“Commander Cobb.”

He felt, rather than heard, the words disturb his precious tumbler of amber liquid, an almost imperceptible ripple breaking across the hitherto calm surface - a portent that his hard-won tranquility was about to meet a violent end.

Without turning to face the speaker, Zachariah Cobb, washed out former Starfleet Officer and current alcoholic, drained the remnants of his glass and motioned silently for the attractive young bartender to grace him with a refill.

“That depends on who’s asking.”

Cobb’s confident apathy collided head-on with the other’s enthusiasm, the stranger reaching out and simultaneously blocking the liquid refill with his right hand while seizing Cobb’s arm with his left. Torn aggressively from the steady comfort of his favourite barstool, the old man found himself clamping a hand onto the bartop as the other stepped forward and yelled into his face.

“Commander Cobb, Sir! I have instructions from Starfleet Command to deliver you promptly to Federation Headquarters to receive new orders!”

Orders. Now there was a word Zachariah Cobb had not heard in a long time. But with it came a rush of other concepts, ones that he had spent the last two years sinking to the bottom of the nearest bottle. The Federation. Starfleet. Duty. Commander Cobb. That was him, still. A man with a commission. A man with a job and a duty to perform. The gods be damned!

A few hours later, following a shower and the mimic of a shave, not to mention an incredibly nauseating shuttle ride, and Zachariah Cobb found himself deposited on the steps of the Federation Headquarters building. Tall, modern and blindingly sterile, the foyer into which he stepped formed a sharp contrast to his own dilapidated appearance. Sure, the dress uniform still fit, although perhaps it was slightly more snug around the middle than it had once been. And while he had steadfastly refused to trim his shoulder length hair or equally impressive beard, the old man had at least tamed them with some fancy-smelling gel. He felt like a prized turkey, dressed up and kitted out for the sacrificial slaughter, his heels pounding a staccato rhythm as he crossed the cavernous foyer, as if screaming out a message in morse code. Dot dot dot. Dash dash dash. Dot dot dot. Somebody get me out of this bloody mess!

Finally, after adding as much procrastination to his movement as could be tolerated without coming to a stop, he reached the office of Admiral Roebuck. Zachariah still remembered the scrawny young ensign who had stepped onto his engineering deck with a hyperspanner in his left hand and a vat of enthusiasm in his right. Back then, Cobb himself had shared some of the same drive and dedication. Before the war. Before every atom that connected Zachariah Cobb to the rest of the human race had been sucked from his body and replaced with a bitter, ink-black void. So, Roebuck had made Admiral. Good for him. But why the hell couldn’t he leave Cobb alone? The second battle of Chin’toka was no more than a history lesson now and whatever debt he might have owed Cobb for saving his life, in the intervening years he had repaid it in full, tenfold.

With a deep sigh and a plummeting in his stomach for what was about to come, Cobb straightened his collar and rapped on the Admiral’s door.

“Anomaly Recovery…what, Sir?”

“You won’t have heard of it before now, Commander. It’s classified at the highest levels. But as of oh-nine-hundred hours today, we have reinstated your Omega level clearance.”

“My clearance?” Cobb finally collapsed into the seat that had previously been offered and stubbornly refused. “Is the Federation at war?”

“Yes we are,” Roebuck replied. “In a manner of speaking.”

“Against whom?”

Admiralty had aged the man considerably. Where once his hair had been as golden as the breaking dawn, now it was a coarse, silver-grey. And while those boyish good looks still remained, the years had buried them beneath a collage of wrinkles and worn skin. Cobb could not even begin to imagine the weight of responsibility he was expected to shoulder these days, but in that moment, it appeared as if his question had added at least another 500 pounds of burden to the man.

“Well,” Roebuck removed his glasses and rubbed at the bridge of his nose, “it’s not quite as simple as that. There is no singular, common enemy, but more a random succession of various threats.”

Cobb leaned forward and placed his hands on Roebuck’s heavy oak desk. He could feel the maelstrom beginning to form around him, swirling, midnight water pulling him down into the bowels of the earth. He needed an anchor, something solid to lash himself to in the encroaching storm. But all around him was only water and he a lone vessel, insignificant against these monstrous waves.

“What…what kind of threats?”

It happened so quickly and with an air of such irrelevance as to be almost imperceptible. But in the years that followed, when Cobb looked back on the tragedy of his life, he would mark this indelibly as the moment when the world came to an end.

A few hours later and Cobb stumbled upon the sanctuary of the Federation Command Officer’s lounge. Small and inviting, the warmly lit room held a long bar and several booths and tables for fellow command officers to drink and relax. With four newly-polished pips on his collar to triumph over his otherwise vagrant appearance, he was granted immediate access and retreated to a semi-hidden corner booth. Only once his whiskey had been delivered and he felt reasonably sure of no further interruptions, did he dare to look again at the PADD. A small pinhole camera in the top-left corner of the device was continually aware of its current readers and would encrypt or decrypt the information it held instantly, should its confidentiality be at risk of a breach. As it was, with only Zachariah Cobb’s own tired blue eyes upon it, the screen proudly displayed its contents in full.

“United Federation of Planets - Starfleet Anomaly Recovery Unit. A history.”

He had read the entire document fifteen times already, but still could not shake the sense of deep, primal trauma at what he had learned. It was almost incomprehensible to him that there existed this other world, of monsters and demons and things wholly malevolent and unnatural, and yet almost every soul around him remained oblivious to its very existence?

Sipping needily at his whiskey, Zachariah’s eyes began to study the other occupants of the lounge. All of them Captains or higher. All of them holding service records that would make an Ensign weep for the glory and the heroism of their deeds. And yet not a single one of them could sense this ubiquitous, unthinkable threat. Roebuck alone, that once vibrant soul, bore the weight of this secret burden. And now he would bear it too. As the newly crowned Captain of a newly commissioned ARU vessel, Zachariah Cobb would shoulder a responsibility that he had not the capacity to even comprehend, let alone uphold. And may the gods have mercy on all of their souls.

“And heaved and heaved, still unrestingly heaved the black sea, as if its vast tides were a conscience; and the great mundane soul were in anguish and remorse for the long sin and suffering it had bred.” - Herman Melville - Moby Dick