Licking the Wounds

Posted on Sun Jul 5th, 2026 @ 5:26pm by Remal Kajun & Captain Rhenora Kaylen & Commander Dean House & Lieutenant JG T'Lar

2,632 words; about a 13 minute read

Mission: Pirates!
Location: ISS Sunfire - Badlands

"The wound that hurts the most is the one pride insists does not exist."

I.S.S. Sunfire

The bridge hung upside down. Or perhaps the ship had finally stopped rolling. It hardly mattered. Emergency lighting painted everything in pulsing crimson while damaged consoles spat intermittent showers of sparks. Smoke drifted lazily through the compartment as emergency ventilation struggled to reclaim the air. Somewhere aft, another explosion echoed through the hull.

Remal pushed himself upright from where the deck had thrown him. His shoulder protested. He ignored it. "Report."

Around him the bridge slowly came back to life. Bonnie hauled herself into her chair and immediately began forcing dead consoles to answer her. One screen flickered. Then another.

"Tactical?"

"Forward shields collapsed during the plasma strike." The officer swallowed. "Aft shields are fluctuating below twenty percent."

"Communications?"

"Primary array is offline. Secondary relays are intermittent."

"Flight Operations?"

"The recovery bay lost containment during the roll. Six fighters sustained impact damage. Operations are suspended until structural integrity is restored."

"Engineering?"

The reply arrived several seconds later through heavy static. "Multiple plasma relays fused. Cloak emitter destroyed. Long-range sensors offline. Warp field geometry is unstable." He paused. "We can make warp speeds... but not safely."

The words settled across the bridge. Remal's eyes shifted toward the chronometer. The remaining time allotted by Marshal Kaylen continued its merciless countdown. It would be not enough. Not with this damage. His jaw tightened.

Bonnie finally looked up from her console. "Internal damage is... extensive." She rarely wasted time searching for the correct word. This time she had.

Remal absorbed every report without visible reaction. Then he asked the only question that mattered. "The Bristol?"

The tactical officer immediately consulted his damaged sensors. "No debris field." Remal waited. "No emergency beacon. No confirmed wreckage." The officer hesitated. "We cannot verify the vessel's destruction."

Silence spread across the bridge. Remal slowly turned. "What did you say?"

"The plasma filament should have consumed them, Captain." The tactical officer gestured helplessly toward the damaged display. "But without debris..."

"They're just gone." The bridge became very quiet.

"The filament caught them at point-blank range." Remal spoke with absolute certainty. "Their engines were crippled. Their shields were failing." He stepped toward the tactical display. "They did not survive."

The tactical officer looked uncertain. "Captain... sensors simply don't support..."

"They were damaged." Remal's voice cut through the bridge like a blade. "Our sensors are damaged."  No one answered. He looked from officer to officer before settling once more upon Tactical. "Recalibrate your records."

The lieutenant blinked. "Sir?"

"The Bristol was destroyed by the plasma wave, do I make myself clear?"

Another silence. Then, reluctantly...  "...Aye, Captain."

Bonnie watched the exchange without speaking. She noted he had stopped following the evidence and had begun giving orders to it. She leaned back in her damaged chair with blood still drying against one side of her face as she watched Remal reshape reality with nothing more than rank and conviction.

The tactical officer knew the Bristol might have escaped. Remal knew it hadn't. Facts had simply become... inconvenient. Bonnie smiled. She knew that tone. It was the sound of certainty trying to outrun failure. The corner of her mouth twitched upward. "Mmm..." Barely loud enough for anyone else to hear. "That's going to leave a scar." Not the cut on her own head, but the one forming inside the Captain.

Precisely 30 minutes later a warship approached, hull pockmarked and scorched, skin worn like a trophy displaying their prowess. Deep inside Marshall Kaylen lounged in the command chair, legs drapped over one side as the ship detected the crippled ISS Sunfire. There were no other ships in the vicinity, piquing the Marshall's interest. She had set him an impossible task, one she hadn't anticipated he accomplish.

"Hail them..." She ordered sharply.

"Their comm system is down" Her Ops officer announced smugly. "Someone kicked their assess and handed them a plate of leftovers"

"Then I shall have to speak to him personally. Beam me over" Kaylen retorted to the banter, not bothering to rise. The transporter chief would deposit her in the same position in the same location on the Sunfire.

The transporter shimmered into existence without warning.

Golden light gathered in the center of the battered bridge before resolving into Marshal Rhenora Kaylen, exactly as she had requested. She remained reclined in the command chair she had occupied aboard her own flagship, one leg draped elegantly over the armrest as though she had merely changed rooms instead of crossing between starships.

For a heartbeat, no one moved. Remal was already standing. He came to attention with practiced precision and offered a crisp, respectful salute. "Marshal."

"Captain Remal - I see you were successful... but only just. Does that mean our wager is still on?" She licked her lips seductively as one of the crew scurried to find a bottle of spring wine that would be acceptable and returned with it and a glass. It was her customary demand, and would hopefully curry her favour.

" I see wreckage of one of the Federation ships, the other?" She let the words hang, wanting the details of the battle from Remal himself.

Remal lowered the salute and clasped his hands behind his back. "Our time has not yet expired, Marshal." His voice remained steady despite the battered bridge around him. "The second vessel was caught by an ionic filament wave." He allowed the words to settle before continuing. "Any wreckage would have been scattered throughout the Badlands. Recovery would be... impractical."

His expression never changed. "The threat has been neutralized."

Kaylen seemed to accept his words without pushing for further information, accepting the wine bottle and dismissing the crewman with a swish of her hand. She poured the wine, lifting the glass to her lips and sipping the liquid, mulling over the flavour for a few moments.

"Acceptable," she replied, not differentiating between the wine and the battle.

"The Portal is still secure; ensure that it remains so whilst we assemble the fleet on our side before bringing them through," she ordered, draining the glass. "Your efforts will be rewarded"

---

USS Bristol
Temporary Quarters

MU T'Lar was happy to be out of the brig, though being confined to temporary quarters with an armed guard outside wasn't much of a difference when it came right down to it. Not that she was inclined to wander about the heavily damaged ship anyway. She had a replicator, a shower, a head, and a bed, and that was about it. No computer terminal. No vid screen. Not even a window. It was basically a glorified closet. And yet it was the freest she'd been in her entire life.

She'd made her gamble, and it was actually paying off. She'd escaped. She had the Baldric woman to thank partially for that. She wasn't sure that the Bristol would have accepted her plea for asylum alone without her. As it was, however, the skepticism of the captain of the Bristol may have done her irreparable harm, as she now lay incapacitated in sickbay following the second forced mind meld in less than twenty-four hours. T'Lar had tried to warn them, but to no avail.

Her only hope was that the captain's need to be sure Baldric wasn't a changeling or a spy wouldn't end up killing her, because any post-mortem would surely take into account all that had gone before at her hands, and likely negatively impact the quality of her life in exile at the hands of the Federation. Fortunately, though, she had enough intel to make overlooking the torture and possible subsequent death of a Starfleet officer more than a fair trade for the billions of lives which could be spared given what she knew.

Still, she had her price, and it would be paid, or she would give them nothing more. All that mattered to her was seeing him again. It didn't matter to her that he wouldn't be her Jacob Rosen. All that mattered was that there was still a Jacob Rosen alive in this universe, and she would give anything, betray anyone for just one more chance to be in his presence again. That is why she had done it. Not because she cared about what was about to happen to the Federation. But out of love for one man.

---

Meanwhile, in Sickbay, the medical team were perplexed. They had run tests to confirm that this was actually the Prime universe Baldric, her immunisations were on spec with Starfleet protocol, and her baseline data correlated exactly. Quantum signatures also agreed exactly. The problem was her brain appeared to be scrambled. Her body showed signs of extreme stress, most likely from her time on the ISS Sunfire, yet her mind was a different kettle of fish. It refused to respond to standard treatment, remaining firmly shut down. They induced a coma to protect her higher brain function and hoped someone at DS9 or the Sunfire's own Doctor's would have a bright idea.

DS9 – Operations

The Bajoran sector drifted peacefully beyond the wide windows of Operations. Freighters traced orderly approach vectors. Runabouts departed on scheduled assignments. Traffic control officers monitored the endless rhythm of arrivals and departures that had become the heartbeat of the station.

It lasted all of exactly four seconds. "Colonel." The operations officer's voice carried just enough urgency to silence the room without raising its volume.

Above the command floor, the doors to the office overlooking Operations slid open. Colonel Kira Nerys stepped out immediately. "What is it?"

The officer looked up from his console. "We've got a Starfleet vessel emerging from the Badlands approach corridor." His brow furrowed. "Transponder confirms the U.S.S. Bristol."

Kira stopped halfway down the steps. "The Bristol?" Her expression tightened. "She wasn't due back."

"No, Colonel."

The main viewscreen expanded. Silence settled across Operations. The Bristol drifted into view. Her once-clean hull was scorched black across the saucer. Entire sections of ablative armor had been stripped away. One nacelle flickered unevenly as plasma vented in thin blue wisps into space. Scoring marked nearly every deck. Even at this distance, she looked exhausted.

Kira studied the image for only a moment before noticing what was missing. "The Woolloomooloo?"

The operations officer checked his display. "No sign of her." The silence that followed felt heavier than before.

Kira's voice became all business. "Prepare Docking Pylon Three."

"Aye, Colonel."

"Alert repair teams. I want engineers standing by before they finish their approach."

"Already notifying Engineering."

"Medical, too. Trauma teams, surgical staff, counseling. If that ship looks this bad on the outside, I don't want to imagine what's waiting inside." The acknowledgements came back almost before she finished speaking.

Another officer looked up. "Bristol is requesting immediate docking clearance."

"They've already got it." Kira never took her eyes off the screen. "Clear civilian traffic from the approach lane."

"Approach lane clear."

She folded her arms. "Open a channel."

The communications officer nodded. "Channel open, Colonel."

Kira stepped toward the center of Operations, her voice steady, confident, and unmistakably welcoming. "USS Bristol, this is Colonel Kira Nerys, Deep Space Nine." She allowed herself the smallest breath after seeing the state of the ship. "Welcome home, Captain."

Then her tone sharpened just enough to convey that she already knew the answer to her question, "...What happened?"

"They're back Colonel, the Mirror Universe, they have a new portal." Bozeman replied, praying his ship would hold together long enough tp reach the space station. " We took a beating, the Woolloomooloo got blasted out of the sky. We need repair crews, medical teams...the works"

He looked like a man who had been holding things together for long enough to get back to safety and would quietly fall apart when everyone else was taken care of.

Within twenty minutes, the Bristol was docked, and her crew was disembarking. Bozeman made a beeline for Ops, seeking a secure conversation with the station's CO. Kira had dealt with the Mirror Universe before.

Colonel Kira met him halfway and escorted the Bozeman Captain back to her office with a minimum of fuss. Once the doors closed behind them, she pressed a glass of whiskey into his hand and motioned to the dark couch.

"What do we need to know?" She sat next to him and poured herself a glass.

"One warship, the ISS Sunfire, captained by a Bajoran named Remal. From what we could piece together, they replaced our Sunfire's Commander Baldric with their counterpart. One of their crew defected, a Vulcan. She gave us some intel." He started, staring at the glass like a man on the verge of breaking. "We lost 15 crew"

Kira listened without interruption. Fifteen. She let the number settle between them before saying anything. It was not simply a casualty report. Fifteen families would soon receive a message that would change the rest of their lives. "I'm sorry," she said quietly. "Fifteen is fifteen too many."

Bozeman nodded once, still staring into the amber whiskey.

After a long moment, she spoke again. "I know a man named Remal." She turned the glass slowly between her hands. "The Remal from this universe." A faint, almost wistful smile touched her face. "He's one of the gentlest people I've ever met. Thoughtful. Honest. He'd rather spend an hour talking someone out of a fight than five minutes winning one."

The smile disappeared. "So if the man you fought calls himself Remal..." she looked back at Bozeman, "...then somewhere, in another universe, something went terribly wrong."

Silence returned. Finally, she straightened, the station commander replacing the friend. "Your ship will receive every resource Deep Space Nine can spare. Engineering is already aboard. Medical teams are working their way through your casualty lists."

She set her glass aside. "I'd like to speak with Commander Baldric, and I'd like to interview this T'Lar separately." Her expression became measured. "If she's truly defected, she may be the single best source of intelligence the Federation has on this new portal."

She stood. "And if she's lying..." Kira met Bozeman's eyes. "...I'll know soon enough."

"Good enough for me. Too many died put there for this to be ballsed up any more." Bozeman drained what was left in his glass and set it down on the small side table. "Thank you, Colonel. I appreciate your efforts. If you'll excuse me, I have 15 families to inform," he nodded somberly and exited the office.

Kira rose with him. "You've earned a few hours without another crisis, Captain." The faintest smile touched her lips, though it never reached her eyes. "If you need anything, you ask. Deep Space Nine is yours until the *Bristol* is ready to sail again."

Bozeman offered a weary nod. "Thank you, Colonel." He stepped through the office doors without another word.

Kira remained where she was for several seconds, listening as Operations carried on beyond the transparent aluminum. Docking reports. Casualty updates. Repair requests. The ordinary sounds of a station suddenly carrying an extraordinary burden.

She turned toward the viewport overlooking the Promenade and the stars beyond. Somewhere out there, an Imperial warship still existed. Somewhere out there, another Remal Kajun served an empire built upon fear instead of hope. She folded her arms. "Ops."

The duty officer looked up.

"Send a priority briefing to Starfleet Command." Her voice became all business once more. "Flag the USS *Sunfire* for immediate recall." She paused. "And notify the Admiralty that the Mirror Universe has established a stable portal."

"Aye, Colonel." The officer hurried to comply.

Kira remained at the window a moment longer. The battle in the Badlands was over. The war had just begun.

TBC

 

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