Relinquish, Part I
Posted on Sun May 17th, 2026 @ 9:51pm by Commander Kytolos Sh'reyva
1,775 words; about a 9 minute read
Mission:
Lines in the Vacuum
Location: Various
Timeline: 2166-2168
The Vorchal didn't explode in Kytolos Sh'reyva's dreams. Not always, anyway. Sometimes it drifted for hours through a darkness so complete that space itself seemed to have frozen in around it, everything so familiar to him. It also didn't fracture in single decisive instant or turn into a cloud of fine particles. In sleep, destruction was never so obedient to the chronology of the real world.
Kytolos stood on the command deck and felt, rather than heard, the misalignment of the ship's systems. It was an odd thing because he remembered hearing the voices of his officers reporting on the damage and the failure of several critical systems. Not in the dream, though. Here, everyone seemed to be seated or stood at their stations calmly and without expression. Several consoles flickered with red and amber but no one spoke.
The bridge was quiet, but not silent. It was as if those around him were the living dead and everything existed in a transparent wax.
He shook his First Officer, who was at the tactical station alongside Haldri, the young Lieutenant with the spiky, golden hair. Neither man reacted to the contact. Kytolos felt his throat going raw as he screamed at them to respond--but no sound came.
No one moved and no one spoke.
Kytolos spun in a full three-sixty from the command deck, taking in every crewmember currently staffing the Vorchal's bridge: Kaftran, his trusted right-hand for the last four years, remained motionless alongside Haldri at Tactical. Britzma, the lanky young guardsman recruited four months earlier as a helmsman, also motionless--eyes forward and fixed on nothing. Lieutenant Imaza, the young Andorian woman seated at the communications station kept a hand her ear, the other resting lightly at her console. She, too, was as still as a stone. A half-dozen other officers stood or were seated in various poses, like dolls placed into position.
Striding past Kaftran, he seized young Haldri by the shoulder and shook him hard enough to rattle the tactical harness across his chest. The young man's body moved with the motion but nothing else followed. His eyes remained fixed straight ahead.
Kytolos turned sharply. "Kaftran!"
Again, no response. Nor could he hear his own voice. He knew he had spoken.
There came a sensation deep within Kytolos that all of this was punishment. The retelling of it in his dreams. The reliving of it all. It was as though the universe had calmly declined any sound beyond his own throat.
He closed his eyes and tried to will himself awake. Why must he continue to suffer through this experience? Please let me awaken. Please.
For one strange instant, the bridge elongated around him. The stations now seemed farther apart that they should have been. The ceiling seemed higher. Then time lurched violently forward.
Suddenly, as though time were unpaused, the sound ramped-up into a crescendo where voices, klaxons, and tiny explosions deafened Kytolos.
Klaxons shrieked.
Someone shouted about decompression.
A shower of sparks burst from the aft science station, followed immediately by the smell of burning circuitry. The ship seemed to groan out of anguish, its stressed bulkheads beginning to separate.
"Hull breaches on decks four, five, and eight," called Imaza, her voice breaking apart beneath static. Blood streamed from a cut along her temple, though she seemed not to notice.
"We're venting plasma from both nacelles," came another young voice. Kytolos knew him as Teponas, another new recruit fresh from the Imperial Academy. "Attitude control is lost. We're drifting!"
The deck lurched so hard it nearly threw Kytolos off his feet. Somewhere aft, an explosion tore through the bridge with such violence that tiny, heated pieces of bulkhead were thrown in all directions, burning everyone and everything it came into contact with. The air on the bridge was now hotter than before. Two officers nearest the explosion were slammed more than ten feet back and onto the command deck's plating, smoke pouring off their bodies.
Kaftran was suddenly there, gripping Kyutolos him by the collar of his uniform.
"We must abandon ship!"
Kytolos shoved him back instinctively, much harder than intended. Kaftran stumbled against the body of a fallen officer, regained balance, and stared at him with nothing but raw desperation.
"Helm," Kytolos barked. "Status of that civilian transport."
Britzma hands flew across his console as he attempted to access external sensors but a the only response was a repeated buzzing tone. "Sensors are gone, sir."
"Then estimate."
Britzma lifted his hands from the console, palms upward.
"I--I can't."
There was another impact and the Vorchal shuddered once more.
The forward viewscreen flickered between heavy static and the image of three Romulan birds-of-prey, each making their own pass around them. Farther into the distance was a transport vessel--heavily disabled and also adrift.
After a moment, the screen became nothing but white static--reminiscent of snow falling across the mountains near Laikan, where Kytolos had once stood as a much younger man beside Tirasha beneath the open sky.
He stared at the screen while the bridge scene continued around him exactly as it had before... as it always did.
Smoke thickened near the ceiling and somewhere several decks below, the sound of metal being warped and crushed was loud enough that he could feel it in his bones. Kytolos moved toward the command chair slowly, suddenly aware that portions of the bridge no longer aligned properly. The starboard wall curved inward at an angle too impossible to not to see.
This was dream logic. Or was this tied to grief somehow? It had become indistinguishable a long time ago.
"Commander!"
It was Kaftran again. The younger man's face was slick was sweat now, his antennae twitching violently with every sound the dying ship made.
"She won't survive another hit!"
Kytolos looked around the bridge of the Vorchal. He saw Haldri struggling to reroute whatever was left of the tactical systems through smouldering circuitry. Britzma refused to leave the helm even though the controls were no longer responding. Imaza's hands trembled while she relayed evacuation routes to the crew on other decks.
They were children, almost. Some of them scarcely older than his daughter, Isenne, had been when she first entered Imperial Guard training.
And suddenly Tirasha was standing beside the command chair.
There was no reason for her to be here. She was not part of this memory. And it wasn't as if she walked onto the bridge either. She simply appeared out of nowhere.
She wore the grey-blue civilian coat she always favoured during the winter festivals on Andoria, a small layer of white frost on the shoulders despite the intense heat of the bridge. Her dark hair had been tied loosely behind her head the way she had always worn it at home, and her eyes remained on him--part of an expression Kytolos had seen a thousand times: patient disappointment. It was how she looked at him even near the end of her illness when she had already sensed his full inward retreat from the inevitability of losing her.
"Tirasha," he whispered.
No one else seemed to acknowledge her presence.
Another explosion rocked the bridge.
Kaftran was shouting again. "Commander!"
Tirasha said nothing, simply crossing her arms as she stared at him silently. Slowly and carefully, she reached down and straightened the front of his uniform where Kaftran had twisted it only moment before.
Kytolos closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them again, Tirasha was gone. The command chair was now engulfed in hot white flames. Funny, he thought. I don't remember it ever catching fire.
"Order the evacuation," he said, his voice full of resignation.
Relief replaced the fear on his First Officer's face.
"Yes, sir."
The bridge erupted into motion as officers abandoned stations, some helping the injured through the smoke-filled bridge. Kytolos remained where he stood, turning back to look at the static-filled viewscreen. It really did look like a snowstorm in Laikan.
The Vorchal still felt alive beneath his feet. She was dying but still clinging to life. Perhaps furious with him for choosing to leave.
The dream changed again--it always did.
He never could remember how he came to be inside an escape pod. He was told by others he never lost consciousness, therefore it was probably something his brain chose to ignore. Perhaps the last moments there were too much for him to bear.
Inside the pod, he reached behind him and pulled the safety strap around his torso. Other crewmembers were similarly seated around him. Warning sirens howled and an audible hiss was followed by a violent jolt throwing them clear of the Vorchal.
Kytolos dared one last look at the only ship he'd ever commanded. Fifteen years of trust and love and devotion. She was one of the last of her class still in service.
Yet there she was. Her aft section torn open, a massive chunk of the her underbelly was exposed to space, and both nacelles appeared to be emitting an orange-yellow mist. She was mortally wounded, and Kytolos knew it.
The dying Vorchal rotated slowly outside the small viewport, the glow inside of her seemed to grow as the escape pod slowly put more distance between it and the dying battlecruiser.
He was about to look away when there she was--Tirasha. Standing motionless behind on of the observation ports near the forward section. She placed a hand against the glass, her expression still containing the same patient disappointment as before.
Kytolos surged against the straps holding him to his seat, ready to tear them loose.
"No! We have to go back!"
Two nearby officers leaned across to restrain their commanding officer as he tried in vain to reached the door.
All he could do was watch as a blinding white light engulfed the entire viewport. The Vorchal had exploded, and with it, the two great loves of his life had ceased to exist.
Kytolos felt the hurt in his heart. He knew it was only dream. He knew Tirasha was never there. And he knew the destruction of the Vorchal didn't occur in that way. Nonetheless, it was a cruel thing for his subconscious to construct.
And yet it felt real.
He turned away from the viewport and buried his face in his hands.
Beep Beep Beep.
He looked up and was suddenly alone in the escape pod.
Beep Beep Beep.
He blinked and now saw nothing but darkness.
Commander Kytolos Sh'reyva
Commanding Officer
IGS Vorchal
RSS Feed