Stars, Memory, and Thirty-Four Minutes

Posted on 09 Aug 2026 @ 3:35am by Lieutenant Commander Claire Dunross MD & Lieutenant Commander Grayson McKinney

2,693 words; about a 13 minute read

Mission: Ninety-One Seconds

// Forward Viewing Lounge, Deck 11 //

His shift ended on time. That seldom happened, so for the first ten steps out of the tactical bay, Grayson kept waiting for someone to call him back. Nobody did. He took the win and headed for the forward viewing lounge on Deck 11, where he had promised Claire dinner and, for once, had time to keep the promise.

She had already claimed a table by the windows when he got there, the kind with a real view instead of a screen showing one, stars sliding past slow and steady.

"On time," he said. "Write it down somewhere. Might not happen again this year."

He dropped into his seat with his tray full of food: warm pão de queijo, a small plate of grilled fish and rice, and a bowl of sliced mango for after. Light food, the way his grandmother always made it on Sunday mornings back in Rio. Ailsa McKinney had never cooked a day in Scotland that anyone remembered. Still, she'd learned every one of his mother's recipes within a year, on the theory that a woman couldn't fairly complain about her son marrying a Brazilian if she wasn't willing to learn the food. She ran that kitchen like she'd run one her whole life, muttering to herself in Gaelic at a stove that never behaved as she wanted, and handing out wisdom whether anyone asked or not.

Eat slow enough to taste it, she used to say, or don't bother eating at all. A man who swallows his food without noticing it will swallow the rest of his life the same way.

He picked up one of the rolls and broke it open. Steam came off the inside, and for a second he wasn't in the lounge at all; he was standing in her kitchen at eight years old, waiting for her to decide he'd earned the first one.

Claire reached over and took one off his plate before he'd finished the thought. He didn't say anything about it. There wasn't anything left to say. She'd been doing that since somewhere around the second month they'd known each other, and he'd stopped noticing when it stopped bothering him, which was probably the same week.

He ate slow, the way Ailsa had drilled into him long before he thought to argue, actually tasting the fish instead of just refueling between crises. For a few minutes they just sat while the stars passed outside. The quiet held, and when it settled, he reached into his jacket pocket and took out the datarod, still there since that morning because he hadn't been able to leave it in a drawer even for one shift.

"I want to run it tonight," he said. "The file. If it's what I think it is, I need to know before I can back out, or decide not to." He turned the rod over once in his fingers, the way he'd been doing all day without noticing he was doing it. "Figured I'd rather lose in front of someone than lose alone."

They finished eating without more speeches, and afterward he walked her down toward the holodeck level with one hand loose around the rod in his pocket, like it might try to leave without him. The corridor was quiet at that hour, most of the crew off shift, lights dimmed to the soft gold the Arawyn ran at night. Gamma shift didn't start for another two hours, giving him a real window to work in—enough time to lose a few times before anyone official needed the holodeck.

Holodeck two was free. It usually was this late, and he'd reserved the block just in case. He kicked the door open with more confidence than he felt, crossed to the arch controls, and ran the same authentication he'd used that morning. The program still sat where he'd left it, header line waiting. He drew a breath and let the room become the next problem.

TACTICAL PROBLEM 4-11.

He glanced back at her once, framed in the arch, arms crossed, already settling in as she planned on staying a while.

"Last chance to go do something that isn't watching me argue with a math problem for the next hour."

Claire lingered at the arch with the mug of tea she had carried down from the lounge, one hand curled around its warmth while a PADD rested against her opposite palm.

"Tempting."

It was not.

Curiosity had already settled the matter.

She stayed as the grid disappeared and the bridge formed around them, walls and consoles resolving out of gold light until the holodeck felt smaller. Older. More enclosed than the Arawyn. The layout took her a moment to place, but the lines were familiar from schematics and Academy courses.

Norway class.

The tactical display came alive across the forward bulkhead, spreading contacts and vectors through the dim bridge in pale light. The scenario parameters populated alongside it.

Claire read as Grayson moved toward the command chair.

One light cruiser, a complement of one hundred ninety.

Two heavy cruisers and four escorts.

Five civilian vessels carrying four thousand one hundred twenty colonists.

Loading would take another twenty-nine minutes. After that, forty-two minutes at sublight before the convoy could safely go to warp.

Seventy-one minutes.

Her gaze dropped to the final line.

Best result on record: thirty-four.

Claire took a slow drink of tea, then lowered her eyes to the PADD in her hand.

She made it through perhaps three lines.

When she looked up again, Grayson had settled into the command chair.

That caught her more than she expected.

The bridge lighting shifted across his face as the tactical display changed, pale blues and muted reds moving over familiar features made suddenly less familiar by the setting. There was something different in his bearing here. Not harder, exactly. More settled. The humor that so often lived close to the surface had quieted, leaving behind a concentration that seemed to draw the room toward him.

He looked as though he belonged there.

Claire's thumb stopped against the edge of the PADD.

For one brief unwanted moment she saw beyond Lieutenant Commander McKinney.

Captain McKinney.

The thought arrived whole enough to hurt.

Not because she doubted he would reach it. Quite the opposite.

She could see it too easily.

A command of his own. A ship that was not the Arawyn. A life moving forward along a path he understood far better than she understood her own.

A future Grayson who might not be hers.

Claire held the thought only a heartbeat before putting it away.

Not tonight.

Her eyes dropped back to the PADD.

She read the sentence twice.

Then Grayson began.

The asteroid belt was his first choice.

On the tactical display, Grayson drew the cruiser across the convoy's line, using the belt for more than simple concealment. He shifted position before the opposing force could settle into an easy approach, forcing the escorts to compensate while keeping Blue One between them and the civilian ships.

Claire lowered the PADD another inch.

For several minutes, it worked.

Then one of the escorts widened its approach.

Another followed.

The change was subtle but the effect was not. The two ships spread far enough apart that defending one exposed the cruiser to the other, while the heavier ships closed through the space they created.

Grayson saw it almost immediately.

His next decision came without hesitation.

The convoy remained protected.

The cruiser paid for it.

The first impact came as a flash across the forward display and a heavy tremor through the deck. Claire's tea rippled inside the mug.

Another hit followed.

A phaser array disappeared from the tactical board.

Then another warning joined the first.

Grayson adjusted.

He kept adjusting.

Claire could see the shape of what he was trying to do even when the details stayed ahead of her. He was trading position, shields, weapons, and time against one another while holding the civilians behind him.

The belt had bought him something.

Not enough.

The escorts were already making it irrelevant.

For several minutes it was impressive enough that she almost forgot the number at the top of the scenario.

Seventy-one.

The bridge darkened around them.

Smoke curled from a damaged console to Grayson's left.

Twenty-one minutes.

Twenty-two.

Then the light went white.

The bridge vanished.

The grid returned abruptly and Claire blinked against the brightness.

The only sound left was the faint hum of the holodeck and Grayson's breathing.

Twenty-two minutes and change.

He was already studying the result.

Claire lifted her mug again and glanced down at her PADD.

The same sentence.

Still.

She gave up pretending and let the screen dim in her hand.

There was no need to tell Grayson he had lost. He knew. More importantly, he was already thinking about why.

The second run began before her tea had cooled.

This time he abandoned the asteroid belt earlier and drew the enemy toward the gas giant, using the radiation field to disappear from their sensors while the convoy moved.

The bridge dimmed into deep amber as radiation warnings began.

Claire felt the tension change with it.

For several minutes the problem seemed almost generous.

Red contacts faltered at the edge of the interference. The convoy gained distance. Grayson used the quiet to redistribute power and reposition the cruiser. When he came out of the radiation shadow, he did it at an angle Claire had not anticipated.

The first volley struck one of the escorts hard.

Claire's brows lifted.

For one breath, perhaps two, the whole problem seemed to shift.

Then the cost of the maneuver began to arrive.

Emitter efficiency fell.

Shield strength dropped.

The place that had hidden him had weakened the systems he needed once he emerged.

The bridge lights flickered as another impact rolled through the deck.

Grayson compensated.

Then compensated again.

The simulated officers called damage reports over one another, voices tightening as systems began to fail. Claire heard the strain building in the bridge around him, but Grayson remained centered, working each new problem as it arrived.

That was when something began to bother her.

At first she could not name it.

He was doing better.

That was obvious.

Twenty-five minutes passed.

Then twenty-eight.

Thirty.

Claire set her mug carefully on the ledge beside the arch.

Every decision was clever.

Every adjustment bought something.

A few more seconds. A better angle. Another kilometer for the convoy. One damaged system kept alive at the expense of another.

Grayson was solving everything the scenario put in front of him.

Beautifully.

And somehow, watching him, Claire began to feel less convinced that solving each problem was the same as solving the problem.

The bridge shook again.

A console blew forward, filling the compartment with a sharp crack and the smell of scorched insulation.

Thirty-one minutes.

Grayson was still working.

Still finding another move.

Still pulling time from a ship that appeared to have none left to give.

Then the cruiser died.

The noise stopped.

The lights vanished.

The holodeck grid returned around them.

Claire did not move immediately.

Neither did Grayson.

He stood inside the yellow lines, looking toward where the tactical display had been, as though the answer might still hang there if he stared long enough.

Eventually his hand moved toward the controls.

Claire watched it.

"Grayson."

He glanced back at her.

She folded her arms, studying him for a moment before looking toward the blank space where the bridge had been.

There was something familiar in the shape of what she had just watched. Not the ships or the tactics, but the rhythm of it. The constant invitation to find one more answer. The suggestion that if the officer were only clever enough, quick enough, imaginative enough, the problem might finally yield.

She had felt that once herself.

At the Academy.

Claire tilted her head slightly.

"This is beginning to remind me rather a lot of the Maru."

---

He didn't answer right away. For a moment, he stood in the yellow grid lines, staring at the space where the bridge had been. The last of the holomatter shimmered out, a faint gold fading in the corners, while a system below the deck clicked and went quiet. He looked drained in a way that had nothing to do with fatigue.

"Maybe," he said, letting the word linger before continuing.

"When I took the Maru," he said quietly, "I improvised a rescue the simulation never planned for. It wasn’t in any of the branches, wasn’t supposed to work. I still died, but I died interesting enough that two proctors watched the holovid twice, just to see how I’d managed it. Somebody probably still has that file somewhere."

He almost smiled at the memory, but it didn’t quite reach his face.

"Never felt like this, though." He turned to her. "Annoyed when I lost. Maybe a little proud for making the proctors laugh. But never like the room was still counting something after I was already gone."

He didn’t wait for her response. He crossed to the display, boots quiet on the holographic floor, and brought up the closing screen that appeared at the end of every run—not that he’d ever stopped to read it before.

CASUALTY ALLOCATION: PENDING.
AFT COMPARTMENT PERSONNEL: CREWMAN A THROUGH CREWMAN I.

He read it once, then again, slower. Nine people, except they weren't people so much as letters lined up like a duty roster. Below them ran columns of injury data and survival intervals, precise down to the minute.

He set the rod down on the console, his hand lingering near it.

It wasn't the losing that unsettled him. He'd lost plenty of times and slept fine afterward. This was something else. Somebody had taken extraordinary care with what happened after Blue One stopped being a viable ship, recording consequences the tactical problem itself seemed almost indifferent to.

The grid hummed faintly around them.

Grayson stood very still.

Then he picked up the datarod again and turned it once between his fingers.

"Claire," he said quietly. "What kind of program counts its dead this carefully?"

Claire did not answer him immediately.

Her attention had already moved past the question to the display.

She left the arch for the first time since the simulation began, abandoning her cooling tea and the PADD beside it as she crossed the empty grid toward him. The tactical problem had held her curiosity before. This was different.

She stepped alongside Grayson and leaned closer to the screen.

Crewman A.

Crewman B.

Her eyes traveled down the list to I, then across the columns beside them.

Injuries. Compartments. Survival intervals.

Nine anonymous people described in considerably more detail than Claire would have expected from a tactical exercise whose larger pieces had been cruisers, escorts, weapons, and minutes.

Her brow furrowed.

Grayson’s question lingered between them.

Claire read through the entries once, then again more slowly, resisting the instinct to start pulling the information apart simply because it was there.

“I’m not sure.”

She glanced toward him.

“But the simulation certainly seems to want you to see it.”

Her eyes returned to the screen for another moment.

There was more here. She could feel the edge of it now, the same pull a difficult case could exert when one piece did not quite fit with the others. Given another hour, she suspected both of them would still be standing in the holodeck chasing it.

Claire looked at Grayson properly.

Fourteen hours of duty had come before dinner, and two unsuccessful runs had followed it. Whatever answer his father had buried in the program had waited eleven years already. It could survive a few more hours.

She reached out and closed the casualty display.

“Tomorrow.”

Grayson looked at her.

Claire gave him the look that generally preceded an argument he was unlikely to win.

“You need sleep.”

She admitted.

“So do I.”

Her expression softened as she picked up the datarod and offered it back to him.

“Whatever Captain McKinney wants you to find will still be here in the morning.”

 

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