Posted by Captain Chris Taggart (Commanding Officer) in Promotions on First Contact Day!
Chris wipped his face and hands clean and while talking his tray back up he motioned for his NE Aid and he nodded back and went to get a couple boxes and fancy looking paper and stood by the tables. Chris walked over to him and cleared his throat. “Ladies and Gentlemen! May I have your attention please?! Today not only celebrates First Contact Day but two special crew members on this ship!” He purposely left out Kastarak’s Birthday because he knows Vulcans but particularly Kastarak and does not want to embarrass him. He’ll wish him a Happy Birthday later in private.

“I would like to Lieutenant Junior Grades Pawl Batario and Quentin Dawson front and center.”

Captain Chris_Taggart
Captain USS_Chernov

When the captain called Batario and Dawson forward, Kastarak stood still, though the moment landed sharply within him. He watched Pawl, and felt the familiar ache of a love repressed. It had once been shared, now it was distant by necessity. Pride and sorrow sat beside each other in silence. He refused to purge his deep gut-wrenching emotion.

Next was Dawson. Kas, as Dawson would say, with that irreverent ease Kastarak had come to tolerate and even value, regarded the promotion as both earned and long overdue. But the disappearance gnawed still. Ninety or so days lost to silence. No answers. No logic. Just a void between what Dawson deserved and what Kastarak could reconcile. It didn’t help that Kastarak’s state was already influenced by the many other emotions of the day— all painful. The memory of last contact with Vulcan, the gnawing guilt belonging only to a survivor of genocide on the anniversary of his own birth that no one in the universe was alive now to remember, the repressed and painful love for Pawl he refused to regulate himself off from, and the unsettling situation with his friend Dawson.

He straightened his posture to appear reverent for the occasion. No one must see what was buried in Kastarak’s gut, when then honour was to be upon Pawl and Dawson.

Kastarak, Lt Cdr
First Officer and Navigations Officer