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YE/D04 - Security Complex - Paul - 02-23-2026
==
RE: YE/D04 - Security Complex - Riley Wright - 04-03-2026
<< Briefing Room <<
The thought passed quickly, replaced by colder focus as she turned and headed the opposite direction. Her pace was brisk but controlled, boots striking the deck with measured rhythm while the briefing replayed itself in clean fragments. Cardassian blockade. ROE Yellow. Boarding drills, offensive and defensive. Casualty preparation. Reconnaissance. Starbase 214. She did not need to force herself to remember any of it. Once a situation crossed the line from uncomfortable to dangerous, her mind had a way of locking onto the important pieces and refusing to let go.
⠀
That did not mean she was not nervous. It sat lower than panic and sharper than uncertainty, a tight awareness tucked just behind her ribs. Not fear of the work itself. Fear of getting the shape of it wrong in front of people who had been doing this longer than she had. Fear of sounding like she was pretending the pip had somehow transformed her into a seasoned officer between the briefing room door and Security Operations.
⠀
Don’t overplay it, she told herself as the doors parted. You do not need to suddenly become Captain Perfect. You just need to get them moving.
⠀
The Security Complex was active without being chaotic. Duty officers moved between stations, reports scrolled across side consoles, and the main tactical display still carried the ordinary pulse of shipboard routine that existed right up until routine got replaced by contingency. Riley stepped to the central operations console and set her PADD down beside it, fingers already moving. A young Bajoran crewman at the nearest station glanced up, eyes flicking to her collar before widening just slightly. The reaction was quick enough that he probably thought nobody noticed.
⠀
Riley noticed.
⠀
So did the petty officer at the opposite console, who did a much better job of hiding it.
⠀
Right. Great. That’s not intimidating at all.
⠀
She kept her expression composed and keyed the command line open. “Computer, route current estimated time to Starbase 214 to the main Security display. Maximum size, command visibility. Keep it persistent until manually removed.”
⠀
A beat later the central screen shifted. A clean mission header appeared, followed by a large countdown clock tied to the Yeager’s projected arrival profile. It was blunt, impossible to ignore, and exactly what Art had asked for. Riley gave it one measured look, then nodded once to herself.
⠀
Nothing motivates preparation like a giant clock telling you exactly how little time you have left.
⠀
She opened the duty roster next. Security assignments populated in columns: watch rotations, response teams, available specialists, weapons certification updates, readiness status. Riley scanned the names quickly, sorting them not just by rank or availability, but by what she remembered of them. Who moved well under pressure. Who defaulted to aggression. Who got sloppy once they thought they understood the scenario. Who had been on the Yeager long before she had and might take badly to being reorganized by someone who had made Ensign less than ten minutes ago.
⠀
That thought tightened in her chest again, but Security alone was not the whole answer. On a ship the Yeager’s size, it never was. Riley split the display and pulled up auxiliary personnel records—not to drag anyone from another department into drills they had not been ordered into, but to see what the ship actually had if things went bad enough that everyone’s department title stopped mattering. Weapons qualifications. Tactical certification. Cross-training history. Emergency response competencies. Small ship reality. If the Cardassians ever got as far as the corridors, Security would be the first line. It would not be the only one.
⠀
Her eyes moved down the list, sorting instinctively. People who could hold a phaser without becoming a danger to everyone around them. People who could follow a defensive position order and keep their heads. People who would need protection rather than assignment if the ship ever shifted from readiness to damage control. T’Varen’s name appeared halfway down one of the personnel overlays, current department listed as Science.
⠀
Riley paused.
⠀
That got an actual flicker of relief out of her before she could stop it. Science Officer now, yes. But still T’Varen. Still steady. Still impossible to rattle in the ways that counted. Riley trusted her friend’s judgment more easily than she trusted most people’s promises, and in a crisis that mattered a hell of a lot more than department labels.
⠀
Yeah, Riley thought, the tension easing just a fraction. If this goes bad, you’ll still know exactly what to do.
⠀
She did not add T’Varen to any active drill roster. That was not Riley’s call, and she knew better than to start reallocating departments because she had been wearing an Ensign’s pip for five minutes. But she did flag the cross-trained names into a quiet auxiliary column for herself—possible emergency support, internal defense reinforcement, evacuation corridor coverage, last-line phaser-capable personnel if the ship ever got driven that far inward. It was not dramatic. It was practical. And practicality, Riley was learning, was what kept people alive when the elegant plans stopped working.
⠀
Before she could get too far into it, a voice sounded from two stations down.
⠀
“Ma’am?”
⠀
Riley looked up.
⠀
Chief Petty Officer Halden stood from a side console with a data slate in hand. The stocky Tellarite was older than she was by at least a decade, broad through the shoulders, steady-eyed, and carried himself with the kind of practiced competence that suggested he had been quietly keeping rooms like this functional long before junior officers started issuing instructions in them. His gaze dropped to the new pip on her collar, then back to her face.
⠀
“Congratulations, Ensign,” he said. “Though I’ll save the real enthusiasm until I see whether that promotion improved your timing or just your paperwork.”
⠀
It was not warm. It was not unfriendly either. It was a challenge.
⠀
For half a second Riley could almost feel the shape of the answer she would have given anyone else—something polite, restrained, easy to step around. That was clearly not the right response here.
⠀
“Then keep your enthusiasm in reserve, Chief,” she replied, calm and even. “The paperwork can survive. I’m more interested in whether the timing works.”
⠀
The words sounded slightly foreign in her own mouth—too blunt for her usual rhythm—but not wrong. Halden gave a short grunt that might have been the Tellarite version of interest, then sat again.
⠀
She opened a second display and began building the drill sequence. First: defensive boarding response. Corridor lockdown procedures, deck-seal coordination, internal crossfire avoidance, emergency triage lanes, detainee handling. Second: offensive boarding package. Entry stack discipline, room-clearing in mixed environmental conditions, controlled fire under low-visibility settings, rapid recovery of injured personnel. Third: concealed armor integration.
⠀
Riley paused there for half a second, remembering Lieutenant Beinn’s suggestion in the briefing. She had initially filed it under medical practicality, but the more she turned it over, the more useful it became. Cardassians were not careless in close-quarters combat. They were methodical, cruel, and perfectly willing to leave someone alive if living hurt more. If concealed armor bought Security officers even two extra seconds in a confined fight, then those seconds mattered.
⠀
She added it to the mandatory cycle, then tapped her commbadge.
⠀
“Wright to Security team leads,” she said. Her voice came out calm and level, which was useful because inside she was still acutely aware that everyone hearing it knew exactly how fresh that new rank was. “Report to Security Operations in fifteen minutes for boarding-response prep. Bring current team configurations, armor availability, and any unresolved readiness issues. We’re running offensive and defensive packages before arrival.”
⠀
She released the channel, then returned her attention to the main console. “Computer, pull current corridor control schematics for decks one through six to this console. Highlight any recent maintenance closures, blind spots, or routing changes.”
⠀
A moment later the display shifted again. Corridor maps layered themselves across the console in clean lines and color-coded overlays, flagged junctions flashing where recent maintenance, narrowed access, or sensor shadows might complicate a defensive response. This time, as the work began to populate in front of her, she did let herself feel it. Not pride, exactly. Something steadier than that. Alignment. The orders did not feel borrowed. They felt like work she had already been walking toward for years.
⠀
Her eyes caught her own service entry in the corner of the roster display—Wright, Riley. Rank designation updated. The single word there should have felt ceremonial. Instead it landed with surprising quiet.
⠀
Ensign.
⠀
Riley stared at it for only a second before returning to work, but the second was enough.
⠀
No parade. No speech. No dramatic moment. Just a border crisis and a to-do list.
⠀
A faint, private warmth moved through her despite everything.
⠀
Honestly? That tracks.
⠀
She called up the ship schematic and overlaid likely boarding vectors. Docking collars. Cargo access points. Emergency hull breach response routes. Transport inhibitor coverage. If the Cardassians came aboard, they would not come aboard to posture. They would come aboard to seize control, isolate command, take prisoners, and turn confusion into leverage. Riley marked choke points that could be held, fallback positions that would not trap her people, and lines of movement that allowed Medical access without exposing them to the first wave of any engagement.
⠀
That mattered too. Riley was not building a response around winning the corridor and leaving bodies behind it. She was building one around stopping the threat, protecting the ship, and keeping as many people alive as possible once the shooting started—Yeager crew, civilians if there were any, even Cardassian boarders if they made the very smart decision to stop being boarders and start being prisoners.
⠀
Lt. Commander Torres’ voice surfaced from memory with irritating clarity, as if he had chosen this exact moment to stand at her shoulder again.
⠀
Security protects lives.
⠀
Not just convenient lives. Not just your own.
⠀
Lives.
⠀
Riley’s jaw tightened faintly. She had let that slip once already. Not deliberately. Not maliciously. But she had let suspicion narrow the frame until Tomer had stopped being a person she was responsible for protecting and started becoming a problem other people were evaluating. She understood that now in a way she had not wanted to.
⠀
So this time, her planning left room for surrender. Room for containment. Room for people to stop dying the moment they stopped fighting. That, too, was Security.
⠀
Her fingers slowed only once more, and that was when Tomer’s name surfaced uninvited again. Alive, maybe. Lost, but not gone. The knowledge sat differently now than it had in the briefing room. It did not absolve anything. It did not clean the wound. But it did change the shape of failure, and Riley was beginning to understand that there was a difference between carrying guilt and carrying responsibility.
⠀
One made you smaller.
⠀
The other made you move.
⠀
So she kept moving.
⠀
By the time the first of the team leads began arriving, the main screen was already counting down in bold numerals, the drill progression had been structured into escalating phases, and the first pass of team assignments was ready for review. Three enlisted personnel entered first. Halden was one of them, unsurprisingly. With him came Petty Officer Second Class Marek, the wiry Bolian who folded his arms the moment he started assessing a problem, and Petty Officer Third Class Tovan, a dark-haired Human who looked alert, curious, and slightly too eager to see what this was going to become.
⠀
They stopped in front of the central display.
⠀
Marek’s gaze flicked over the boarding vectors, then toward Riley. “That’s an ambitious prep cycle, ma’am.”
⠀
There was no open challenge in it. There did not need to be.
⠀
Riley met his eyes. “It’s a short timeline.”
⠀
“That it is,” Marek replied.
⠀
Halden looked over the schematics in silence for another second, then lifted his eyes to Riley. “You’re building the full drill cycle before the chief gets back. Bold choice. Did d’Tor’an approve that, or are you gambling she’ll like initiative more than improvisation?”
⠀
The question landed exactly where Riley had known one like it would. Not disrespectful. Not deferential either. A real department question from someone who knew how departments actually worked.
⠀
Riley resisted the urge to answer too quickly. Then she let that go.
⠀
“If it were improvisation, Chief, I’d still be standing here waiting for permission to use the time she already gave me,” she said. “Chief d’Tor’an ordered the drills staged before she got back. I’m staging them. If she wants changes once she returns, we’ll change them. Until then, standing still seemed like the less intelligent option.”
⠀
That sat in the room for a moment. It was a sharper answer than Riley would normally have given, and she knew it. But Halden was not asking for softness. He was asking whether the structure in front of him would hold under pressure.
⠀
Halden studied her, then gave one slow nod. “Good,” he said. “That’s an answer.”
⠀
The tension in Riley’s shoulders eased by less than an inch, but Halden’s eyes narrowed at the overlay for half a second longer than the others.
⠀
“Wait,” he said, one thick finger tapping the display. “You left casualty lanes open on both sides.”
⠀
The room shifted slightly around that.
⠀
Riley looked over. “Yes.”
⠀
Halden turned fully toward her, not hiding his objection in the slightest. “That is a mistake, Ensign. If Cardassians make it into our corridors, we do not solve that by budgeting medical access for them.”
⠀
Marek folded his arms tighter, blue features sharpening as he studied the route layout. “He’s not wrong. If those lanes stay open, that’s more space to secure, more movement to track, and more chances for somebody to use Medical traffic as cover.”
⠀
Tovan looked from one of them to the other, then back to the display. “Unless they stop fighting,” he said carefully. “Then they’re not really boarders anymore.”
⠀
Halden gave him a sharp sidelong look. “That is a very optimistic way to survive a Cardassian boarding action, Petty Officer.”
⠀
Tovan straightened a fraction, but did not back off. “I said unless, Chief. Not when.”
⠀
Riley felt the challenge settle across the whole group now, not just from Halden. Good. Better, actually. This was a department conversation, not a duel.
⠀
“If they’re still fighting, they’re a threat,” she said evenly. “If they stop fighting, they’re casualties or prisoners. Either way, a corridor full of dead or dying people helps nobody.”
⠀
Marek’s brow furrowed. “It can still help the side that’s left standing.”
⠀
“Right up until Medical can’t get through,” Riley replied. She stepped closer to the display and indicated the marked routes. “These lanes are not there because I’m worried about being fair to hostile boarders. They’re there because once a fight starts, chaos spreads fast. We need room for casualty movement, security containment, and surrender handling without all three colliding in the same ten meters of corridor.”
⠀
Tovan nodded once, slow and thoughtful. “So if somebody drops a weapon, there’s already a place to move them instead of making that decision in the middle of a firefight.”
⠀
“Exactly,” Riley said.
⠀
Halden grunted through his nose. “Expensive principle.”
⠀
Riley’s jaw tightened faintly. For a second, Tomer flashed through her mind again—not as a suspect, not as a briefing problem, but as someone she had once stopped fully seeing because suspicion had narrowed everything else out.
⠀
She kept her voice level.
⠀
“Less expensive than teaching the whole ship that Starfleet only protects people we already approve of.”
⠀
That landed harder than she intended. Marek’s arms loosened by a degree. Tovan went still. Even Halden paused.
⠀
After a beat, Marek exhaled through his nose and tipped his head toward the display. “Fine. Then if we’re keeping both-side casualty lanes, we need cleaner overlap control here and here. Otherwise Medical and containment teams trip over each other the second this gets messy.”
⠀
Riley nodded immediately. “Good. Show me.”
⠀
Tovan pointed to the adjacent junction. “And put a reserve there. If someone surrenders or goes down in the wrong place, you’ll need somebody to pull them clear without stripping your containment line.”
⠀
Halden looked between all of them, then gave a low, rough grunt. “Alright,” he said. “I still think it’s a risk. But if we’re taking it, we build around it properly.”
⠀
That, from him, was not agreement.
⠀
But it was buy-in.
⠀
More personnel filtered in after that. A Bajoran crewman with containment duty experience arrived carrying a PADD tucked under one arm. An Andorian Petty Officer Third Class followed with the crisp, controlled posture of someone already halfway through three contingency plans. A quiet Betazoid crewman stepped in last, taking in the room’s mood almost before she looked at the display. Another crewman had clearly expected to see d’Tor’an and had to recalibrate on the spot when she found Wright standing at the center console instead.
⠀
Riley could feel every recalibration in the room. It would have been easy to respond by hardening, by trying to sound older, harsher, more certain than she actually felt.
⠀
Instead she took a breath and decided not to pretend.
⠀
“Alright,” she said, gesturing to the display. “We don’t have time to make this pretty, so we’re going to make it effective. Chief d’Tor’an wants us ready before we arrive, and that means no wasted motion.”
⠀
She let her gaze move across the gathered personnel before continuing. “I know some of you have been in this department longer than I have. That’s useful, not a problem. If you see a weakness in this setup, say it. If you know a choke point I marked wrong, say it. If concealed armor is going to fail under a specific loadout, definitely say it. I’m not interested in looking polished for twenty minutes. I’m interested in us not getting people hurt because nobody spoke up.”
⠀
That changed the room more than rank ever could have. Not dramatically. Not all at once. But enough. Arms loosened. Shoulders adjusted. Attention shifted from watching her to watching the work.
⠀
Halden stepped toward the display and pointed to a junction on Deck Four. “This fallback route bottlenecks at the secondary hatch if Medical’s moving casualties the opposite direction.”
⠀
Riley looked, processed, and nodded. “Good catch.”
⠀
Marek pointed next. “If you’re planning offensive boarding rehearsal through maintenance access, run it with reduced lighting. Those accessways never look the same once the power grid takes a hit.”
⠀
“Add it,” Riley said, already making the notation.
⠀
Tovan, a little more tentative, said, “You might want a two-person reserve near Transport Control if they try internal site-to-site movement before the inhibitors fully lock.”
⠀
Riley looked at him. “That’s not tentative, Petty Officer. That’s correct.”
⠀
He straightened slightly at that.
⠀
The work started to move then—properly move. Not because Riley had bullied it into place, and not because the pip on her collar had magically settled the question of authority. It moved because the department had recognized what she was actually doing: not trying to play veteran, but trying to get them ready before the chief came back.
⠀
That, they could work with.
⠀
Riley felt the nervousness still there, but it had changed shape. Less fear of being tested. More awareness that the test was already happening and she was still on her feet.
⠀
Okay, she thought, making another adjustment to the boarding package. That I can do something with.
⠀
By the time the discussion turned into concrete assignments, the main screen was counting down overhead, corridor schematics had begun updating in real time, and Security Operations no longer felt like a room waiting for d’Tor’an to return and take over.
⠀
It felt like a room already in motion.
⠀
Riley squared her shoulders and started dividing the drills into execution order.
⠀
“Chief Halden, you’re on defensive containment review. Marek, offensive package and low-visibility adjustments. Tovan, coordinate with Tactical support on Transport Control coverage and get me confirmation the inhibitor response times are current, not last month’s. Everyone else, if your teams aren’t ready to move when Chief d’Tor’an gets back, I want the reason before I want the excuse.”
⠀
A few answering nods met that. No one smiled. No one needed to.
⠀
The clock continued its silent descent overhead, and for the first time since hearing the new rank out loud, Riley stopped feeling like she had stepped into something unfamiliar. Not because the nerves were gone. Because they were not. But she was moving anyway.
⠀
And that, more than the pip itself, felt like stepping into her place.
RE: YE/D04 - Security Complex - Riley Wright - 04-24-2026
The Security Complex had gone quiet in the way a room only did when everyone in it was paying attention to something happening somewhere else.
On the main display, Holodeck 2 was rendered in layered telemetry rather than spectacle: corridor schematic, lifesign tags, weapons discharges, lane integrity markers, reserve response timing, surrender-point flags. Riley stood at the central operations console with her PADD in hand, watching the simulation unfold through numbers, movement traces, and the occasional small inset visual feed. It was less dramatic than standing in the holodeck.
It was also less forgiving.
Good, she thought, arms folding briefly before she forced herself to loosen them again. Drama is useless. Show me where it breaks.
The arrival clock to Starbase 214 still counted down on a side display. Chief d’Tor’an still had not returned. That absence sat at the edge of Riley’s awareness, but only there. The drill was already running. The work did not improve by waiting for someone else to supervise it.
On the screen, containment held the first intersection properly. Reserve stayed where it was supposed to. Marek’s team angle looked clean. For a few seconds Riley felt the smallest easing in her chest.
Then the surrender marker flashed.
One hostile lifesign dropped its weapon. Another registered wounded. The telemetry promptly turned ugly.
Containment drifted inward.
Reserve hesitated.
The casualty lane constricted by just over forty percent.
Medical access remained technically open, but only technically.
Riley’s jaw tightened as the overlays stacked over one another in a knot of flashing color.
There it is, she thought. That’s the failure point.
Not the first exchange. Not the initial containment. The moment the scenario stopped being simple and demanded three decisions at once.
A boarder surrendered.
A second went down.
And half the corridor tried to solve all of it in the same space.
Riley watched the timing line crawl across the display. One-point-three seconds of hesitation from reserve. Not long in abstract terms.
In a corridor fight, long enough to matter.
She terminated the simulation before the congestion could cascade into noise and keyed the result archive to her console. By the time the holodeck team returned, she had already isolated the choke point, cut the telemetry down to the relevant span, and built three overlays showing where the lane had failed, where reserve lost clarity, and where containment stopped acting like containment and started acting like a crowd.
Alright, she told herself, exhaling slowly. Don’t sound defensive. Don’t sound uncertain. Just sound right.
A few minutes later the Security Complex doors opened and the team came back in carrying the drill with them.
No one looked especially pleased. That, at least, was promising.
Tovan came in first, his shoulders a little too tight. Marek followed with the irritated focus of someone who had already identified multiple flaws and disliked all of them. The Bajoran crewman from containment looked like he was still half in the corridor mentally, replaying where instinct had overtaken structure. Chief Petty Officer Halden entered last and, predictably, looked more energized than discouraged.
Tellarites, Riley was beginning to suspect, liked a good problem for the same reason some people liked sparring. It gave them something solid to hit.
Riley did not wait for anyone to settle too long.
“Alright,” she said, looking up from the console. “Post-simulation review. We held containment, but not cleanly. Reserve response lagged by just over a second. Casualty lane integrity broke at the surrender point. Medical access stayed technically open, but only technically. If the scenario had extended another few seconds, it would have become congestion instead of access.”
That got their attention fast enough.
She tapped the display, and the overlay narrowed to the exact junction she had been watching.
“This,” she said, indicating the highlighted knot of movement, “is where the run stopped being orderly.”
Halden folded his arms. “That’s a polite way to describe it.”
“It’s the accurate way,” Riley said.
That got the faintest shift from him, not agreement exactly, but enough that he did not interrupt again immediately.
Good. Keep it level.
She enlarged the timing feed and split the corridor trace into separate movement paths. “The first problem wasn’t the surrender. The first problem was hesitation about assignment. Reserve delayed because the lane became two questions at once instead of one.”
Tovan nodded once, jaw tight. “That was me.”
Marek tipped his head toward the display. “Not just you. Containment drifted inward the second the target dropped his weapon. That compressed the corridor before reserve ever got there.”
The Bajoran crewman exhaled through his nose. “I thought he was reaching again.”
Halden snorted. “And if he had been, your instinct would have saved you. The problem is that three people had three different instincts in the same second.”
That was not wrong.
Riley let the line stand. “Exactly. Which means the problem is not individual reaction speed. The problem is that the response tree is still too loose at the point where a target stops being a straight-line threat and becomes a surrender, a casualty, or a deception attempt.”
Tovan looked back to the display. “So we need the handoff decision made before the next run starts, not during it.”
“Yeah,” Riley said. “We do.”
She adjusted the overlay again, separating the movement tracks cleanly. “If the target is still armed, still advancing, or still resisting, they remain a threat. That part is simple. If the weapon is down and resistance stops, the situation changes. Not into safety. Into responsibility.”
Halden’s eyes narrowed.
Marek’s arms folded tighter. “Responsibility is expensive in a corridor fight.”
“It gets more expensive when people start tripping over each other because nobody knows who owns the next three meters,” Riley replied.
That held for a beat. Not because it was dramatic, but because it was true.
She stepped closer to the display and indicated the marked routes. “The casualty lane stays open. Reserve secures the surrender point. Containment does not collapse inward unless resistance resumes. Medical access stays a lane, not a crowd. If someone drops a weapon, we do not make up the next step in real time.”
The Bajoran crewman looked at the marked path and frowned. “So if they go down in place, reserve moves them, not containment.”
“Yes.”
Tovan nodded more firmly this time. “Which means reserve isn’t choosing between junction coverage and prisoner movement. Reserve already owns prisoner movement unless the threat reactivates.”
“Exactly.”
Halden gave a rough grunt through his nose. “You left the lane open on both sides on purpose, then.”
Riley looked at him. “Yes.”
The Tellarite held her gaze another second. “Still think it’s a risk.”
Marek spoke before Riley could answer. “It is a risk.”
That came out flatter than Halden’s version, more clinical than argumentative.
Then he jerked his chin toward the display. “But it’s a manageable one if overlap control gets cleaner. If those routes stay separated, containment holds. If they don’t, Medical and Security start sabotaging each other.”
Riley nodded once. “That’s where I’m at too.”
Tovan glanced from Marek to Halden, then back to Riley. “And if somebody fake-surrenders?”
“Then the cover officer does the job we put them there to do,” Riley said. “We are not building this around trust. We’re building it around discipline.”
That bought her a brief silence.
Then Halden shifted his weight and jabbed a finger at the display. “Fine. Then mark the cover angle properly, because this one’s garbage. If the target rolls left instead of right, reserve loses line of sight for half a second.”
Riley looked.
He was right.
The correction bothered her for exactly one heartbeat.
Good. Better here than in the corridor.
“Good catch,” she said, making the change immediately.
The Bajoran crewman leaned in next. “The verbal calls were muddy too. I couldn’t tell if the surrender was confirmed or just shouted.”
Riley adjusted that in the notes as well. “New call sequence. ‘Disarm, secure, shift.’ No extra wording. No improvising.”
Marek nodded once. “That helps.”
Tovan pointed to the adjacent junction. “You also need a second reserve marker here. Not a full reserve team. Just one body who can reinforce if containment gets pinned while the surrender handoff is happening.”
Halden grunted. “There. That’s better.”
Riley caught herself before the corner of her mouth could move.
So that’s what approval sounds like from a Tellarite. Good to know.
She made the change. “Done. Secondary reserve at the junction. Reserve primary owns surrender movement. Cover officer maintains threat angle until disarm is physically confirmed.”
That drew a small nod from Marek and a more thoughtful one from Tovan. The room had changed again without anyone announcing it. Less challenge now. More work. The kind of shift Riley was starting to understand as its own form of acceptance.
Not agreement with her on everything.
Just trust that she was actually running the problem instead of posing next to it.
Her eyes moved once more across the simulation breakdown. She could still see the exact point where the corridor had started to blur. For a second Tomer flashed through her head again—not as a saboteur, not as a briefing problem, but as the reminder she had not asked for and could no longer ignore.
You let suspicion narrow the frame once already.
The thought landed cleanly and without mercy.
Don’t do it again.
She straightened a fraction and looked back to the team.
“Alright,” she said. “Next run gets the corrected call sequence, the adjusted cover angle, and the secondary reserve marker. We’re not rerunning the whole scenario from the top. We’re rerunning the failure point until the corridor stops arguing with itself.”
That got the faintest snort from Marek.
Halden uncrossed his arms. “Better.”
Tovan exhaled once, then nodded. The Bajoran crewman rolled one shoulder, as if physically resetting himself for the next pass.
Riley keyed the update into the drill file and sent the revised configuration back to Holodeck 2. The arrival clock was still counting down on the side display. Chief d’Tor’an was still absent. The Cardassians were still out there, and the ship was still heading toward a situation no amount of clean theory was going to keep simple.
But the department was learning.
Messily, argumentatively, imperfectly.
Still learning.
Riley let herself look at them for one second longer—the Tellarite who argued because he cared whether the structure held, the Bolian who could smell inefficiency from across the room, the human petty officer trying not to make the same mistake twice, the Bajoran crewman who had trusted instinct first and was now learning where to place it.
This is what it actually is, she thought. Not the pip. Not the title. This.
For all the nerves still sitting under her ribs, this no longer felt like pretending.
It felt like work.
RE: YE/D04 - Security Complex - Artemis d'Tor'an - 04-27-2026
==Temp NPC: Security NCO JANET GUERRERO – Human/Betazoid ==
Janet was what Chief d’Tor’an referred to as “the receiver”. As per new instructions from the Chief -given through gritted teeth- there was to be a rotation of two people committed to relaying what was happening on the Bridge. The “runner” would be on the Bridge, feeding the information, and the “receiver” would take up the task of weeding through what was sent.
Chertstone: requested registry details for vessel listed as 'Disreputable Damsel’
Maybe she was just feeling what the crew was feeling, but Janet had anxiety. This mission definitely seemed to get everybody on edge in a hurry.
Computer results:
Captain Obadiah Heathridge and vessel “Disreputable Damsel” reportedly caught crossing the Talarian border. A Cardassian patrol squadron had made the statement, which was dated over a week ago. The Damsel had sent out a distress signal during this time, which Starfleet received and responded to using a runabout.
Eyewitness reports state that Captain Heathridge and his ship had been escorting a Talarian refugee convoy, and put his ship between the refugees and the Cardassians.
The ship had been no match for the Cardassians though, and it was destroyed. At the arrival of the Starfleet runabout, the two vessels the Damsel had been protecting retreated. Captain Heathridge had survived despite being on the lead ship, and the runabout acted as escort for all three ships back into Federation space.
Starbase 214 accepted the docking request, providing medical care to those injured. Captain Heathridge was listed as stable but unresponsive in the Medical Bay.
Engineering assessment declared the “Disreputable Damsel” a total loss, and was being temporarily stored in what was commonly referred to as a “parking orbit” around the station, pending the CMO discharging its Captain.
“Oh, I’d love to read those reports!” Janet muttered to herself, as she requested the information from the Starbase, CC’ing in Starfleet command. If she wanted to read them, she knew the Chief would most certainly want them ready and on her desk. She looked up briefly as another line of text came in from the other half of her relay team, but was disappointed at what she read.
First Officer on the Bridge
Nothing more on the gallant battle between the “Damsel” and the Cardassians, then. No doubt the First Officer was now reading the same information she had just been, and was chewing up the story in a different way. Janet Guerrero had stars in her eyes as she pictured the heroic battle; a tiny cargo ship, putting itself between the big, mean, imposing enemy, growling away as the innocent refugees stood in its cover.
==GM: Request of the Cardassian and Starfleet runabout reports? ==
RE: YE/D04 - Security Complex - Riley Wright - 04-30-2026
Riley had just sent the corrected failure-point package back to Holodeck 2 when the Bridge relay advanced across the Security Complex’s main display.
For half a second, she simply looked at it.
The main display had been carrying the holodeck telemetry: corridor schematic, lifesign tags, weapons discharges, lane integrity markers, reserve response timing, surrender-point flags. It was the cleanest way to make the whole room see the same problem at once. Now it was showing a Bridge update.
[Chertstone: requested registry details for vessel listed as 'Disreputable Damsel’]
Riley felt the smallest tightening at the corner of her jaw and did not let it become anything else.
That was the main board.
Some part of her wanted to be annoyed. A very practical part, actually. She had been using that screen to keep the drill anchored, and losing it meant the holodeck telemetry would have to be compressed down to consoles and auxiliary boards where everyone would work harder to see the same pattern.
But she did not say that out loud.
She did not know who had routed the relay there, or why. She did know that the main display was not something people casually hijacked in the Security Complex without a reason, a standing protocol, or someone’s authority behind it. In the middle of a border crisis, assuming incompetence first was a good way to become the least useful person in the room.
So Riley adapted.
She shifted the holodeck telemetry down to her console and pushed the corrected failure-point overlays to the nearest auxiliary board. Not as clean. Not ideal. Usable.
Usable is enough. Keep moving.
That still left Janet Guerrero at the receiver station, working the Bridge feed as it came in. Riley did not take the station from her. She did not reach over her shoulder, did not start issuing corrections, and did not ask for a report Guerrero was already in the middle of building. That was how officers turned useful NCOs into annoyed ones.
Instead, Riley moved close enough to see Janet’s console and the main display at the same time, one hand still near her own controls as the Holodeck 2 sim continued to run in compressed form on the auxiliary board.
It was, Riley realized, hovering.
Controlled hovering. Professionally restrained hovering.
Still hovering.
She glanced briefly toward Guerrero, then kept her voice low enough not to pull the whole room into it. “You’re doing fine, Guerrero. I know I’m hovering. Keep the feed yours.”
Riley did not wait for reassurance back. The point was not to make Guerrero manage her nerves on top of the Bridge relay. The point was to make sure the NCO knew Riley’s proximity was attention, not distrust.
The returned information unfolded beneath the first relay line, and Riley split herself between three things at once: the new Bridge data, the sim’s reserve timing, and the receiver console where the incoming text was being shaped into something Security could use.
She read the report once for the facts, then again for the gaps.
Captain Obadiah Heathridge and the Disreputable Damsel had reportedly been caught crossing the Talarian border by a Cardassian patrol squadron a little over a week earlier. The Damsel had sent a distress signal, Starfleet had responded with a runabout, and eyewitness accounts placed Heathridge’s vessel between the Cardassians and a Talarian refugee convoy. The ship had been destroyed. The refugees had escaped back into Federation space under escort. Heathridge had survived, but was stable and unresponsive in Starbase 214’s Medical Bay. What remained of the Damsel was being held in parking orbit, declared a total loss pending further disposition.
Somewhere in the receiver workflow, Guerrero had already requested the Starbase reports and copied Starfleet Command. Riley caught that detail, filed it, and left it alone.
Good. Let her work.
On the auxiliary board, Holodeck 2’s telemetry ticked forward. The corrected surrender-point drill was still playing out in miniature, all movement traces and tagged lanes instead of bodies and voices. Reserve timing looked cleaner. The casualty lane held this time by a wider margin. Containment did not drift inward.
Then Riley’s eyes flicked back to the main display.
The room did not go silent this time.
It tightened.
Riley felt it happen before anyone spoke. The same way a corridor narrowed before a fight, not because the bulkheads moved, but because everyone inside suddenly understood there was less room than they had thought.
A civilian ship put itself between refugees and Cardassian patrol craft.
The thought landed harder than she wanted it to. Maybe because the drill they had just run had been about surrender points and casualty lanes. Maybe because she had spent the last hour trying to force Security to leave room for the moment an enemy stopped being only an enemy. Or maybe because there was something painfully simple about the image: an old ship, outmatched, deciding that being too small to win was not the same thing as being allowed to move aside.
Riley did not let herself stare at the report for too long. She checked the sim again. Reserve moved. Cover angle held. Medical lane stayed open.
Useful.
Not enough.
She let the relay remain what it was: information coming down from the Bridge, incomplete until the supporting reports arrived, useful but not yet finished. Some of the phrasing already made her want more. Reportedly. Eyewitness accounts. Cardassian patrol statement. Starfleet runabout response. Medical status. Engineering assessment. Each one was a different kind of truth, and none of them were the whole truth by themselves.
Careful, she warned herself. Heroic does not mean simple.
Halden had moved close enough to read the main display without pretending he was not interested. His heavy brow furrowed as the last of the summary settled into place.
“A smuggler can still do one brave thing,” he said.
Marek’s blue features sharpened. “And one brave thing does not tell us why the Cardassians opened fire.”
Tovan looked between the two of them, then at Riley. “It changes the priority, though, doesn’t it?”
Riley let the question sit for half a breath. She appreciated that he had asked it as a question instead of declaring an answer he had not earned yet.
“It changes the frame,” she said. “Maybe Heathridge was what Command thought he was. Maybe he was more. Maybe he was less. But right now he’s a comatose witness, his ship is evidence, and the refugees he protected may still be the reason this happened.”
Halden grunted. “Or the bait.”
“Also possible,” Riley said without flinching. “Which is why nobody in this room is going to romanticize the report into something easier to handle.”
She softened her tone by a degree, not enough to blunt the point, but enough to keep it aimed at the work instead of anyone in particular.
“The Damsel’s action matters,” Riley continued. “So does the fact that we don’t know whether the convoy was targeted because of who they were, what they carried, where they came from, or who they were with. Until we know, survivors, medical records, and wreckage all matter.”
Marek nodded once, slow and clinical. “Station-side security problem, then.”
“Possibly,” Riley said. “Medical Bay access, refugee protection, evidence control, wreck perimeter, and any Cardassian interest in finishing whatever they started.”
Tovan’s jaw tightened. “You think they might try for Heathridge?”
“I think if someone destroys a ship and leaves the captain alive by accident, they may eventually decide whether that accident matters.”
The words felt colder once they were in the room. Riley did not take them back. Security was not helped by making ugly possibilities sound polite.
The Bridge relay advanced again with a short notation.
[First Officer on the Bridge]
Riley absorbed it, checked Janet’s console for any accompanying context, then turned her attention back to the holodeck configuration. The corrected drill file waited where she had left it: primary reserve owned prisoner movement, secondary reserve covered the junction, containment held shape, Medical lane remained a lane. It had been built for a boarding action aboard the Yeager.
That was still necessary.
It was no longer sufficient.
She added a new branch to the scenario tree.
Marek noticed first. “You’re modifying the next run.”
“Yes.”
Halden squinted at her console. “Refugee markers?”
“Civilian movement markers,” Riley corrected. “Refugees, survivors, station personnel, injured crew, hostile casualties, or confused people standing exactly where they shouldn’t. The label matters less than the behavior.”
“It matters a great deal if one of those confused people is hiding a weapon,” Halden said.
“That’s why the cover angle stays,” Riley replied. “We are not removing suspicion. We are disciplining it.”
The Tellarite stared at her for a second, then gave a short, rough laugh through his nose. “That sounds like something they teach officers right before officers get other people shot.”
Riley felt the old urge to over-answer rise in her chest. To prove she had thought it through. To make sure nobody mistook restraint for softness or compassion for a tactical blind spot. Instead, she looked at the display and made one more clean adjustment before answering.
“No,” she said. “It’s what they should teach everyone before fear makes them shoot the wrong person.”
That held the room for a beat.
Riley did not look away from the console, partly because the work required attention and partly because she did not want anyone to see how close the words had cut to something personal. Tomer surfaced again at the edge of her mind, unwanted and instructive. Suspicion narrowing the frame. A person becoming a problem. A lesson she had no intention of needing twice.
Not again.
She highlighted the added civilian markers and assigned them unpredictable movement profiles. Some would obey orders. Some would panic. One might conceal a weapon. One might collapse in the casualty lane. Another might run toward a familiar face instead of toward the evacuation route. The program accepted each variable with cheerful indifference.
Of course you do, Riley thought. You don’t have to live with the results.
Her eyes flicked back to Janet’s console once more. Not long. Just enough to catch whether the Bridge had added anything that changed the shape of the work. Then back to the sim. Reserve timing. Civilian movement. Lane integrity.
She was starting to feel like she had split herself into pieces: one officer watching the drill, one watching the Bridge feed, one watching the people in the room reacting to both.
None of those pieces were optional.
“Next run starts at the corrected failure point,” she said aloud. “Same surrender sequence. Same casualty lane. Add civilian interference and station-side confusion. I want to see whether the fix survives contact with people who are scared, injured, or not listening.”
Tovan exhaled quietly. “That’s going to get ugly fast.”
“Then it gets ugly in the holodeck first.”
Marek leaned closer to the display. “If this is station-side, Medical traffic will not move like shipboard Medical. Too many external variables. Different personnel habits. Civilians won’t recognize our call sequence.”
“Then we need universal calls.” Riley tapped the phrase she had entered earlier. “Disarm, secure, shift works for us. It may mean nothing to a frightened civilian. Add a second layer for non-Security personnel: ‘Stay down. Hands visible. Follow the light.’ We can route floor markers and emergency strobes if the station supports it.”
Halden snorted. “You are assuming Starbase 214’s emergency systems are cooperating.”
“I’m assuming they may not,” Riley said. “Which is why the drill uses both functioning and degraded markers.”
This time Halden’s grunt sounded less like objection and more like reluctant satisfaction.
Riley’s eyes flicked once toward the main display again, then to Guerrero’s receiver station, where the relay remained the proper place for whatever came next. The Damsel report still occupied the board, stubborn and unfinished.
It made the Security Complex feel smaller somehow.
Not physically. Operationally.
A possible boarding action was one problem. A damaged refugee convoy, a comatose captain, a destroyed civilian ship, Cardassian involvement, and whatever waited at Starbase 214 was another. The two problems had not merged yet, not officially.
But they were close enough for Security to prepare as though they might.
Riley turned back to the gathered team. Their attention was on her again, but it felt different from earlier. Less like they were evaluating whether the new Ensign knew where to stand. More like they were waiting to see where the work went next.
That was not comfort.
It was responsibility.
She straightened. “We continue the drills. Defensive containment, offensive boarding, concealed armor, surrender handling, and now civilian interference under degraded station conditions. Until Chief d’Tor’an returns or Command redirects us, our job is readiness, not theory.”
Halden folded his arms. “And the Damsel?”
“The Damsel is now part of readiness.”
Marek’s mouth tightened in approval. “Evidence security.”
“Witness protection,” Tovan added.
Riley nodded once. “Refugee safety, too.”
For a moment, the room held the shape of it: shipboard Security preparing for a possible fight while the facts ahead of them kept expanding into something uglier and more human. Not just Cardassians. Not just borders. Not just one questionable captain and an old wreck in orbit.
People.
Always people.
That was the part that made Security harder than tactics and more important than force. Anyone could draw a firing line. The real work was knowing what still had to be protected after the line was drawn.
Riley keyed the revised drill package to Holodeck 2.
“Holodeck team, this is Wright,” she said. “Updated scenario coming through. Reset to the failure point. Add civilian movement markers, degraded station lighting, partial emergency guidance failure, and one non-compliant casualty in the lane. Same corrected call sequence. Same reserve responsibilities.”
She paused, eyes flicking once to the Damsel summary still occupying the main display.
“Run it until the corridor stops arguing with itself.”
She closed the channel and looked back at the Security personnel in front of her.
“Alright,” Riley said. “Let’s make the next mistake useful.”
RE: YE/D04 - Security Complex - GM-01 - 05-15-2026
The reports from the Runabout, those available anyway, indicated that three Cardassian frigates had ambushed the small convoy. Despite being outnumbered and outgunned, the Damsel had placed itself between the Cardassians and the refugees, fighting off all three ships at once. It managed to destroy one, possibly through more luck than intent, before becoming disabled. The Cardassians continued to fire into the hulk, only retreating when the Starfleet Runabout had approached.
Whether that was to avoid firing on a Starfleet vessel or because they had taken damage themselves and couldn't stand up to a "fair" fight, was not currently known, and a matter for speculation.