Past the Fireball
Posted on 31 Aug 2026 @ 2:28am by Lieutenant Commander Grayson McKinney & Lieutenant Commander Claire Dunross MD
1,603 words; about a 8 minute read
Mission:
Ninety-One Seconds
Location: Holodeck 3
He stood at the arch, having queued up the program, and went through the approach one final time out loud, since that's the way he found out whether it actually made sense or had only sounded good in his head.
"I adopt a cost-saving approach; I jettison the entire magazine early and scatter it rather than aiming it. My object isn't to destroy anything so much as to get them to slow down and consider what they're doing."
He looked at Claire.
"Each escort that has to inspect its own hull rather than giving pursuit is giving me some of the time which I can't obtain any other way."
He liked the way it looked. He had liked the way the previous three approaches looked as well, right up to the point at which they ceased to work, but this one seemed different, neater.
“Ready?”
He keyed in the program before she could answer.
The grid dissolved. Consoles and bulkheads emerged from the golden light, and the bridge took shape again, small, familiar, nothing like the Arawyn. Stars settled on the viewscreen. The tactical display flickered to life along the forward bulkhead. Red Force waited in its usual place, patient in the way only simulations could be.
He moved toward the command chair. Three times he’d sat there and lost. Still, some stubborn part of him believed the fourth attempt might tip the balance—this time, the chair might side with him.
He reached it and set his hand on the back.
The quiet felt different tonight. By now, Claire would usually have a mug or a PADD in her hands, something to anchor her while she watched. Now she stood at the arch, arms at her sides, not moving to her usual spot, not even glancing at the tactical display.
He noticed, though he didn’t turn.
“Grayson.”
Claire had listened to the approach without interrupting. There was nothing obviously wrong with it, and that had become part of the problem. Every version he built made sense while he was explaining it, and usually for some time after the simulation began. He found another angle, another system to sacrifice, another way to force the pursuing ships to spend time they could otherwise use against the convoy.
Then Blue One died.
Thirty-four minutes remained the best result.
“Before you start, bring up the submission requirements.”
Her attention stayed on the secondary console rather than the tactical display. The Arsinoe had changed the way she looked at the program. It was difficult now to see cruisers, escorts, and casualty figures without remembering that somewhere behind all of it had been an actual ship, actual medical records, and a surgeon whose standing order had followed Claire long after she closed the file.
The secondary display opened.
CASUALTY ALLOCATION: REQUIRED.
TACTICAL NARRATIVE: OPTIONAL.
Claire left the arch and crossed the bridge, stopping near the console rather than joining him at the command chair. She read the two lines again.
“The first time we ran this, I said it reminded me of the Maru.”
Her fingers rested against the edge of the console.
“I was thinking about the shape of it then. Every choice gives you another problem. You solve one, it gives you another, and eventually there is nowhere left to go.”
Claire glanced toward him.
“But the Maru ends.”
Her gaze returned to the submission screen.
“This doesn’t.”
The distinction had bothered her almost from the moment he had shown her the casualty section, though she had not understood why at the time. Now it sat plainly in front of them.
“The program keeps going after Blue One is lost. It keeps recording casualties. It asks you to account for them.” Claire indicated the first field before moving her attention to the second. “But it doesn’t require you to explain how you fought the battle.”
Tactical narrative. Optional.
Approach vectors, weapons employment, shield management, terrain, mines. Everything Grayson had spent days refining sat behind a field the program did not actually require him to complete.
Claire let that sit for a moment.
“I don’t think it’s asking you to find a better way to fight.”
Her eyes moved briefly toward the command chair.
“You’ve been trying to make thirty-four become seventy-one.”
She looked back at him.
“What happens if seventy-one was never available?”
The words sounded harsher once they were spoken than they had in her head, but she did not take them back.
Claire glanced again at the casualty allocation field. “I think that’s where the problem actually begins.”
He said nothing for a long moment.
He stayed by the chair, hand resting on its back. Instead of answering her, he focused on the secondary console. The form waited there, as it had on every run, casualty allocation, tactical narrative marked optional. He’d skipped that section a dozen times, never asking why a training scenario would call the plan optional and mean it.
If the plan was truly optional, losing the ship wasn’t the failure. The failure was reaching the end with nothing to put in that column.
He ran it back, slow and methodical, the way he’d double-check a firing solution. The program never stopped when the ship died; it kept counting all the way to the casualty section. The ship’s death wasn’t the end. It was where the real problem started.
He removed his hand from the chair.
He didn’t sit down.
He didn’t know what the lesson was, even though for half a minute he’d understood the only requirement was to sit in the chair and win.
The bridge waited, lit and ready. The approach he’d been so sure of an hour ago still sat in the queue, unused.
He turned to look at Claire.
"Well, if that is the question," he said, lowering his voice more than he had intended. "What should my answer be like?"
Claire considered the question before answering.
“I don’t know.”
There was no hesitation in the admission. If anything, saying it clarified something for her.
She moved closer to the secondary console and looked again at the required field. She could tell him what a physician would do with casualties once they reached Sickbay. She could tell him how triage changed when resources disappeared, how quickly a patient who might have been salvageable under ordinary conditions could become someone a medical team simply could not save. She knew exactly what her own standing orders required if the Arawyn ever reached the point where evacuation failed.
None of that made this her decision.
“If I tell you what the answer should be, you’re still solving someone else’s problem.”
Claire pivoted from the console to face him.
“But I think it begins when you accept the ship is going to be lost. Everything before that is tactics. What you do after that is the part he’s asking you to answer.”
Claire knew what he did when someone was still in danger. He kept looking for another move. She had watched him do it through every run, giving up weapons, shields, position, anything that might buy another few seconds for the people behind him.
The casualty allocation field offered him a very different kind of problem.
Her eyes dropped to it.
“What happens to everyone who is still aboard when you run out of minutes?”
For an instant, the old medical order returned with uncomfortable clarity.
The Assistant Chief Medical Officer remained.
Claire kept the thought to herself. Her next breath came a little slower than the one before it.
She looked back at Grayson.
“I think whatever answer you give him has to be yours.”
He didn't answer right away.
He moved past her and shut the program down in a single action, without any ceremony. The bridge stayed one beat longer than it ought to have, as it always did just before it failed, the golden light fading away until only the grid remained.
The chair was empty, and he had not sat in it at all that night.
He saw the display a second before it fell. CASUALTY ALLOCATION remained blank. TACTICAL NARRATIVE was still listed as optional. It was exactly as it had been on each run since the first night he had opened the file.
He wasn't going to attempt a fifth approach. That part was completed, whether he wanted it to be or not. The next step wouldn't be an improved run; it was going to be himself, the nine names, and a field that he had been avoiding since the first night, even though he had never quite admitted that's exactly what he was doing. For the first time since he had opened the file, he already knew what the first name on the list would be.
Not tonight, though, because he was too tired to do it properly, and he didn't want to finish it wrong.
Instead, he went towards her rather than towards the arch.
She raised her eyes when he came to a stop in front of her, close enough for the grid lines to cast a pale light over both of their faces. He put his hand up and pushed the stray lock of hair behind her ear, then bent down and lightly kissed her, a leisurely gesture that served as a substitute for words when he didn't have any yet.
"Thank you," he said, quieter than he meant it to come out.
He didn't say what for. She'd know, or she wouldn't need to.
End Log
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