Under a Hostile Sky : Part Two

Posted on Wed Dec 10th, 2025 @ 10:41pm by Commodore Stephen MacCaffery

1,972 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: The Tavrik Accord: Orchestrated Chaos
Location: Meridian Station, Tavrik III

Back in Eriksson’s office, the atmosphere tightened again.

The room was functional but lived-in. A battered mug with a worn Starfleet delta sat on the desk. Framed holos, landscapes, and a Meridian team shot adorned the walls. The “windows” were screens cycling through exterior views of the pad, ocean, and station’s perimeter.

Eriksson pulled up a file and spun the display toward him.

“Three weeks ago,” she said, “Dr. Halim—one of our geologists—went out to run routine seismic checks near our eastern boundary markers. Standard survey. Inside the coordinates we’ve filed with the Kaldari Union.”

The holo shifted to a middle-aged man in a field jacket, hair flattened by a helmet he wasn’t currently wearing, lines of fatigue around his eyes.

“Kaldari militia unit intercepted him,” Eriksson continued. “Accused him of surveying outside the agreed limits. His equipment was confiscated. They took him into custody for thirty-six hours. No charges filed. No formal interrogation. No contact allowed.”​

She tapped again. The log expanded, showing timestamps. One moment, Halim’s location beacon pinged steadily along a survey grid. Next, it snapped to a different point and went dark.

“We tracked his signal until they killed it,” Eriksson said. “Filed a protest through the usual channels. The Kaldari replied with a polite letter about ‘temporary detention for verification of survey parameters.’ They say they released him as soon as they confirmed he hadn’t violated boundaries.”​

“And what does Dr. Halim say?” Stephen asked.

“That he spent a day and a half in a storage container, sitting on an upturned crate, breathing air that smelled like old ore and cheap disinfectant,” Eriksson said. “They fed him. They didn’t touch him. They didn’t explain a damned thing. Just left him stewing in his own imagination.”​

“Message-sending,” Stephen said.

“Exactly.” Eriksson’s mouth tightened. “He came back unharmed on paper. But my people know now that a Kaldari patrol can step across our invisible line, pluck one of them up, and we’ll protest and frown and log everything…and as long as nobody comes home with a broken bone, nothing happens. That sits in people’s heads.”​

Tit-for-tat escalation: surveys pushing, militias pushing back.

“If they’d kept him longer?” Stephen asked. “If they’d hurt him?”

“Then Captain McKinney would’ve been very busy convincing his tactical officer not to light up anything with a Kaldari transponder,” she said. “As it is, we’re still technically in the realm of ‘unfortunate incidents.’ But this is where things start sliding.”​

Stephen nodded slowly. He’d seen too many situations where “unfortunate incidents” piled up until someone used one as justification for something that couldn’t be walked back.

“What happens if they stop playing along the margins?” he asked. “If the Kaldari decide on actual hostile action?”​

Eriksson leaned back, elbows on the chair’s arms, fingers steepled.

“We have defensive systems,” she said. “Orbital sensors, ground-based phaser arrays, and shield emitters to deter raiders and deflect debris, buying time against space threats. They aren’t meant for coordinated ground assaults by larger, terrain-aware forces that don’t care about collateral."

Her gaze flicked to the wall, as if she could see the people in the residential zone through it.

“Our security team trains hard,” she added. “They’re good. But this is a science colony with military support, not a garrison. If the Kaldari come at us with numbers and serious intent, we can make it cost them. We can hold long enough for the Valley Forge to reposition and come down out of the sky with something that makes them rethink their life choices.”

She paused. “But long enough’ might mean minutes. An hour, if we’re lucky. And all of that assumes nothing interferes with the ship’s ability to get back to us. We’re dependent on orbital support in a way they aren’t.”​

Every word carried an undercurrent: vulnerable, isolated, and—if the right person made the call—expendable.

“Do you think Command understands that risk?” Stephen asked.

“They understand it in the abstract,” Eriksson said. “They see it on readiness charts and contingency plans. I’m not sure they’ve stood on a residential deck and thought about how many school-age kids they’ve implicitly put into the ‘acceptable loss’ column if the math goes sideways.”​

He didn’t argue with that.

“Director,” a voice said from the doorway.

They both turned.

Lieutenant Commander Anton Steerforth leaned in, hand on the frame. “We’re due at the east platform in ten if you want to make use of the clearer window in the haze,” he said. Then he caught sight of Stephen and straightened. “My apologies. Commodore.”​

“Come in,” Eriksson said. “You’re on the agenda.”

Steerforth stepped fully into the office. He carried himself like a man who had spent time in classrooms and committee rooms, not just briefing theaters: shoulders a touch rounded, eyes alert behind a layer of thoughtfulness.

“Anton Steerforth,” he said, offering his hand to Stephen. “Cultural affairs and liaison duties. Which mostly means I try to keep us from stepping on the wrong toes in the wrong order.”

Stephen shook his hand. “Good to meet you,” he said. “Your name’s on my brief. You did the Tavrik pre-contact cultural assessment.”

Steerforth grimaced. “The one Command kept reading as ‘welcome mat’ when it was more ‘beware of dog.’ Yes, that’d be mine.”​

“Anton’s the one who reminds me the locals are people, not abstract problems,” Eriksson said. “Come on. Let’s go stand where we can see how much trouble they’re in.”

The eastern perimeter platform felt higher than it was.

They rode a lift inside the Spike, a short climb with pressure shifts and gravity adjustments as the tower swayed. Doors opened to a steel-grated platform with a waist-high rail, instruments like wind vanes, samplers, and a weather drone cradle.

Beyond the rail, the world opened.

The wind was stronger, faster, and cleaner without buildings. It smelled of salt, metal, and industrial exhaust on high currents. The landing pad, a neat rectangle, sat south in a dirt field. Beyond, the dark ocean heaved beneath a cloud-streaked sky.

“Look west,” Eriksson said.

Stephen did.

The horizon was ribbed with color. Closer to Meridian, the sky was the same gray-blue slurry he’d seen on descent. Beyond that, past the planet’s curvature, the gray gained a smear of orange, subtle at first but undeniable the longer he watched. It lay low over an unseen line, like a bruise under skin.

“Sulfide haze,” Eriksson said. “Industrial emissions. Kaldari ore processing on the far side of that curve. On a clear day, you can see the band from orbit. Down here, it paints the horizon.”​

He watched the band. It didn’t move quite like a natural cloud. It sat heavier, clung more.

“How far?” he asked.

“Roughly eight thousand kilometers as the crow flies,” Steerforth said, coming to lean on the rail beside Eriksson. “If Tavrik had crows. Ash—” He stopped himself, caught Eriksson’s warning look, and adjusted smoothly. “The main Kaldari industrial complex for this hemisphere sits under that haze.”​

He glanced at Stephen. “Tens of thousands of workers. Ore processing day and night. It’s their big success story. Also, their slow-motion disaster.”

“The Vethari own the shipping contracts,” Eriksson said. “Offshore platforms, orbital rigs, you name it. They get the ore off world. They set the rates. The Kaldari feel like they’re getting choked. The Vethari feel like they finally found a way to get out from under centuries of being everybody’s middlemen.”​

“And the Federation?” Stephen asked.

Eriksson’s mouth quirked, humorless. “We build a tidy little outpost on the western coast and talk about cooperative development while filing mineral rights paperwork in triplicate.”

Steerforth spoke more gently. “They don’t hate us, Commodore. Not as a people. But they do see us as competition. We show up with clean lines, regulations, stabilizing families, terraforming studies, and we plant our flag within sight of their biggest, dirtiest investment. To them, that feels like we’re moving in.”​

He nodded toward the distant haze. “That’s not ideology. That’s territorial instinct and economic fear. Dangerous mix.”

“We’re the closest target to both,” Eriksson said. “We’re closer, in every way that matters, than anybody on their own councils or any Vethari executive. You don’t have to hate someone to decide that hitting them sends the right message to someone else.”​

Stephen studied the orange band at the horizon. Wind pressed at his jacket, urging him back from the rail. Behind him, Meridian was all lines and order; beyond the curve, the world grew untidy.

“Director,” he said quietly. “Lieutenant Commander Steerforth, how tightly is he tied into your day-to-day?”

Eriksson flicked him a look. “He has a full plate keeping us from offending every cultural norm within range,” she said. “Why?”

“Because I want him,” Stephen said. “When I start dealing directly with Kaldari leadership, I’ll need someone attached to my team who’s already done the listening. Someone who understands how they tell their own story.”​

He turned slightly, including Steerforth in his gaze. “I don’t want you writing memos I skim. I want you in the room. Temporarily assigned to my mission profile, starting with whatever our first formal engagement looks like.”

Steerforth’s eyebrows went up, then down. “You’re sure?” he asked. “I tend to bring inconvenient nuance to conversations that prefer clean lines.”

“That’s exactly why,” Stephen said. “Everyone else will tell me what we could do. You’ll tell me what it’ll feel like when it hits them.”​

Eriksson crossed her arms, considering. “On paper, I should tell you I can’t spare him,” she said. “In reality, if you walk into any negotiation on this planet without someone who understands how these people think, I’ll be reading your casualty report instead of your mission summary.”

She looked at Steerforth. “You’re attached to the Commodore’s team until this settles,” she said. “You’ll still have to feed me what I need to keep this place running. Understood?”

“Yes, Director,” Steerforth said. His tone was mild. There was a thread of something like relief under it.

“Thank you,” Stephen said.

Steerforth gave a short nod. “Then I suppose I’d better start thinking in terms of ‘we’ and not ‘they’ a little sooner than I planned.”

They stood there a moment longer—three people leaning into the same wind, looking at a horizon that hid more than it revealed.

The talk of “first engagement” proved more complicated than simply booking a shuttle and flying east.

The Kaldari, Eriksson explained on the way back down, were not in the habit of granting formal observers anything. They had their own schedules, their own protocols for “dignitary visits,” and their own definition of dignitary.

“You’re not a head of state,” she said. “You’re worse. You’re someone they might have to listen to without any of the ceremonial compensation. They don’t like that.”

“We send a request,” Steerforth added. “They send back a list of objections. We pretend to address some. They pretend to concede to others. Eventually, someone on their side decides it’s worth seeing you because saying no outright would send the wrong signal to the wrong people.”

“How long?” Stephen asked.

“Three days is fast, here,” Eriksson said. “If we start the dance now, we might get you into their city by the end of the week.”​
“Then start the dance,” Stephen said. “I’ll make use of the time.”

Meridian made it both simple and impossible.

End Log

Commodore Stephen James MacCaffery
Special Envoy
Tavrik III

 

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