Fire, Contained

Posted on Fri Jan 16th, 2026 @ 11:53pm by Vice Admiral Sidra MacLaren

2,321 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Dreamdust
Location: Starbase 369

// Residential Deck - Starbase 369 //

Sidra did not look back as the doors sealed behind the containment team.

She did not watch the changeling disappear down the corridor, bound in a lattice of forcefields and armed escorts. That part was done. Delegated. Locked into protocol and muscle memory.

What remained was heavier.

She made a request of Sha’mer before she departed. “Do not leave the station without letting me know first. You are welcome to join us at Fleet Ops.”

MacLaren had things to do, new protocols to roll out, bigger brass to inform. As much as she wanted to focus solely on Indi, she had a population of thirty-eight thousand on this station, and far more across her command.

Her boots struck the deck in a measured rhythm as she moved toward the turbolifts that would carry her up toward Fleet Operations. The station’s spine rose above her, layered rings of command, logistics, traffic control, intelligence, and oversight. Normally, the ascent grounded her. Gave shape to the weight she carried.

Not now.

Now, every step tightened something sharp and hot beneath her ribs.

Rucker matched her pace without being asked.

He did not crowd her. Did not speak immediately. He had always known when silence mattered more than words. The corridor lights slid across his uniform as they walked, catching the familiar lines of a man who had stood at her side through worse than this.

“I was already in Fleet Ops,” he said finally, voice low. “Working logistics and resupply for the Caelestis. Heard the call the moment it went out.”

Sidra nodded once. He had her six. It had been a few years since they had been able to serve together, but that hadn’t changed.

She slowed, just slightly, enough to glance at him. The anger in her chest did not recede, but it shifted, redirecting instead of burning blind.

“I appreciate the backup.” She meant it. The words sounded hollow anyway.

They stopped at the lift.

Sidra turned fully toward him now, posture straight, command settling back into place where fury had threatened to crack it open. “I need you on containment,” she said without preamble. “I want full isolation, redundant dampening fields, biometric monitoring, and no assumptions. None.”

Rucker inclined his head. “Already thinking the same.”

“Good.” Her jaw tightened. “If that thing breathes wrong, I want to know about it.”

He accepted the order without ceremony, already shifting mentally into execution. Then he paused.

“For what it’s worth,” he said quietly, “you did everything right.”

Sidra exhaled once. Sharp. Controlled.

“I’m not ready to hear that.”

“Understood,” he said simply. “Then I won’t say it again.”

That earned him a second look. This time, gratitude flickered through the anger. Brief. Earned.

“Go,” she said. “I’ll take it from here.”

Rucker stepped away, already issuing commands into his comm as he disappeared down the corridor.

Sidra stood alone for half a second longer than necessary, then turned and entered the lift.

// Turbolift //

The turbolift surged upward, acceleration pressing faintly into Sidra’s spine.

The station did not feel solid anymore.

It felt rushed.

Layered systems. New command structures still settling into place. Departments spun up faster than Starfleet doctrine ever would have allowed under normal circumstances. Epsilon Fleet had been allowed to grow because it needed to grow. Because the frontier did not wait. Because the old rules bent under pressure.

And because Indi Hawk had been in that chair.

Sidra had signed off on the compromises. Faster onboarding. Condensed background reviews. Parallel security clearances instead of sequential. She had trusted the instincts of the woman overseeing it all. Trusted her judgment. Trusted her presence.

Somewhere in all of that, a changeling wearing Indi’s face had walked freely through her command.

Reported. Observed. Embedded.

And Indi herself was gone.

The anger flared hot and fast now, no longer controlled, no longer distant. It climbed her chest and tightened her throat, sharp enough that she had to brace her hands against the lift wall to keep them from shaking.

This was not just a breach.

It was a betrayal that had taken root inside the bones of something still being built.

The lift chimed.

Sidra straightened instantly, spine locking into place as the doors slid open onto Fleet Operations. Whatever fury burned in her stayed contained, honed down into something narrow and dangerous.

For now.

// Fleet Operations :: Command Corridor //

She moved too fast to register anything but distance.

The Fleet Operations ring blurred past her, transparent panels flashing with movement and data she normally absorbed without effort. Officers stepped aside. A voice spoke her name. Another tried again, closer this time.

Sidra did not hear any of it.

The only thing she was aware of was the pressure building in her chest, the sharp heat coiling tighter with every step toward her office. The one place on the station designed not for command, but for control.

She reached the door, it opened to her badge, and she stepped inside.

The doors sealed behind her with a muted thrum.

Sound vanished.

// Vice Admiral MacLaren’s Office //

The silence hit like a physical thing.

No corridor noise. No distant hum of systems. No voices bleeding through bulkheads. The office was soundproof by design, layered insulation meant to give a Fleet Commander privacy and focus.

Sidra felt the containment snap into place and something inside her finally broke free.

She let out a raw, wordless scream and drove her fist sideways into the nearest solid surface. Not the desk. The reinforced storage column beside it. The impact rang dully through her arm, pain sharp and grounding and welcome.

Her breath came hard as she turned, ready to strike again.

And stopped.

Will stood near the conference table, frozen mid-motion. The PADD he had been holding slipped from his fingers and clattered softly against the floor. His eyes were wide, not with fear, but with startled concern.

He took a half-step toward her.

Then hesitated.

Sidra registered him all at once. The height she still was not used to. The fact that he was no longer small enough to simply shield without thought.

Her hand dropped slowly to her side.

“Will,” she said, the word rougher than she intended.

He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he closed the distance cautiously, like someone approaching a wounded animal they were not entirely sure wouldn’t lash out again.

“Mom,” he said quietly. “Are you hurt?”

The question landed harder than any reprimand could have.

Sidra drew in a long breath through her nose, forcing the surge of adrenaline back down where it belonged. She flexed her fingers once, testing them, then shook her head.

“No,” she said. “I’m not.”

Her gaze flicked briefly to the dent she had left in the column, then back to him.

“That was… not how I planned to start our lunch.”

A flicker of something crossed his face. Relief, maybe. Or understanding arriving faster than she expected.

“I figured something went wrong,” he said carefully.

Sidra held his gaze for a long moment.

She could still send him away. Smooth this over. Put the uniform back on fully and pretend command did not sometimes look like this.

Instead, she made a different choice.

“You should have been warned,” she said. “I missed that.”

She stepped past him, retrieved the fallen PADD, and set it on the table before turning back to face him.

“This is what it looks like,” Sidra said evenly, the anger no longer burning but still very much alive. “When something slips through every safeguard you trusted. When the consequences are personal.”

She let the silence stretch after the words left her mouth.

She did not soften them. She did not explain them away. She allowed them to sit between them, heavy and unresolved, long enough to be felt.

Then she looked at him fully.

“I want you to stay,” Sidra said quietly.

Not as an order. As a choice.

She stepped closer, close enough that the line between them was unmistakable. “I need to lay a few things out, and I’m not going to do it twice.”

She held his gaze.

“You don’t leave this room and talk about being here. Not with your friends. Not later. Not as a story. This moment stays between us.” A beat. “Not because you’re hearing something that you wont hear otherwise. Because this space is private.”
Her expression did not waver.

“I trust you,” Sidra said simply.

The words were not dramatic. They were deliberate.

Will nodded once. “I won’t say anything.”

She inclined her head, accepting it without ceremony.

“Sit,” she said. “And watch.”

She turned away then, crossing to her console as the familiar weight of command settled back into place. The office remained sealed off from the rest of the station, quiet by design.

There had been a time when this was how she lived.

Before him. Before she learned how to come home without carrying the fire with her. Before she learned that rage could keep you moving long after it stopped being useful.

Back then, anger had been fuel. Pain had been momentum. She had burned hot and fast and called it discipline.

She had survived it.

She had also paid for it.

Sidra activated the station command channel.

Her authorization rippled outward immediately, priority overrides cascading through systems that had been built fast, layered quickly, and trusted too soon. Displays shifted as traffic control, operations, and security queues reconfigured in real time.

“Station directive,” Sidra said evenly. “Effective immediately.”

Will watched from the chair as her voice carried beyond the walls.

“No personnel arrivals to Starbase Three Six Nine via shuttlecraft or docking,” Sidra continued. “All arrivals will be conducted by transporter only. No exceptions.”

She did not pause.

“All inbound shuttles are to be remotely piloted into assigned bays. No crew disembarkation prior to transporter verification.” A faint edge entered her voice. “This includes civilian traffic, diplomatic couriers, and Starfleet personnel of all ranks.”

She routed the order through multiple systems with practiced precision.

“I am aware this will disrupt schedules,” she added flatly. “That is acceptable. We will fix inconvenience. We will not fix compromise after the fact.”

The channel closed.

Sidra exhaled slowly, already feeling the fallout settle in. Docking delays. Traffic snarls. Engineers swearing under their breath. Commanders requesting clarification she would not give yet.

A logistical nightmare.

She accepted it without hesitation.

Then she opened a second channel. Restricted. Narrowcast. Fleet and colony command only.

“This is a command-level advisory,” Sidra said, voice quieter now, but no less firm. “We have confirmed a security breach involving identity compromise.”

She did not elaborate. She did not name names.

“All commanding officers are directed to begin randomized transporter screenings for key personnel,” she continued. “Vary patterns. Vary timing. Build layered biometric and pattern records.” Her jaw tightened. “Do not rely on a single verification pass.”

A brief pause.

“Assume vulnerability until proven otherwise.”

The channel closed.

Will stayed quiet for a few seconds after the channels closed.

He didn’t look at the console or the still-scrolling data feeds. He watched her instead, the way he always had when he was trying to understand something rather than react to it.

“So,” he said finally, carefully, “this is the part people mean when they call you the Dragon.”

Sidra glanced at him.

Not sharply. Not defensively.

Just enough to acknowledge the hit.

“I suppose it is,” she said.

He huffed a quiet breath, almost a laugh. “I’ve heard the stories. I just… hadn’t ever seen it.” He hesitated, then added, “Not like that.”

“No,” Sidra agreed. “You haven’t.”

She leaned back against the edge of the desk, folding her arms loosely. “Most people only see the aftermath. The orders. The tone. The scorch marks left on policies and egos.”

Her gaze softened slightly as it returned to him.

“They don’t usually see the fire itself. And I’ve been very careful about that where you’re concerned.”

Will nodded, absorbing that. “It wasn’t… scary,” he said after a moment. “Just intense.”

“That’s how it’s supposed to be,” Sidra replied. “Fire that scares you isn’t under control.”

She straightened, the last of the edge settling back into focus. “And for the record, the Dragon isn’t about anger. It’s about what happens when you stop pretending something isn’t broken.”

That earned a thoughtful look from him.

“I think,” Will said slowly, “I get why people listen when you decide to move.”

Sidra regarded him for a long moment, then nodded once.

“That,” she said, “is the part I want you to learn from this. Not the volume. Not the reputation.”

She pushed away from the desk and checked the time on her console. The weight of what still waited for her pressed back in, insistent.

“I have more to do,” Sidra said quietly.

Will stood immediately.

She crossed the space between them and pulled him into a hug before he could say anything else. Not brief. Not careful. She held him there, arms solid around his shoulders, grounding herself in the simple fact of him being here, steady and real.
The moment stretched longer than either of them acknowledged.

When she finally released him, she rested her hands briefly on his arms.

“Send your dad a message,” Sidra said softly. “He’d like to hear from you today.”

Will smiled. “Yeah. I’ll do that.”

She watched him go, waited until the door slid shut behind him.

For a heartbeat longer than necessary, Sidra stood there, eyes closed, sending a quiet wish out into the universe that Stephen was having a better day than she was.

Then she turned back to her console.

The Dragon had work to do.

Vice Admiral Sidra MacLaren
Fleet Commander
Epsilon Fleet

 

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