Tavrik on Her Shoulders
Posted on Sat Jan 17th, 2026 @ 10:06pm by Vice Admiral Sidra MacLaren
827 words; about a 4 minute read
Mission:
Second Light
Location: Fleet Operations
/// Fleet Operations Center :: Starbase 369 ///
Fleet Operations was running at sustained red.
Not emergency red. Not alarms and shouted orders. This was worse. This was controlled saturation, every system loaded to the edge of tolerance, every officer operating inside margins narrowed to nothing, with no room for error and no appetite for hesitation.
Sidra MacLaren stood in the central ring, boots planted wide against the deck, hands moving through a lattice of layered data. Security feeds, access logs, transporter buffers, identity verification trees, all of it stacked, cross-referenced, and updating faster than most people could read.
She was reading all of it.
“Everyone with access to this command center needs to be cleared,” she said evenly. “Including myself. No exemptions.”
“Yes, Admiral,” an analyst replied immediately, fingers already moving.
Another voice, Intelligence this time. “We’re still looking for classified extraction. Fleet movements. Deployment schedules. No confirmation yet.”
Sidra did not look up. “Keep at it,” she said. “We don’t stop because it’s quiet.”
A beat passed.
She flicked her fingers outward. The display shifted, isolating a thin thread of amber data running between behavioral models, patterns of response rather than access.
Across Fleet Ops, officers worked in disciplined silence. Orders were moving out faster than acknowledgements could return. Transporter directives. Compartmentalized access. Randomized verification windows. No arrivals without pattern confirmation. No trust by rank. No assumptions.
This was the cost of a breach that had worn a familiar face.
Sidra opened her mouth to issue the next instruction.
Fleet Ops froze.
Not because of an alarm.
Because a priority channel cut straight through the noise, overriding every other feed burning across the glass panels.
Sidra felt it before she heard it. A pressure change. A sudden, wrong stillness.
“Pull it up,” she said, already turning.
The channel resolved.
“Vice Admiral MacLaren,” Captain McKinney’s voice came through, clipped and unvarnished. “This is Captain McKinney, USS Valley Forge.”
Every sound in Fleet Ops fell away.
Sidra straightened by a fraction, spine locking into place. “Go ahead, Captain.”
There was no preamble.
“The Kaldari Councilman Thess Kalon is dead,” McKinney said. “Poisoned during formal proceedings. We have confirmed hostile action. The Commodore has ordered immediate planetary lockdown.”
The words hit her like cold water.
For a heartbeat, Sidra did not breathe.
This was it.
This was the moment she had felt coiling under her skin since the changeling revealed itself. The line where compromise stopped being theoretical and became lethal. Where observation turned into action.
She kept her voice level. “Is he the only casualty?”
“Yes,” McKinney replied. “The Commodore is in command. Asserting jurisdiction.”
Good. The panic receded by a hair’s breadth, replaced by something sharper.
“What is your posture?” Sidra asked.
“Transporter grid locked. Atmospheric sensor net established over Island Chain Seven. Orbital traffic sealed. Vethari vessel is being jammed under Condition Lockdown.”
That was not escalation.
That was response.
Sidra closed her eyes for exactly one second, then reopened them.
For an instant, she was acutely aware of the Caelestis docked just beyond the station’s skin. Her ship. Fueled. Crewed. Close enough that she could feel the pull of it, the instinct to step aboard and put herself where the danger was sharpest.
She did not move.
“Fleet Ops,” she said without looking away from the channel. “Continue as ordered. This does not change our internal posture.”
She stepped closer to the console, lowering her voice just enough to keep the room contained. “Captain, I issued a fleet-level advisory minutes ago. Confirm you’ve received it.”
“We have,” McKinney said. “Identity breach. Transporter-only arrivals. Randomized verification.”
Sidra nodded once. “That stands. Expand it. No pattern reuse. No exceptions.”
There was a pause on the line, not hesitation, but calculation.
“We’re going to need backup,” McKinney said. “The situation here is unstable.”
“You’ll have it,” Sidra said, her eyes flicking to another screen. “Tempest is two hours out,” she added, already knowing it would not be enough.
She wanted to hear from the Commodore. Wanted his read. Needed to know how much she had to send, and how fast.
“Captain,” she added, “assume anything that looks like diplomacy is camouflage.”
McKinney exhaled once. “Already am.”
Silence hung between them, heavy and shared.
Sidra broke it cleanly. “I need a report from the surface as soon as possible. The Commodore will report, relay that.”
“Understood,” McKinney said. “Valley Forge standing by.”
The channel closed.
Fleet Ops exhaled as one, motion resuming instantly.
Sidra did not move.
The room blurred at the edges of her vision, not from fear, but from the sheer force of restraint it took to keep standing still. Somewhere deep under her ribs, panic clawed hard enough to bruise.
She crushed it flat.
This was not the time.
The worst had happened. They were inches from war.
And she would not fall apart until the fleet could afford it.
Vice Admiral Sidra MacLaren
Fleet Commander
Epsilon Fleet
RSS Feed