Day 3 to Gault: 0300

Posted on Thu Nov 5th, 2026 @ 4:48am by Lieutenant JG Katie Kellerman & Ensign Azrael Vaux

1,657 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: We'll Be Back
Location: Runabout

Katie had thrown on a long t-shirt before stepping out of the rear compartment. She went over to the copilot’s chair and, once she ensured the console was locked, kicked her feet up onto it and sat back in the chair. They’d had to make only a few course adjustments during their trip thus far, so they hadn’t spent much time outside of the living quarters unless someone wanted privacy.

Tonight, however, she’d woken up and couldn’t get back to sleep, so she’d extricated herself from Izzy’s arms and made her way up front to watch the stars go by and get her thoughts in order.

It was several minutes before the door to the living compartment opened again and Azrael stepped out, closing it silently behind him. It hadn’t been Katie getting out of bed that had woken him up, but the continued absence of her warmth that had brought him out of his own slumber. When she hadn’t reappeared after a while, he’d slipped his hand out of Kally’s grasp and put on a tank top and boxers before going to the only place on the small ship that would make sense, just to check on her.

He knocked gently on the side of the cockpit wall, “Mornin’, everything all right up here?”

Katie gave a small jump and turned around, frowning. “I’m sorry, Izzy,” she said. “I was trying hard not to wake anybody up.” She sat back around and sighed. “I’m fine; I was just…watching the stars.”

“You didn’t…wake me up, that is.” Azrael gave her a slight smile, a mostly-truth, “It’s been a rather restful trip so far, and Vaux keeps me from needing as much sleep, so I’m oftentimes awake at odd hours anyways. Did you want to be alone? I can head back there if you do.” He tossed a thumb over his shoulder back towards the living area.

She shook her head. “No, it’s fine. You’re welcome to join me if you like.” She gave a small smile. “Privacy’s kind of impossible here anyway, right?” She gestured to the pilot’s chair. “Get comfy.”

“Thanks.” He settled in the pilot’s chair and leaned back, “You know, I still remember the days when I could just look up at the stars and see magical little pinpricks of twinkling lights, imagining what they would be like up close. It was honestly a bit disappointing to find out that they’re burning balls of gas held together by gravity.” He chuckled, “Still pretty, but all of the mystique is gone.”

“Ever been inside one? Seen the swirling gasses fusing into heavier elements at the center of a churning ball of controlled fire in a vacuum?”

“I can’t say I have; never had the nerve to take one of those flights.”

“Me either,” she said. “So I guess there’s some mystery left, right?” she smirked.

“Touche,” He placed his hand over his heart, “You win the point.” He laughed quietly. “But I will say that I’ve never tired of visiting new places and seeing new things. For that, being assigned to Chimera has been probably the best place for me.”

Katie let out a long sigh. “I came here for Kally,” she said. “To keep her out of trouble. Turned out, this was the one ship she could thrive on.”

“Where would you rather be?” He asked inquisitively, “If you had your dream starship assignment, where would you go?”

She shrugged. “Honestly? I’ve no idea. Staying on the Intrepid would’ve been hell. I’d just be the identical twin of the ensign who almost literally fucked up a peace treaty. The captain couldn’t even look at Kally after, and I doubt he’d have been able to look at me. How could I advance there? And somewhere else? No friends, no Kally, nobody? I mean, I suppose I could’ve started over, but I wasn’t thinking of that back then. And here, I had Kal, I had Jadizon, I had a chance. And now, I’m Assistant Chief Engineer, I have friends, I have my sister safe and sound. Some regrets? Yes, but I don’t think I’d be in this position anywhere else.” She gave a small shrug again.

“Maybe, maybe not…yet.” Azrael waved a hand. “You’re smart in your own right, Katie, and you’re going to make one helluva Chief Engineer at some point, whether here on Chimera or on some other ship. And you’re not your sister; there are people out there who like you in your own right and unless Cally’s cooking the books with performance reports, there may be other ships asking for you by name before the ship is out of the refit. We’ve got a good little ship going at this point and barring some sabotage, that’s going to get out there.”

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She wanted to bring up Kally’s complaints about the admiral out to get them, but she didn’t want to sound like she was dismissing everything he said. “Thanks,” she said, finally. “And...I know I’m not my sister. Sometimes it’s just hard for others to remember that.” She looked out the window for a moment. “And it can make relationships difficult.”

Azrael exhaled deeply, remembering the legends that were the Kellermans his first year as a cadet, the stories that had surrounded them. If he’d had a twin brother, what could that have become? Would he have been able to break away from them? “I can only imagine.” He finally said with a nod, “Want to tell me about the Senior Chief? You don’t have to if it’s too much to talk about, I’m just nosey.”

“He’s a good, honorable man,” she said, quietly. “Handsome, tall, well built, great in bed, and swore he cared about me without settling for me when Kally decided she wasn’t in love with him after all.” She went quiet for a moment and finally shrugged. “And it didn’t work. We didn’t work. The sex was great but…I don’t know it was just great sex, does that make sense? It didn’t lack passion, it didn’t lack emotion. Hell, feeling him telepathically made it the most emotional sex I’d ever had–no offense,” she said, glancing over.

“None taken,” He gave an understanding smile, “Everyone is different in bed and I’m only Trill.”

“And when we were alone together, he could be very sweet, very tender. He hated being vulnerable. He didn’t make me feel less, but he could be condescending now and again. We had fights like any couple. We had good times, too. There was nothing wrong with things except…he just wasn’t the one.” She wiped her eyes. “That’s what pisses me off more than anything. On paper, we were fine. It’s like writing code and it won’t compile, but none of the system patches are conflicting. It just won’t run and you can’t figure out what it is, but you know it’s not working.” She shook her head. “I knew, deep down, as much as I loved him, it wasn’t working. We weren’t looking for the same things.”

Azrael remained quiet for long seconds. He didn’t have any words for how much he felt for her situation, that chemistry that just…wasn’t. He’d never gone through that in either of his last two lives and certainly not in this one. “Sometimes… It happens. Everything happens, maybe not for any reason at all, it just happens.”

“Not the best reason to give an engineer,” she said with a humorless chuckle. “I deal with things that work and don’t work, but things work because they’re assembled correctly and built correctly. You have all the right parts, you put them together the way they should be put together, they work. That’s how it is.”

“Well, I’m a scientist,” He gave his own chuckle, “We see things that defy explanation of any kind and everyone expects us to come up with a rational reason for them. I’m lucky enough that I’ve got two additional lives of experience with all of this and there are things in my past that still haven’t been explained” He exhaled and shrugged, “I’ve seen fires that burn without fuel, ice forming in a burning desert… Experiments that fail to produce the reactions they have had every time before, all because of some intangible that may be discovered or not.” He offered a half-smile, “We think we know everything until suddenly we don’t.”

“Doesn’t piss me off any less,” Katie said, simply. She looked back out at the stars again for a few minutes. “I suppose,” she said finally, “not knowing doesn’t matter in the end. It is what it is.”

“Indeed.” He said, “And people have destroyed themselves on the altar of those mysteries. Some move on from them.” Izzy gestured at Katie, “Neither of them are wrong.”

“Well, if it’s all the same to you, I’m angling to not be one of the destroyed ones,” she said.

“I’d be sad if you were.” Izzy said with a soft smile, “I’d have to try to change your mind.”

“And I’m well aware how convincing you can be,” she teased, now giving him a small smile. She was quiet another moment then reached over and held her hand out.
He took her hand and squeezed it gently, “The stars really are beautiful.”

She nodded and squeezed back. “Even knowing what’s inside.”

 

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