Under a Hostile Sky : Part Three

Posted on Wed Dec 10th, 2025 @ 11:01pm by Commodore Stephen MacCaffery

2,871 words; about a 14 minute read

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

They assigned him a temporary suite in Spike’s mid-levels, slightly larger than a standard officer’s cabin, with a bed, a wall-built desk, two chairs, a replicator, and a narrow window that was a screen showing various views. He switched it from the landing pad to the ocean, the hazy horizon, then to rotating exterior feeds to remind himself it was real.

A duffel with his gear arrived an hour later by freight lift. Khorev took the unit across the hall, with his people in pairs down the hall, plainclothes neighbors watching anyone who lingered. They quietly rotated, like hanging curtains. The next three days fell into a rhythm, trial preparation, but on a planet intent on wearing him down by degrees.

Mornings belonged to Meridian’s interior: briefings with Eriksson’s department heads, walks with Steerforth, quiet chats with station personnel summoned for “informal chats” in the director’s office. Afternoons, he reserved for his own work.
On the first afternoon, he cleaned the small desk, arranged his PADDs, and ordered a topographical map overlay of Tavrik III’s western hemisphere and nearby oceanic sectors. The map appeared above the desk: color-coded elevations, bathymetric lines, icons for installations, Meridian, Kaldari facilities, and offshore Vethari platforms.

He leaned back in his chair, studying it.

Tavrik’s landmasses differed from Earth’s, with a unique tectonic history. The oceanic structures, however, drew his attention. Off the western coast, south of Meridian’s latitude, an island chain arced into the sea, dozens of small landmasses, from kilometer-sized rocks to larger ones supporting infrastructure. The chain bent like a crooked finger; volcanic markers dotted along it.

He tapped the largest island. “Computer,” he said. “Identify this feature.”

“Planetary survey designation: Tavrik-West Island Chain Seven. Informal local designation: The Lanterns,” the station computer replied. “Uninhabited. Classified as marginally habitable with localized microclimates.”​

He zoomed in. The holo sharpened: steep slopes, a central peak, narrow beaches, topography crowded with cliffs and ridges. From above, the islands looked untamed, self-contained places where the wind still ruled, untouched by Meridian’s order.

“Any current installations?” he asked.

“Negative,” the computer said. “Survey sensors indicate no permanent structures. Occasional temporary sensor buoys and drone landings.”​

The door chimed.

“Come.”

Steerforth stepped in, a cup in one hand, a PADD in the other. He paused when he saw the holo. “Planning a vacation spot?” he asked.

“Trying to see if this world has anywhere that isn’t either a grid or a mine,” Stephen said.

Steerforth stepped closer, eyes tracking the arc of The Lanterns. “Beautiful from orbit,” he said. “Terrible landing conditions. Wind shear makes Tavrik’s main coast look like a calm lake. Why?”​

Stephen watched the holo for a moment, then said, “If we ever manage to get the Kaldari and Vethari to agree to something that needs space to breathe, we’re going to need a neutral ground they don’t associate with ore quotas or shipping schedules. Somewhere physically separate from their usual battlefields. Somewhere that isn’t Meridian, either. A place that feels like no one owns it yet.”

He touched one of the larger islands, spinning the view so cliffs and ridges stood out. “Something like this could work,” he said. “If we can make it survivable.”​

Steerforth considered the image. “They’d hate it at first,” he said. “Too exposed. Too much unknown. But if you could sell it as a third space, somewhere that’s nobody’s home turf, they might eventually see the value.”

“I’m not asking anybody to like it,” Stephen said. “I’m asking whether it could keep them from bringing guns to the same table.”

“You’re thinking several moves ahead,” Steerforth said.

“That’s the job,” Stephen replied. “Also, how I sleep at night.”

He left unsaid that this was how he kept Sidra from facing the choice Eriksson dreaded: which colony to sacrifice for the sake of a wider peace.

They moved through Meridian’s days.

On the second morning, Eriksson showed him power systems with the chief engineer, a compact man with grease under his nails and a fierce attachment to his reactors. On the third, Kettle spent an hour explaining, with visual aids, why some Kaldari demands about “just thickening the air a bit faster” were not requests but invitations to trigger weather systems nobody had modeled.

Between briefings, there were smaller moments.

He passed the trio of youths near the residential zone mess. They weren’t laughing; the girl clutched a PADD, jaw tight. The lanky boy leaned casually against the wall, eyes flicking between a door and the corridor. The youngest sat cross-legged beside a supply crate, chin on his hands, staring into space.

Stephen slowed. “Everything all right?” he asked, voice light, as if he were making conversation.

The lanky boy’s eyes sharpened. “Fine, sir,” he said, too quickly.

The girl glanced at the door, then back at him. A medical symbol was embossed into the panel at eye level. Sickbay. “Our dad’s in there,” she said. “Routine. They said it’s routine.”

“Routine doesn’t usually need three nurses and a doctor,” the youngest muttered.

“Jase,” the girl warned.

Stephen glanced at the door. “You mind if I wait with you a minute?” he asked.

All three looked at him like he’d suggested juggling plasma grenades.

“It’s just…crowded in the corridor sometimes,” he said. “Standing’s easier with company.”

After a small silence, the boy shrugged one shoulder. “Suit yourself, sir.”

Stephen leaned against the wall, relaxed. Khorev positioned himself nearby, ready to intervene but leaving space. Passersby glanced quickly at the small group near sickbay.

“How long have you been posted here?” Stephen asked.

“Two years,” the girl said. “My dad’s in environmental systems. Mom runs part of the school.” She lifted her chin. “We’re not new.”

“Didn’t think you were,” Stephen said. “You look like you know which end of the station is up.”

That earned him the ghost of a smile from the boy.

The youngest, Jase, looked at Stephen’s collar. “You’re the one from the ship,” he said.

“There are a lot of people from the ship,” Stephen said.

“The one everyone’s talking about,” Jase clarified. “The one that’s supposed to make the shouting stop.”

“Jase,” the girl hissed again.

Stephen kept his voice mild. “Trying,” he said. “Shouting’s not always bad. It means people are still talking. It’s when they stop shouting and start shooting that we have a real problem.”

Jase considered that. “They already started shooting,” he said quietly. “Just not here.”

The sickbay door opened. A doctor stepped out, saw the kids, and smiled in a practiced, reassuring way. “He’s fine,” she said.

“Routine, like we told you. Blood pressure check and some blood work. He’ll be out in a minute.”

The tension went out of the girl’s shoulders so fast it looked like someone had cut a line. The boy let his head thump lightly against the wall in relief. Jase exhaled dramatically, then caught himself.

“Thank you, Doctor,” Stephen said.

She gave him a brief, curious once-over, then moved past, already on to the next task.

The door opened again. A man in civilian clothes stepped out, an adhesive patch still on the crook of his arm, a faint flush along his throat. The kids swarmed him, talking over each other.

“We’re good,” Stephen murmured, mostly to himself. He pushed off the wall.

The man noticed him then, over their heads. “Sir,” he said, nodding.

“Afternoon,” Stephen said. “Take care of yourself. This place needs its environmental systems more than it needs me.”
The man smiled, rueful and proud all at once. “I’ll try,” he said.

Later, in his quarters, Stephen sat on the bunk’s edge and thought of Will—the way his son’s voice shifted when he masked worry with bravado, Sidra’s face, listening to casualty reports. Meridian’s children wore that same flicker in their eyes, forced to grow up sideways. He wasn’t here to save them; he knew better. But if he failed, the cost would land on them first.
On the second evening, a comm chime pulsed at his desk.

“Valley Forge to Commodore MacCaffery,” the computer said. “Secure channel request from Commander Sarah Mackenzie.”
“Route it here,” Stephen said.

The screen brightened, revealing Sarah in her quarters. The low, warm light contrasted with the gray bulkheads. She wore a black tank and an unbuttoned JAG-red overshirt, with her sleeves rolled up. A pile of PADDs, one glowing with legal text, was on the table behind her, and a steaming mug was at her elbow. She looked like she’d concluded her night but had lost the argument.

“Commander,” he said. “You’re supposed to sleep occasionally.”

“Don’t start with me, Commodore,” she said, but there was a flicker of a smile. “You’re the one who dragged me out of JAG and parked me on a ship pointed at the most litigious sector in the Beta Quadrant.”

“True,” he said. “Consider it payback for making my life miserable on the Corellis arbitration.”

“That was you making promises the treaty couldn’t support,” she said. “I just kept you out of prison.” Her eyes sharpened. “How’s Tavrik treating you?”

“Bad air, thin patience, good people,” he said. "And briefing packets so thick they could double as shuttle shields. About what you’d expect.”

She leaned back, the low light highlighting her eyes’ lines. “Up here, it’s busy,” she said. “Since hitting atmosphere, the Kaldari legal bureau has sent three ‘clarifications’ reinterpreting trade rules to favor them, without using those words. The Vethari added a twelve-page annex on ‘contractual expectations’ basically saying ‘don’t touch our profit margins.’”

He huffed. “So everyone’s nervous and pretending they’re not.”

“Pretty much,” she said. “I wanted to make sure you had an updated sense of where the lines are moving. You asked me to keep you connected to the legal landscape on board. Consider this the first installment.”

“Hit me,” he said.

She picked up a PADD, using it as a prop rather than for reading. “On the Kaldari side, they’re relying on a clause that says Federation personnel will ‘refrain from activities that could reasonably be construed as resource mapping beyond agreed zones.’ They’ve never tested this before. Detaining your geologist and now all this paper—” she gave a small, humorless smile “—that’s them building a case that they’re the injured party if you glance outside Meridian’s footprint.”

“And the Vethari?” he asked.

“They keep saying ‘legitimate commercial expectations’ like it’s a prayer,” she said. “They’re terrified of mediation that might reopen shipping agreements. They also try to frame you as a guarantor, not a neutral. If someone quotes their language, push back hard.

He nodded, absorbing. “Any landmines I need to worry about personally?”

“One careless promise could drag Sidra’s fleet into open conflict,” Stephen thought, the weight of potential consequences pressing heavily on him. “They don’t get to erase twenty years of work because they found my marriage line in a personnel file.”

"I know that," she said. "You know that. They don’t care. They’re looking for leverage. So: don’t let anyone maneuver you into making commitments that sound like you’re speaking on Sidra’s authority. You speak as the Federation’s designated intermediary. Period. Let me keep the admiralty leashes upstairs.”

“That’s why you’re here,” he said. “To keep my name off the wrong kind of precedent.”

She lifted her mug in a half-salute. “And because you asked,” she said. “For the record, leaving San Francisco for this circus? I did it because I trust your instincts more than most admirals’ orders. So try not to make me regret the career move.”

“I’ll do my best,” he said. “If Starfleet Command decides to get creative with Meridian’s expendability, I want your voice in the room before anyone signs anything. No back-channel horse trading without legal eyes on it.”

“You’ll have it,” she said. “McKinney’s been good about looping me into anything with the word ‘contingency’ in the header.
He knows I answer to you on this.”

“Good,” he said. “Down here, I’ll try not to promise Kettle we can terraform the place in a decade or tell Eriksson we’ll hold this station no matter what. Both would make for terrible exhibits later.”

Her mouth tugged sideways. “That’s all I ask. Stay within your limits. Leave the rest to me.” She paused. “And Stephen? If communications falter deeper in, don’t assume silence is good news. If your mandate changes, I’ll use bandwidth to update you. You’re not alone.”

He let that sit a moment. Sarah Mackenzie had cleaned up after him before—treaties, tribunals, political knife-fights. He asked her aboard because he trusted her to warn him when trouble was coming.

“Thanks,” he said. “Get some sleep.”

She glanced at the pile of PADDs, then back at him. “You first,” she said. “Mackenzie out.”

The screen went dark, leaving his reflection faint on the surface, Tavrik’s ominous sky spilling in from the viewport behind him.

On the third morning, Steerforth arrived at his door with a PADD and the faintly amused, faintly exasperated look of a man who’d lost an argument exactly the way he’d expected to.

“We have a response,” he said.

“From the Kaldari?” Stephen asked.

Steerforth nodded. “In their way. They’ve agreed to a visit by a ‘Federation intermediary’ to their primary industrial center, pending confirmation of transport protocols and security arrangements. They’re making a lot of noise about not wanting you to ‘inspect’ anything.”​

“Understandable,” Stephen said. “I’m not here to audit their books.”

“They don’t believe that,” Steerforth replied. “But they’re willing to pretend if it gets them a chance to read you in person.” He handed over the PADD. “We can get you there in three days. They’re insisting on a specific flight corridor: no overflight of certain facilities, no more than two shuttles inbound, and no more than one armed escort on ground.”

“Generous,” Stephen said dryly.

“They also included a paragraph about how any violation of their stipulations would be treated as a breach of sovereignty,”
Steerforth added. “So we’re all starting from a place of deep mutual trust.”

Stephen read the document, absorbing the layers. Beneath the formal phrasing, he heard what they were really saying: We’ll let you in, but we’ll control the frame. You don’t get to see anything we don’t want you to see.
He lowered the PADD. “We’ll work with it,” he said. “Director Eriksson will scream if we try to match their ground forces person for person anyway.”

“She’ll scream if you go at all,” Steerforth said. “And then she’ll make the contingency plans herself.”

They both knew that was the best they could hope for.

Later that day, standing again on the platform at the Spike’s eastern edge, Stephen looked toward the orange bruise at the horizon.

“I need to see that city,” he said, quietly but firmly. The words felt less like a decision and more like an acknowledgment of something that had already settled inside him. “Not in reports. Not through someone else’s story. I have to walk their streets.”​

Eriksson didn’t answer immediately. The wind filled the pause. Steerforth stood a short distance away, pretending to check a wind gauge and absolutely listening.

“The Kaldari have never permitted a Federation mediator into their primary industrial center,” Eriksson said at last. “They’ve let traders in. Observers, they can ignore. Non-aligned monitors with no teeth. Never someone whose job it is to ask why people are dying.”​

“Then this is overdue,” Stephen said. “If I’m going to ask them to bend on anything, I need to know what it costs them to say yes. I can’t do that from Meridian’s side of the line.”

He watched the haze. "I don't expect to like what I see," he added. "But it's going to be there whether I look at it or not."

Eriksson's jaw worked once. "We've started the process," she said. "Steerforth's been dancing with their liaison office. Best-case, we have a corridor cleared and protocols agreed in three days. You'll go in on one shuttle, with your twelve and maybe four extra bodies if I'm feeling generous."

She looked at him, eyes steady. "You're asking to walk into a pressure cooker, Commodore. We'll do everything we can to keep the lid on. But you need to know, if they decide to make a point, you're the point they'll choose."

The wind swirled around them, carrying a hint of the industrial dust that drifted in from the horizon, leaving a metallic taste in the back of Stephen's throat. The wind gauge rattled quietly, a steady reminder of the forces beyond their control.

End Log

Commodore Stephen MacCaffery
Special Envoy
Tavrik III

 

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