Night Shift Part II of III

Posted on Fri Dec 5th, 2025 @ 7:33pm by Vice Admiral Sidra MacLaren & Rear Admiral Indi Hawk

1,271 words; about a 6 minute read

Sidra waited, at first with the sharp, coiled energy of someone ready for a fight.

But the longer Indi stayed quiet, still, unfocused… the more something cold and unfamiliar tugged at Sidra’s gut.

This wasn’t her.

Not the Indi Hawk she’d known for nearly twenty years.

Not the razor-edged, hyperaware, impossible-to-surprise officer who could track a conversation, a room, and a threat vector all at once.

Not the woman who once could read the air pressure in a corridor and tell you who was coming.

But this version, this drifting quiet, this soft unfocused expression, Sidra had never seen that. Not once.

Her anger didn’t vanish, but it shifted. Tightened.

Concern threaded underneath it, unwelcome but insistent.
Something’s wrong.
Something is very wrong.

Sidra drew in a slow breath through her nose, forcing the heat in her chest to steady rather than erupt. She stepped forward, not confrontational now, but deliberate.

“Indi,” she tried again, voice low, firm. “Hey. Look at me.”

Still nothing sharp in those eyes. Nothing grounded.

Sidra’s stomach twisted.

This wasn’t avoidance. This wasn’t defiance.
This was… absence.

Her jaw clenched as instinct and duty collided, Fleet Command instinct, friend instinct, security instinct. All of them pointed to the same truth.

If Indi didn’t snap back in the next breath, Sidra was going to have to call Medical. And she hated that thought.

But she’d do it.

Sidra reached out, not touching, but close, a presence in Indi’s peripheral space.

“Indi,” she said again, quieter. “Whatever this is… say something.”

A beat.

“I’m not above calling the doctor on you, and don’t think for a second I won’t. So help me understand what the hell is going on.”

Her voice didn’t rise. It didn’t need to.
It carried weight.
History.

Twenty years of knowing exactly who Indi Hawk was, and knowing this wasn’t her.

Sidra held her position, breath steady, muscles tight, waiting for any flicker, any sign, that Indi was coming back into the room.

Nobody had been this close in.. forever. Not physically. Not this intently. Not this intentionally. Not only did Indi take a step back and blink, she also searched around the room for a way out. Her eyes darting around. A few more steps back. The mountain top vanishing from her mind. Reason returning. One more step back. Her eyes resting on Sidra. Her awareness returning to her office, to where she was leaning against her desk.

It had been a wrong call to decline the meeting invitation. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong! She knew about Tavrik! She knew all about it! She'd read countless reports and accounts about it, just in the past few hours. People were worried, and it was up to her to be aware about it.

It struck her that Sidra hadn't once called her by her rank yet. Not once. She wasn't here as her boss. But Indi didn't want anyone else here. If she wanted to call Medical, well, that would be a problem to deal with when that time came. And yet, if she could avoid that, all the better.

"What are you going to tell me about Tavrik that I don't know yet? I didn't think it was that important," she started and continued with giving a detailed Security oriented, and above all accurate, report of everything going on. It was a deflection, but at least a well played one. If she'd made an error in judgement about the meeting, Sidra would at least have to reveal her true goals now. If she wanted to play nice, she could get rid of her. If she really wanted to slam her professionally, well, she had made an error in judgement by declining the meeting.

Sidra didn’t interrupt the report, not at first. She let Indi speak, absorbing each Security detail, each assessment, each perfectly structured deflection. The accuracy wasn’t surprising; Indi had always been good at compartmentalizing. Weaponizing facts to hide behind them.

But Sidra wasn’t listening for content.

She was listening to the cadence.

Sharp. Overly sharp.

Precise in a way that was almost brittle.

Too fast, like she needed the report to fill the space where an answer should’ve been.

Sidra exhaled slowly through her nose, the kind of controlled breath that kept her temper from blowing a hole in the bulkhead.

When Indi finished, Sidra held up a hand, small, stopping, final.

“None of that,” she said quietly, “answers the question I actually asked.”

She watched Indi’s face carefully, not for deception but for the cracks she was trying so hard to hide.

“You know the situation,” Sidra continued, voice low but firm. “I never questioned that. I never doubted your grasp of the intel. You’ve always been better at the data than most people who ever held your job.”

A beat.
“But that was not what I asked you.”

Sidra took one step closer, not threatening, not looming, but anchoring herself in the space between them with deliberate presence.

“What I asked,” she said, softer now, “is what’s going on with you.”

Her green eyes scanned Indi for any hints.

“Because that report? That was the cleanest deflection I’ve ever heard from you. And I’ve heard a lot.”

Another beat. The quiet stretched.

“I’m not here to slam you. If I wanted to pull rank, I would’ve done it in the corridor. I came here because you’re off. Because you scared me for a second back there. Because you’ve never gone that far inside your own head in front of me in twenty years.”

She lowered the padd slowly to her side.

“So I’m going to ask you again, once,” Sidra said, tone steady and without a hint of anger this time. “And I want the truth this time, not the job.”

She leaned in, just slightly.

“What’s going on with you, Indi?”

The question hung there, heavy, unignorable, impossible to sidestep.

Indi's mind raced to come up with a way to sidestep the question. "Nothing," she started answering, but she cut herself short. Sidra wouldn't go with that. Not any longer. Had she made the error too much? Simply by declining to be at a meeting? It could be. It had been a dangerous line ever since she had traded loneliness for drugs.

But then, what else to answer?

As Sidra leaned in again, she took a step back once more. She didn't want the presence. Didn't want anybody close to her, physically or otherwise.

What else was there to say?

The race in Indi's mind continued, but then why couldn't she come up with anything?

Meanwhile, the silence stretched on again. And again. She could see Sidra waiting. And waiting. Patiently. Like a hawk. Considering she was usually the hawk, the process felt unsettling.

Could she confide in her? Did she want to confide in her? Could she explain what had happened why it had happened? So many questions. So little answers. If she could trust anybody, it was Sidra. But did she want to? Did she really want help? Or should she just come forward and hope to lose the only friend she had left? Would she end up truly alone and with plenty of reason to marry the Dreamdust?

Questions. No answers.

"Nothing," she finally repeated, her eyes staring down at her feet, dead and lost. She didn't want to tell anyone what was going on. "Nothing."

TBC in part III...

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