Fleet Captain Michael Lancaster’s Personal Log, Stardate 2401.8

During my time in command of Arcturus, I have been remarkably lucky. Through numerous battles, I have only lost seventeen crew members. Given our average crew levels reaching up to 2,500, this is a casualty rate of only 0.68%, which puts us within the top 1% of all Starfleet vessels for survival over a multi-year period. I believe my crew and I are now paying for our good fortune.

 

After five days of search and recovery efforts in the remnants of Outpost C-91, the physical and emotional toll the crew is facing is substantial, even with the support of a dedicated team from the Starfleet Bureau of Mortuary Services. In many ways, the dead are easier to face than the few survivors—C-91 was brand-new, and the only civilians aboard were the family members of the crew. Those we have been able to bring aboard alive are either severely injured or faced with the loss of a mother, father, sibling, or child—in many cases, they are both. 

 

I have to admit that I would rather be in one of the 2,971 torpedo casings lying in the cargo hold myself than see Luca or Ari in one. I… don’t often find myself so overwhelmed by empathy, but I have never seen my husband so close to breaking as he forces himself to work double and triple shifts to ensure that all of the dead are identified, washed, dressed, and prepared for their final disposition. He comes back to our quarters silent and shell-shocked. Nothing I say or do seems to make it better, but I don’t know if he’s ready for anything to be better yet.

 

He isn’t the only one struggling. My bridge crew are acting like true professionals and I can tell their sense of pride and honor in being able to bring our Starfleet comrades home, but their usual banter and light are gone. To reduce the psychological burden, I have ordered Arcturus to face away from the wreckage as we finish our task. Ari called me a coward, but the last thing anyone needs is to stare at the debris while trying to find an iota of solace in the lounge. He has been leading teams to comb the debris personally, to attempt to piece together what happened here. He has seen more than I have during this mission. I can’t fault him or even find the energy to be angry with him, because I do feel like a coward. 

 

We do not have enough stasis units or sufficient cold storage to return the dead to a starbase. In this situation, Starfleet’s operational protocols for mass casualty scenarios allow for two courses of action: I can wait for medical ships to arrive, or I can arrange for mass burials in space. I have elected the option that will end this ordeal as quickly and with as much dignity as possible. In approximately twelve hours, we will commend our dead to a low solar orbit, and I have no idea what I am going to say to my crew.

Arcturus held her position at the outer edge of the debris field left from the ill-fated Outpost C-91, a brand-new station that had been shattered into a hundred thousand fragments alongside the starships Rocinante and McCoy over a week prior. A remote border post, C-91 had been intended to make the former Demilitarized Zone on the Cardassian border safer, but it had only lasted a week in service. One of the Copernicus-class station’s docking pods had survived intact, but there were only 47 survivors aboard. Between the station itself, its assigned Aquarius-class defense vessel (Rocinante) and the visiting Olympic-class McCoy, at least five thousand Starfleet personnel and civilians had been killed. Nearly two thousand casualties remained unaccounted for. Workbees, shuttles, and runabouts flitted out from the Arcturus’s two open hangers, moving into the debris field to look for survivors and bodies. While some hope remained, the crew was largely resigned to the fact that anyone else they brought back to the ship was likely not just to be dead but nearly atomized—sensors couldn’t pick up enough organic material left in the wreckage to constitute whole beings anymore.

Recovering the fallen was proving to be a more straightforward task than solving the mystery of the station’s destruction. Much of the debris had been irradiated, which had damaged the memory systems aboard the station’s computers. The distress beacons from the two starships were also compromised, the engineers aboard Arcturus were working around the clock to try to piece these systems back together. They would get there given enough time, but everyone was starting to lose patience. All the survivors had managed to add to the investigation is that there was absolutely no warning of an attack before the station simply exploded.

“It’s not like we don’t know who did this. I don’t understand why the fleet isn’t mobilizing,” Commander Christopher Forrest spat at the briefing room table once the other officers had given their departmental summaries of the recovery effort. “Cardassians did this.”

There was a general murmur of agreement from the assembled senior staff.

“A brand-new space station exploding could just as easily be a mechanical fault,” Lancaster said, calmly. “As my strategic operations officer, I shouldn’t have to remind you what the consequences of massing a force on the Cardassian border would be.”

“We can take them,” Forrest replied. “They may have caught up to us pound-for-pound, but we weigh a lot more than they do.”

That was partially true. With the Federation focused more to its interests and borders in the Beta Quadrant, the Cardassian Union had slowly and quietly managed a rebuilding program no one had anticipated. While still a regional power, their ships were once again to Starfleet vessels, and there were loud voices in the Central Command pressuring the Detapa Council to take a more militaristic stance towards the Federation. The loss of C-91 had awoken equally loud voices at Starfleet Command who wanted a full mobilization against the Cardassians to “put them back in their place,” but Lancaster knew that Starfleet was stretched too far and too thin to face a full-scale conflict. Forrest was useful for the way he could generally see the bigger strategic picture, but he was also a hawk. The strategic operations officer sounded like he was going to try to continue advocating for his point, but Lancaster had reached his breaking point.

“Enough, Commander,” the fleet captain replied, slamming his palm down on the table and causing his young communications officer, Lieutenant Belvedere, to jump. The room was dead silent for a beat. “Our orders—my orders—are to find out what happened to this station systematically and completely. There will be no deviations from those orders. Even if the Cardassians did this, we do not know why they did it. If we get this wrong, it means war. I already have the Federation Council and Starfleet Command screaming at me to find answers, so I will not tolerate petulance from my own staff.”

Commander Armstrong cleared his throat. “Sir, if I may?” 

“Go ahead,” Lancaster said to his science officer.

“My team has been modeling various methods for cutting through the radiation interference from the wreckage. I believe we can modify the main deflector to essentially scrub the debris to tolerable levels so that our transporters and tractor beams will function more effectively,” the commander said. 

Before Lancaster could respond, Captain Vane spoke up. “Between recovery, reassembly of the station’s computers, and shuttle maintenance, I don’t have time to re-engineer one of our largest and most complex pieces of equipment,” the Bolian engineer protested.

“If we can get a clear scan, we may not need to reconstruct the computer core, and we won’t need to keep scrubbing the shuttles,” Armstrong argued. “We just need to refine the targeting scanners and tune the beam to match the local subspace harmonics.”

“Just,” Vane snorted.

“Mister Armstrong, send me your specifications,” Lancaster interjected. “The first officer and I are both engineers. We’ll work with Mister Bowens to make your modifications, while engineering continues its work,” he said, glancing to his right where Alesser was sitting.

“Piece of cake,” Alesser confirmed, though Lancaster sensed insincerity in his smile. 

Lancaster nodded; he’d take even false civility, given the past few days of tension. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair before moving on to the last item. Counselor Sharma and Commander Holland, the ship’s diplomatic and protocol officer, were the only ones who already knew about Lancaster’s decision to move forward with a mass funeral for all of the Starfleet personnel they had recovered.

“I am aware of how difficult this assignment has been for the entire crew, especially our medical department,” Lancaster said, fixing his eyes on his husband, the chief medical officer, for a moment. “I have consulted the regulations and with the visiting specialists from the Bureau of Mortuary Services. Based on their estimations, the personnel that remain unaccounted for were likely vaporized. We do not have sufficient space aboard the ship to properly store the remains we have collected, so we will be performing a burial in space at 1800 hours today for the Starfleet personnel we have recovered.”

The officers around the briefing table were silent. Lancaster imagined the thoughts that were coursing through the room and the frustration that they must be feeling at the idea of working round-the-clock to recover their fallen comrades, only to put them back into space.

“We’ll retain civilians and anyone who left religious directives until they can be transferred… home,” Lancaster continued, finding himself faltering on that last word. He cleared his throat. “There’s no practical alternative.”

Sheppard spoke up first. “I think a ceremony will help the crew come to some degree of closure,” he said.

“Agreed,” Alesser said simply.

“Commanders Sharma and Holland will work out the details of the ceremony,” Lancaster said. He looked around at the sullen faces of his crew. “And I want all of you to schedule time with the counselor within the next few days. This mission… it’s not something you should be trying to process on your own. Dismissed.”

Dr. Sheppard was one of the first people to leave, practically bolting out of his spot to return to sickbay. As the crew filed out, Captain Alesser remained behind. He didn’t speak until the doors closed behind the last of their subordinates.

“A head’s up on your plan would have been nice,” Alesser said.

“You would have had one, if you hadn’t been avoiding me,” Lancaster said. “Ari, I’m doing my best here,” he continued, using the private pet name he had for Alesser as his lover rather than first officer. “I’m doing what I can to get the crew through this.”

Alesser’s face contorted through several different emotions in rapid succession. “I gave you an opinion you didn’t like, so you’ve cut me out of command decisions,” he countered. “You’re literally avoiding facing the situation!” he added, pointing to the viewports, which were pointed away from the debris field.

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Lancaster replied, fighting his instincts to return venom with venom. Alesser was clearly spoiling for another fight as well. “If I have to be your lightning rod, that’s fine. I can handle it. Just consider who or what you’re really mad at. At least you’re talking to me when we’re in the same room—I can’t get more than a few syllables out of Luca because he’s so exhausted. I’m very concerned about you both.”

The first officer crossed his arms and sunk lower in his chair, another set of emotions clearly going through his mind. The Ardanan man sighed.

“I don’t actually have a competing proposal. There’s no other logical course of action,” Alesser conceded, which filled the captain with a sense of. His amber-colored eyes were fixed on Lancaster. “How could Starfleet let this happen? What if it were us out there?” he asked.

“That’s what we’re here to find out—and it’ll be a lot easier to accomplish that if you can stop treating me like the enemy,” Lancaster replied. He swallowed, finding his throat dry from the emotions he was feeling. “If this was some sort of terrorist attack, it’s working exactly as intended.”

Alesser nodded. “Yeah,” he agreed. He stood up and pecked the captain on the temple as he moved towards the exit. “I’m sorry. I have to rearrange some of the away teams and I’ll meet you in deflector control,” the first officer said.

That was a little less of a catharsis than Lancaster was hoping for, but he felt a glimmer of hope that Arcturus would be able to return to normality. Or at least that his personal life would. Sheppard working himself to exhaustion was one more problem that remained to be solved.

In 2385, Luca Sheppard was a second-year nursing student at Starfleet Academy. Right at the end of his second year, the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards were destroyed by the rogue synth attack and Mars was set ablaze. Sheppard and his fellow cadets were pressed into emergency service as orderlies as Starfleet prepared to receive casualties back on Earth. That day, Sheppard saw many, many wounded people and he’d seen all sorts of suffering, but Arcturus’s mission to the Cardassian border in 2401 was his first real experience with death on a mass scale. 

Several days into the process, Sheppard and his team were long past the point of preparing whole bodies for burial. Most of their remaining work was ensuring that what biological matter and fragments they could identify were placed together into torpedo casings, as was customary. Combadges and rank pips helped with the identification process, but it was deeply unsatisfying to only have a finger or an ear to put to rest. Every death certificate needed to be signed by a physician, though, which meant that he’d done hundreds himself.

Even with a dedicated team from Mortuary Services, the entire medical department was busy. In addition to recovering and cataloguing the dead for burial, they also had 47 patients in various stages of recovery across the two sickbay complexes. Sheppard had to divert almost all of his non-nursing staff to help in the morgue, and they were pulling in personnel cross-trained from other divisions just to keep adequate staffing levels. To their credit, no one was complaining. They were handling the job like the professionals they were. But to Sheppard, it felt like sprinting through an entire marathon. 

During the briefing, he felt as though he should be annoyed at the speed with which they were going to be consigning the dead back into space, but he felt nothing. His husband, the captain, was nothing if not logical, and if there was another alternative, he would have considered it. He hadn’t wanted to stick around in the conference room because he knew that his staff was barely finding the time for bathroom breaks—there was work to be done, and he had to set an example. Thankfully, staff routines were starting to come closer to normal as the amount of physical labor with managing the bodies declined—but that meant that hope of recovering anyone else, let alone any survivors, had all but vanished, and that felt like a pall over the whole ship.

When Sheppard entered sickbay, he only made it a few steps towards his office before he was intercepted by Lieutenant Gardner, one of the charge nurses. The young man normally had what Sheppard thought of as “capital-T Twink energy,” meaning that he was sassy, flirtatious, and chaotic, but even he was somber and quiet.

“Doctor, Lieutenant Kane is conscious,” the nurse announced. Lieutenant Lysander Kane was listed as Outpost C-91’s deputy chief of security. He was the highest-ranking survivor they’d been able to pull from the wreckage. “He keeps saying something about ‘Security Alert Purple,’” Gardner continued as Sheppard walked with him into the ICU. 

Lieutenant Kane was twenty-five, tall, handsome, and blond. He was the spitting image of a Starfleet security officer—now that the swelling had abated from the traumatic head injury he’d suffered. Sheppard had kept him sedated for the first few days of his stay aboard Arcturus to ensure he wouldn’t further injure himself, but they were allowing him to come out of that sedation naturally. Watching the lieutenant’s vitals carefully, Sheppard stepped in closer to hear him faintly muttering about that same purple security alert.

“Lieutenant, you’re aboard the starship Arcturus. Can you hear me?” Sheppard asked. He turned to Gardner. “Figure out what that alert means.”

“Big ship,” Lieutenant Kane muttered, eyes fluttering. That was a good sign. Before Sheppard could respond, Gardner handed Sheppard a PADD with a list of standard station security alerts: code purple was a bomb threat. “Who did it?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out,” Sheppard said. He saw Kane try to sit up, so he quickly put his hand on his shoulder. “Easy, lieutenant.”

“I’ve gotta get to ops,” Kane said, trying to sit up again. That was a less promising sign: the lieutenant was having trouble staying fully conscious. Sheppard glanced up to see that his cognitive vitals were still shaky. He grabbed a hypospray and applied it to Kane’s neck before he could try anything else. “Must have been… freighter,” the security officer managed before passing out again.

“What freighter?” Gardner asked.

“No idea. Watch him,” Sheppard replied before leaving the nurse and the patient to head towards his office.

Sheppard tapped his badge to report the new information but tapped it again to cancel the call when he saw Lancaster waiting for him in the office. He was never unhappy to see his husband, but unannounced visits like that were rare. The doctor managed a smile and crossed the room to kiss him on the cheek. They hadn’t seen much of each other in the past few days.

“What are you doing down here?” Sheppard asked.

“I came to see how you’re doing. I know this has been hard on you,” Lancaster said bluntly.

“I’m fine,” Sheppard replied. “It’s good you came down, though. Lieutenant Kane woke up just long enough to say that there was a bomb threat alarm. He also mentioned a freighter, but that’s all we could get out of him,” he said, pressing straight into the business at hand.

The machinery behind Lancaster’s eyes was already starting to whir—Sheppard could recognize that look from his partner, anywhere—but he surprised Sheppard by just nodding.

“That’s a good lead,” the captain said. “Computer, privacy,” he ordered, which prompted the computer to close the door to Sheppard’s office and switch the glass from transparent to frosted within a few milliseconds. “You’re not acting like yourself.”

Sheppard scoffed. “I don’t feel like myself,” he admitted. He shook his head, not used to the emotional intelligence quotient in their relationship being flipped like that. Usually, he was the one who had to remind Lancaster to rest, eat, and breathe during stressful situations. “We don’t have a choice. We have to get this done. I’m not going to slack off on my first real assignment as chief medical officer.”

“I’m a bad influence on you,” Lancaster murmured. “After the ceremony, I want you to rest. I know from your reports that the caseload down here is stabilizing. You’ve ‘made’ me do that on more than one occasion.”

Sheppard nodded. “I’ll try,” he conceded. He’d been unable to tell Michael Lancaster ‘no’ for over a decade by that point. “Maybe I’m a bad influence on you,” he teased, though he still felt a little too numb to find much joy in their banter.

“Physician, heal thyself,” Lancaster said. He tapped his badge. “Lancaster to bridge. Doctor Sheppard’s team has learned from one of the survivors that there was some sort of freighter present before a bomb alert went off. Find it,” he ordered, slipping back into his captain mask before leaving Sheppard’s office.

Sheppard took a deep breath as the weight of days of poor work-life balance hit him. He hadn’t been to the gym in days, which was extremely unusual for him. He was tired, irritable, and overwhelmed. But he also had a job to do. After that deep breath, he walked back out into sickbay to keep up the fight.