Fighting Bureaucracy

Posted on Tue May 12th, 2026 @ 9:46am by Lieutenant JG Nayisa Wrea & Commodore Jacob Kane

Mission: Aeon's End
Location: Starbase Esquimalt
Timeline: 5 years ago, after "The Fall of Sera III"
1494 words - 3 OF Standard Post Measure

When the vessel identified as the Moran finally docked with the Federation starbase, it felt like a momentary relief. Nayisa helped the civilians offboard into the hands of the medical staff, feeling bad for the children crying for their parents and the adults trying to soothe them. She felt a little weak from the waning adrenaline and the blood loss, but was determined to report what just happened. When she finally exited the ship, she put up a hand when a teal uniform tried to tend to her. “I’m fine,” she lied, ignoring the lingering pain. “I need to speak to the station commander. Now.”

“You can talk to the CO in Sickbay. You’re injured,” the Lieutenant insisted. The woman had clearly been through something; all of the civilians had burns, cuts, and smudges, and this woman was no different. Her arm was in a makeshift sling, blood staining her torn clothes. The worst was one of the adults, who was missing a limb and lost consciousness from the blood loss by the time the vessel arrived.

“No,” Nayisa said firmly. “I will only consider medical treatment after I talk to the station commander. This is urgent.” They argued back and forth a little before the Lieutenant conceded with a sigh, instructing a security officer to escort her to a briefing room with a nurse, just in case.

Commander Borsch was tall for a Tellarite, and had a gut that nobody was quite sure how it managed to fit under his uniform and pass regulation fitness testing. But it did and he had. With a snort from his narrow nasal passages, he fixed the woman with a frown. "What is the meaning of all this? I'm hearing word of attacks, this far into Federation territory. We have starships in the area to-"

Nayisa stood when the Commander entered, ignoring the faint pull of a headache when she did so, then promptly cut him off when he started his little rant. "Sera III has been destroyed." She almost forgot how uptight some of the higher ranks could be. Maybe it was influenced by her time away from bureaucratic sterility, but she couldn't stand the audacity to be surprised that starships didn't make problems disappear. "I doubt even a squadron could have stopped what I witnessed, Commander. Starfleet Command needs to know about this new threat. Whatever it was that attacked the planet, they incinerated everything in less than 30 minutes. There were thousands of enemy vessels!"

"Preposterous!" the Tellarite snorted. "You're clearly delusional and traumatised-"

"Delusional?? Ha! If I'm delusional, then so are the seven survivors in your sickbay!" Nayisa knew it was difficult to believe. She didn't want to believe it herself. But to not even consider the possibility that she was telling the truth was dangerous. She ignored the nurse asking her to calm down. "We all saw the same thing. Some unknown force attacked the colony, then destroyed it. I watched these things, whatever they are, ram into the evac ships and destroy them. Pull my ship's sensor logs if you don't believe me!"

"Someone call security..." Borsch sighed. He was overworked, distracted, and had no time for these silly ramblings.

Nayisa looked at him for a few long seconds in disbelief. This was precisely why she believed rank was merely symbolic. There was no way this sad excuse for a sack of potatoes had more lived experience than her, because if he did then he'd be taking her a little more seriously. "Please, Commander. Let me show you what my sensors picked up. I have no reason to lie about this. Please, trust me for like ten seconds."

A look from a somewhat sympathetic Lieutenant Commander finally, reluctantly, forced Borsch to relent. With a semi-dismissive wave of his hand, he motioned for Nayisa to continue. "Yes, yes. Show."

The second the Commander gave her permission, Nayisa did everything she could to keep herself from running to the room's wall displays. There was a faint tremble in her fingers as she typed, but after a couple seconds she gained access to the Moran's sensor logs. Footage appeared on the displays, showing the massive ships and the thousands of smaller vessels. The metric showing the number of scanned entities exceeded 9 thousand. In the footage, the evac vessels were rammed by these small ships and eventually destroyed. Behind Nayisa, she could hear the nurse audibly gasp when the massive ships fired at the planet and obliterated it. Nayisa herself didn't say anything, instead watching Borsch, silently daring him to dismiss what was on the screen.

The Tellarite's face screwed up as his eyes squinted a little more than usual.

"Well, that's...ah..." He shuffled his feet. "We should...report this. To someone."

Nayisa's eyes slightly narrowed as her expectations for this man kept diminishing. This idiot commander was lucky that there was nothing in the room worth turning into a makeshift projectile. "Yeah. We should." Her words were curt. Her head was pounding. She must have swayed slightly, because she felt the nurse hold her shoulder. This time, she didn't fight it, letting the nurse support her.

Not breaking eye contact with the now uncomfortable Tellarite, she turned her head slightly toward the nurse. "Repair what you can in ten minutes. I'm sure the Commander has some high priority calls to make, and I don't want to appear delusional when I provide my report."

The nurse, for her part, did a double-take between Nayisa and Borsch, before listening to the former and opening up a medkit.

The Tellarite Commander scurried around grumbling about a few different things, mostly sounding put-out, before waddling back to the pain-in-the-neck newcomer. "You. How did you get here? Were you followed? There are reports of sensor shadows all over the edge of the system!"

"I wasn't followed," Nayisa answered curtly, carefully taking a seat so she wouldn't fall over. "My ship is the Moran, which is docked here at your station. It's a camouflaged Flyer issued by Starleet Intelligence." The news of sensor shadows was concerning, but she followed practically a dozen evasive maneuvers. There was no way they followed her. "Tell me more about these reports. What exactly are they reporting?"

Borsch scowled, barely holding in his annoyance and frustration. "Hundreds. It can't possibly be accurate, there's no way there would be a force that size this far into Federation space..."

The blood loss only made the sudden paleness in Nayisa's skin more pronounced. "Commander, please," Nayisa began, leaning forward. "Listen to me when I tell you that Starfleet is grossly unprepared for this. What's coming makes the Dominion War seem like child's play."

"Preposterous..." the Tellarite responded, though far less confidently than before. "We would have known at least something about these things. We're not exactly on the border. Where did they come from?"

Nayisa glared at the Commander. "We probably haven't heard anything because they have destroyed every station and outpost in their path." She hated spelling things out for people, but this guy was holding onto his denial like it was a prized possession. "You want me to tell you what you want to hear. I'm sorry, we don't live in that fantasy. If your command means anything to you, you will stop denying what is right in front of you and do something!"

"I...ah..." The Tellarite stammered, looking around with deepening uncertainty. "We should contact Starfleet Command; request instructions. Perhaps a fleet-"

"You don't have the luxury of that kind of time!" Nayisa shot back. If he continued this any longer, she was borrowing the nurse's tricorder to throw at him. Maybe it would snap him out of it. "I have the information, so let me handle Starfleet Command while you go do your fucking job!"

The Tellarite stared again. Then nodded and waved his hands. In his mind, the Commander wasn't sure it was worth the effort, given the force arrayed against them. "Go. Go! Do whatever it is you seem to need to do!" he growled, stomping away to call forth more crewmen to snarl at.

As Commander Douchebag left, Nayisa used the nurse to stand, ignoring the protests to movement in her condition. "Just get me in front of a computer, then I'll stop making your life difficult," she promised.

It didn't take long to find a space, and Nayisa practically slumped into the chair. She took a couple seconds just to catch her breath before she typed on the computer with her good hand. "Nayisa Wrea, Serial Kappa Sierra 29676501," she said, when prompted for her identity. "Priority transmission to Starfleet Intelligence." She'd let them deal with Starfleet Command. When another face appeared on the screen, she straightened slightly, more as respect to a familiar face than for any bureaucratic reasons.

"We have an existential problem on our hands."