Fact-Finding Mission

Posted on 01 May 2026 @ 11:23pm by Lieutenant Ryan Collingway & Lieutenant Commander Grayson McKinney

1,764 words; about a 9 minute read

///Mess Hall////

The small group of engineers ate lunch and glanced at Commander McKinney, who seemed to be staring at everything and nothing at the same time.

"I heard that he sleeps with one eye open," Walkins said.

"Eh, big deal," Sorensen said. "But apparently he rigged his quarters. If anyone unauthorized enters...whoosh, immediately beamed to outer space."

"Oh come on, that can't be true," Walkins said, then frowned. "But apparently he does have a Klingon Targ in there."

"I'm sure none of that is true," Ryan said. "He's probably a completely normal person if you talk to him."

"Good idea, Ryan," Walkins said, with a smirk. "You do it."

"Me? No," Ryan immediately said, and glanced at his data padd. "I'm busy."

"Work your shift tomorrow," Sorensen offered.

Ryan stared at him.

"And the next day. You want to see more of the carnival right? I'm okay with the OT to see this."

"Argh, fine," Ryan said, grabbing his mostly uneaten tray. He walked over to McKinney's table.
He had been aware of them for most of his meal.

Not because they were loud. The small group of engineers ate with the focused energy of people who had something to discuss and were, collectively, working themselves toward a decision. He had cataloged it the way he cataloged everything, a peripheral sweep between bites, unremarkable.

He returned to his food.

The mess ran at its midday register: the hiss of the replicator bank on the port wall, the ambient percussion of trays and conversation, the ventilation humming at a pitch that meant the environmental systems were holding load. Lunch service had thinned to the end-of-rotation crowd. The table he'd chosen faced two exits and a clear sightline to the door.
He was working through the last of a rice dish, a replicated approximation of something his mother would have regarded with polite, structural disappointment, when he registered the footsteps separating from the group.

Measured. Coming toward him.

He did not look up.

He took another bite, chewed slowly, and listened to the approach the way he listened to an approaching vessel on long-range sensors, tracking without reacting, building a picture before committing to any response. The footsteps stopped at the edge of his table. He let the silence sit for exactly one beat.

Then he looked up.

The officer was young, a Lieutenant JG by the pip, carrying a tray mostly uneaten, with the specific expression of a man who had lost an argument to someone else's confidence. Behind him, across the mess, the group of engineers wore the studied nonchalance of people pretending not to watch.

Grayson's eyes moved from the officer's face back to his tray. He glanced at the engineers. One beat.

"Mind if I join you?"

He set his fork down. Then his knife. He aligned both parallel to the tray's edge with the unhurried precision of a man completing a task on schedule, neither faster nor slower than necessary.

He leaned back.

The chair registered the full weight of him as he settled into it, and he looked at the young officer the way he looked at most variables when there was nothing yet to act on: level, without urgency, with the patient and entirely undramatic attention of a man who had time.

He looked at him for a moment.

Then his eyes moved, once, to the engineers' table. A half-second. No more.

He nodded and lifted two fingers toward the empty chair across from him.

The officer sat.

Grayson reached for his coffee, turning it once in his hand as he prepared to speak. Without any particular inflection.

"For the record," he began, his gaze drifted over the tray in front of him, unhurried and deliberate. "Sleeping with one eye open isn’t just a performance; it’s a medical necessity."

He paused briefly, then continued, "The claim about outer space is perhaps sixty percent accurate, highly dependent on the context." He took a slow sip from his cup, savoring the moment before setting it down with a sigh.

"And by the way, the Targ isn’t just a figure of speech, she’s actually a Caitian, and truth be told, she's better adjusted than half of my department combined, which says a lot about the kind of day they’re having."

He picked up his fork.

"So." His eyes came up, easy and direct. "What did you lose?"

He watched the young lieutenant try to decide whether to explain himself. It was a specific kind of pause, the one that preceded either honesty or a second, worse lie, and Grayson had enough experience with both to tell them apart before the mouth opened. He reached for the carafe and poured a second cup without asking, sliding it across the table with two fingers.

"I'm going to save you the sentence." His voice carried no heat. "You didn't lose anything. You were volunteered." The half-smile arrived. "Which, for the record, is harder than losing. Losing has dignity."

He picked up his fork and ate a deliberate bite before continuing, giving the observation time to land without becoming a verdict.

The name had registered the moment the young officer settled into the chair. Not with a chime or an alarm, but with the quiet, persistent return of a passive sensor contact, a minor signature, low-threat, cataloged and filed without immediate reaction while the primary display moved on to more urgent variables. Collingway. He turned the name over in his mind once, the way he might examine a recovered component of unknown origin, weighing its texture and history before deciding its place in the schematic. It wasn't a name that required an active watch list. He had spent enough years reviewing port authority manifests and JAG summaries during his time on the Cortez to know exactly what the Collingway family specialized in, and more specifically, what a man wearing that name and a Starfleet uniform was likely trying to leave behind.

He looked at Ryan over the rim of his cup.

"Engineering third rotation is underrated work," he said, setting the cup down. He glanced once toward the engineers' table, easy and unhurried, just long enough for Walkins and Sorensen to know he'd seen the whole production from the opening bet. "The officers who end up genuinely good at their jobs almost always came up through the boring shifts." He returned his attention to Ryan. "The interesting ones just look that way from the outside."

He left it there. Open. No pressure behind it.

"So." Grayson tilted his head a fraction, the half-smile still present, patient and without agenda. “What do you want?”

Oof.

Ryan felt a bit like a child in the principal's office. Of course Grayson had heard everything, and disregarded it, until Ryan had come to the table. He could just say something awkward and stumble back to his own table.

But Ryan didn't want to do that. Grayson didn't give off any pressure, but Ryan still viewed this as a challenge. He had walked over to get to know the Chief Tactical officer better, and that was what he planned to do. "Well, this is still slightly better than my first encounter with Lieutenant Flamminia," he said lightly, to defuse tension. "I think the junior officers, along with my myself, simply want to get to know you better. Unless you prefer the mystery better," he said, his voice also giving off no pressure.

"I also wanted to thank you," he added. "Your team assisted engineering during the attack. We would have been a much worse position if they hadn't."

He waved a hand, once, flat and easy.

"Thanks runs the other direction." He picked up his coffee. "Your people did your jobs and didn't wait to be told twice. Mine were just in the same corridor." He drank, set the cup down, and left it there. Clean. Closed.

He looked at Ryan for a moment.

"For the record," he said, and the half-smile arrived, "the mystery mostly runs itself. People fill the space with something, and they tend to prefer entertaining over accurate."

His eyes moved, unhurried, toward Walkins and Sorensen across the mess hall, then came back.

"No outer-space transporter protocol. The Caitian, well, she’s actually a feline of the Earth variety, and her name is Brasa. She has strong opinions about the temperature of my quarters that she communicates directly to Engineering."

Grayson smirked a beat. "Professionally, I support her position."

He pushed his tray aside and leaned back in the chair, the full weight of him settling into it without ceremony.

"What held together out there," he said, "wasn't training. Not exactly." His tone dropped a half-register, not quieter but more direct. "It was people from different departments working the same problem without waiting for permission. That doesn't come from a briefing room." He turned the empty cup once in his hand. "It gets built."

He set the cup down.

"I've been meaning to start something on this ship. Did it on my last two postings." He said it offhand, the way a man mentions something he has already decided. "Mixed discipline sparring. Full contact, no holodeck safety ratings. It isn't about the fighting."

Grayson looked at Ryan.

"It's about what a crew becomes when they've done something hard together that wasn't a simulation." He let that sit for a beat, then tilted his head toward Walkins and Sorensen. "That includes them, if they're interested."

He said it at normal conversational volume. He was entirely confident it would carry.

"Thursday. Holodeck two. 1900." He picked up his fork. "Don't bring gear."

The half-smile returned, dry and without apology.

"And don't tell anyone I recruited a fight club over lunch. I've got a reputation to keep"

Grayson returned to his meal with the complete ease of a man who had said everything he meant and meant all of it.

Ryan nodded. "I've had some practice. I'll be there," he said, with more confidence than he actually felt. A few lessons with Lieutenant Flamminia and one or two on his own. He did fine in them. And by 'fine', he really meant 'could have died a dozen times over if not for the holodeck safety program'. This time would be the real deal. He took his tray and went back to his table.

"What happened?" Sorensen asked.

If nothing else, Ryan now knew that Grayson's eyes and ears were everywhere. "I'll tell you later," he said.

Lieutenant Junior Grade Ryan Collingway
Engineering Officer
USS Arawyn

Lt.Commander Grayson McKinney
Chief Tactical Officer
USS Arawyn

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