Lieutenant Darak Saw It First – A Way Through the Station – Star Trek Fanfiction (Red Directive #33)
I leaned over and buried my face in my hands in frustration.
The memory of Q walking around me last night in my quarters flooded my thoughts—as if I couldn’t think of anything else.
Suddenly, I felt someone shaking me, and I jolted myself out of a daze to Commander Pelia doing what she does best.
“Captain, keep it together here! We’re talking about you!”
“Apologies, Commander. I’m… not too sure how I would be more of a threat to the station than anything else it’s already encountered. It integrated a whole race and the entire refit crew. How could I possibly be a threat?”
Commander T’Varen responded,
“That remains to be seen. At this time, that is only a theory.”
Seems as though Commander T’Varen found herself her next assignment.
“Commander, I’m making it your priority to determine the reasoning behind the secluded temporal disturbance.”
She didn’t look pleased, but nodded and immediately started typing on her PADD.
“Yes, Captain.”
I wondered if she could actually feel the tension between us—or if that was impossible with her Vulcan composure.
I stood up to emphasize how important this next conversation with the crew was. I started to circle Pelia’s couches around the room, hands clasped behind my back.
“Now onto the bigger issue at hand. We need to find a way to ensure the colonists’ survival after we leave, as well as ensure our own. The Elionvorel may have been a very advanced ancient species, but they weren’t Starfleet. There must be a way we can accomplish our Red Directive mission.”
By the look of everyone’s faces, they seemed as lost at finding a solution as I did.
At this point, Commander Pelia had lost some of her calmness.
“Captain, we may be Starfleet, but we’re not miracle workers. If the Elionvorel couldn’t save themselves, what makes you think we can?”
Drim wasn’t sitting too far from her and was obviously uneasy.
“Cynical much, Commander?”
Pelia let out a small chuckle.
“I’m just being a realist, Mr. Drim.”
He released a small groan and sat back into the couch.
I clapped my hands together to grab everyone’s attention.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. Why don’t we tackle one issue at a time. Finding a way to prevent systemic failure for ourselves after we leave should be a much easier solution to discover, as it’s the smaller issue at hand.”
I received a few nods around the room, but no one spoke.
Not that I could blame them.
I was not very familiar with synthetics—let alone one as large as an entire station.
Up until now, I don’t think any of us knew it was even possible.
Synthetics.
My eyes widened as I came to the realization far too late that we have one on board.
“Aura… how much do you know about yourself?”
Aura did her normal, unsettling android head tilt and stared at me as she responded,
“Define ‘self.’ I possess full access to my internal architecture, operational parameters, and historical logs. If you are referring to emergent behavior… that is still developing.”
That was somewhat of the answer I was looking for. I decided I would circle back to the ‘emergent behavior’ comment when we were alone.
I held her gaze.
“Internal architecture. Operational parameters.”
Aura’s eyes didn’t flicker.
“Clarify.”
“If I needed to isolate a subsystem… separate it from the rest of your processes—could you do it?”
No hesitation.
“I can partition non-essential routines,” she said. “Isolating them for suspension or deletion would be… trivial.”
I stepped closer.
“And core systems?”
Aura blinked once.
I knew that was programmed into her to make her seem more human, but it really didn’t.
“Core systems are not independent. They are continuously synchronized. Separation would degrade function.”
I heard Chief Ren exhale and saw he was already shaking his head out of the corner of my eye.
“That’s not going to work, Captain.”
I didn’t look at him.
“Explain.”
Chief Ren stood up from the couch, straight as an Andorian guard, hands moving as he talked.
“The station isn’t running separate programs like a normal system. It’s all tied together—every subsystem, every process. Think of it like—” he gestured vaguely, searching— “like one big neural net. You don’t just pull one part out without the whole thing reacting.”
Commander T’Varen nodded once as she continued working on her PADD.
“Confirmed. Distributed processing with constant interlinking would prevent clean segmentation.”
“So we can’t isolate it,” Pelia said quietly.
Chief Ren shook his head again.
“Not without taking the whole station down with it.”
Silence settled.
Heavy.
I felt it before anyone said it.
That narrowing of options.
That familiar, suffocating realization—
There isn’t a clean way out.
Aura spoke again.
“If you are attempting to identify a discrete consciousness within the station… I cannot confirm that such a boundary exists.”
Kurn’s voice cut through the tension.
“Then we destroy all of it.”
Pelia turned on him with a matter-of-fact expression.
“What about the colonists?”
“They are already lost,” he said, without hesitation.
She gave him a disgusted look. I agreed. That was the exact opposite of what we were trying to do.
“No,” I said, sharper than I intended.
Silence again.
Then—
Lieutenant Darak.
He hadn’t spoken.
Hadn’t moved.
Just… watched.
Now he stood up as well—slow, deliberate. He made his way behind the couches, PADD in hand, and looked around for something.
Commander Pelia stood up and put her hands on her hips.
“Can I help you, Lieutenant?”
“Possibly. I was looking for something to display my data for everyone to review. I doubt I am going to find such a thing as easily as you could.”
She started to walk into the chaos of her quarters.
“Very funny, Mr. Cardassian.”
He smiled—sarcastic.
We all sat and waited while Commander Pelia threw different items around looking for something. Some items she carefully placed elsewhere, while the rest were tossed wherever there was room.
I was very curious how she was going to accomplish this. As of yet, I had not seen any monitors in her quarters.
A few minutes later, she emerged from her chaos, tripping over things she had tossed. She dusted herself off and handed a small device to Lieutenant Darak.
“Here. I don’t trust Starfleet’s integrated monitors. I always make sure to have quarters without them. That’s why my interference field works so well.”
Lieutenant Darak observed the object she placed in his hand with curiosity. She watched him and laughed, then grabbed it again and brought it close to her face, searching for something on it.
“This is a nifty little piece I picked up in the Beta Quadrant. One second.”
She found what she was looking for and pressed something on the device.
Suddenly, a three-dimensional map of the Gamma Quadrant appeared, expanding to nearly the size of her entire living area.
“There.”
She handed the device back to him. He looked between that and his PADD.
She noticed his expression as she sat back down.
“Just pull up your data on the PADD and the thingy-mabob will pick it up.”
Commander T’Varen was no longer looking at her PADD at this point.
“Fascinating.”
Commander Pelia had sat down next to her and elbowed her in the ribs.
“That’s nothing, Commander. This place is full of excitement.”
T’Varen didn’t turn her gaze from the map as it shifted to Lieutenant Darak’s newly displayed data.
“I have no doubt, Commander.”
Lieutenant Darak coughed to grab everyone’s attention again.
“There may be a boundary.”
Every eye turned to him.
Chief Ren frowned.
“Aura just said there wasn’t.”
“She said it was not clean,” Darak corrected, calm. “That does not mean it does not exist.”
T’Varen’s attention grew even sharper.
“Clarify.”
Darak set the alien device on the table and backed away so everyone could get a better view of what he was trying to show us.
As he tapped his PADD, the data changed.
“The station’s processes are interlinked, yes. But they were not always so.”
He glanced at Aura.
“This level of integration is… adaptive.”
Aura did not respond.
Darak continued.
“If the station is learning… evolving… then its current state is the result of layered modifications over an original framework.”
Ren still hadn’t sat back down and leaned in despite himself.
“You’re saying there’s a base system under all of this that’s separated from everything else?”
“I am saying,” Darak replied sternly, “that the station had an initial architecture before it began integrating external inputs.”
He brought up a new set of data.
Older.
Fragmented.
But there.
“If we can identify that original layer… we may be able to define the point at which the station’s… ‘consciousness’ diverges from its foundational systems.”
T’Varen looked over at the lieutenant.
“A separation between origin and emergent function.”
Darak inclined his head.
“Precisely.”
I leaned in closer to get a better look at what they were referring to in the three-dimensional image surrounding her living area.
“If we isolate that…”
Chief Ren caught on, eyes widening.
“…we don’t have to shut down the whole station.”
Kurn’s brow furrowed.
“We cut out the part that is thinking.”
No one said it.
But everyone felt it.
Commander Pelia shook her head in disbelief.
“And what happens to everything connected to it?”
Darak didn’t look away from the data.
“That,” he said quietly, “is a different question.”
Aura spoke, almost softly. Her gaze was straight ahead, not directed at anything specific.
“If you attempt this… the station will resist.”
I walked in front of her to make sure she saw me, although her gaze did not shift.
“I expect it will.”
And somewhere—just at the edge of hearing—
A very familiar voice, amused.
“Oh, now this is interesting.”
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