Help Us, Help You
Posted on 26 Aug 2025 @ 2:56am by Captain Sabrina Corbin & Gareth Rhys & Tara
1,289 words; about a 6 minute read
Mission:
Fractured Accord
Location: Deck 7 Annex A
Timeline: Previous to the Commissioning Ceremony
“Help Us, Help You”
=/\= Annex A Auxiliary Section, Deck 7 =/\=
The farewells happened in the soft light of the transfer corridor, where the hum of the Arawyn’s warp core felt like a steady metronome. Grak’s palm thumped Gareth’s shoulder hard enough to make a point, and Vaela gave him a final look that said, Trust, but be careful. The rest of the Long Haul crew peeled back toward their docking port, leaving Gareth and Tara in the quiet. The status light on their Mirror Node shifted from amber to green. Ready. Tara stood at his left, composed and still. Before them, arrayed near an auxiliary systems bay, stood the ship’s command: Captain Corbin at the center, a Lieutenant Powell at her shoulder, and a half-dozen specialists in a neat crescent.
“Annex is live,” Gareth said, his voice plain and direct. “Our system is self-contained. By default, it has read-only access. Nothing gets written to your LCARS without a three-key authorization—your command, Tara’s, and mine. Together.”
He let the words land, hands open at his sides. No sales pitch. Just the facts.
“Good afternoon,” Tara offered, her voice calm. “I’m prepared to assist under your protocols.”
Gareth gestured to a clear-sided lockbox on a nearby bench.
"The keys live here. We can start with a ‘watch me work’ protocol to show you, her capabilities. Give her access to this sector's public stellar cartography and comms chatter. She'll cross-reference it against the unclassified fleet's historical data and find patterns you wouldn't think to look for, anomalies in trade routes, ghost signals in sensor echoes.
Once we're underway, she can apply that same logic to your live sensor data..."
Gareth gestured towards the window, "Imagine you're tracking ten ships; she'll be able to analyze their engine signatures and tactical deployments to predict which one is the actual threat. She can sift through thousands of channels of subspace chatter to isolate a single coded message. It's about enhancing your intelligence gathering by filtering signals from noise, giving your team a clearer picture, faster."
He paused for a moment before continuing with the only promise that mattered.
“We’re here to be useful. If that means sitting in the back and staying out of the way until you point us at a problem, that’s what we’ll do.”
He held the floor, content to let the Arawyn’s captain set the tempo. He and Tara were exactly where they were supposed to be steady, ready, and useful.
Captain Corbin stood with her hands folded behind her back, letting Gareth’s presentation run its course before answering. When she finally spoke, her tone was even, deliberate, meant for both him and her watching crew.
“Read-only access with a tri-key failsafe. That’s a system I can accept. It keeps us honest with one another.”
Her gaze shifted to Tara for a moment, measured and steady. “And I appreciate that you’ve come willing to work under our protocols. That alone earns more goodwill than you might imagine.”
She let her eyes fall briefly to the lockbox, then back to Gareth. “I’ll take you up on the ‘watch me work’ demonstration. Stellar cartography and comms chatter will give my people a sense of what she can do without tangling our core systems.” A small nod followed, pragmatic but not cold.
Then Corbin allowed the faintest smile, dry as good gin. “And as for the cases of Boar’s Rock that appeared in my wardroom, thoughtful, Mr. Rhys, though you should know it reads less as a bribe and more as a reminder of our mutual superior. Vice Admiral MacLaren’s taste in scotch is well documented… if you know where to look. A sharp gesture, but I do wonder if you’re trying to impress me, or to signal that you’ve already done your homework.”
Her expression eased just a fraction, humor still laced in the steel. “Either way, I’ll take the bottles. We’ll raise one when you’ve proven the asset you say you are.”
Corbin shifted her stance, tilting her head toward Lieutenant Powell and the specialists. “Set your kit. Let’s see what she can do. Help us, Mr. Rhys, truly help us, and you’ll find me a far easier captain to live with than most.”
She fell silent again, watching as her officers, under Powell’s direction, moved to clear space for the node. Sidra called him an unconventional asset, and she wasn’t wrong. He carries himself like someone who’s accustomed to bending the rules until they break, but he delivers. If Tara can filter the chaos into clarity without sinking roots into my ship’s backbone, then they’re worth the risk. An asset, yes. But mine to manage, not the Admiral’s.
Gareth let the wardroom crack about whiskey drift through the air and gave it the proper response—a thin grin that admitted it was funny without promising anything. Read-only protocols. Sideband links only. Tri-Key encryption or bust. Those were the guardrails he clung to, the ones that kept him from waking up with a Starfleet commbadge pinned to his chest like some accidental recruit. No, he'd board the Arawyn on his terms, proving his worth the old-fashioned way: raw, useful grit.
He nodded to Tara. "Sandbox only."
"Copy," she replied, stepping toward the center of the room. The overhead holo-emitters woke with a polite chime, casting a three-dimensional sector map onto the deck. It wasn't just a map; it was a living data stream—nav buoys, trade lanes, and patrol arcs pulsing in a calm, Federation green.
"Astrometrics baseline established," Tara said. Her hand entered the projection, and the data responded to her touch. "Let's triage your last watch cycle."
With a sweep of her hand, a chaotic cloud of icons representing the last twelve hours of reports and sensor readings filled the air. "First, the noise," she said. With a series of precise gestures, she culled the data; duplicate reports merged with a soft flash, stale sensor echoes faded to grey and drifted away, and minor alerts resolved themselves and vanished. The cloud shrank by half in seconds.
"Now, the patterns." She isolated two amber icons pulsing at opposite ends of the sector. "Two anonymous tips," she said, as she physically pushed the holographic points together. "Shared voiceprint and timestamp." They merged into a single, brighter icon, which she then slid to a holographic sidebar labeled SECURITY.
Next, she plucked a thread of data representing a freighter. "Transponder is echoing an outdated yard code," she explained, pulling up the relevant Port Authority regulation as a secondary window and sent a notification to the Starbase's security department.
Gareth watched the room's posture shift from professional skepticism to focused engagement. This wasn't a briefing; it was a workshop.
"We'll keep this humming from the backbench," he said, voice warming a fraction. "No strings, no static. Just pure lift." Under his breath: "And coffee that doesn't scorch like overheated dilithium by oh-eight-hundred."
Tara's eyes met his in the holo-glow, a spark of genuine gratitude cutting through her fatigue, motivation clear: she craved allies in the endless watch. "Share your baselines, and I'll fine-tune them, and only alert for real fires, not ghosts. Not at 0300, unless it's blazing. I'll clarify: metaphorical or meltdown."
Gareth held back, letting the ship's rhythm claim the moment. The hologram steadied, pulsing green, a silent affirmation that, for now, the stars aligned without demanding surrender. But in his core, he knew: one more glitch, and the line between outsider and essential might blur forever.
End Log
Gareth Rhys
Intelligence Subcontractor
Tara
Intelligence Specialist
Cpt Sabrina Corbin
Commanding Officer
USS Arawyn
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