Beginnings and Ends

[Cptn Swain 0]

The USS Cassini glided through the blue and green wisps of gaseous clouds that made up the Yann’zou Expanse like an ancient sailing ship cutting through the morning fog rolling off the ocean. Watching out the window of his ready room, with a cup of strong tea wrapped between his hands, her master sighed happily. The Cassini was finishing her third survey of the expanse and as soon as she picked up the last of the long-range mapping beacons used to help better triangulate positions within the expanse, she would set course for her next mission – wherever that took her.

Putting his tea down, Captain Asher Swain smiled as he considered how smoothly this particular pass through the expanse had been, and how that despite it being his fourth such mission, they’d still managed to find something new and interesting that filled him with the same sense of excitement and wonder that he’d felt the first time he’d gazed upon the murky green and blue clouds of gas and dust that swirled through the forty lightyear wide expanse on the edge of the Beta Quadrant. He recalled, fondly, the first mission he’d led to the expanse when he’d first taken command of the Cassini. He’d been very excited when he got the orders to begin the three month survey of the expanse, having briefly been part a cataloging mission while aboard the George Washington. During that first mission, the Cassini had not only completed the first real map of the expanse, but also discovered three new types of microbes that lived in space, feeding off the gaseous particles. Their second mission, which had been an even longer 6-month mission, had revealed dozens of new spatial anomalies and yielded first contact with two new species. So when he was told he’d be on a third mission that would last almost a year, he’d been ecstatic.

Swain stood and walked over to the fresher, depositing his tea mug before returning to the couch with a happy sigh. It was hard to believe that a year had passed already. When they first arrived, he’d been almost disappointed (though he didn’t let his senior staff know), because for the first seven weeks they were in the expanse, they found absolutely nothing of scientific note; but like everything he’d found since venturing into space, in the blink of an eye, you can find something that makes you rethink everything you’ve known.

He was on the bridge, it was a Thursday he recalled, sitting in on gamma shift while his XO took a few days off with a runabout. Everything had been the very definition of the word routine since they’d arrived. They planted their beacons without incident and began their first pass through the expanse’s core region. The core of the expanse was filled with asteroids and thick patches of methane, argon, chlorine and energetic plasma. It had largely been ignored during previous surveys of the region, including the two earlier missions by the Cassini because it was thought to be devoid of life and posed navigational hazards.

Still for all the explosive gases laying around them, their journey into the core had been routine, if not filled with a starscape of occasional fireworks as the energetic plasma reacted with the explosive gasses whirling through the area. Swain was sitting in his chair, drinking a cup of oolong tea, reading a report from the nightwatch about peculiar readings coming from a mass deeper inside the core region.

Always the explorer, Swain had ordered the Cassini to alter course to investigate. His helmsman had, as usual, rolled her eyes (all four of them), declaring that it was nothing and he just wanted something to keep her busy. It was only partially true.

The most interesting thing about the report had been that the mass appeared to be organic. Swain still was rather surprised, even months later that they had actually found not just life, a whole swarm of never-before-seen creatures massed deep in the expanses’ core. He remembered watching on the view screen as they finally came into visual range. He’d been so surprised at the time that he’d dropped his tea in his lap.

It was a reminder that not only did life somehow find a way to flourish even in the most inhospitable of places, but that there was always something new, something exiting waiting behind the next star, or under the next rock; it was a lesson he’d learned many years before as a young boy exploring the wilds of his home planet. With a smile, he glanced from the stars to the framed butterfly collection hanging above his desk thinking of the days and nights he’d spent in the woods around his family farm collecting new samples, each one filling him with excitement. At night he’d lay awake under the stars, looking up trying to find new constellations, mapping them in detail in his trusted journal. Always the scientist, he considered.

“Captain,” came a voice, pulling him from the thoughts of boyhood.

Blinking briefly, he looked up to see his executive officer standing in his doorway, a PADD tucked underneath her arm. “I hope I wasn’t interrupting anything,” she said coyly. “When you didn’t answer the doorbell, I figured I might as well let myself in.”

Trying his best to put on a serious face, he stood with his hand on his hips. “Allyisa,” he said trying to be authoritative, “what are you ever going to do if you have a Captain who does mind you invading his personal space.”

“He’ll get over it,” she said with a wide smile, and entered more fully into the room, walking to meet her friend and captain. “Besides, you’re not going anywhere and neither am I.”

Swain finally gave up on his attempt to be serious and joined her in smirking. Allyisa Neyrn noted the change and headed for the couch. She’d known Asher Swain for nearly fifteen years. They’d been co-workers, then lovers, then co-workers, then friends and now they’d become not just friends but partners who helped guide hundred and fifty souls through the great unknowns as commanding and executive officers; and though she knew they’d never be intimate again, she couldn’t help but wonder how things might have been every time she felt his soft, hazel eyes fall on her and saw his charming, always disarming smile. Pushing aside her thoughts, thankful he wasn’t a telepath, she looked over once he joined her on the couch.

“I guess I am too late for tea?”

Swain smirked, rising quickly. “As if one can ever be late for tea,” he said moving to the replicator. “Besides, you know I can always drink more than one cup.”

“Of course,” she said, “I’ll take my usual, though no cream. I am trying to cut that out.”

“You know that the computer can replicate fat-free cream,” he said as he punched in the commands. “Not that you should be drinking cream in your tea anyway.”

“I know that,” she said with a mock-glower. “Besides, you drink that awful dark tea that wouldn’t be fit for a Targ to drink, and they’ll drink anything.”

“There is nothing wrong with Asinina tea,” he said, returning with two mugs. “Besides, I’ve been on an oolong kick for a couple months.”

“I see,” she said feigning disinterest. “For someone who crows about how tea should be drank ‘correctly,’ you sure don’t hesitate to use the replicator. I know my grandmother would never have served someone tea out of one of those things.”

“Your grandmother,” he said, “also had the good fortune of owning a teahouse. I’d hope she wouldn’t serve replicated tea.”

Neyrn finally grinned and took her cup from Swain, who’d settled in opposite her in a recliner. “So, if you didn’t come for my wonderful tea,” he said with a wide grin. “What did you come for?”

“We’ve finished picking up the last of the beacons. I had Santos lay in a course for Starbase 36. We’ll want to stop off there, I think, before…”

“Before what?”

She slid a PADD across the small table that sat between them. “Before we go wherever that says we’re going; just came in about an hour ago.”

Picking it up, Swain recognized it as orders from Command and sighed as he entered his pass codes to gain access. He knew that sooner or later these would come in, still he’d hoped that crew could grab some R&R at a base before they had to trek off on some new mission or the other, especially considering that it had been almost eight months since they’d seen a port and almost a year since they’d seen a starbase. His hazel eyes flickered as he read the PADD.

For a few moments he said nothing. Neyrn looked up from her tea when it was starting to become noticeable. “Well?”

He sighed, putting both his tea and the PADD down. Running his hands through his shoulder length brown hair, they finally rested on the bridge of his nose. “Cancel the trip to thirty-six,” he said finally. “No real reason to go there.”

She lifted her brow. “You do know it’s been nearly eight months since we’ve so much as blinked at a port. The crew’s getting a little itchy. Not to mention we’re running a little low on supplies. Asher, if we’re going on any kind of a mission the least you can…”

He held up a hand. “I think they can wait.”

“Asher,” she said more forcibly. “Unless we’re saving…"

“We’re to put into McKinley Station.”

“Oh,” she said softly before repeating herself again. “Oh.”

“So yeah I am sure they can deal with a few more days on ship. Most of them are going to get a good long rest.”

She finished her tea and stood up. “Yeah, I guess so. Well, if that’s all, I better go have Travain alter our course. “

Swain nodded and watched as she headed towards the door. “I guess I’ll see you later then? Dinner at my place?”

“Why not have the whole senior staff in your mess?”

“That’s a good idea, I’ll tell them then.”

“I am sure Johnson will be excited,” she said, referencing the ship’s rambunctious, barely out of the academy chief engineer. “He’s been homesick since we got out here I think.”

“Yeah,” he said. “So don’t spoil my surprise.”

Neyrn smiled and headed for the door, leaving Swain alone to consider the future.