.
Still hovering.
She glanced briefly toward Guerrero, then kept her voice low enough not to pull the whole room into it. “You’re doing fine, Guerrero. I know I’m hovering. Keep the feed yours.”
Riley did not wait for reassurance back. The point was not to make Guerrero manage her nerves on top of the Bridge relay. The point was to make sure the NCO knew Riley’s proximity was attention, not distrust.
The returned information unfolded beneath the first relay line, and Riley split herself between three things at once: the new Bridge data, the sim’s reserve timing, and the receiver console where the incoming text was being shaped into something Security could use.
She read the report once for the facts, then again for the gaps.
Captain Obadiah Heathridge and the Disreputable Damsel had reportedly been caught crossing the Talarian border by a Cardassian patrol squadron a little over a week earlier. The Damsel had sent a distress signal, Starfleet had responded with a runabout, and eyewitness accounts placed Heathridge’s vessel between the Cardassians and a Talarian refugee convoy. The ship had been destroyed. The refugees had escaped back into Federation space under escort. Heathridge had survived, but was stable and unresponsive in Starbase 214’s Medical Bay. What remained of the Damsel was being held in parking orbit, declared a total loss pending further disposition.
Somewhere in the receiver workflow, Guerrero had already requested the Starbase reports and copied Starfleet Command. Riley caught that detail, filed it, and left it alone.
Good. Let her work.
On the auxiliary board, Holodeck 2’s telemetry ticked forward. The corrected surrender-point drill was still playing out in miniature, all movement traces and tagged lanes instead of bodies and voices. Reserve timing looked cleaner. The casualty lane held this time by a wider margin. Containment did not drift inward.
Then Riley’s eyes flicked back to the main display.
The room did not go silent this time.
It tightened.
Riley felt it happen before anyone spoke. The same way a corridor narrowed before a fight, not because the bulkheads moved, but because everyone inside suddenly understood there was less room than they had thought.
A civilian ship put itself between refugees and Cardassian patrol craft.
The thought landed harder than she wanted it to. Maybe because the drill they had just run had been about surrender points and casualty lanes. Maybe because she had spent the last hour trying to force Security to leave room for the moment an enemy stopped being only an enemy. Or maybe because there was something painfully simple about the image: an old ship, outmatched, deciding that being too small to win was not the same thing as being allowed to move aside.
Riley did not let herself stare at the report for too long. She checked the sim again. Reserve moved. Cover angle held. Medical lane stayed open.
Useful.
Not enough.
She let the relay remain what it was: information coming down from the Bridge, incomplete until the supporting reports arrived, useful but not yet finished. Some of the phrasing already made her want more. Reportedly. Eyewitness accounts. Cardassian patrol statement. Starfleet runabout response. Medical status. Engineering assessment. Each one was a different kind of truth, and none of them were the whole truth by themselves.
Careful, she warned herself. Heroic does not mean simple.
Halden had moved close enough to read the main display without pretending he was not interested. His heavy brow furrowed as the last of the summary settled into place.
“A smuggler can still do one brave thing,” he said.
Marek’s blue features sharpened. “And one brave thing does not tell us why the Cardassians opened fire.”
Tovan looked between the two of them, then at Riley. “It changes the priority, though, doesn’t it?”
Riley let the question sit for half a breath. She appreciated that he had asked it as a question instead of declaring an answer he had not earned yet.
“It changes the frame,” she said. “Maybe Heathridge was what Command thought he was. Maybe he was more. Maybe he was less. But right now he’s a comatose witness, his ship is evidence, and the refugees he protected may still be the reason this happened.”
Halden grunted. “Or the bait.”
“Also possible,” Riley said without flinching. “Which is why nobody in this room is going to romanticize the report into something easier to handle.”
She softened her tone by a degree, not enough to blunt the point, but enough to keep it aimed at the work instead of anyone in particular.
“The Damsel’s action matters,” Riley continued. “So does the fact that we don’t know whether the convoy was targeted because of who they were, what they carried, where they came from, or who they were with. Until we know, survivors, medical records, and wreckage all matter.”
Marek nodded once, slow and clinical. “Station-side security problem, then.”
“Possibly,” Riley said. “Medical Bay access, refugee protection, evidence control, wreck perimeter, and any Cardassian interest in finishing whatever they started.”
Tovan’s jaw tightened. “You think they might try for Heathridge?”
“I think if someone destroys a ship and leaves the captain alive by accident, they may eventually decide whether that accident matters.”
The words felt colder once they were in the room. Riley did not take them back. Security was not helped by making ugly possibilities sound polite.
The Bridge relay advanced again with a short notation.
[First Officer on the Bridge]
Riley absorbed it, checked Janet’s console for any accompanying context, then turned her attention back to the holodeck configuration. The corrected drill file waited where she had left it: primary reserve owned prisoner movement, secondary reserve covered the junction, containment held shape, Medical lane remained a lane. It had been built for a boarding action aboard the Yeager.
That was still necessary.
It was no longer sufficient.
She added a new branch to the scenario tree.
Marek noticed first. “You’re modifying the next run.”
“Yes.”
Halden squinted at her console. “Refugee markers?”
“Civilian movement markers,” Riley corrected. “Refugees, survivors, station personnel, injured crew, hostile casualties, or confused people standing exactly where they shouldn’t. The label matters less than the behavior.”
“It matters a great deal if one of those confused people is hiding a weapon,” Halden said.
“That’s why the cover angle stays,” Riley replied. “We are not removing suspicion. We are disciplining it.”
The Tellarite stared at her for a second, then gave a short, rough laugh through his nose. “That sounds like something they teach officers right before officers get other people shot.”
Riley felt the old urge to over-answer rise in her chest. To prove she had thought it through. To make sure nobody mistook restraint for softness or compassion for a tactical blind spot. Instead, she looked at the display and made one more clean adjustment before answering.
“No,” she said. “It’s what they should teach everyone before fear makes them shoot the wrong person.”
That held the room for a beat.
Riley did not look away from the console, partly because the work required attention and partly because she did not want anyone to see how close the words had cut to something personal. Tomer surfaced again at the edge of her mind, unwanted and instructive. Suspicion narrowing the frame. A person becoming a problem. A lesson she had no intention of needing twice.
Not again.
She highlighted the added civilian markers and assigned them unpredictable movement profiles. Some would obey orders. Some would panic. One might conceal a weapon. One might collapse in the casualty lane. Another might run toward a familiar face instead of toward the evacuation route. The program accepted each variable with cheerful indifference.
Of course you do, Riley thought. You don’t have to live with the results.
Her eyes flicked back to Janet’s console once more. Not long. Just enough to catch whether the Bridge had added anything that changed the shape of the work. Then back to the sim. Reserve timing. Civilian movement. Lane integrity.
She was starting to feel like she had split herself into pieces: one officer watching the drill, one watching the Bridge feed, one watching the people in the room reacting to both.
None of those pieces were optional.
“Next run starts at the corrected failure point,” she said aloud. “Same surrender sequence. Same casualty lane. Add civilian interference and station-side confusion. I want to see whether the fix survives contact with people who are scared, injured, or not listening.”
Tovan exhaled quietly. “That’s going to get ugly fast.”
“Then it gets ugly in the holodeck first.”
Marek leaned closer to the display. “If this is station-side, Medical traffic will not move like shipboard Medical. Too many external variables. Different personnel habits. Civilians won’t recognize our call sequence.”
“Then we need universal calls.” Riley tapped the phrase she had entered earlier. “Disarm, secure, shift works for us. It may mean nothing to a frightened civilian. Add a second layer for non-Security personnel: ‘Stay down. Hands visible. Follow the light.’ We can route floor markers and emergency strobes if the station supports it.”
Halden snorted. “You are assuming Starbase 214’s emergency systems are cooperating.”
“I’m assuming they may not,” Riley said. “Which is why the drill uses both functioning and degraded markers.”
This time Halden’s grunt sounded less like objection and more like reluctant satisfaction.
Riley’s eyes flicked once toward the main display again, then to Guerrero’s receiver station, where the relay remained the proper place for whatever came next. The Damsel report still occupied the board, stubborn and unfinished.
It made the Security Complex feel smaller somehow.
Not physically. Operationally.
A possible boarding action was one problem. A damaged refugee convoy, a comatose captain, a destroyed civilian ship, Cardassian involvement, and whatever waited at Starbase 214 was another. The two problems had not merged yet, not officially.
But they were close enough for Security to prepare as though they might.
Riley turned back to the gathered team. Their attention was on her again, but it felt different from earlier. Less like they were evaluating whether the new Ensign knew where to stand. More like they were waiting to see where the work went next.
That was not comfort.
It was responsibility.
She straightened. “We continue the drills. Defensive containment, offensive boarding, concealed armor, surrender handling, and now civilian interference under degraded station conditions. Until Chief d’Tor’an returns or Command redirects us, our job is readiness, not theory.”
Halden folded his arms. “And the Damsel?”
“The Damsel is now part of readiness.”
Marek’s mouth tightened in approval. “Evidence security.”
“Witness protection,” Tovan added.
Riley nodded once. “Refugee safety, too.”
For a moment, the room held the shape of it: shipboard Security preparing for a possible fight while the facts ahead of them kept expanding into something uglier and more human. Not just Cardassians. Not just borders. Not just one questionable captain and an old wreck in orbit.
People.
Always people.
That was the part that made Security harder than tactics and more important than force. Anyone could draw a firing line. The real work was knowing what still had to be protected after the line was drawn.
Riley keyed the revised drill package to Holodeck 2.
“Holodeck team, this is Wright,” she said. “Updated scenario coming through. Reset to the failure point. Add civilian movement markers, degraded station lighting, partial emergency guidance failure, and one non-compliant casualty in the lane. Same corrected call sequence. Same reserve responsibilities.”
She paused, eyes flicking once to the Damsel summary still occupying the main display.
“Run it until the corridor stops arguing with itself.”
She closed the channel and looked back at the Security personnel in front of her.
“Alright,” Riley said. “Let’s make the next mistake useful.”
For half a second, she simply looked at it.
The main display had been carrying the holodeck telemetry: corridor schematic, lifesign tags, weapons discharges, lane integrity markers, reserve response timing, surrender-point flags. It was the cleanest way to make the whole room see the same problem at once. Now it was showing a Bridge update.
[Chertstone: requested registry details for vessel listed as 'Disreputable Damsel’]
Riley felt the smallest tightening at the corner of her jaw and did not let it become anything else.
That was the main board.
Some part of her wanted to be annoyed. A very practical part, actually. She had been using that screen to keep the drill anchored, and losing it meant the holodeck telemetry would have to be compressed down to consoles and auxiliary boards where everyone would work harder to see the same pattern.
But she did not say that out loud.
She did not know who had routed the relay there, or why. She did know that the main display was not something people casually hijacked in the Security Complex without a reason, a standing protocol, or someone’s authority behind it. In the middle of a border crisis, assuming incompetence first was a good way to become the least useful person in the room.
So Riley adapted.
She shifted the holodeck telemetry down to her console and pushed the corrected failure-point overlays to the nearest auxiliary board. Not as clean. Not ideal. Usable.
Usable is enough. Keep moving.
That still left Janet Guerrero at the receiver station, working the Bridge feed as it came in. Riley did not take the station from her. She did not reach over her shoulder, did not start issuing corrections, and did not ask for a report Guerrero was already in the middle of building. That was how officers turned useful NCOs into annoyed ones.
Instead, Riley moved close enough to see Janet’s console and the main display at the same time, one hand still near her own controls as the Holodeck 2 sim continued to run in compressed form on the auxiliary board.
It was, Riley realized, hovering.
Controlled hovering. Professionally restrained hovering.
Still hovering.
She glanced briefly toward Guerrero, then kept her voice low enough not to pull the whole room into it. “You’re doing fine, Guerrero. I know I’m hovering. Keep the feed yours.”
Riley did not wait for reassurance back. The point was not to make Guerrero manage her nerves on top of the Bridge relay. The point was to make sure the NCO knew Riley’s proximity was attention, not distrust.
The returned information unfolded beneath the first relay line, and Riley split herself between three things at once: the new Bridge data, the sim’s reserve timing, and the receiver console where the incoming text was being shaped into something Security could use.
She read the report once for the facts, then again for the gaps.
Captain Obadiah Heathridge and the Disreputable Damsel had reportedly been caught crossing the Talarian border by a Cardassian patrol squadron a little over a week earlier. The Damsel had sent a distress signal, Starfleet had responded with a runabout, and eyewitness accounts placed Heathridge’s vessel between the Cardassians and a Talarian refugee convoy. The ship had been destroyed. The refugees had escaped back into Federation space under escort. Heathridge had survived, but was stable and unresponsive in Starbase 214’s Medical Bay. What remained of the Damsel was being held in parking orbit, declared a total loss pending further disposition.
Somewhere in the receiver workflow, Guerrero had already requested the Starbase reports and copied Starfleet Command. Riley caught that detail, filed it, and left it alone.
Good. Let her work.
On the auxiliary board, Holodeck 2’s telemetry ticked forward. The corrected surrender-point drill was still playing out in miniature, all movement traces and tagged lanes instead of bodies and voices. Reserve timing looked cleaner. The casualty lane held this time by a wider margin. Containment did not drift inward.
Then Riley’s eyes flicked back to the main display.
The room did not go silent this time.
It tightened.
Riley felt it happen before anyone spoke. The same way a corridor narrowed before a fight, not because the bulkheads moved, but because everyone inside suddenly understood there was less room than they had thought.
A civilian ship put itself between refugees and Cardassian patrol craft.
The thought landed harder than she wanted it to. Maybe because the drill they had just run had been about surrender points and casualty lanes. Maybe because she had spent the last hour trying to force Security to leave room for the moment an enemy stopped being only an enemy. Or maybe because there was something painfully simple about the image: an old ship, outmatched, deciding that being too small to win was not the same thing as being allowed to move aside.
Riley did not let herself stare at the report for too long. She checked the sim again. Reserve moved. Cover angle held. Medical lane stayed open.
Useful.
Not enough.
She let the relay remain what it was: information coming down from the Bridge, incomplete until the supporting reports arrived, useful but not yet finished. Some of the phrasing already made her want more. Reportedly. Eyewitness accounts. Cardassian patrol statement. Starfleet runabout response. Medical status. Engineering assessment. Each one was a different kind of truth, and none of them were the whole truth by themselves.
Careful, she warned herself. Heroic does not mean simple.
Halden had moved close enough to read the main display without pretending he was not interested. His heavy brow furrowed as the last of the summary settled into place.
“A smuggler can still do one brave thing,” he said.
Marek’s blue features sharpened. “And one brave thing does not tell us why the Cardassians opened fire.”
Tovan looked between the two of them, then at Riley. “It changes the priority, though, doesn’t it?”
Riley let the question sit for half a breath. She appreciated that he had asked it as a question instead of declaring an answer he had not earned yet.
“It changes the frame,” she said. “Maybe Heathridge was what Command thought he was. Maybe he was more. Maybe he was less. But right now he’s a comatose witness, his ship is evidence, and the refugees he protected may still be the reason this happened.”
Halden grunted. “Or the bait.”
“Also possible,” Riley said without flinching. “Which is why nobody in this room is going to romanticize the report into something easier to handle.”
She softened her tone by a degree, not enough to blunt the point, but enough to keep it aimed at the work instead of anyone in particular.
“The Damsel’s action matters,” Riley continued. “So does the fact that we don’t know whether the convoy was targeted because of who they were, what they carried, where they came from, or who they were with. Until we know, survivors, medical records, and wreckage all matter.”
Marek nodded once, slow and clinical. “Station-side security problem, then.”
“Possibly,” Riley said. “Medical Bay access, refugee protection, evidence control, wreck perimeter, and any Cardassian interest in finishing whatever they started.”
Tovan’s jaw tightened. “You think they might try for Heathridge?”
“I think if someone destroys a ship and leaves the captain alive by accident, they may eventually decide whether that accident matters.”
The words felt colder once they were in the room. Riley did not take them back. Security was not helped by making ugly possibilities sound polite.
The Bridge relay advanced again with a short notation.
[First Officer on the Bridge]
Riley absorbed it, checked Janet’s console for any accompanying context, then turned her attention back to the holodeck configuration. The corrected drill file waited where she had left it: primary reserve owned prisoner movement, secondary reserve covered the junction, containment held shape, Medical lane remained a lane. It had been built for a boarding action aboard the Yeager.
That was still necessary.
It was no longer sufficient.
She added a new branch to the scenario tree.
Marek noticed first. “You’re modifying the next run.”
“Yes.”
Halden squinted at her console. “Refugee markers?”
“Civilian movement markers,” Riley corrected. “Refugees, survivors, station personnel, injured crew, hostile casualties, or confused people standing exactly where they shouldn’t. The label matters less than the behavior.”
“It matters a great deal if one of those confused people is hiding a weapon,” Halden said.
“That’s why the cover angle stays,” Riley replied. “We are not removing suspicion. We are disciplining it.”
The Tellarite stared at her for a second, then gave a short, rough laugh through his nose. “That sounds like something they teach officers right before officers get other people shot.”
Riley felt the old urge to over-answer rise in her chest. To prove she had thought it through. To make sure nobody mistook restraint for softness or compassion for a tactical blind spot. Instead, she looked at the display and made one more clean adjustment before answering.
“No,” she said. “It’s what they should teach everyone before fear makes them shoot the wrong person.”
That held the room for a beat.
Riley did not look away from the console, partly because the work required attention and partly because she did not want anyone to see how close the words had cut to something personal. Tomer surfaced again at the edge of her mind, unwanted and instructive. Suspicion narrowing the frame. A person becoming a problem. A lesson she had no intention of needing twice.
Not again.
She highlighted the added civilian markers and assigned them unpredictable movement profiles. Some would obey orders. Some would panic. One might conceal a weapon. One might collapse in the casualty lane. Another might run toward a familiar face instead of toward the evacuation route. The program accepted each variable with cheerful indifference.
Of course you do, Riley thought. You don’t have to live with the results.
Her eyes flicked back to Janet’s console once more. Not long. Just enough to catch whether the Bridge had added anything that changed the shape of the work. Then back to the sim. Reserve timing. Civilian movement. Lane integrity.
She was starting to feel like she had split herself into pieces: one officer watching the drill, one watching the Bridge feed, one watching the people in the room reacting to both.
None of those pieces were optional.
“Next run starts at the corrected failure point,” she said aloud. “Same surrender sequence. Same casualty lane. Add civilian interference and station-side confusion. I want to see whether the fix survives contact with people who are scared, injured, or not listening.”
Tovan exhaled quietly. “That’s going to get ugly fast.”
“Then it gets ugly in the holodeck first.”
Marek leaned closer to the display. “If this is station-side, Medical traffic will not move like shipboard Medical. Too many external variables. Different personnel habits. Civilians won’t recognize our call sequence.”
“Then we need universal calls.” Riley tapped the phrase she had entered earlier. “Disarm, secure, shift works for us. It may mean nothing to a frightened civilian. Add a second layer for non-Security personnel: ‘Stay down. Hands visible. Follow the light.’ We can route floor markers and emergency strobes if the station supports it.”
Halden snorted. “You are assuming Starbase 214’s emergency systems are cooperating.”
“I’m assuming they may not,” Riley said. “Which is why the drill uses both functioning and degraded markers.”
This time Halden’s grunt sounded less like objection and more like reluctant satisfaction.
Riley’s eyes flicked once toward the main display again, then to Guerrero’s receiver station, where the relay remained the proper place for whatever came next. The Damsel report still occupied the board, stubborn and unfinished.
It made the Security Complex feel smaller somehow.
Not physically. Operationally.
A possible boarding action was one problem. A damaged refugee convoy, a comatose captain, a destroyed civilian ship, Cardassian involvement, and whatever waited at Starbase 214 was another. The two problems had not merged yet, not officially.
But they were close enough for Security to prepare as though they might.
Riley turned back to the gathered team. Their attention was on her again, but it felt different from earlier. Less like they were evaluating whether the new Ensign knew where to stand. More like they were waiting to see where the work went next.
That was not comfort.
It was responsibility.
She straightened. “We continue the drills. Defensive containment, offensive boarding, concealed armor, surrender handling, and now civilian interference under degraded station conditions. Until Chief d’Tor’an returns or Command redirects us, our job is readiness, not theory.”
Halden folded his arms. “And the Damsel?”
“The Damsel is now part of readiness.”
Marek’s mouth tightened in approval. “Evidence security.”
“Witness protection,” Tovan added.
Riley nodded once. “Refugee safety, too.”
For a moment, the room held the shape of it: shipboard Security preparing for a possible fight while the facts ahead of them kept expanding into something uglier and more human. Not just Cardassians. Not just borders. Not just one questionable captain and an old wreck in orbit.
People.
Always people.
That was the part that made Security harder than tactics and more important than force. Anyone could draw a firing line. The real work was knowing what still had to be protected after the line was drawn.
Riley keyed the revised drill package to Holodeck 2.
“Holodeck team, this is Wright,” she said. “Updated scenario coming through. Reset to the failure point. Add civilian movement markers, degraded station lighting, partial emergency guidance failure, and one non-compliant casualty in the lane. Same corrected call sequence. Same reserve responsibilities.”
She paused, eyes flicking once to the Damsel summary still occupying the main display.
“Run it until the corridor stops arguing with itself.”
She closed the channel and looked back at the Security personnel in front of her.
“Alright,” Riley said. “Let’s make the next mistake useful.”