Nightmares

Posted on 20 Oct 2025 @ 7:17pm by Commander Suzanna Batenburg

357 words; about a 2 minute read

Mission: Fractured Accord
Location: SB 369

///// Batenburg quarters /////

She suddenly sat up straight in bed, eyes wide open, her breath ragged. It took a long moment for her to realise it was a nightmare. It had been years since she’d had one, and it was always the same one. The Erasmus, fleeing from the planet Lemina, trying to rescue as many citizens, the planet exploding, the Erasmus suffering serious damage, major hull breaches in various sections.... she lost nearly half her crew that day. And it had been her first mission as Captain of a ship. Suzanna took a deep breath to regain her control, now that she was awake. It was probably the seeing the Erasmus again.

She got out of bed, and got a glass of water. It was the Battle for Earth, with the loss of officers, that had brought her back to Starfleet. Not that she was happy about, but as a Vulcan, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one. But she had refused her old rank of Captain, and did not want to be in command. The compromise was going back to her roots of Science, Xeno-anthropology. Admiral Blokpoel had supported her, and given her an assignment, and she had followed her to Starbase 369.

There was plenty to research at this end of the galaxy, there was so much uncharted territory, still, and she couldn’t wait to get the results of the Erasmus when they would chart this part of the Spinward March and compare it to the Admiral’s home-dimension. She had started the work to catalogue that data, so that when the new data from here could be more easily be compared and catalogued. How had each side developed, not just the last few decades, but also from much earlier time.

And now the terraforming mission, Admiral Blokpoel had given her a brief of what had happened so far, and asked to research more background. Now was as good a time as ever to start on that, even though it was only 0500. Sleep would not be coming back until tonight, she knew that.

Cmdr Suzanna Batenburg
Science Officer
Epsilon Fleet

 

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