Old Shores

Posted on Sat Mar 28th, 2026 @ 1:18pm by Lieutenant Commander Vianola Paxidor

2,189 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: One Year Later…
Location: Presidio Waterfront, San Francisco, Earth
Timeline: MD01 - 1230 hours

San Francisco was showing off.

The afternoon sun lay warm over the water, turning the Bay into hammered gold beyond the restaurant’s broad windows, and every white line of wake out on the surface seemed brighter than it had any right to be. Officers in uniform came and went along the promenade below in twos and threes, cadets among them in knots of louder energy, all movement and ambition and the sort of certainty people wore best when the future was still something they spoke about instead of something they had already had to survive.

Vianola sat back in her chair with one elbow resting lightly against the armrest, her lunch barely touched for the moment, a glass of water beading slowly at her hand. Out of uniform, she still looked every inch Starfleet. There were some things clothing did not soften. The straight line of her posture. The quiet readiness in the set of her shoulders. The red of her hair falling loose below them, catching the afternoon light whenever she turned her head. She had her final orders tucked away in her bag beside her, already read twice, as if a third pass might somehow reveal something the first two had not. It would not. The Yorktown. Chief Security/Tactical Officer. Reporting window confirmed. Departure locked in.

Clean. Official. Decided.

And still somehow not quite real.

Across from her sat Captain Renn Talvora, once her Chief Security/Tactical Officer on the Hong Kong, now promoted well beyond the post where she had first known him. Age had not softened him much. It had only sharpened what had already been there. He still had that same watchful stillness about him, like a man who could sit through a pleasant lunch and spot three exits, two security problems, and one lie before the drinks arrived.

He glanced up from his own plate, catching her looking out towards the Bay again instead of eating. “If you stare at the water any harder, Paxidor, Starfleet Command will assume you’re reconsidering.”

Her mouth twitched. “I’ve already signed for the posting. Bit late now.”

“It is never too late to make an admiral nervous.”

That got a brief laugh out of her, low and real.

Renn sat back slightly, studying her over the rim of his glass in the way that had once made junior officers confess things they had not even realised were written on their faces. “You’ll suit it.”

“The Yorktown?”

“The job.” He paused. “The ship too, probably. Though you’ll hate at least a third of the department within the first week.”

Vianola gave him a flat look. “Only a third?”

“Optimistic of me, I know.”

That one pulled a proper smile from her. Not broad, not showy, but enough to change her whole face for a second before she looked down and picked up her fork. “You always did oversell my warmth.”

“I never had to. People noticed it eventually. Usually right after you’d finished terrifying them.”

She shook her head once and finally took a bite, buying herself a second before answering. Typical Renn. Dry as old paper and still annoyingly capable of landing somewhere too close to the truth.

Around them, the restaurant carried on in an easy hum of conversation and cutlery against ceramic, the sort of polished Starfleet-adjacent place that had learned long ago exactly how much formality officers wanted when they were technically off duty but not quite relaxed enough to admit it. Outside, a shuttle crossed the sky in a neat arc towards the Academy grounds.

Renn set his glass down. “You remember Madris Theta?”

She looked up at him at once. “That is a cruel thing to bring up over lunch.”

His expression did not shift, though there was amusement buried in it. “You threw a cargo crate through a sealed door.”

“It opened, didn’t it?”

“It decompressed the corridor.”

“Temporarily.”

He let the silence sit just long enough to make the point.

Vianola leaned back in her chair, one brow lifting. “You’re the one who told me to get us into the comms room.”

“I expected a little more finesse.”

“You had a boarding party cutting through junction twelve, internal sensors down, and Lieutenant Morvek trying to bleed to death against the starboard bulkhead. Finesse was not really the mood of the day.”

“No,” Renn allowed. “It was not.”

For a moment the humour softened around the edges, giving way to the shape of memory. The Hong Kong rolling hard under impact. Emergency lighting washing everything red. Smoke in the corridor. Morvek white-faced and furious, insisting he could still stand. Renn already barking orders as if he had eight more officers than he actually did. She could still remember the feel of the cargo crate under her palms before she had driven it into the access seal hard enough to break the mechanism clean through.

He looked at her for a beat longer, then said, quieter, “You got us into the comms room.”

Vianola’s gaze held his. “We got there.”

He gave a small nod, as if that answer had been expected.

The waiter passed near enough to top up waters and disappear again. Outside, the light on the Bay had shifted, less gold now, more silver-blue, the afternoon beginning its slow lean towards evening.

Renn folded his hands loosely in front of him. “You know why I asked you here.”

“To make sure I don’t embarrass your mentoring legacy?”

“That too.” A pause. “Mostly because a transfer like this can wrong-foot you if you’re not paying attention. Same field, same rank, same job on paper. In practice, not even slightly the same animal.”

She said nothing to that straight away. She did not need to. He was not wrong.

He watched her with the same measured calm he had carried on the Hong Kong, only now there was more ease in it, more distance from the immediate press of departmental life. The rank on his collar might have changed over the years, but the man underneath it had not shifted nearly as much.

“When I took my first command-track placement,” he said, “I spent the first month trying not to become the officer I thought everyone expected to see. Nearly made a mess of it.”

That got her attention properly. “You?”

“One of my more irritatingly human qualities. I do occasionally overthink.”

“Captain, I’m stunned.”

“There it is,” he said dryly. “I was wondering how long it would take before you started enjoying yourself.”

Now she did smile, faint but unmistakable, and looked down into her glass for a moment before answering. “I know the job. I know what’s expected. It’s not that.”

“No?”

Vianola exhaled quietly through her nose. “It’s a new ship. New people. New rhythms. You spend long enough somewhere and you stop having to think about how things fit together. You just know. Then you move, and for a while you’re back to learning the shape of everything by hand.”

Renn’s eyes stayed on her. “And you dislike that.”

“I dislike the gap between being experienced and being new.”

“That,” he said, “is because you’re competent.”

She huffed a laugh at that, though it was more breath than sound.

He let the moment settle, then reached for his drink. “You’ll be fine, Vi.”

The name, shortened and familiar, landed more softly than the title or surname ever did. She had heard it from enough people over the years, but from some mouths it meant more.

Her fingers rested against the side of her glass. “I know.”

It was not false confidence. Not bravado either. Just truth.

Renn inclined his head once. “Good. Then all that’s left is for you to get aboard, make half the security department nervous, win the other half over, and pretend not to notice which senior staff member tries to test you first.”

“That sounds very specific.”

“It usually is.”

Vianola’s mouth curved faintly at that, her gaze slipping past Renn for a second towards the bright spill of afternoon beyond the window.

“I’ll miss the seabase,” she admitted, then added with drier honesty, “Though if I’m being fair, I may miss the beaches and the sun more than the duty roster.” She glanced back at him, one brow lifting slightly. “It’s hard to be too miserable in a place that looks like a holiday brochure half the year.” The smile lingered a fraction longer before softening. “Still. I’ll miss the people. The place gets under your skin before you notice it.”

The waiter appeared at just the right moment, polite enough not to interrupt the flow of things until there was a natural break in it. He paused beside the table with that practiced sort of ease people in places like this always seemed to have.

“May I clear these for you?”

Renn glanced down at his plate, then at Vi’s, and gave a small nod. “You may.”

Vianola offered the waiter a small smile and shifted her glass back a fraction to make room. “We’re done.”

A moment later the plates were lifted away, the last signs of lunch disappearing with them, leaving only glasses, folded napkins, and the easy quiet that followed the end of a meal neither of them had particularly rushed. Outside, the light had changed again, softer now, the kind of late-afternoon glow that made San Francisco look even more like a place designed to seduce people into staying put.

Renn leaned back slightly once the waiter had gone. “So. Beaches, sun, and a suspiciously good duty station. Anything else Triton is losing that you’re prepared to admit?”

Vianola gave him a look over the rim of her glass. “Not to you.”

“Wise.”

That earned him a quiet snort of laughter, and she let the humour sit there for a second before her expression settled into something more open, more honest.

“I am excited about the Yorktown,” she said, and this time there was no hesitation in it. “I think that’s the part I’ve been trying not to lean on too hard. Leaving one place and looking forward to the next at the same time feels a bit disloyal, somehow.”

Renn’s brow shifted faintly. “It isn’t.”

“I know.” She turned the glass once between her fingers. “It’s a good posting. Good ship. Different pace. Bigger reach. I wanted something that moved again.” Her mouth curved, small but real. “And if I’m honest, I’d have been disappointed in myself if I’d talked a great game about challenge for thirty years and then gone soft the minute one turned up.”

He studied her for a beat, and whatever he saw seemed to satisfy him. “No danger of that.”

“No,” she said lightly. “Didn’t think so either.”

The silence that followed was easy, the kind that only really happened between people who had known each other long enough not to rush in and fill it. Around them the restaurant carried on in its low murmur, glasses catching the light, cutlery chiming now and then, Starfleet and civilian life brushing shoulders in that very Earth way of pretending the galaxy was not constantly on the verge of becoming more complicated.

Eventually Renn pushed his chair back and rose, smoothing a hand down the front of his jacket. Vianola followed a second later, collecting her bag from beside the chair and settling the strap over her shoulder. Up close, in the full wash of daylight coming through the window, she looked a touch less guarded than she had when they sat down. Still composed, still unmistakably herself, but lighter somehow. The kind of change only someone who knew her well would notice.

Renn did.

He stepped in first, sparing them both the awkwardness of deciding whether a handshake would do, and drew her into a brief, firm hug. Vianola returned it without hesitation, one hand coming up against his back for a second before they eased apart again.

He looked at her then, not as an old department head reviewing a former officer, nor as a senior captain offering polite encouragement, but as someone who had known her through enough years and enough hard miles to mean what came next.

“You’ll do well there,” he said. “And if you need anything, advice, a sounding board, someone to remind you you’re not losing your mind, you call me. I mean that.”

Something in her expression softened properly at that.

“I know,” she said, quieter now. “Thank you.”

Renn gave a single nod, as if that settled the matter. “Good. Then go and make a brilliant nuisance of yourself aboard Yorktown.”

Her smile came easier this time. “I’ll do my best.”

“I know you will.”

And with that, they turned together towards the door, the afternoon waiting beyond the glass, bright and salt-lit and moving steadily on.

 

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