Program: Samhain One

Posted on Fri Oct 31st, 2025 @ 7:47pm by Lieutenant Leo Da'Cinci

1,568 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: Character Development
Location: USS Sunfire, Holodeck Two

The doors hissed open and the world changed from brushed duranium to peat and mist. Leo Da’Cinci stood on the threshold, one thick hand still on the arch, the other gripping a small lantern. He grunted, nostrils flaring.

The holodeck had outdone itself. Damp air curled around him, carrying the scent of wet leaves, wood smoke, and that faint copper tang that always rode the wind in late October. Behind him, the soft pulse of the ship’s warp core seemed to fade into a heartbeat made of rain.

“Computer,” he muttered, voice half growl, half reverence, “run program.”

The cottage appeared first: a squat stone thing, half swallowed by ivy, leaning against the dark edge of a forest. Its thatched roof shone slick with drizzle, and smoke trailed lazily from a crooked chimney. Beyond it rolled the hills of Ireland, or as close as the holodeck could guess, all emerald humps and heather, fenced in by gray stone walls that led the eye toward a sky streaked with dying sunlight.

“Aye,” Leo breathed. “That’s more like it.”

He stepped forward, boots sinking into spongy turf. The lantern bobbed, throwing amber light across his broad Tellerite features, tusked mouth, rough skin, the hint of soot already smudged on his cheek. He looked like something the bonfire might have summoned.

Inside the cottage, the air was warm, full of the scent of baking bread and burning peat. Someone, or rather, some subroutine, had been busy. A kettle whistled on the hearth. A table stood ready with mismatched wooden chairs. Beside the door, bundles of herbs hung from rafters, swaying gently in a breeze that had no business existing in a sealed room.

Leo set down his lantern, cracked his knuckles, and let out a satisfied grunt.

“Computer, mark time nineteen-hundred hours. And don’t ye dare reset me stew again, ye hear?”

The computer chirped obediently, and Leo gave it a narrow-eyed glance. “That’s better. You may be a fine machine, but you’ve no sense for a simmer.”

He moved through the motions of ritual with the same mechanical precision he used on plasma injectors. First, he hauled a half-cut log to the pit outside and stacked it on the pyre he’d programmed earlier. The wood caught quickly under his careful hand, fed by the brisk October air. Sparks climbed like tiny souls toward the stars, or rather, toward the photonic dome pretending to be a sky.

He stood back, the fire’s glow washing gold over his features. “Right then,” he said softly. “Let the wicked burn and the kind stay warm.”

He reached into his pocket and drew out a small taper candle, lighting it from the bonfire before ducking back into the cottage. Inside, he blew out the hearth flame with a firm puff and relit it from the taper, the old way, the safe way, the way his adoptive mother had taught him when he was barely tall enough to see over the stove.

“That’s for keepin’ the house safe,” he muttered. “Not that the ship’s safety system needs any help, but can’t hurt to have tradition on our side.”

He turned to his next task: a turnip, bulbous and pale, waiting on the table. Leo eyed it with suspicion. “Bloody inefficient design,” he declared, grabbing a small knife. “Hard as duranium, it is.”

He carved anyway, tongue poking from the corner of his mouth as he gouged out crude eyes and a jagged grin. When he was done, the thing looked like it wanted to bite someone.

“Perfect,” he said, triumphant. “Ugly as me own face. Keep the spirits off for sure.”

He lit an ember from the fire, dropped it into the hollow, and watched the flickering face come alive. Shadows danced across the stone walls. For a moment he could almost believe the ancestors were watching.

By the time the stew was bubbling and the barmbrack cooling on the sill, the rain had thickened to a mist. Outside, the bonfire roared higher, its smoke a dark ribbon twisting into the night.

Leo ladled stew into two bowls, setting one opposite his own empty chair.

“For the gone but not forgotten,” he said quietly. “Here’s to Ma, who could make a meal out of turnip and will alone. And Da, who taught me to keep my word even when the warp conduits blew. And me seven daft brothers, every last one of ye, who thought it wise to play toss-the-hammer in the living room.”

He raised his cup of cider, drank deep, and sighed. “May your ghosts find good company and better drink.”

For a long time he ate in silence, the only sounds the crackle of fire and the steady drum of rain. Every so often he’d glance at the empty chair, nodding as if someone sat there.

“You’d have liked her,” he said after a while. “The Sunfire, I mean. She’s temperamental, aye, but she’s got spirit. Hums in her sleep like a proper lady.”

The wind moaned through the chimney, and Leo chuckled. “Don’t ye start, now. I know what you’re thinkin’. A ship’s no substitute for kin. But she listens, see? And that’s more than most.”

A soft chime drew his gaze to the window. A figure was there, a woman’s outline, silvered by the firelight. Her hair, if it was hair, floated as if underwater. Her face was neither human nor Tellerite, but something caught between memory and light.

Leo didn’t move. He’d seen this before, holoprojection or ghost, he wasn’t sure.

“Come to check on me handiwork, have ye?” he said softly.

The figure smiled, a flicker of warmth in the cold night. She pointed to the loaf of barmbrack resting on the sill.

“Aye, aye, I know. It’s time for fortunes.”

He rose, slicing into the loaf with slow, deliberate care. Out fell a ring, tiny, gold, gleaming. He stared at it, then barked a laugh.

“Ha! A ring, is it? That means marriage! Well, no offense to any lass fool enough to try, but she’ll have better luck talkin’ sense to a warp coil.”

The ghost, or projection, tilted her head, almost amused, then faded like mist. Leo’s grin softened.

“Figures,” he muttered. “Even the dead have better things to do than argue with me.”

He went back outside, cider in hand. The bonfire was taller now, wind pushing sparks across the grass like fallen stars. Around him, lanterns glowed, carved turnips, hanging from branches, each one grinning in its own crooked way. He stood among them, face lit in orange and shadow.

“This is it then,” he said quietly. “The thin place between here and there.”

He took a long pull from the cider. “Here’s the truth, Da. I wasn’t the best of sons. Didn’t listen much. Didn’t stay put either. But I remember the work of your hands, every nail, every beam, every engine you built with more love than logic. Guess I got that from ye.”

He fell silent, staring into the fire. Somewhere in the distance, bagpipes began to play, a low, mournful tune that wound around the hills like smoke.

The music stirred something in him, pride, ache, maybe both.

“Suppose I’m not just a Tellerite nor a human,” he murmured. “I’m the bastard child of both, stitched together with copper wire and stubbornness. And that’s fine by me.”

He tossed the last of his cider into the flames. The fire flared blue, hissed, and then settled into a warm golden hum.

When he finally powered down the program, the cottage faded into the black-and-yellow grid of the holodeck. Only the smell of smoke lingered on his uniform, and the soot on his hands. He was halfway to the door when it slid open.

Commander Jenna Ramthorne stood there, eyebrow arched, her expression somewhere between amusement and disbelief. “Lieutenant Da’Cinci,” she said, folding her arms. “Care to explain why you look like you wrestled a fireplace?”

Leo blinked, realizing he was still wearing the rough kilt and smudged shirt from the simulation. In one hand he held the carved turnip lantern, still flickering faintly.

“Tradition,” he said simply.

Jenna’s lips twitched. “Tradition, huh? You planning to exorcise the warp core next?”

He gave her a tired grin. “Only if it starts howlin’. Till then, I’ll stick to me fires and me ghosts.”

She shook her head, smiling as she turned away. “Carry on, Leo.”

As the doors closed behind her, he looked down at the lantern in his hand. The flame wobbled, reflected in his dark eyes.

“Here’s to the living and the dead,” he whispered. Then he blew it out.

The corridor lights felt too bright after the holodeck dusk, but Leo didn’t mind. He walked back toward Engineering, humming the last bars of the bagpipe tune, the soot smearing his jaw like war paint. The ship purred around him, his other hearth, his other home.

He smiled faintly. “Happy Samhain, ye old girl,” he said to the bulkheads. “Keep the bad spirits in the plasma conduits where they belong.”

The hum deepened, almost in answer.

And for one quiet moment, Leo Da’Cinci could have sworn the USS Sunfire was smiling back.

 

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