Shock sat without movement on one of the USS Ayarim’s small transport shuttles. The engines emitted a low, constant hum. Beyond the viewport, the stars slipped past all too quickly. Within the small cabin, his duffel lay neatly at his feet. A second box of personal items sat in the shuttle’s hold, mainly private clothes and memorabilia, including a framed picture of a Klingon boy’s crayon drawing of him and his family, his grandfather’s ceremonial cloak, and boxes of tea from across the quadrant (circa 30 kg in total).

The captain’s insignia on his collar felt unfamiliar, not due to any sensory anomaly, but because of what it now permitted. Visibility. Permanence. Names and ranks were illusions of control. His own had shifted too many times to carry inherent meaning.

He reviewed the past seventy-two hours, methodically, as he had already done five times. The call had not been anticipated, though the possibility had long been accounted for. His prior assignment, on record, had been routine. In fact, it had been anything but. The Ayarim’s operations had skated the boundary between official policy and contingency doctrine. Still, the transfer orders had come via Malwax with little ceremony. The Denobulan’s smile remained as exaggerated as ever—a tic Shock now recognized as both affection and shield. But it had conveyed safety. For a moment, that had been enough.

Officially, the command of the Leviathan had been intended for Captain Rosemary Denbigh, with Commander Akvar as her incoming chief of operations. En route to the Leviathan, their shuttle had been destroyed – or more accurately, dissolved. The absence of physical remnants suggested quantum resonance failure, not standard sabotage. No explanation had been made public. That, too, was a kind of message. Yet whatever the cause, the result had been the same: the Leviathan remained without command, and a gap in the chain of responsibility that Starfleet could not continue to leave unfilled.

Much of Shock’s career had unfolded in the space between roles. As a V’Shar Academy graduate, embedded within Vulcan diplomatic structures, he had learned early to operate under constructed identities. He had not used his given name, Afel, outside his family since his teens. In Paris, he had shaken hands with Council aides while mapping ideological fracture points. His degree in Earth studies had been a formality. While technically earned, it credited largely from his intelligence coursework. The few who had shared the truth of his mission understood that cultural attaché had been less a post than a disguise.

Later, in San Francisco, his Starfleet Academy cadet uniform had served a similar function. The coursework was genuine. The persona, less so. He had been tasked with monitoring for infiltration: Romulan agents rebranded as refugees, potential Changeling reemergence, even anomalies suggestive of Q-class entities. While others studied propulsion theory, he logged clandestine reports on personnel anomalies and internal instability. It had been a useful posting—efficient, contained, and instructive. But it had never been about education.

That double life had continued aboard the Raal, then outward into conventional service. Even as his role became more visible—chief of security, department head—he had remained fluent in ambiguity. He had watched, assessed, intervened when necessary. But always within boundaries. Always in silence.

There were, however, moments that defied containment.

The incident aboard the Athena (or the Shai, depending on temporal vector) had left a visible trace. When he had been forced to exist across two ships and two centuries, logic had not sufficed. He had navigated contradiction not as anomaly but as continuum. In that paradox, he had functioned. He had made command-level decisions under pressure, across time, and had survived with the cohesion of self intact. Not every officer could have done the same. Perhaps Starfleet had remembered that. Perhaps someone with access to his unlisted file had determined that Shock, whose life had been layered in fictions, might be well-suited to a ship that had never held one truth for long.

Still, entrusting him with the Leviathan, a vessel this large, this symbolic, meant something had changed. Either the stakes had risen, or the masks were no longer sufficient.

The Leviathan had suffered instability. In the space of a year, it had seen four commanding officers. Captain Iphigenia Henao had been reassigned. Lieutenant Commander Lazol, a Ferengi on an officer exchange programme, had held the centre seat both briefly and unorthodoxly, before, what Shock mused, returned to serve Ferenginar’s own fleet. Captain Zarcal had remained for barely two months. And most recently, Lieutenant Commander Vivian Skogheim had served as acting commanding officer. Shock had reviewed the records. The ship had remained operational, but cohesion under such conditions was difficult to maintain. Skogheim appeared to have managed it best.

He had not met her in person. The file presented a tall, broad-shouldered woman with a visible facial scar she had chosen not to have removed. That detail stood out. Most officers chose dermal regeneration for such injuries unless they served a purpose. Shock noted the choice as deliberate. She had likely earned it in combat (Dominion War service confirmed that possibility). Perhaps it was a boundary. Perhaps it was a message, but what was then the intended communication?

Skogheim’s background suggested a strong orientation toward discipline. She had grown up with a Vulcan mother and a Human father, and had reportedly exceeded expectations from an early age. Her name was fully human. He noted that too. Her academic and physical performance were both exemplary. She had trained extensively in martial disciplines and had served with distinction during the Dominion war. Injuries in the line of duty had earned her commendations. That combination would be familiar to many Starfleet captains.

After her promotion to lieutenant, she had transitioned into Intelligence. That aspect still gave him pause. Starfleet traditionally viewed Intelligence postings with structural caution, particularly when assigning personnel to command tracks. However, Skogheim’s service in that field appeared to have focused inward, with internal protocols, training systems, and security design rather than covert operations.

Shock did wonder why she had not been named commanding officer herself. Given her time aboard, and the relatively short tenure of those before her, it would have been a plausible solution. The file did not indicate whether she had declined the role or whether Starfleet had passed her over in favour of an outside appointment. If the latter, the reasoning was not apparent.

Skogheim’s command style, as described in her file, reflected an emphasis on protocol, precision, and a willingness to make decisions based purely on strategic interest. She was described as direct, honest, and emotionally indifferent in her judgments. She was not unkind, but rather emotionally unmoved. Others might misread that as coldness, particularly a crew seeking affirmation. However, Shock understood the logic in such an approach. It would minimize confusion and reduce potential for interpretive error. Whether the crew had adjusted to her, or merely endured her, remained to be seen.

He would need to establish clear lines of communication with her. Not to soften her (that would be both unnecessary and unproductive) but to understand how she made judgments, and how best to complement them. It was unlikely she would waste his time, or her own. That was an advantage. He had no interest in testing authority against authority.

What was clear, even from the brief file summaries, was that Skogheim had carried the burden of leadership under difficult circumstances. That deserved recognition, and it demanded respect. Yet, Skogheim had been in command. Now he was. How would she adapt to him taking the centre seat, and her resigned to second-in-command? In any case, he knew he had promote her to commander. It would be his first order.

Shock adjusted the collar of his uniform. The new insignia caught slightly on the fabric. The sensation was minor, but he noticed it again. It was an oddly persistent reminder.

He returned his gaze to the stars beyond the viewport. They offered no affirmation, but neither did they contradict. They simply continued, in silence.

The shuttle was due to dock in just over two hours. After that would come the standard introductions, the formal assumption of command, a review of systems and personnel, and likely an address to the senior staff. He would prepare a statement, but he would keep it brief. Vulcans typically did.

He reached into his bag and retrieved a small flask of tea. The blend was Andorian – sharp, mineral-heavy, and slightly bitter. It helped ground his thoughts.

Shock considered the moment again. Until now, he had commanded no vessel. Now he was to command one of the largest and most symbolically significant ships in the quadrant. That change had occurred in less than three days, without his seeking it and without precedent in his career.

There was no obvious logic to this, but there was duty. He understood duty. He had lived by it, even when understanding lagged behind obligation.

If Malwax had placed his confidence in him, and if Starfleet Command had acted upon that confidence, then Shock’s task was not to second-guess the decision. His task was to carry it forward with competence and integrity.

He took a sip of the tea. It had gone tepid again. Shock sipped it anyway, then quietly returned to the replicator for fresh water.

“One hundred millilitres, near-boiling, with a mineral compisition suitable for Andorian ash-leaf tea”, he commanded. After the replicator obeyed, he poured the water back into the flask with steady hands. He found that the repetition of small rituals grounded him. He would need grounding. He touched his collar again. It still felt unfamiliar.

He studied the names of the senior crew, other than Skogheim, on board the 1900-person ship.

Adam Magnússon had lived through more battle than Shock ever had. Adam had seen frontlines, Dominion campaigns, and close-quarters combat. He had survived by watching, not by declaring. His silence shouldn’t be misinterpreted as absence; rather, it was built around something heavy and immovable. Shock found himself wondering how much of that weight the man still carried. Would he allow it to shift? Would he allow him to see it? Or would trust require years? There would be little warmth, perhaps. But stillness could be its own kind of loyalty.

Bethany Kovra Gadi, half Betazoid, one-quarter El-Aurian, and one-quarter human, was complexity in motion. She had spent years without telepathy, surviving by reading body language and simulating empathy with precision. Then, suddenly, the abilities appeared. Shock knew what it was to rebuild oneself under new conditions. He wondered: had she let go of the version of herself she had to be in order to survive? Or had she layered the new skills over the old wounds? He would need to grant her space and trust. Would she reciprocate?

Bradley Maxwell was harder to place. Too young, and yet… two years in place, without fuss. That kind of stability didn’t happen by chance, not on a ship like the Leviathan. Raised among artists on Alpha Centauri, and yet his record spoke of pattern recognition – seeing what was out of place, noticing before it unravelled. Malwax had once called that a “quiet kind of command.” Was Maxwell ready to lead under pressure? Could he hold authority in the face of crisis? Or had the last two years simply lacked the wrong kind of test? Shock hoped it was the former but if it wasn’t, how quickly could he step in?

Aasrel Izei was young and resilient. Shock tried not to imagine what nine days in the hive mind might feel like. It had changed him. Izei had lost his empathy: not metaphorically, but neurologically. Could Izei navigate a crew without the Betazoid social map he’d been born into, the fine-tuned emotional capabilities of feeling others’ emotions? Would he even want to? Shock didn’t know. But he had no intention of looking at Izei as a liability. He would speak to him plainly with respect. He hoped the respect would be returned.

The name Steven Marsh hadn’t meant anything to him when he first saw it. Then he saw the place of birth: France. Shock had lived in Paris once, during his posting to the Vulcan delegation to the Federation Council. There was something grounding in that: a landscape they had both known, a culture and atmosphere they both had, for different period of time, called “home”. Shock read on. Marsh was no traditional scientist. The file described elegance, not order. But there was discipline in his work, if one looked. Perhaps what Marsh needed wasn’t challenge, but recognition. Shock hoped he could offer that in a sense of shared experience.

Ashara Mavix was, on paper, young, just twenty-two. But age, he reminded himself, was not linear for a joined Trill. She was only the second host of the Mavix symbiont, yet already carried lifetimes of memory. That weight could be steadying or destabilizing, depending on how it was integrated. Her record suggested rapid maturity, high performance under pressure, and a piloting aptitude that spoke to precise spatial intuition. That alone made her worthy of close attention, and, perhaps, even of trust.

Laural Witley would be essential. She had served on the Leviathan longer than anyone else among the senior crew: nearly five years. In that time, the ship had weathered countless captains, departmental turnover, and structural instability. Witley had remained. That alone was significant. But she was more than a survivor. She was the crew’s memory, the constant in the Leviathan ‘s chaos. She was their memory of events and of feelings. Of morale. Of unspoken losses. Her file spoke of humour, precision, and a near-clinical refusal to be underestimated. Shock respected that. He hoped she would allow him close enough to listen. Not as a superior, but as someone who needed her view of the landscape. The shape of grief aboard the Leviathan would not appear in the duty logs. Witley would know where the silence lived. Whether she chose to share it with him was a different matter, and one he would not – nor could – demand.

Kadence Argona was newer. Two months aboard. Her file read like redacted field history barely disguised as clinical service: trauma recovery, elimination operations, Black Ops placements. She had moved through the Federation’s shadows and emerged not cynical, but sharpened. Her expertise wasn’t theoretical. It had been earned in sealed rooms, in cryo-malfunctioned rescue missions, in survivor’s guilt thick enough to drown. Shock didn’t doubt her loyalty. But loyalty to what? The Federation? Starfleet? She had helped people past regulation, past protocol. That was her strength, and her liability. Her methods might unsettle a ship that needed stability. They might also save it. He wondered whether she would defer to Witley’s steadiness, or whether her independence would override departmental unity. Either way, she would not bend easily. She would need boundaries but not fences. If she suspected command didn’t respect where she came from, she would disengage. Or worse, act alone. Shock could not afford either. He would need to be precise with her. He needed to be measured, direct, but not adversarial.

And then there was Kelmain.

Post-human, some would say. A machine, some others might say. But Shock would not. Beneath the cybernetic frame, beneath the armature, the skillsofts, the neural stabilizers, was still the man who bore the name Dorian Kelmain. A man who required memory to stay alive. A mind stitched together by will and ghost fragments. Kelmain did not alarm Shock. He moved him. Not with pity, but with recognition. Kelmain had been rebuilt against his will, but he remained sentient. Shock would speak to him directly, without condescension.

He paused. Looked again at the list.

No one on that roster was simple. None fit cleanly into a textbook command structure. But perhaps that was fitting. The Leviathan had not thrived under simplicity. It had endured.

He sipped the tea. Still hot. Still sharp. It centred him.

Command would not be about perfection. It would be about listening. Noticing the small instabilities before they compounded.

And if he made mistakes (and he would), they must be in service of the whole. Not fear. Not ego.

Shock sat straighter. His hands quiet. The stars outside continued their slow crawl.

He took another sip of his tea. He was almost there.

Captain Shock
Commanding Officer