Old Steps, New Deck

Posted on Fri Apr 10th, 2026 @ 11:37pm by Lieutenant Commander Vianola Paxidor & Captain Steven Jenkins

1,526 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: One Year Later…
Location: Corridors / Captain’s Ready Room, USS Yorktown
Timeline: MD01 - 1400 hours

Some ships had a feel to them from the moment you stepped aboard. In the lighting. In the sound underfoot. In the way the crew moved through the corridors. The Yorktown, for all her Neo-Constitution elegance, did not feel delicate. She felt assured. Clean without being sterile. A ship that knew exactly what she was.

Vianola respected that straight away.

She stepped clear of the airlock with her bag over one shoulder, uniform sitting crisp and familiar across her frame. Gold and black. Hair set a little more neatly than usual for first impressions, though not so tightly as to strip away all softness. Around her, the corridor moved with quiet purpose. Officers passed by at a steady clip, a few giving her that brief second look that said word had already got around.

Good.

She kept walking, PADD tucked beneath one arm, only glancing at it once for the route to the captain’s ready room. She preferred learning a new ship on foot. You noticed more that way. The width of the corridors. Sightlines. Traffic patterns. The general pulse of the place.

The Yorktown still carried the faint scent of new systems polish, but there was life in her too. Crew had already made their mark here. Routine had settled in. The ship felt lived in, not staged.

By the time Vianola reached the bridge deck, the flow of traffic had thinned. The hum of the ship seemed lower here, steadier somehow. Through a nearby viewport the stars burned white against black, hard and distant.

She slowed just enough to smooth a hand over the front of her jacket, then stepped up to the ready room doors.

She pressed the chime.

“Come.” Steven spoke without looking up from the PADD in front of him “I’ve got a lot of paperwork to finish before we head out. Please tell me the PADD in your hand isn’t for me.”

Vi stepped into the ready room and let the doors close behind her, the PADD held neatly at her side.

“No, sir,” she said, lifting it slightly. “This one’s mine. Personnel files. I wanted to get a sense of the department before I started meeting people.”

Then she offered him a small, composed nod.

“Lieutenant Commander Vianola Paxidor. Reporting aboard as your new Chief Security/Tactical Officer.”

There was the faintest pause after that, just enough to betray that first-reporting formality was never quite as comfortable as she made it look.

“Sorry. That probably would’ve made more sense in the other order.”

"Yes, it probably would." Steven said, looking up from his PADD "At ease, Commander. Before you pull a muscle."

He rose from his chair, manoeuvring to the old oak cabinet in the corner of the room. He opened it, withdrawing a pair of china mugs, a glass teapot and two containers, all on a silver tray. He set them down on the desk in front of her, removing the lid from the teapot before moving to the replicator.

"750 millilitres of water, 95 degrees, and 250 millilitres of semi-skimmed milk, five degrees." He spoke, collecting the two containers that materialised, setting them down beside the teapot and opening the first of the two containers, withdrawing a large scoop of tea leaves and placing them in the silver diffuser in the center of the teapot before pouring the water into the glass container as he spoke "My Father has always said it's important to greet guests with a cup of tea. Says it helps calm the nerves. When I was given this Command, he gave me this tea set, said it would help calm my nerves. Do you take milk and sugar, Commander?"

Vianola eased properly at that, the hint of tension in her shoulders giving way with a quiet breath as she watched him move around the ready room with the ease of someone who had done this often enough for it to mean something.

“Just two sugars, thank you, Captain.”

Her eyes dropped briefly to the tea set as he laid it out, and something in her expression warmed. “It’s beautiful. Your father sounds like a wise man.” A faint smile touched her mouth before she added, “Mine didn’t want me joining Starfleet at all. Thirty years on, I think my mother’s influence has softened that opinion a little, but not nearly enough for him to admit it.”

She glanced back up at him then, dry humour returning in a lighter shade.

“I’ll do my best not to get us into any battles that end with that set in pieces. No promises, obviously, but I’ll do my best.”

"Thank you, I appreciate that." Steven nodded as he prepared the tea "However, if I'm honest, as much as I love my Father, I'm more concerned about the sideboard there. It was a Birthday gift from my mentor. He was something of an antique enthusiast and wanted to pass appreciation for the past on. I was much more inclined towards looking forward than reflecting when I first came onboard as First Officer."

Vianola’s eyes went to the sideboard then, taking it in properly this time.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, quieter than before, the words unforced. “I can see why you keep it here.”

A small pause followed. Not awkward. Just enough to let the room settle around what she already knew sat beneath it.

“And... I was very sorry to hear about Captain Shrak.” Her gaze lifted back to his, steady and respectful. “I’d heard what happened on Frontier Day. Losing your captain like that, on your own ship...” She let the thought trail there, her expression softening slightly. “I’m sorry, Captain.”

For the briefest moment, Hevol crossed her mind. Not sharply, not in the old way, but there all the same, in that quiet place grief settled when it had lived in a person long enough. Loss knew loss when it saw it. She understood, perhaps more than she would ever say aloud, what it meant to have someone woven into the shape of a place and then gone from it.

"It wasn't my ship, it was his." Steven replied sombrely, before continuing "With that being said, thank you, Commander. I'll admit, you never truly recover from loss like that is my one take away from counselling."

He hesitated before continuing.

"In any case, we're due to move out in 48 hours. I've been informed that the targeting systems for the weapons are out of alignment by four degrees. Not a lot, but enough that it could be a problem if we get into trouble." He said, picking up a PADD and tapping it a few times to bring up the relevant report before holding it out to her "The technicians on starbase haven't been able to work it out. They're good, but they lack tactical knowledge. I tried looking at it with them, but I couldn't find a solution. Whatever we do, that misalignment comes back. Maybe a fraction of a degree lower or higher, but it comes back. We've purged the protocols, which suggests it may well be mechanical. Mind getting another set of eyes on it?"

Vianola listened without interruption, the correction settling cleanly. His ship. Not Steven’s, not then. Hers would have been the same distinction if someone else had tried to lay claim to a grief that was not quite theirs to name.

“No,” she said quietly. “You don’t.”

There was nothing clever in it, no attempt to soften the truth. Just agreement.

When he moved on, she let him, reaching out to take the PADD from him with a small nod as her eyes dropped to the report. Her expression shifted with it, the sympathy still there but set aside now in favour of something more practical, more familiar.

“I’ll take a look,” she said, already skimming. “Four degrees is plenty if someone starts shooting back.”

Her thumb moved once along the edge of the PADD as she read, mind already turning over possibilities.

“If the purge changed nothing, then yes, mechanical would be my first guess too. Mounting, calibration drift, feedback from the targeting assembly itself, maybe something sitting just far enough out of true to keep correcting back to the same bad point.” She glanced up at him briefly. “Either way, I’d rather find it now than in the middle of a fight.”

Then the faintest trace of dry humour returned, small but steadier than before.

“Seems a fair welcome gift, really. New ship, new captain, broken weapons targeting.” Her eyes dropped back to the display. “I’ll head down and start with Tactical.”

“Thank you, Commander.” Steven nodded “Dismissed.”

Vianola gave a small nod, already turning the problem over in her head.

“Aye, Captain.”

With the PADD in hand, she stepped back from the desk, offered him one last respectful inclination of her head, then turned and made for the door. The ready room door opened at her approach, and a moment later she was back out on the bridge deck, the doors closing quietly behind her.

 

RSS Feed