The Start of Something Pretty Big

Posted on Sun Oct 12th, 2025 @ 6:58pm by Captain Doran'atar

633 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: Laying the Groundwork
Location: Quarters 3C, Starfleet Headquarters, USS Federation

"...you are hereby charged with the responsibility of the general state and operational effectiveness of the ship, and the welfare and discipline of Her company. She is to serve as a diplomatic hub of the United Federation of Planets, and provide ground upon which to rebuild that which the Burn split apart."

Humans and their pompery. Seriously, there was a point at which it had to just be too much, right? Doran'atar could swear that literally everything else in the Koinonia's Commissioning Warrant could've been a holo-PADD message, but noooo, leave it to the higherups in Starfleet to conflate yep, this is your brand spanking new ship now into a 40-minute-long ceremony, complete with music (from a live band, no less) and far too many guests of honor. He would've settled for a stiff, unfiltered talk from an admiral in their office and a good, firm handshake.

And yet, in spite of all that, that paragraph had stuck, and now, standing in his temporary quarters aboard the Federation, it once more came to mind as he adjusted his mess uniform. Doran'atar was a warfighter, not a diplomat, not that he'd never worn the latter hat in his career. Sweet-talking, for him, was hard. People were hard and had never been anything less than hard for him in his entire career. He'd honestly been wishing for his first command to be commander of a training institute, or perhaps a Merian-class with its tactical prowess. What he'd gotten instead was a glorified diplomatic table, at which he would have to deal with people Plus Pro Max Ultra. He would've been lying if he said that he wasn't the least bit irritated - and a smidge unsure of what was to come next.

Well, honestly, there was nothing for it but to hold up his head and... boldly go. Ugh, his human colleagues even had him thinking the phrase now. Doran'atar had learned over the duration of his career that one did not make difficult things less difficult by whining or complaining or wringing one's hands and doing nothing else. He was certainly entitled to bemoan his luck, of course, but only for tonight. Tomorrow morning he would be on a shuttle to the Koinonia, and then he'd need to put on his brand new hat as commanding officer for the first time, and thereon there'd be no more opportunity to whine. This was his show now.

Resolve settled in the pit of his stomach as he checked the bowtie on his neck one last time. Yep, he wasn't good at honeyed words or planning large-scale parties or grand speeches to get the ball rolling or anything which diplomacy asked for, and that was fine. He would just need to do the exact same thing he'd done the day he set foot aboard his very first assignment: consult widely, learn from his betters, take well-meaning advice with an open mind and, above all, recognise and admit when he was wrong. And by god, he would drag his speechmaking kicking and screaming up the ladder if it was the last thing he did. No escaping the sweet words regardless, of course. He might not ever be perfectly ready, but he could choose to get himself as close to perfectly ready as possible. Victory is life. Even the intangible wins counted as victories.

For now, though, talk of victory and speeches and human pomp and ceremony aside, he had a commemorative dinner to attend, and he'd heard rumors that dessert was... bougied-up peach cobbler. Coincidence? He thought not. Doran'atar brought up his tricom badge's personal transporter, typed in the coordinates of the Federation's massive dining hall and dematerialised in a flurry of gleaming particles.

 

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