In Her Custody

Posted on Thu Aug 6th, 2026 @ 4:06pm by Vice Admiral Sidra MacLaren

1,608 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: The Heir of a Buried World
Location: Starbase 369 | VIP Medical Suite
Timeline: MD01: Late Afternoon

The words lingered after Seren finished speaking.

Sidra remained still for a moment, the padd resting against her knee while the quiet machinery of the VIP medical suite filled the space between them. The archive sat where she had placed it earlier, sealed and untouched, while Seren’s gaze remained fixed somewhere just beyond it. His father’s final instruction had answered one question, but it had opened several more, and the temptation to follow every one of them already pulled at her.

She resisted it.

Across from her, the cost of the conversation was becoming harder to ignore. The bronze of Seren’s skin had lost some of its warmth beneath the clinical lights, and fatigue showed more clearly now around his amber eyes. The control was still there, but the effort required to maintain it showed. His breathing had become shallower over the last several minutes, and the monitor beside the biobed had begun registering changes he was determined not to acknowledge.

She glanced toward it once.

Seren noticed. “I am all right.”

“I did not ask.”

The faintest movement touched one corner of his mouth. Sidra nearly answered it before deciding against it and settling the padd more comfortably against her knee.

There were dozens of questions she could still ask. She wanted the names of the places he had passed through, the route his father had prepared, the identity of anyone who had helped them, and whatever Seren remembered about the people who had finally driven him into Federation space. Wanting those answers, however, was not the same as needing them immediately.

“Your father sent you away twenty-three days ago,” she said. “You have been moving since then.”

“Yes.”

“Did you remain alone the entire time?”

Seren hesitated, the familiar calculation returning behind his eyes. “Mostly.”

That was different enough to matter. “Mostly?”

“There were people who helped without knowing who I was.”

“Do they know where you were going?”

“No.”

“Do any of them know about the archive?”

“One knew I was protecting something. Not what.”

Sidra made a small notation on the padd for the first time in several minutes. “Are any of them in danger because they helped you?”

His expression changed, and this time she did not need decades of investigative experience to recognize what the question had touched.

“I don’t know.”

The answer bothered him.

“That is not something you can fix tonight,” Sidra said.

“No.”

“But it is something we can look into.”

His gaze lifted to hers, and something appeared there that she had not seen from him since entering the room. It was gone almost immediately, replaced by the careful restraint she had come to expect, but she had seen it.

Hope.

“I don’t know their full names,” he said. “Some of them would not give them.”

“Then we start with what you do know.”

Seren nodded, although even that small movement came more slowly now.

Sidra shifted the padd onto the table beside the archive and leaned back in the chair, giving the conversation a little more physical distance. Outside the suite, Starbase 369 continued through the ordinary rhythm of late afternoon. Somewhere beyond the bulkheads, thousands of people were ending shifts, finding meals, finishing reports, and carrying on without any idea that a name buried in a treaty for nearly fifty years had returned to the station.

Inside the room, very little had visibly changed.

That was often how consequential things began.

“Seren, I am going to ask you one more question tonight.”

His eyes returned to her.

“You told Commander Neris that no one else could receive the archive.”

“Yes.”

“Did your father explain why?”

For several seconds Seren said nothing. His fingers tightened slightly against the blanket, though Sidra could not tell whether discomfort or memory caused it.

“He said you had nothing to gain from finding what was inside.”

Sidra’s brow tightened. “That is a remarkably low standard for trust.”

A breath escaped him that might, under different circumstances, have been amusement. “My father was cautious.”

“I had gathered.”

The monitor beside the bed chimed once. Seren ignored it, but Sidra did not.

“He said there were people who would see the archive as leverage,” Seren continued. “Others would see it as a weapon. Some would see it as a way to reopen something they wanted left closed.”

“And what did he believe I would see?”

“Evidence.”

That stopped her.

Not because the answer flattered her. Sidra had been called many things over the course of her career, several of them considerably less generous and probably more accurate. What caught her was the precision of the word.

Evidence.

Not inheritance. Not justice. Not vindication.

Before Sidra could decide whether there was one more question worth stealing from the time Medical had given her, the inner door opened.

Doctor Halvik entered without apology.

Sidra knew that expression. She had seen variations of it on physicians throughout her career, usually immediately before being informed that rank had ceased to be useful.

“Admiral.”

“Doctor.”

His gaze moved briefly to Seren and then to the monitor beside the biobed. “This conversation is finished for tonight.”

Seren straightened slightly. “I can continue.”

Halvik did not appear impressed. “I am aware that you can. I am telling you that you will not.”

Sidra felt a flicker of sympathy for the young man, mostly because she had lost precisely that argument herself more times than she cared to count.

Seren looked toward her.

Sidra could have asked Halvik for another ten minutes. He probably would have refused, but an admiral could make the request uncomfortable enough that some physicians might relent. She did not. Seren could probably keep answering. That did not mean the answers would continue to be worth what they were costing him.

“We will continue when Medical clears you,” she said.

His gaze shifted immediately toward the archive.

“What happens to it?”

There it was, the question he had been holding since she entered.

Sidra followed his attention. “It remains in my custody.”

His shoulders eased slightly, although not enough to mistake for relief.

“And then?”

Sidra could have softened the answer. She chose not to. “It will be examined.”

The tension returned.

“Opened?”

“Not tonight.”

Seren studied her. “Without me?”

“If that becomes necessary.”

The monitor climbed several beats. Halvik noticed. So did Sidra.

“My father intended me to authenticate it.”

“Then we will not bypass an authentication requirement if one exists.”

“That is not the same thing.”

“No, it isn’t.”

Sidra leaned forward slightly, keeping her voice level. “You brought the archive to Starfleet because you wanted what it contains examined. I will respect the precautions your family built around it as far as I reasonably can. But I will not promise that you will control every step of the investigation.”

Seren said nothing.

The first real friction between them had finally appeared, not over whether she believed him, but over what happened once responsibility changed hands. Sidra understood his concern. Understanding it did not give her the luxury of surrendering her own responsibilities to satisfy it.

“You trusted Commander Neris with it because you had no other choice,” she said. “You trusted me because your father told you to. I am asking you to make the next decision for yourself.”

For several seconds the only sound in the room came from the medical equipment. Halvik remained near the doorway, silent now, apparently willing to tolerate the exchange provided it actually ended.

Seren looked at the archive and then back at Sidra.

“If you open it, you need to understand that what is inside may not belong only to my family.”

“I already assumed that.”

“And if it changes what you believe happened?”

“Then I change what I believe.”

His eyes held hers. Some of the rigidity went out of his posture, not entirely, but enough.

Sidra stood and reached for the archive. Its surface was cool beneath her hand, and the weight settled solidly against her forearm as she lifted it from the table. Seren followed the movement closely but did not reach for it.

That mattered.

“Get some rest,” she said.

“I am not very good at that.”

Sidra regarded him for a moment. “That makes two of us.”

Halvik made a quiet sound from the doorway that strongly suggested he had opinions about both of them.

For the first time, Seren smiled.

It was small and exhausted, gone almost as soon as it appeared, but it made him look considerably younger. More than anything else during the conversation, that reminded Sidra how much had been placed on him before he had ever chosen to carry it.

She turned toward the door.

“Admiral.”

Sidra stopped.

When she looked back, Seren’s attention had returned to the archive in her arms.

“My father was right about one thing.”

She waited.

“He said I would know when I reached the person I was supposed to give it to.”

The statement carried more weight than Sidra expected, but she did not answer it with reassurance she had not earned.

“I will take care of it.”

Seren nodded once.

Doctor Halvik stepped aside as Sidra approached the door, though his expression suggested he would be considerably less accommodating if she attempted to turn around.

She had no intention of doing so.

The doors opened onto the quieter corridor beyond, where Quen waited exactly where Sidra had left her. Behind Sidra, Medical closed around Seren again. The cool weight of the archive remained against her arm as she stepped into the corridor, carrying everything his father had spent a lifetime trying to preserve.

 

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