They said it was a miracle. They said that she was amazingly lucky to be alive.
But even now, Gaila wondered if the others were the lucky ones.
When the Farragut dropped out of warp with the rest of the armada, they started taking fire almost immediately. Most of the ships managed to get their shields up in time, but the Athena, Sarek, Malcolm Reed, and Discovery were annihilated.
They fought back, but it seemed futile. One by one, ships were going down. Captain Ventralis ordered an evacuation. Gaila was one of the first to the escape pods. Less than a minute after her pod launched, the Farragut exploded.
Most of the pods headed towards Vulcan. But Gaila's was headed directly away from the planet, and she was in so much shock, she couldn't turn it around. By the time she had composed herself, she was so far away that returning to the planet would mean getting closer to the ship that had attacked them. She figured that it was safer to keep going. Hopefully, someone would pick her up.
Instead, she watched as the enemy ship finished off not only the Starfleet ships, but as many escape pods as possible. She watched as the Enterprise arrived, clashed briefly with the enemy.
And she watched as Vulcan was destroyed.
Gaila was a rarity among Orions – one born in the Federation. Her mother had escaped slavery in the Orion Syndicate while Gaila was still in her womb. She had given up everything, and ended up dying in the medical bay of a human freighter so that her daughter would be free.
Gaila had no homeworld. Her home was the Iroquois. But she had visited many worlds in her youth. One of them was Vulcan. In an attempt to separate herself from her Orion heritage, she had read up on every major Federation culture. The humans, of course, were the most prevalent, what with spreading their culture everywhere they went. But she also studied the cultures of the Denobulans, the Tellarites, the Andorians… and the Vulcans.
Two weeks later, they finally found her. She was barely functional, not to mention malnourished. They took her back to Earth. She spent four months in the care of Starfleet's best doctors. But while her body recovered, her mind was still coping with what had just happened. It all boiled down to a single question:
Why?
Why had she lived? Why was she the only survivor of the seven ships that had faced the Narada? Why her?
Gaila wasn't alone. The surviving Vulcans, even the crew of the Enterprise, were dealing with similar issues. They called it "fen'karr". The humans called it "survivor's guilt". But while everyone had a different name for it, they all had one answer.
The survivors survived for a reason. They were the ones that had to continue on. Gaila knew that a number of Vulcans in Starfleet had either requested transfers to New Vulcan or resigned outright. Gaila considered requesting a transfer to Enterprise, but she decided against it. Enterprise would be fine without her.
Instead, Gaila returned to Starfleet Academy. She would graduate in a year and a half, just as the new ships replacing the ones destroyed at Vulcan would be completed.
And come hell or high water, she would serve on the Farragut.