Ensign Corwin Adler strolled along the long observation deck colonnade that made up part of the 40 Eridani A Construction Yard’s control station’s entertainment levels. It had been a little more than a week since the Vaadwaur had been sent back to whatever corner of Underspace they’d come from, and the USS Pulsar was nearing the end of its repairs from its harrowing infiltration. Corwin hadn’t wanted to show it while he’d been in front of his cadet crew, but he’d been scared half to death over the ordeal and still found his hands quaking from time to time when his mind inevitably drifted toward their narrow escape from death.

Standing in front of the massive transparent aluminum wall that looked out over Vulcan not so far away, at least in celestial distances, the young Ensign tried very hard to banish the lingering fear and nagging doubts he still had about his permanent assignment as the Pulsar’s actual Commanding Officer. There had been something comforting about the epithet of ‘provisional’ being attached to the title, like it was just for a little while… and then he could be an engineer like he’d wanted to be. Now that it was gone, the reality of his situation felt so much more crushing than the thought of being a hair’s breadth away from death had been.

Corwin leaned up against the railing that separated spectators from the actual barrier that kept the void of space from encroaching into the station, a deep and ponderous sigh tumbling from his lips unhindered by any sense of decorum that might have otherwise prevented such a thing from occurring. His half-focused eyes wandered languidly along the contours of the planet in view, but never truly finding a foothold on any one feature.

Adler heard the rustling of fabric next to him after a while, but he didn’t pay it much attention at first as his eyes continued their lazy glide over the slightly unfocused image of the planet. It wasn’t until his ears took in several sharp clacks for hard chitin against the metal railing that his eyes snapped back into focus and he lifted his gaze to the figure standing next to him.

“Oh…” Corwin murmured before straightening himself up, “I’m sorry, Captain… I must look terrible…”

“I did not stop by to comment on your posture, Ensign,” the massive reptilian Captain remarked, his own eyes gazing out at the Vulcan surface much like Corwin’s had been a moment ago.

“You didn’t?” Adler asked, unable to keep his confusion from leaking into his tone.

“I did not,” Gar’rath assured the boy once again without looking at him.

“Okay…” the young man muttered tepidly, “Did you… um… need me for something, sir?”

“Not specifically, no. I just happened to see you as I was passing by and thought to take a moment to join you,” the Gorn remarked, turning toward Adler to give him a small grin.

“Ah…” Corwin said, nodding numbly as he struggled to understand why this Captain, or really anyone, would simply want to share the same space with him for no particular reason.

“You seemed like you were lost in a moment,” Gar’rath offered after a short span of silence, “I’ve had my share of those over the last week. Strangely enough, I’ve been finding it difficult to talk to my crew about them. Perhaps you’re having similar difficulties.”

Corwin cast his gaze back toward the void of space, his eyes drifting downward as he thought about the Captain’s words. After giving it some thought, he finally nodded silently in response.

“Then maybe it would help if we talked, as fellow commanders… dealing with our burdens,” Gar’rath suggested in a quiet but somehow powerful voice.

“Really?” Adler gazed back up at the hulking reptilian, a glimmer of hope reflecting in his gaze.

Gar’rath’s head bobbed in response, “I think you and I could both benefit from the exchange.”

Corwin straightened up, moving to fully face the Captain who’d been standing next to him, “I’d like that, sir. I really… really would…”

“Come then,” the Gorn said, moving away from the railing himself and slowly trudging toward a small cluster of empty tables sitting a dozen or so meters behind them. Gar’rath pulled out a chair from one side of the table before sliding down into a sturdier looking bench resting on the opposite side. An awkward silence temporarily dominated the area as Adler settled nervously into the chair that had been pulled out for him.

“You’re still struggling with your position,” Gar’rath stated rather than asked.

Corwin nodded rather forcefully in response, “I’m… I… I just thought I was going to be an engineer. I didn’t even take courses that remotely touched on how to lead people. I just… I just wanted to use my hands to keep a ship going… I’m not a leader…”

“Except you are,” the Gorn said with a chuckle, “Despite all that you just said, you’ve been doing it.”

Adler sighed, “Only because I had to…”

“That’s how it starts more often than you think,” Gar’rath commented with a small smirk.

“Maybe for people who’ve been serving for a long time,” Corwin conceded before his face clouded over, “But I only graduated a month ago from the Academy. Admiral T’Reln told me I was supposed to be assigned to the Pulsar for remedial training, I wasn’t even a developed enough officer to get a real assignment! And now somehow, I’m her Captain?!”

“It is a unique career progression, I cannot argue that,” the Gorn admitted with a small chuckle, “But even with all of those factors working against you, here you still sit, a commanding officer. And in the shortest span of time I’ve seen, you managed to prove not once but twice that you were just the person that needed to be exactly where you were. Even if it was nothing more than serendipity… the results speak volumes.”

“It was just sheer luck… both times!” Corwin cried out in frustration, “I can’t just… just… rely on luck forever, can I?”

“No,” Gar’rath said as he shook his head, “While luck was in your favor in this particular instance, you are wise to point out that it cannot be your only plan. Luck got you here, Ensign, now you have to learn the skills you’ve been reflexively utilizing to produce results even after luck abandons you.”

“But how?” Adler asked, his entire countenance seeming to beg for an answer.

The Gorn let out a long, deliberate sigh, “I wish I could give you that answer, Mister Adler. I’ve spent a substantial part of my own career asking the same question.”

Corwin’s face twisted in a mix of shock and disbelief, “That… that can’t be true. You led that whole fleet… you’re a great commander…”

“Hardly,” Gar’rath said with a bitterness in his tone, “Deep down I am just a warrior who was asked one too many times to lead others. It was easy when it was just a small security team. I could keep two or three people alive and safe just using these two hands and the claws that come with them.”

The Gorn flexed his comparably massive hands as if to highlight his point, “But the longer I served, the more lives I had to keep track of… and the more ambiguous the ‘enemy’ became. I cannot even remember when I stopped using my claws to solve problems and started using words and tactics instead. Similar to you, I wanted to simply rely on my own two hands to keep the people around me safe… It just took me longer to get to where you are… where using my hands no longer made enough of a difference.”

Corwin’s mouth flapped open a few times as he struggled to find the words to refute what he’d just heard. He’d thought it impossible for someone with as long a career as Captain Gar’rath to share even a sliver of his own insecurities. But the longer he floundered, the less preposterous it seemed until he no longer had the will to try to deny it.

“We are supposed to be the bastion of steadiness when our crews are faced with uncertainty and doubt,” Gar’rath continued, “But we are no less prone to those feelings than anyone else, Ensign. Your worries, your tribulations… they do not disappear simply because you have been chosen to sit in the chair and command a ship. You merely have to appear as if you are devoid of them.”

“So…” Adler asked hesitantly, “Does that mean… during the battles… you were scared too?”

“Not for the same reasons you likely were,” the Gorn remarked teasingly, “But I felt fear in my own way. Not the fear of death, but of failure. Of being denied the chance to pay the Vaadwaur back for the lives I lost on my ship. Of dying before I could exact a toll twice as heavy as they exacted from us. But it was still a powerful emotion… one that could have crippled me if I had allowed it to.”

“Then… how did you overcome those feelings?” Corwin asked softly, as if entranced.

“For me,” Gar’rath said as he lowered his head in contemplation for a brief second, “I sink into a sort of primitive place in my mind that I used to go to when I was hunting in the swamps of Cestus III as a youngling. It helps me to focus only on what needs to be done, and everything else just does not register until I return from that primal place. I cannot say whether or not you could mimic such a technique, but that is, in the most generic way, how I accomplish the illusion of being composed.”

Adler fidgeted with his hands for a few moments before looking up, “Sometimes, when I’m fixing things, I start to hum little melodies in my head… Sometimes they’re little mnemonic devices, other times its just repeating the names of the parts I’m tinkering with… But when I do, it always seems like the world just sort of… melts away… Is it something like that for you?”

The Gorn cocked his large head slightly to one side, “I had not thought of it in such a way before, of the world around me ‘melting’… but now that you phrase it as such, it does make sense. Perhaps that is a similar place in your own mind, Ensign. It may be worth exploring when you find yourself in a situation where you need to shed a fear or two for a time.”

“I always just thought it was… my mind wandering… aimlessly… Never thought it might actually be something handy…” Corwin mused with a sardonic half-grin.

“Anything can be a useful tool if you are creative enough to apply it in a new and interesting manner. Should you not already know that, being an engineer?” Gar’rath teased.

Adler couldn’t help but crack a lopsided smile at the Captain’s joke, “I haven’t actually gotten to… you know… be one yet…”

“That time will come, Ensign. Even in my position as a ship’s Captain, there have been many times when I have had to leverage my old security skillset. It will be the same for you, before your tour on the Pulsar is over. Just let it happen naturally. Take the opportunity you have been given to learn and grow as the Captain of your own ship at a point in your career that I would argue no one in recent times has had the fortune of replicating,” the Gorn said with a toothy grin.

Corwin sat in silence for a long while before finally looking the Captain he’d been conversing with, in the eyes, “Thank you, Captain. I think… I think I really needed someone to just… talk to me about all this. I’ve been… stuck in my own head… going in circles… letting myself sink into a hole… a rut… something…”

“The last Captain I served under told me something once, and I think it applies to you as much as it did to me. Command will take more from you than you ever thought you had. Some days it will feel like it gives nothing back. No praise. No peace. Just more burdens to bear.

“But every now and then… it does pay you back. Not with medals or speeches, but with a moment. A decision that saves a life. A look from your crew that says they trust you.

“You’ll remember those moments. They’ll be the ones that stay with you,” Gar’rath recited with an edge of respectful reverence.

“Wow…” Corwin murmured breathlessly, “That was… really deep…”

“He was incredibly inebriated when he said it,” the Gorn remarked flatly.

Adler snorted as a fit of giggles erupted from him. Gar’rath smiled as he watched the Ensign descend into a fit of rancorous laughter that seemed to thaw all of the tension that had been locked inside his small frame for far too long. When he finally managed to pull himself together, Corwin eased himself back into the chair he’d been perched on the entire time, actually relaxed for the first time in his recent memory.

“I think I laughed at that harder than I should have…” the Ensign said, though his voice harbored not even an ounce of regret.

“I have been told that mammals need to laugh from time to time, it keeps you healthy,” the Captain said with a teasing tone.

“You sound like my holographic XO… I think he sees me as some sort of pet sometimes…”

“Or an experiment,” Gar’rath remarked with a dismissive shrug.

Adler couldn’t help but let out a frustrated but resigned huff, “That’s probably more likely…”

“At least he’s never asked you if you thought of him as lunch,” the Gorn remarked dryly.