Posted by Commander William Archer (First Officer / Nav Officer) in Arrival - USS Chernov

Posted by Captain Kastarak (Commanding Officer) in Arrival - USS Chernov

Posted by Commander William Archer (First Officer / Nav Officer) in Arrival - USS Chernov
Posted by… suppressed (2) by the Post Ghost! 👻
William Archer watched as the Chernov came into view and let out a quiet sigh. He remembered reading the orders months earlier, instructing him to report for duty aboard the USS Chernov. He had known they were coming. He had even known they were necessary. That knowledge, however, had done little to make the moment any easier.

It wasn’t the assignment itself that troubled him so much as what it represented. Leaving Starfleet Command—and, more importantly, the Interstellar Strategy Division—meant stepping away from one of the most rewarding roles of his career. The work had mattered. It had shaped Federation policy across the quadrant, and he had been close enough to those decisions to feel their weight.

Serving as Executive Officer aboard a starship felt, in some ways, like a step down from that level of influence. Yet Archer understood the reality of Starfleet advancement. If he ever hoped to reach flag rank, command experience was not optional. More than that, he knew the strategies he had helped design depended on ships at the front line making the right decisions, often under pressure and with incomplete information. If nothing else, he could bring that perspective with him.

And then there was the crew. A ship was only as effective as the people who served aboard it, and ensuring they functioned as a coherent team was no small responsibility. In that sense, the posting was still a good one. He simply missed his previous assignment.

As the shuttle landed in the shuttle bay, Will packed the items he had pulled out of his rucksack for the journey. Running his hand through his black hair, slightly peppered with grey, he waited for the door to open, bags in hand.

Cmdr William Archer
Executive Officer

The shuttle touched down in Shuttlebay with a sound Kastarak has heard thousands of times. T’Aria should have been here, standing with her hands folded behind her back and saying nothing unnecessary. Her absence is already noticeable. He senses a hollow pressure in his gut. First, heat, to which he marked as curious, and then a fast cooling, as if the heat had become engulfed by liquid nitrogen. He named this emotion grief, which he assessed as a logical response to T’Aria’s departure. He found it more curious still that his emotions were not yet responding to the arrival of Archer.

Even with the grief, T’Aria’s departure was logical. Duties back on New Vulcan pulled her back. As quickly as she last departed, she departed this time. Kastarak had scarce the time to process it. If Captain Taggart had been Kastarak’s pater familias – father – then T’Aria had been his sister, his big sister, on whom he had depended countless times for counsel, for tea, and for solidarity. They shared the same grief of their broken, genocided planet, the same trauma, the same hollowness.... From his very first day on the Chernov, she had been there. And now she was gone. Again. Starfleet had quickly accepted her request for relief – unusually fast, just like last – and just like last time – by-passing the captain’s chair.

Kastarak’s gut began heating up and freezing in cycles once more. He decided to purge these sensations and regulate them away – these emotions no longer served any kind of logical function. He knew she was gone, was being replaced, and that he would feel this absence sharply. He did not need to experience the emotions any more.

He took a deep but slow breath, inhaled first, then exhaled, and brought his mind and body back to serenity. Now he focused on T’Aria’s replacement, who would any second now exit the shuttle. Starfleet had secured – in terms of what was on paper – an able replacement. A human, command-trained, and a strategist. He noticed that with the arrival of Archer, there would be more Williams among the senior staff than there would members of a single non-human species. Starfleet’s bias towards humanity was one that defied logic, and caused heat and ice in his gut once more.

He quickly purged it. He knew of the structural inequalities, but at this point, welcoming an able first officer, his concerns served no purpose. Archer was the most able and available officer the Chernov could get. Kastarak had read his files. He knew Archer’s command trajectory. In a short period of time, Kastarak mused, Archer might leave the ship too, not to be pulled away for personal duties, but to reach captaincy. It might even be inevitable.

Like that human poem he learnt many years ago would have it, nothing gold can stay.

As the hatch opened, Kastarak straightened his shirt (clad in gold, he marked in his mind poignantly), and waited.

Kastarak, Cpt
Commanding Officer

Will’s mind was already racing a few steps ahead, formulating a plan of being escorted by an ensign to his quarters, dropping off his bags, having a shower and putting on a fresh set of uniform, before heading up to the bridge. First impressions were important to him, and he intended to look the part with his new…

The doors hissed open, and there was a momentary pause as Will’s eyes fell upon the pointy-eared humanoid that stood before him.

“Captain?” he said, trying to change the way he was forming the word as he was speaking to remove the surprised inflection in his voice, yet completely failing in doing so.

Cmdr William Archer
First Officer

That single word – captain – reached Kastarak’s ear with an inflection he had not expected. To Kastarak, the tone carried surprise, and he briefly evaluated whether it also suggested dissatisfaction. While he found no evidence beyond his own inference, the word itself had been formed as a question rather than an acknowledgement. He noticed a in his gut. First he felt Heat, then a cooling withdrawal. He named the feeling: doubt.

He examined its source. Was it species? Apparent youth? Twenty-nine was young for a captain. And furthermore, humans often misjudged Vulcan age, and a twenty-nine year-old Vulcan might look younger than the equivalent-aged human. Or, perhaps, did the doubt originate within himself, as from a sensation of displacement from T’Aria’s absence, her abandoning of him? The mind, he knew all too well, seeks patterns even where none exist. As a sufferer of PTSD, that, he knew all too well.

“Yes. Commander Archer, I presume?”

He noted, with mild disappointment toward himself, the faint upward lilt in his own voice. That was an unnecessary unmasking of his own self. He had wanted to be more in control of the situation.

Kastarak, Cpt
Commanding Officer

A small smile formed on Will’s lips, as he nodded. “Yes Sir,” he said, placing his holdall on the deck. “Sorry I’m a bit scruffy,” he said, gesturing to the couple of days worth of stubble on his face. “I hadn’t expected you to be in the shuttle bay when I arrived.” he said. In Will’s view, he couldn’t see a logical need for the Captain to meet him, especially as he would have been on the bridge 15 minutes later… but he could see a need from a leadership perspective… which in turn would be a logical reason. He put that train of thought to one side as he looked toward the Captain.

Cmdr William Archer
First Officer

With this, Kastarak noted internally that his earlier heightened reaction had likely been in error. He exhaled and inhaled, oxygenating his brain anew.

“I wanted to meet you as you arrived,” he replied as a matter of fact. Taking also point of Archer’s confessed scruffiness and a long trip. “Would you like to clean up before meeting me on the Bridge? I should also like to speak with you later today.”

Kastarak, Cpt
Commanding Officer