Ghosts in the Chart
Posted on 08 Sep 2025 @ 7:05pm by Captain Sabrina Corbin & Gareth Rhys & Tara
2,573 words; about a 13 minute read
Mission:
Fractured Accord
Location: USS Arawyn
=/\= Astrometrics Lab – USS Arawyn =/\=
In the aftermath of the buoy’s destruction, the Arawyn had settled into a tense quiet. Security and engineering teams were focused on assisting the Newton, while sickbay took on several of her injured crew, the Sovereign’s expanded facilities proving invaluable. With her departments engaged and the ship holding position, Captain Corbin disliked the sense of sitting still in contested space. Confident in the Arawyn’s ability to answer any threat, she chose to make herself useful, charting their next move.
The lab unfolded like a cathedral of light and glass. A vaulted dome overhead served as a seamless projection surface, casting the stars in crystalline detail until the room itself seemed adrift in open space. Ribbons of starlanes arced in soft blue, punctuated by navigation beacons and pulsing amber hazard markers. Below, a wide ring of consoles curved around the central holo-table, its surface alive with shifting vectors and luminous grids.
Captain Sabrina Corbin stood at the table’s edge, hands braced lightly against its frame. The plotted convoy route toward Tavrik III stretched in a confident green arc until it didn’t. Where the navigation buoy had been, the path stuttered into static, dissolving into a dead zone of fractured signals and untrustworthy star maps.
Corbin’s brow creased as she adjusted overlays, trying to coax a clean alternative corridor through gravimetric eddies and contested border space. She had always loved this work, mapping the unknown, teasing order from chaos, but this was no academy exercise. A convoy depended on her charts, and a misstep here could cost lives.
She exhaled, straightening. Her gaze lingered on the empty gap in the projection, then shifted toward the nearest comm node. The thought of Gareth’s introduction to Tara surfaced: watch me work. This was precisely that moment. But she wasn’t about to treat Tara like an extension of someone else’s kit.
Her voice was steady, measured with both formality and invitation.
“Specialist Tara, this is Captain Corbin. I’d like you to join me in Astrometrics. We’ve lost a buoy on the Tavrik corridor, and I could use your eyes on a new course.”
The stars glittered on every surface, as if waiting for her answer.
“Aye, Captain, Astrometrics. En route.” Tara closed the channel and opened a tight-beam to the bridge. “Gareth, Captain Corbin wants me in Astrometrics.”
“Copy,” he answered. “I’ll meet you there.”
She left the corridor, the red alert bars still glowing overhead as the crew moved with crisp efficiency. Gareth followed minutes later, cutting across the bridge to the turbolift. Neither of them hurried, but both carried the awareness that the Captain’s request was no small matter.
The turbolift ride was silent, filled only by the hum of the ship’s systems. Tara studied the deck readouts, curiosity working at her. She had never seen Astrometrics before; its reputation as the Arawyn’s nerve center for navigation and stellar analysis carried weight. Why summon her there? What problem required both her perspective and Gareth’s presence?
The doors parted, and the lab spread out like a starfield under glass. The dome projected the sector in crystalline light, every lane and hazard suspended as if the ship itself drifted in open space. At the central holo-table, Captain Sabrina Corbin waited, her posture composed and intent as she worked the starmaps.
Tara slowed a step at the sight, the scale of the room both daunting and inspiring. Gareth moved alongside her, steady and measured, his expression unreadable.
They stopped at the edge of the holo-table. Tara inclined her head with respectful formality. “Captain, reporting as ordered.”
Gareth added his own crisp nod, voice even. “We’re here, Captain. What do you need from us?”
Corbin’s eyes lifted as the turbolift doors parted. She had expected one set of footsteps, not two. Her gaze lingered on Gareth a moment, an arched brow flicking upward before she smoothed her expression back into composure.
“I don’t recall hailing for a pair,” she remarked, tone edged with dry amusement. “Unless, Mister Rhys, you’ve been holding out on me and secretly earned a degree in astrometrics.”
The quip was gentle, not dismissive, and a faint half-smile followed. “In any case, you’re welcome to stay. Extra eyes never hurt.”
She gestured to the holotable, where the broken green arc of the convoy route flickered. “Astrometrics is… well, one of my personal hobbies. I’ve always enjoyed the puzzle of star-charting, though tonight’s is less academic. Our chief flight officer has taken ill, so I’m handling the lane work myself.”
The smile faded as her tone grew deliberate. “The Tavrik buoy isn’t just gone; it was destroyed. Which means a straight-line replacement would be expected. Anticipated. Whoever did it will be waiting for us to make the obvious move.”
Her hand brushed the projection, shifting it to highlight the contested regions where amber hazards flared. “That leaves us with a challenge: carve a course that gets our convoy to Tavrik III intact, one that threads through this patchwork of claimed borders and gravimetric snarls, and does it in a way that no one watching will predict.”
Her eyes found Tara’s, steady and intent. “That’s why I asked for you, Specialist. I think your perspective can help me see the space differently.”
The Captain’s dry remark about not recalling a summons for two drew the faintest twitch of amusement from Gareth. He let the silence hang just long enough to soften it, then replied with a grin.
“Afraid I never earned that astrometrics degree, Captain. I only majored in not getting lost.” He angled a glance toward Tara, then back to the holotable. “Besides, she’s new aboard. Thought it wise to keep an extra set of eyes on her until she finds her footing.”
The words were wrapped in humor, but they carried a truth he didn’t bother to hide. He’d seen enough new recruits dropped into deep water to know how quickly Starfleet could chew them up.
Tara felt the edge of that protection. For a heartbeat, she wanted to object; she could stand on her own. But Gareth’s tone wasn’t patronizing. It was the voice of someone who had walked into plenty of rooms alone and didn’t want her to repeat his mistakes. She let the remark pass with the smallest flick of acknowledgment and stepped forward, shoulders squaring.
“I’m honored, Captain,” she said, voice even. “I’ll help however I can.”
The lab’s dome stretched overhead like a living map of the quadrant, stars glimmering as though the ship itself floated between them. Ribbons of starlanes bent and shimmered, soft blue and steady green, until they fractured into static where the Tavrik buoy had once held the path together. It was dazzling and intimidating all at once. Tara’s pulse quickened at the scale of it, the sheer reach of space laid open like a puzzle no single mind could solve. And now, she’d been asked to try.
She stepped closer to the holotable, her reflection glimmering faintly in the glass as she studied the broken arc. The gap wasn’t just an absence; it was an invitation to disaster. Whoever had destroyed the buoy would be waiting for Starfleet to redraw the same line.
Gareth drifted to one of the side consoles, posture deceptively relaxed. He keyed into the intelligence feeds with the fluidity of habit, fingers brushing over LCARS inputs as he pulled data not meant for public screens. Merchant guild traffic logs. Fringe pirate sightings. Tholian customs advisories two sectors spinward. Each thread built a picture in his mind. No chatter loud enough to signal an ambush, but quiet could be its own warning. He distrusted silences more than noise.
From the central table, Tara lifted her hand. Two fingers traced the dead zone, then swept outward. “If we just replace the buoy and keep to the same line, that’s what they’ll expect. They’ll be ready.” She bent the green arc into a wider curve that skirted the amber hazard markers without crossing them. “So we give them something obvious—a busy, harmless lane. Something easy to monitor.”
With her other hand, she pinched a second path into being, narrow and subtle, slipping behind the glow of the first. “Then the convoy doesn’t march in one line. We stagger them. Smaller groups. Each running just far enough apart that no one ship looks like the prize. From a distance, it looks boring. But boring gets them through.”
The icons pulsed with a rhythm she set into them, compress, expand, compress, so that the pattern of movement felt natural, almost forgettable. She added a scatter of decoy probes along the public route. Their faint signals blinked like sparks on the edge of vision, the sort of clutter pirates might chase without realizing they were wasting their time.
Gareth looked up from his console, the cybernetic glint in his right eye catching the projection light. “Cross-checking against chatter nets. No signs of hunters organized on this side of the line. If anyone’s waiting, they’re hiding deep.” His gaze shifted to Tara, not doubting, but weighing. She hadn’t asked his approval before stepping forward. That independence earned his respect more than deference ever could.
Tara kept her focus on the stars overhead. She could feel the Captain’s eyes on her, cool and measuring, not unkind. It wasn’t intimidation; it was expectation. That weight steadied her more than it shook her. “If they’re watching,” she said quietly, “we’ll let them chase shadows. By the time they realize, we’ll be past them.”
The lab’s hum filled the pause that followed, the dome alive with stars and plotted courses.
Gareth leaned back from the console, arms loose at his sides, posture easy but watchful. He wasn’t here to take her place at the table. This was her test, not his. Still, his presence on the flank was deliberate, an anchor, a quiet guardrail. He knew when to keep his distance and when to close the gap, and right now, distance was the truer show of faith.
Tara drew in a steady breath, letting the wonder and the weight of the moment settle together. This was her first step aboard the Arawyn, and she’d made it with her own hands.
And just behind her, steady as shadow, Gareth kept watch.
Corbin studied the projection in silence for a long moment after Tara finished, her gaze flicking between the shifting overlays and the faces across the table. Then she nodded once, deliberate.
“Well said, Specialist. In plain terms, if they expect us to make a sudden veer, we don’t. We hold our course.” She tapped the holo-grid, dragging out the convoy’s green arc so it extended past the ruptured buoy. “But we make it look like four ships are still here when in truth, we’ve split the deck. Remote drones tuned to mimic our signatures will pad the formation, while masking protocols conceal the real vectors. To anyone watching, the convoy appears whole and predictable.”
Her hand swept across the projection, splitting the icons into ghost copies and scattering them with precise spacing until the map shimmered with decoys. “We thread through contested space without fanfare. No dramatic course change to flag us as prey. Just quiet misdirection, simple enough to execute, difficult to challenge without giving themselves away.”
She glanced at Tara again, the faintest trace of a smile at the corner of her mouth. “You gave me the frame; thank you. It’s a sound approach.”
Then her eyes shifted to Gareth, steady and inviting. “Mister Rhys, you’ve danced with shadows before. What’s your read? Will this keep our hunters guessing long enough to make port?”
Tara’s eyes tracked the holographic ghost ships Captain Corbin had scattered along the convoy’s route. She saw the quiet misdirection, the simple timing—a predator’s feint designed to draw the eye. "I see the pattern, Captain," she said, her voice steady. "I can fine-tune the spacing and keep the decoys looking real. Anyone watching will see a whole, boring convoy and completely miss the handoff."
Gareth stood at an auxiliary console, his eyes on the tactical display, reading the empty space behind the convoy like a tracker reads broken ground. Corbin’s question hung in the air: Will it hold?
He answered it plainly. "The front door is locked, Captain. But the back gate is wide open." He glanced at Tara, a flicker of pride in his eyes, then turned his attention back to the Captain. "Let the Long Haul play sheepdog. We'll hang back half a light-minute, off-axis, and sweep our own wake."
His hands moved over the console, and a new icon, his ship, appeared on the hologram, taking up a flanking position behind the last decoy. "Predators hit the lead ship or the straggler," he explained. "They rarely watch the space between. We'll watch the rear, drop a few sensor drones, and listen for the ripple of a cloaked ship or the whisper of an engine. If someone tries to sneak around for a bite, we'll be waiting for them."
Tara, already anticipating his strategy, adjusted the timing of the decoys. "I can anchor the decoy's refresh rate to your sweep pattern," she added, her voice a calm counterpoint to his. "If a sensor pass hits the convoy, the whole picture will look like one cohesive unit. There will be no tells."
Gareth nodded, a hint of a smile touching his lips. "We’re not hunting," he said, the words aimed at both Tara and the Captain. "We're sweeping. If we do it right, they'll never even know we were there."
The briefing room hummed around them, the holographic stars and ships turning in the silence. Tara rested her hands lightly on the edge of the holotable. Gareth’s fingers were poised over his console. Between them, their plan hung in the air, a complex and deadly trap made of light, waiting for a single word to be set in motion.
Corbin’s eyes tracked the layered projections, the convoy stretched and disguised by their combined effort. She let the quiet hang for a moment before giving a slow nod.
“Excellent. Specialist, keep refining the decoys until they’re seamless. When we move, I want anyone watching to see exactly what you’ve described, something boring enough to ignore.” She allowed the faintest smile, not cold but measured. “That’s fine work, and I’m grateful.”
Her gaze shifted to Gareth. “And you’ll have your sheepdog’s post. A quiet sweep of the rear with just enough teeth to make any would-be predator regret the attempt. Consider your suggestion noted and approved.”
She clasped her hands lightly behind her back, shoulders settling. “We’ll hold here until the Newton reports as ready for transit. Once she’s buttoned up, we’ll put this plan in motion.”
Her eyes lingered on the shimmering ghost icons, the convoy looking steady and whole. “Let them think we’re idle. When the time comes, they’ll find we were already two steps ahead.”
End Log
Captain Sabrin Corbin
Commanding Officer
&
Gareth Rhys
Intelligence Contractor
&
Tara
Intelligence Specialist
RSS Feed