Chapter Two

Starbase 59, known also as Overwatch, was a large station spanning at over eighteen-hundred metres in width at the widest and nineteen-hundred metres tall it was currently also one of the largest outside the core systems

The terrestrial enclosure, which spanned the upper portion of the station's vast primary hull was the home of Starside residential area as well as sports and other various recreational areas. It also included a small grove of trees, a pond and a substantial amount of grass.

The enclosure itself mimicked the environment of a typical Class-M planet, with a simulated sky that domed over the whole area. In the middle was the central column, that ran from the floor all the way to the top of the dome. The central area was home to a vast mall as well as being a housing for the central power grid, and transport hub.

Well away from Starside, in a cordoned off area, was a large gathering of Starfleet personnel. They were all there for a specific purpose. To commemorate those that had fallen aboard the U.S.S. Evergreen, which had been attacked unprovoked and destroyed by a Klingon vessel.

Commander Saaris, the dark haired and eyed Vulcan, sat alongside her crew-mates, watching the bearded Andorian Admiral, Brax Thalon, as he addressed those in attendance of the funeral service.

What he was saying she didn't know. She wasn't paying him much attention, as she was far too focused on her own internal conflict.

Just a few weeks ago, things had seemed so certain. Her career was solid, being the executive officer and chief of sciences aboard the Evergreen. Back then, her logic had been sound and her emotions had been under control. Her life was as she wanted it, as she had carefully crafted it to be.

That had all been stripped away along with the destruction of the ship. As of that moment, her life had become aimless, with no goals for her to attain. Her logic was also now faulty and she struggled to keep her composure due to a brain injury. Her emotions were now much closer to the surface than they had ever been. Those that knew her could see it, and that brought her shame.

Everything now seemed so chaotic, so out of focus. There was no real reason for her to rise in the morning, nor was their any real reason to go to bed at night.

Saaris felt tired, worn down by the recent events. In all honesty, she had had enough. She was seriously contemplating retiring from the service and returning home back to Vulcan. As far as she was concerned, there was nothing left for her in Starfleet. All the worth she had found ended with the destruction of their ship at the hands of barbarians.

Over half the crew had lost their lives, and she had almost been amongst them. Instead of physically dying though, she had in a very real way, died inside her own mind.

Her green pointed ears perked up at the mention of her name. It was now her time to speak. Something she very much wasn't looking forward too.

Slowly, Commander Saaris rose up from where she was sat and made her way over to the dais, where Admiral Thalon stepped down, standing to the side to let her speak.

Stood on the raised podium, the Vulcan stared out into the crowd, feeling an almost foreign sense of stage fright. She closed her eyes for a moment and forced it down, before casting her eyes to the more familiar faces in the group.

First, she laid eyes on the Lieutenant Commander N'renn, who was a member of the feline species known as Caitians. She had been the head of security and weapons aboard the Evergreen. Now, almost seemingly by sheer luck of opportunity, she was now the security chief here on Starbase 59. Part of the reassignment had been the promotion from lieutenant to lieutenant commander.

Sat next to her, on her right was Lieutenant Commander Gyreth, who had been the chief engineer of the ill-fated starship. He was a Tellarite and far more than simply competent at his job, he was an extremely skilled engineer. He was fairly gruff, but could also be quite sociable. When he was in a good mood anyway.

Her eyes then drifted to the man that was sat next to him. It was Paul Schaffer, who had been the chief medical officer. He had helped her a lot though most of the hardship she had suffered since the brain injury she had suffered during the destruction of the ship, which had not only affected her emotional control, but she had also discovered later that she had lost her sense of smell completely.

Over the last few days, she had been avoiding Schaffer. The reason why? She herself didn't really understand. All she knew, is that she had to get away from him for a while.

It suddenly dawned on her that she had been stood there for a few minutes staring and many in the audience were exchanging looks of concern and whispers amongst themselves.

She cleared her throat before she began to speak. "For the last few years, the majority of us have been working together. We have seen and observed things that many could only imagine. We shared these experiences in the hopes that we could better the understanding of not just ourselves, but of everything and for everyone."

Saaris took another look across those before her. Lieutenant Bridges had his eyes downcast to the floor. He had lost many people close to him, as well as a young ensign that he had been very fond of. Next to him sat Lieutenant Kinkaid, who had been one of her best science officers. He stared at her with puffy eyes. He too had lost friends, as had all of them. The look of sorrow on their faces, brought up a heavy feeling in her stomach. A huge sense of loss.

Closing her eyes for a few moments, she continued, "All we aspired to do was explore. To perhaps even make friends with races yet to be discovered. Today, we commemorate those that died, because they wanted to know more about the universe. We appreciate their sacrifice, even if it was senseless, because it was due to them, that our knowledge is greater today than it was yesterday. For that, we will be eternally grateful." She bowed her head as the feeling of hate began to brew inside her. "But that was taken from us," she said with closed eyes. "Torn from us by barbarians who want nothing more than to kill."

She stopped and looked up at the shocked faces. She had taken it too far, allowed her emotions to run free. She couldn't do this, she couldn't stand here any longer and face them "Thank you," she managed to get out before she stepped away from the podium.

With that, the speeches were finished. Now came the part where they were all supposed to mingle, to talk about life aboard the Evergreen, to chat about those that had been lost to them. Saaris didn't want to do any of that. So instead, she left the gathering behind and headed towards the central column.

She wanted to be alone, not feigning interest in this charade. The ship was gone and so were so many good people. All this so-called funeral did, at least in her mind, was needlessly prolong that which should have already been left in the past.

Upon entering the central column, she made her way to the nearest turbo-car. Once the doors had slid closed and she was out of sight, she let out a heavy sigh, before rubbing the tears that had started to form out of her eyes.

After taking several long deep breaths, she gripped the control handle and gave the computer her destination.

Doctor Paul Schaffer watched Saaris go, with a deep sense of sorrow and regret. He felt like it was his fault that she had become so distant, so detached from him and the others.

It was only now that he realised that while he had thought he was being supportive of her, throughout her healing process, that he was really just being a nuisance.

His constant presence hadn't been needed, nor had it been warranted. Often, she had even told him that his presence wasn't needed, but he had chosen to ignore her, believing that she did need him. The truth was, that is was he who needed her.

Now, he had driven her away due to his overbearing nature, since she had awakened on the planet. He smiled sadly when he could almost hear her correcting him, as it wasn't a planet, it was a moon. A large moon with a breathable atmosphere, that had orbited a putrid brown gas super-giant.

"Everything alright, Doctor?"

He looked around to see N'reinn stood beside him, a worried frown crossing her golden brown feline features.

Schaffer sighed. "I'm worried about Saaris," he said, casting his gaze back towards the central column.

"We all are," she said. "You've just got to give her some time and space."

"Yeah," he sighed, not sure if it was already too late for that.

"Even Vulcans aren't immune to tragedy," she told him.

"No, but they're usually better at hiding it," he commented.

"Just give her some time," the Caitian repeated. She rested a reassuring pawed hand on his shoulder. "You should be mingling with the crew. This might be the last chance you ever get to see them all-" She paused, taking in a sharp breath. "This might be the last chance you get to see those that are left altogether in one place."

Schaffer looked past her into the crowd of people. "I'm not really sure I can," he told her. "I feel that all this needs to be put behind me. Not prolonged and certainly not celebrated."

"It will be," she assured him, giving his shoulder a gentle squeeze. "Just mingle for the next hour or so. It'll do you good."

"I'm not sure it will."

"Everyone on that ship knew you to some extent," she said to him, not letting it go. "Some of them might want to talk to you one last time. As the saying goes, if not for you, then for them."

He rubbed his eyes, before nodding with reluctant agreement. "Perhaps you're right," he accepted, with reservation.

"Come on, let's go talk to some of the crew."

Commander Saaris, if she could even call herself a commander anymore, stepped into her assigned quarters. She quickly made her way into the bedroom area, where she laid herself down on the bed.

With her fingers webbed and her index digits pointed towards her chin, she closed her eyes and concentrated solely on the soft thrum of the station.

Slowly, with some effort, her mind began to clear, as did her mood. She no longer wished to dwell upon what had happened, to remember the faces of those that were now dead.

She didn't want to hate those responsible for their deaths, yet she did. For the Klingons, she dwelt on them with both bile and hatred. She wanted to grab the Klingon captain by the throat and squeeze until their oesophagus collapsed and they suffocated to death.

It wasn't the Vulcan way to think or feel such things. Or at the very least, it hadn't been for millennia. What she felt was decidedly more Romulan, decidedly more vicious.

She pondered on whether she was now indistinguishable from their cousins. After all, they had discovered that the Romulans were simply Vulcans who had rejected Surak's teachings and instead had opted to leave the Vulcan homeworld in a great exodus in primitive spacefaring vessels.

It had been assumed that they had all perished. In fact, when a Vulcan ship had first observed life on Earth, the had assumed that they might have been those that had fled. It hadn't taken long for them discover that they weren't and this was a few centuries before the supposed first contact with Zefram Cochrane, when they had detected the warp signature in the Sol system.

It was a good thing that they had, or else there might never have been a Federation and her people might have been in the middle of a war with the Andorians or Romulans or even the Klingons at that moment.

The Klingons were warmongers, who seemed to only care about the next great battle, the next great campaign. They only thought about their next conquest and subjugation, where they could slaughter their enemies in some glorious battle.

If they kept it all amongst themselves, within the borders of their Empire, then it wouldn't have been an issue. Instead, they forced their foul ancient barbarism onto every race they came into contact with.

How they had ever achieved space travel was a huge mystery to her. Some of them must have devoted their time to science. By the very fact that they still constructed newer more advanced warships meant that some of them still had to devout themselves somewhat to science and engineering. Even if the end goal was just to find new and easier ways of killing people.

She found their culture to be vile and repugnant. She had for a long time. It had only been recently however, that she had felt her revulsion with such power. They had caused to be unable to control the things she now felt without restraint. Her injury disturbed her mind and her soul.

Saaris hated them for it. She despised the torment that she now had to endure because of their unwarranted attack on the Evergreen. The hate for them was something she didn't want to feel, but all attempts to subdue her emotions were met with frustratingly little success.

Still, she attempted to meditate, as she had done when she had first entered her quarters before he mind had begun to wander. The Vulcan tried to force all thoughts out of her mind and to put all her focus onto the gentle thrum of the station and her own breathing.

Once again, her meditation failed as she grew fatigued and she gave up. She simply lay there on her back with her eyes closed until she finally drifted off to sleep.

He wasn't having a good time. Paul Schaffer put on a fake smile and tried to make the best of it. N'reinn had been right, it was the right thing to be here for the rest of the crew, to offer them emotional support, even if he himself was suffering through it.

With every face he saw, he knew there was another face that he would never see again. Like Charlie and Jeff the lab technicians, or Casey and Sam who he always saw together in the mess hall, to name only a few. It simply wasn't fair that their lives had ended so prematurely. There was a lot of hope and promise of a future, but now it was gone, snatched away.

Space was dangerous, they all knew that. It didn't make it any easier.

When the crowd began to disperse, Schaffer used it as an excuse to slip away himself. He headed to the central column where he found a bar. He wasn't interested in drinking himself into a stupor, but he needed some place social, but that was away from familiar faces.

He sat down on a stool the by the bar and ordered a brandy. With it in hand, he sipped it slowly while taking in the ambience. All he wanted to do was to forget, at least for a few hours.

Eventually, Paul had emptied the glass and he decided to call it a day. Despite it being only the afternoon here on the station, he had just had enough. He just wanted today to be over, he just wanted to move on from this.

But he knew that he wouldn't be able to. He just couldn't get the faces of those that had died out of his head. He had spent his whole life in Starfleet, but being assigned to science vessels primarily, he had never experienced death as he had now, not with so many in one single attack.

Paul knew as a doctor he should be used to it. He knew that it should be part of the job. Being in the fleet meant he didn't get many old people close to the ends of their lives, nor did he usually get really sick people. Being on a science vessel meant that injuries or deaths due to combat were so rare that they were pretty much non-existent.

Soon, Paul had arrived at his quarters. He kicked off his shoes and climbed into bed, not bothering to take off his dress uniform. He lay there unable to sleep, just staring up at the dark ceiling.

He wondered where he went from here? Did he simply accept whatever posting came his way, or did he quit the service?

Honestly, he didn't know and right now he didn't really care. Most likely he would take whatever they offered and maybe it would be far away from here, far away from Saaris.

Maybe that's what he needed. A fresh start with no familiar faces from the past.

Or more likely he didn't know what he wanted nor what he needed. He needed to sort out his own thoughts before making any decisions on anything and right now, the lack of sleep and the stress was making it difficult to think clearly.

All Paul Schaffer could hope was that with time came clarity. Right now nothing made any sense and it seemed almost surreal. The unfortunate truth, however, was that it was most definitely real.

Deciding he needed a distraction from his thoughts, he climbed back out of bed and put on his boots. Maybe a walk would do him some good.

He doubted it.