Lines We Cross

Posted on Mon Oct 27th, 2025 @ 10:04pm by Vice Admiral Sidra MacLaren & Commodore Stephen MacCaffery

3,259 words; about a 16 minute read

Mission: Second Light
Location: Starbase 369

// Fleet Operations - SB 369 //

The report from the Arawyn glowed in the half-light of Sidra’s office, its final lines scrolling to a quiet end. The convoy was homeward bound, the crisis on Tarvik III contained, for now.

Sidra let the text fade from the screen. Beyond the viewport, the curved perimeter of the docking ring caught the reflected light of the Newton, scarred, berthed three decks below, engineers still crawling along her nacelles. Captain Rao’s ship had arrived ahead of the others two days earlier, battered but intact. Corbin’s Arawyn and the rest of the convoy were still en route, bringing with them the uneasy calm of a mission finished but not concluded.

She reached for the mug beside her, found it long gone cold, and set it aside. Reports filled her padds in ordered stacks, containment data, soil analysis, diplomatic dispatches, all saying the same thing in different ways: Tarvik was stable, but brittle. The kind of stability that was shattered at the first wrong word.

The Vethari Combine’s “open-handed” declaration was already circulating across colonial channels, painting them as saviors of the frontier. The Kaldari Union had issued a polite but pointed acknowledgment, one phrase standing out like a blade in silk, shared space.

Sidra’s jaw tightened. “Shared,” she murmured. “Not in any treaty I’ve read.”

Corbin’s report was, as always, immaculate; facts rendered clean, emotion distilled to precision. Yet Sidra could sense what lingered beneath the lines: the watchfulness of a captain who knew calm could be an illusion. Tarvik’s skies might be clearing, but no one on the frontier was exhaling just yet.

She leaned back, gaze drifting to the shelf where the Archer’s model caught the light. Below it, the holo from Loch Lomond shimmered faintly, Stephen and Will caught mid-laughter against a windswept shore. A moment untouched by duty.

For a long breath she weighed her options. Fleet Command could send one of their career diplomats, well-intentioned, fluent in protocol, and utterly out of step with the frontier’s pulse. They’d arrive armed with talking points and exit clauses, none of which would survive a Kaldari stare or a Vethari smile.

Stephen, though, this sort of thing was stitched into his bones.

He’d made a life of pulling tempers back from the brink, of finding words that gave everyone just enough dignity to keep talking. He understood how law and empathy could occupy the same room, how patience could be a weapon when used precisely. This wasn’t politics for him; it was craft.

And Tarvik was exactly the kind of wound he’d try to clean before it scarred.

She almost smiled at the thought. If she mentioned it, he’d feign reluctance for form’s sake, then start asking for data within the hour.

It would be right up his alley, equal parts law, conscience, and quiet fire.

Still, asking him meant crossing the line she had always drawn between her command and their life together.

Sidra rarely blurred the line between command and personal life. She never used her position to pull him into Fleet matters. But this time, the balance felt different. If the Combine’s narrative took hold, if the colonies began to believe the Federation was the aggressor, everything Corbin and her crew had preserved at Tarvik would unravel.

She set her padd down with quiet finality. “You’re going to ask him,” she said under her breath.

// Stephen MacCafferey's Office //

Stephen let the unlit pipe sit easy at the corner of his mouth. The taste of synthetic cedar was a familiar warmth, a small, physical anchor that kept his jaw from locking. On the PADD before him, grades waited in a neat, unwavering column, each line item a small, final verdict. He scrolled, stylus poised.

Padran’s brief flashed up. All stance and no spine. Pretty citations that carried no actual weight. Stephen read the final argument twice, scanning for a hidden turn of logic he might have missed. He hadn’t. He grunted, a dry sound against the pipe stem, and marked the margin: Two lines on clean citation. One on the structural flaw: adjectives are not a substitute for evidence. He set the score down precisely where it belonged, lower than the cadet likely expected. He deserved it.

The next file queued with a familiar stutter. Keller. The mining relay kid whose feed always hiccupped in the back of class. The opening was plain, almost shy, but the central argument locked onto the core question and did not let go. Stephen watched the logic find its feet, pull a secondary source exactly as he’d taught them, trim back all the rhetorical theater, and land on a conclusion he could use on a bad day. He felt the corner of his mouth lift, a rare, genuine smile. Best he’d seen from the kid. Best in the whole stack. He tapped a quick note: ‘Good work. You made the rule hold.’ He gave him the mark to match.

His combadge chirped, pulling him from the file.

“MacLaren to MacCafferey. Could you come by my office?”

Sidra. His pipe stem lifted a millimeter. Official call, official title.

He could picture her instantly: the wide curve of the command viewport behind her, the neat stacks of PADDs on her desk, the absent, repetitive way she would smooth a piece of flimsy when her head was running too hot.

“That sounds official, Admiral,” he said, his own voice level. “Should I be worried?”

A beat of silence. “Not yet. Just bring that calm of yours. I think I may need to borrow it.”

“Very well, On my way.”

The channel closed. Sidra straightened the stack of padds out of habit, though her focus had already shifted. For once, she wasn’t summoning a subordinate, but her husband, the one person who might see the path through the quiet storm forming at Tarvik.

Stephen finished the column, two more, one middling, one quick fail with a fix attached, then sent the grades in one clean, decisive sweep. A soft pulse confirmed delivery. He clicked the pipe off, set it in the tray, and stood. His jacket was on the chair; he left it. The walk would clear his head.

He hadn't followed the Tarvik situation closely. Enough to know the Arawyn was inbound. Enough to know the Combine was busy spinning a frontier story with themselves as the heroes, and that some dry Kaldari communiqué had smuggled in the phrase ‘shared space.’ Headlines, not muscle memory. He sorted the fragments as he walked. What was she planning that required him—her husband, the law professor—instead of her staff of flags and functionaries?

The question didn't worry him. It simply focused him. He clasped his hands behind his back, falling into a leisurely, measured pace.

Starbase 369’s inner residential ring carried him along like a slow river. He let the steady, ambient hum of the station’s life support scrub the rest of the classroom from his shoulders. Through a wide porthole, he saw a slice of the docking ring. The USS Newton’s scarred nacelles caught the cold work-lights, tiny engineering suits crawling over the damage. He filed the image, his mind stripping it for parts: Engines intact. Whatever happened, they survived it.

Outside Sidra’s command office, the ambient sound of the corridor bled thin, absorbed by the heavy-duty door and bulkhead. He knew that particular, pressurized quiet. He pressed the chime and stepped in at her immediate call.
A half-full mug of cold coffee on the side table. PADDs in ruthlessly clean stacks. And Sidra at her desk, radiating a stillness that didn’t deceive him for a second. He crossed the last few meters without ceremony, moving past the formal guest chairs.

“Hey, you,” he said, his voice soft, pitched for her and not the room.

He set one hand on her shoulder, then sliding up, finding the back of her neck, his thumb pressing into the tight muscle at the base of her skull. A brief, warm squeeze. Not the full embrace he would have used on a different day. This situation, this her, asked for less, not more.

Her muscles eased under his fingers for a fraction of a second, then tensed again. He felt the old, familiar instinct rise: keep the room gentle.

“You said borrow,” he murmured, his hand dropping from her neck to rest on the back of her chair. “I brought all I had.”

He took the chair beside her desk, not the formal one across from it. A partner, not a subordinate. He didn’t reach for the PADDs. He didn’t ask what was wrong. He simply watched her eyes, the way they stayed on his for a beat before flicking to the window, to the stack, and then back to him. He let the silence sit, giving her time to own it.

Finally, he gave a slight, single nod. “All right, Admiral. Tell me what you’ve got. And then tell me how you want me to stand in it.”

She didn’t answer right away. The question hung between them, steady and patient. Then she rose, crossing to the viewport. The dock lights glimmered across the curve of the Newton’s hull below, stark white against the scored plating. Engineers moved like slow fireflies over her surface. Every ship carried its own ghosts back from the frontier, but that one had more than most.

“The reports read like a resolution,” she said quietly, her reflection faint beside his in the glass. “But every one of them ends with the same undercurrent, everyone waiting for the next flare. You can feel it. The colony, the Combine, the Union. Even here.”

She folded her arms, eyes still on the lights below. “Tarvik isn’t done with us. The story’s still being written, just not by us right now.”

A long breath left her. “And I didn’t help that. Declaring the Combine an active threat…it was the right instinct, wrong execution.” Her voice softened, stripped of rank and distance. “It was too sharp. Too fast. I wanted to keep the fleet safe, but all I did was draw the line thicker. They’re using my words to paint us as aggressors.”

Her reflection in the glass looked back at her, steady but tired. “I own that. I made the call, and now I have to walk it back before someone else pays for it.”

She turned, leaning against the desk. “That’s why I need someone out there who can speak for us without sounding like me.” The faintest wryness touched her mouth. “Someone who knows how to make the law sound like it still belongs to everyone.”
Her expression softened, but her tone stayed measured. “I didn’t call you here as my husband, Mac. I called you because I know what kind of work steadies your hands. You are the best man for this job.”

She let that truth settle in the air, the faint hum of the office filling the space where she would normally fill silence with orders.

He let out a short, warm laugh while she laid it out, the kind of sound that instantly took the sharp edges off the room. His hand went to his jacket pocket out of habit, patted left, then right. Pipe. Not there. He pictured it cooling on his office tray and shook his head once, amused with himself.

“Mm,” he said, his mouth quirking. “You do have a gift for treating every problem like a nail. And I’ve seen the hammer. It’s formidable.” He lifted a palm, a gesture of peace before she could bristle. “It’s saved lives, Sidra. Now, it’s just dented optics.”

He crossed to the replicator. “Two Earl Greys,” he said to the air, “one cube each.” The cups appeared with a whisper of steam. He stirred both, listening to the faint clink of the dissolving sweetener, letting the simple, repetitive motion order his thoughts. Professor off. Diplomat on.

Sidra watched the motion of his hands more than the words at first, the way he stirred the tea, deliberate and unhurried, as if calm itself were an instrument he could play on command. The room softened under it.

He slid one cup to her and kept the other, taking the chair beside her desk, not across from it. A partner, not a supplicant.
When he sat beside her, she turned slightly, one shoulder angling toward him. For a heartbeat, she only studied him, the faint curl of amusement still in his mouth. The “hammer” line had landed exactly as he’d intended, truth wrapped in warmth. It kept her from bristling, though the faint lift of her brow said she’d registered it.

“You make it sound like I go looking for nails,” she said, tone dry but quiet. “They just have an uncanny talent for finding me.”
She took the tea, holding it in both hands rather than drinking. The warmth sank through her palms as she let herself settle into the rhythm of his focus. It wasn’t the heat of command here, but the measured, grounded way he drew structure from chaos.

“I’ve glanced at the Tarvik headlines,” he said, his voice dropping into a working tone. “Enough to know the Combine’s writing their own song and the Kaldari slipped ‘shared space’ into a sentence that didn’t need it. I’m behind the hour-by-hour.”

He pulled his PADD and thumbed open his schedule, his brain already switching lanes. Substitute options for his lecture series bloomed. He sent a single-line ping to the faculty clerk—coverage request, materials attached—and slid the device face-down on her desk. A quiet, final gesture. He was present, and he was hers.

“Okay,” he said, leaning in a notch. “Before you brief me, let’s talk anchors. What are our non-negotiable objectives, and what’s our ceiling for concession? I need to know the shape of the box before we start building in it.”

“Non-negotiables.” Her eyes found the viewport again. “The Federation retains administrative authority over the Tarvik site. That’s the cornerstone. No joint oversight committees, no trade proxies disguised as humanitarian boards. If the Combine wants to offer aid on our site, it goes through our channels or not at all.”

A pause. “The Kaldari Union, we can’t afford another border escalation. If they want the gesture of consultation, give it to them, but the territorial claim has to stop short of our colony grid. We aren’t touching their side of the planet and have no plans to.”

She looked down into the cup, the reflection of the dock lights scattering across the surface. “As for concessions, optics are the only currency worth spending right now. Let them have the story, appear cooperative, soften the language, let them say ‘shared stability’ if it saves face. But the line stays where it is.”

Sidra set the tea aside again, untouched, the steam thinning as she spoke.

She drew a slow breath, voice dropping half a note. “Our ceiling is any step that undermines the colony’s confidence. I won’t let the crew who held that line wonder if it was for nothing.”

Finally, she met his gaze again, steady, quiet. “That’s the box. Everything else, I trust you to build as you see fit.”

For a moment, the edges of her mouth curved, tired, but real. “And before you remind me: yes, I know I’m a hammer. But at least this time, I’ve asked a man who knows how to use a level.”

He watched her face as she spoke, reading the tension in her jaw, the way her eyes held his. She took the question as he meant it: a request for a frame, not a challenge. He sipped the tea, thinking aloud as he would in class when he wanted the room to see the gears turning.

“Assuming the headlines are right,” he mused, “if the Combine’s story is already taking hold, we can’t just argue it down. We have to give everyone a way to nod and keep their dignity. The Kaldari need language that says ‘sovereignty respected’ without us handing them the map. The colonists need to hear ‘safety’ and ‘trade keeps moving.’ The Combine needs a clause that lets them retreat without losing face.”

He set his cup down and nudged hers closer with a knuckle. “So. You brief me. Give me the clean transcripts from the Arawyn and the Newton, uncolored briefs on the players, and a line from you I can carry into the room that says we came to listen first.”

His gaze softened. “You asked to borrow my calm. I brought it. We’ll cool this down. We’ll write something people can live under.” He paused, a small, wry smile touching his lips. “If the goal is peace that feels like dignity, not defeat, I can work with that. If the goal is victory... well, Admiral, conditional or unconditional? “

Sidra’s lips parted, not in surprise but in quiet recognition of the shape of the question. The kind that sliced straight to the marrow. She leaned back in her chair, letting the light from the viewport catch across her face as she thought.

“Not victory,” she said at last. “Not this time.”

Her tone was level, but there was a low, controlled current beneath it. “We’ve already won the ground. The terraformers are running, the colony’s secure, the convoy’s coming home. Every additional push after that only serves the ones waiting for us to stumble.”

She reached forward, took the cup he’d nudged closer, and held it without drinking, turning it slowly between her fingers. “We don’t need a victory. We need an equilibrium that the frontier can live with. Something that doesn’t bleed more trust than it buys.”

Her eyes lifted to meet his, green and clear despite the fatigue. “Peace that feels like dignity, not defeat,” she echoed softly. “That’s exactly the mark.”

The ghost of a smile touched her mouth. “You’ll have your briefs in the hour. Arawyn, Newton, fleet intelligence summaries, everything clean, everything straight. You’ll see the patterns before the diplomats do.”

She set the cup down, more gently than before. “And Mac, when you go, make sure they see that I’m listening. Even the ones I’ve already made wary.” Her gaze dropped for a beat. “Especially them.”

For the first time since he’d walked in, her shoulders eased, the faintest exhale threading between them. “You’ll find the right words,” she said quietly. “You always do.”

Then, in a softer register meant only for him: “Thank you for coming when I called.”

Her hand drifted down, resting lightly against his leg just above the knee, giving a gentle squeeze. The fabric of his trousers was warm beneath her palm, textured and familiar. She didn’t look down, didn’t need to. Her fiery green eyes found his cool blue ones, a faint smile curving her lips. The touch was brief, grounding—a silent acknowledgment of everything she hadn’t said aloud.

When she finally let her hand fall away, the warmth lingered.

She already knew she would miss him.

Commodore Stephen MacCafferey (Ret.)
Adjunct Professor / Federation Envoy

Vice Admiral Sidra MacLaren
Feet Commander
Epsilon Fleet

 

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