Touching Base
Posted on Sat Jan 10th, 2026 @ 1:01am by Vice Admiral Sidra MacLaren & Commodore Stephen MacCaffery
3,367 words; about a 17 minute read
Mission:
The Tavrik Accord: Orchestrated Chaos
Location: Fleet Commander's Quarters, Starbase 369 / VIP Quarters Aboard the U.S.S. Valley Forge
Sidra had listened to Stephen’s log twice the day before Khorev’s report reached her desk.
The first time, she had not moved at all. She stood near the viewport, arms folded loosely, the office lights dimmed to a level that let the stars bleed softly into the glass. She did not interrupt it, did not pace, did not even close her eyes. She let his voice fill the room, roughened past fatigue, threaded with restraint that did not quite hold. She heard the pauses as clearly as the words. The careful way he breathed between sentences. The way he said Sid like he needed the sound of her name to anchor himself to something solid.
The engine room that eats people.
The second time, she sat. Not behind the desk, never there for this, but on the edge of the low couch beneath the bulkhead display. She let the log play again, quieter this time, as if volume alone could change how deeply it settled into her bones.
She listened for what he had not said aloud. For the moments where the diplomat gave way to the man who carried other people’s suffering like a personal failing.
I need to find a crack in the glass.
She had not answered then.
Not because she did not want to, but because she knew him. Because once she spoke, once she stepped into that space with him, she would not be able to stay measured. And Stephen had not needed an Admiral’s voice in that moment. He had needed somewhere to set the weight down and keep moving.
Now, with Khorev’s report open on her console, she wished she had answered anyway.
The language was tight. Precise. Khorev did not dramatize. He did not need to. Pre-existing Vethari surveillance. Masked to Federation standards. Compromised site integrity. Device likely placed well in advance, dormant until conditions warranted activation.
Sidra exhaled slowly through her nose.
Stephen had spoken about systems that did not need overt brutality. About power that lived in preparation, in patience, in infrastructure built long before it was required. The report confirmed it. This had never been about reacting to the summit. It had been about being ready for it, or for something like it, someday.
She scrolled through the findings again, slower now. The device had not been a listening post hastily dropped for convenience. It was insurance. A quiet investment. A piece placed on the board long before anyone knew what game would be played.
She understood, with a clarity that made her chest tighten, why he had wanted the site open. Why he had resisted hardening it into something overtly defensive. He believed that transparency could still matter. That showing faith could sometimes force a better choice.
Sometimes it does.
Sometimes it only tells people where to aim.
This was a Fleet problem. Of course it was. Security, diplomacy, interstellar leverage all braided together in a way that guaranteed consequences no matter which thread was pulled.
But this was not a moment she could enter as Fleet Commander without distorting it.
This was her husband, deep in final preparations, standing inside a system designed to smile while it tightened, trying to keep everything from igniting with nothing but words, restraint, and the stubborn belief that cracks could still be found if you leaned hard enough in the right place.
Sidra leaned back in her chair and stared at the inactive channel indicator.
She knew what hour it was there. Knew what he would be doing. Final notes. Rehearsed phrasing. The careful narrowing of focus that let him step into hostile rooms and come out intact. Calling now meant disrupting that flow. It meant pulling him out of the space he used to survive moments like this.
She weighed that.
Then she reached for the console anyway.
The request went out cleanly, without ceremony. No recorded message. No preamble. Just a direct connection request routed through his secure channel.
She did not straighten. Did not put rank into her posture. She sat with her hands folded loosely in her lap, jacket draped over the back of the chair, the quiet stillness of someone who had already decided she would wait as long as it took.
The screen remained dark.
Sidra watched it, steady and patient, knowing he would answer when he could.
And hoping he would answer soon.
The remains of a late supper lingered on the low table in Stephen’s quarters aboard the Valley Forge. Roasted vegetables and chicken scented the air, a reminder of unfinished work. Commander Sarah Mackenzie sat on the sofa, PADD in hand, carefully dissecting the latest Vethari immunity clauses with a surgeon’s focus. Across from her, Lt. Commander Steerforth paced by the viewport, softly reciting Kaldari greetings in a rhythmic murmur that usually soothed Stephen more than the ship’s engines.
Tonight, Stephen did not listen. He sat in the armchair, tea cooling in his hand, gazing beyond the bulkhead. The Starfleet decor faded. Instead, he saw a sensor drone tangled in roots, half-buried in jungle loam on the planet below.
Khorev’s report, sent an hour earlier from the surface, looped in Stephen’s mind. The roots went deep. The Vethari hadn’t just arrived at the table; they had built the room, wired the microphones, and set the lights before the Federation even knew there would be a summit. This was no negotiation. It was theater, and only one side knew the script.
The sharp chirp of the wall comm unit broke his train of thought.
“Bridge to Commodore MacCaffery.” It was the duty Operations Officer, his voice clipped and precise. “Sir, we have an incoming Priority One transmission from Starbase Three-Six-Nine. It’s routed through the Admiral’s personal encryption.”
Silence settled over the room. Mackenzie looked up, eyes narrowing, already calculating what it meant for a Fleet Admiral to call in the middle of the night. Steerforth stopped mid-syllable, nerves evident on his face.
Stephen set his tea aside. A brief, sharp surprise flickered; he had expected a reply to his report, but not a direct call, not so soon. The surprise faded, replaced by a wry certainty. He should have known. Sidra never waited for the morning briefing when it was her people or her husband at risk. She didn’t trust summaries. She read the raw data. She read Khorev’s reports.
“Acknowledge, Ops,” Stephen said, standing and smoothing the front of his tunic. “Route the connection to the terminal in my bedroom. I’ll take it there.”
“Aye, sir. Routing now.”
Stephen looked at his staff, offering a reassuring nod he didn't quite feel.
“Keep working. Mackenzie, find me a precedent for diplomatic immunity waivers in surveillance zones. Steerforth, stop pacing; you’re making the carpet nervous.”
He moved into the bedroom and palmed the door shut. Silence pressed in, dense and expectant. He sat at the small desk, dimmed the lights to reduce the ship’s night-cycle glare, and activated the terminal.
As the channel synchronized, Stephen took a slow breath. He knew what she had seen. Khorev’s report was thorough: passive surveillance, deep-buried, active for months. To a fleet commander, it was a breach, a perimeter compromised, a call for escalation. To Sidra, his wife, it would feel like a trap tightening around him.
He needed to get ahead of that instinct. If she acted as an Admiral, she might cancel the summit or send down heavy security, enough to spook the Kaldari and insult the Vethari. He needed her to see the surveillance not as a threat but as leverage. We know they are listening, he thought. That means we choose what they hear.
The screen flickered, the Federation seal dissolving as the encryption handshake completed. He leaned into the frame, setting his face in calm confidence. He wanted her voice, but he would not let the fire spread.
"Sidra," Stephen said, his voice soft but steady. "I assume you've been reading Khorev's light reading. How are you holding up? How's Will?"
The screen resolved, and Sidra lost a breath. She did not answer his comment about Khorev’s report. Not yet.
He was seated, the light low enough that it softened the hard lines without hiding the exhaustion underneath. Too calm. Too controlled. She knew that look. The way he looked when he had already decided how much of himself he was allowed to show.
She sat the way she had been waiting, not working, shoulders loose, hands still. Seeing him like this, present and unguarded instead of encoded and delayed, made the ache flare sharp and sudden. She had not realized how much she missed him until the distance collapsed into a screen and a living breath on the other side.
They had fallen into letters and voice logs because it was easier. Safer, in some ways. You could choose the words carefully. Shape them. Say the things that were harder to risk out loud.
But this hurt more.
“I’m holding,” she said quietly. Her voice did not carry rank. It carried truth.
“Will’s asleep,” she added. “He misses you.”
She watched his face as she said it. Not to wound him. Not to soften it. Because it mattered.
“I miss you.” The words escaped her as a tired breath.
She leaned forward slightly, grounding herself against the desk. “Khorev’s report is why I needed to speak with you.” She caught herself chewing the inside of her lip, an old habit she thought she had broken years ago, and forced herself to stop.
She took a breath before continuing, slower this time, measured.
“I know I sent you there,” Sidra said. “I’m not pretending otherwise. I signed off on it. I knew the risks, and I still made the call.”
Her hand tightened briefly on the edge of the desk, then eased.
“But that doesn’t make it easier to sit here and listen to your voice carry all of that weight,” she continued. “Or to read Khorev’s report and not react. Not move. Not reach for the tools I use when things start to close in.”
Her eyes held his, steady and unflinching.
“That distance makes it worse,” she said quietly. “Because I have to be careful. Because I have to wait. Because I have to stay in this chair and be composed when every instinct I have wants to step in and put myself between you and the fire.”
She swallowed, then went on, not letting him reply yet.
“So I need you to hear this clearly. I’m not calling you as the Admiral who sent you. I’m calling you as your wife, who is allowed to say that this feels unfair even when it was necessary.”
A small pause.
“I don’t need promises you can’t keep,” Sidra said. “I don’t need certainty about how this ends.”
Her voice softened, just enough.
“I need to hear that when it’s over, when you can step away from the table and the watching eyes, you’re coming home.”
She held his gaze.
“Tell me that, Mac.”
The screen pulsed with her longing and fear. Stephen saw Sidra not as the Admiral, but as the woman who pressed her cold feet against his, whispered secrets in the dark, and made him laugh until he forgot the weight of command. He remembered her hand in his, how they fit in the night, and her eyes, soft, alive, unguarded, when the day was done. Even with their son nearby, amid duties and distance, a space belonged only to them. He missed her touch and how her presence made any place feel like home.
He waited, letting the silence stretch, a space for honesty, not habit. He counted his heartbeats, listened to the faint hum of the comm, and leaned in until his face filled her screen. He met her gaze, holding it as though she could step through and find him on the other side.
He pictured her out of uniform, curled beside him on the old couch after Will had finally drifted off, her head resting against his shoulder, the two of them sharing the soft, wordless peace of parents who had weathered another day together. The world outside could demand anything, but here, in this small, ordinary moment, they had each other. He needed her to remember that, how fiercely he belonged to her, and how the world always narrowed to just the two of them in the quiet after.
Sidra. He let her name calm him. His voice softened, the way it did when it was just the two of them. A small, uneven smile appeared. He wouldn’t let the seriousness of the moment take away his tenderness.
“If the Vethari have audio pickups in the ferns,” he offered, voice dry, “they’re in for the world’s dullest symphony. I’ll make tariff negotiations so excruciating that the poor soul listening will beg for reassignment.”
He watched for her reaction, a lift at the corner of her mouth, a glimmer of their shared mischief. He wanted to remind her she was more than her burdens, and that he was still Stephen, the one who made their son laugh until he hiccupped, the one who loved her before and beyond all titles.
His tone sobered.
"We know they're watching, love. But that means we get to decide what they see. They're not hunting me. They're just recording. And if I know I'm on camera, I'll make sure to place the final brushstroke on their surveillance canvas, illustrating control with each stroke."
He leaned back, but his presence stayed with her. He wanted her to feel the steadiness he carried, not the front he showed others, but the certainty he saved for her.
“But right now, I’m just looking at you. Not the Admiral. You.” His eyes held hers, softening. “Breathe with me.”
He waited in silence until he saw her shoulders relax and knew she had matched his calm.
“I’m not a martyr, Sidra. I promise you, I don’t intend to let anyone turn me into one. I can’t swear nothing will go wrong. But I swear I’ll do everything I can to keep myself safe. I’m not here to be a casualty. I’m here to come home to you.”
He pressed his fingers to the screen, imagining the weight of her hand closing over his, recalling the way they would both reach for Will at the end of a long day, three hands tangled, a silent promise that they’d always find their way home together.
“I’m coming back, mo chridhe. I have a son waiting for one more bedtime story, ours, the one about the starship and the dragon. I have you. That’s what I’m coming home for.”
He looked into her eyes, letting his love show what words couldn’t.
"Mo ghràidh, that’s my promise. That’s the only thing that matters."
Sidra lifted her hand and pressed her fingers to the screen, mirroring his gesture without thinking. The glass was cool beneath her palm, unyielding, and somehow still enough. She never stopped being amazed by how he could see the chaos, name it, and then quietly step around it to reclaim the calm.
She swiped at one eye with the back of her hand and let out a soft breath that turned into a quiet laugh.
“Careful,” she said, shaking her head. “If you keep talking like that, I’m going to have to call the armada back to the starbase and tell them the crisis has been resolved by tariff boredom alone.”
The humor faded gently, leaving something warmer behind.
“I hear you,” Sidra said. “I hear the steadiness. And I hear you choosing yourself.” Her voice softened. “Thank you for that. I needed it more than I realized.”
She rested her forearm on the desk, still close to the screen, unwilling to put more distance between them than necessary.
“I know how fragile everything feels right now,” she admitted. “Epsilon is still young. Still finding its balance. Some days it feels like it could tip with one wrong decision.” She looked at him, really looked. “But this reminds me what anchors it. What anchors me.”
Her fingers lingered against the glass.
“I have my family,” Sidra said quietly. “And I have you coming home.”
A small, tired smile curved her mouth.
“Go do what you do best, Mac. Paint your canvas. Exhaust their listeners.” Her eyes softened again. “I’ll be right here when you’re done.”
She let her hand fall only when the moment had fully settled, her posture easing at last.
“Remember,” she said softly, “orchids only bloom because someone keeps them safe.”
He looked into her green eyes, seeing both the fear she hid from others and the trust she gave only to him. It gave him strength, helping him fight off the tiredness that had been weighing him down.
“I know they’re watching, Sid,” he said, his voice dropping to that register of dangerous quiet he usually saved for the moment before he dismantled a hostile witness.
He stayed gentle for her, but his resolve showed. He nodded slightly, aware of the hidden eyes and ears Khorev had found—the Vethari surveillance that made this private moment a show for someone else.
“Let them watch,” he murmured, the humor soft but edged with a blade. “They can study the stage all they want. But if they try to burn the theater, they’ll find out exactly why you sent a lawyer instead of a soldier. I know the game, love. I know the rules they think they’re playing by. And I know how to break them without firing a shot.”
He leaned closer to the pickup, letting the intimacy of the moment bleed into an absolute promise.
“Trust the process, Sidra. And trust me. I’m not leaving you alone in this.”
He saw a faint smile on her lips and noticed her shoulders relax a little. That was enough. He wanted to leave her with more than just plans—he wanted her to remember the life waiting for them after all this.
“And when I get back,” Stephen continued, his tone shifting, warming into the domestic banter that was their own private language, “you and I are going to have a long, detailed jurisdiction hearing regarding the cat’s territorial claims on my side of the bed. I suspect Will has been aiding and abetting the enemy, and I intend to file a formal grievance.”
He lowered his hand from the screen but kept looking at her. He memorized her unguarded, loving face, holding onto it for the hard hours ahead.
“Kiss Will for me,” he said, his voice rough with an affection he refused to suppress, surveillance be damned. “I’ll be home for dinner. MacCaffery out.”
He keyed the command. The connection severed.
The screen went dark. His reflection stared back from the black glass. Silence pressed in, thick as recycled air. The scent of ozone crowded out the memory of home.
Stephen sat a moment longer. His smile faded, resolve settling in its place. The warmth of Sidra’s voice lingered, the memory of laughter and promise. He let himself feel it, then set it aside. The shift was deliberate, necessary.
He stood, smoothing his tunic, brushing away the last of his hesitation. The husband receded. The Commodore stepped forward, focus and duty settling over him like armor. He needed it for what waited beyond the door.
Turning toward the exit, where his team awaited his direction, he embraced the operational tension once more. The faint hiss of the opening door was a reminder that the quiet moments were over. The requirements of command and the burdens of leadership awaited his full presence.
End Log
Vice Admiral Sidra MacLaren
Fleet Commander
Epsilon Fleet
(will not apologize for long logs)
and
Commodore Stephen James MacCaffery
Federation Special Envoy
Tavirk III
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