The Last Peaceful Morning

Posted on Mon Jul 27th, 2026 @ 5:14am by Captain Marc Steyn & Lieutenant Reruk

3,896 words; about a 19 minute read

Mission: Season 1, Episode 1: Ashes of Wolf 359
Location: Cape Town - Steyn Residence
Timeline: 3 Months After Wolf 359

ON

It had been three months since the battle of Wolf 359.

Three months since the Borg cube had appeared like an omen in the darkness of space. Three months since thousands of lives had been lost, since Starfleet had been forced to confront an enemy unlike anything it had ever faced. For most of Earth’s population, life had slowly begun to settle back into its familiar rhythm. The streets were busy again, markets were filled, children returned to schools, and the nightly news had moved on to other stories. The invasion had become another chapter in history — a terrifying one, but a chapter nonetheless.

For many, the Borg were becoming a distant memory, a frightening story that belonged to yesterday.

But for those who had been there, those who had stood on the front lines and watched friends disappear into the cold silence of space, Wolf 359 was not something that could simply fade away.

The battle remained in their thoughts. In their dreams. In the quiet moments when the noise of everyday life disappeared and the memories returned.

Marc Steyn was one of those people.

The injuries he had suffered during the battle had healed faster than expected, thanks to Starfleet medical technology, but healing was not always measured by physical recovery alone. The scars beneath his uniform had faded, but the memories had not. The faces of those who had not returned, the sound of weapons fire echoing through the corridors, and the cold, relentless advance of the Borg remained with him.

He had been placed on medical leave following his return to Earth, a decision he had accepted reluctantly. Marc had never been someone who enjoyed sitting idle. His entire adult life had been defined by duty, by movement, by having a purpose. Standing still felt unnatural.

Now, three months later, his leave was almost over.

One week remained.

After that, he was expected to report back for duty — wherever Starfleet Command decided that duty would be.

That was the problem.

His orders had not arrived.

Despite multiple enquiries through official channels, despite messages sent and requests for clarification, Command had remained frustratingly silent. Marc had tried not to read too much into it. Starfleet had suffered enormous losses at Wolf 359, and the entire organization was still rebuilding, reassessing, and preparing for an uncertain future.

But waiting was difficult.

Especially when you had spent your life knowing exactly where you needed to be.

That morning, Marc had finished breakfast with his son, Daniel, before watching the teenager leave for school. Daniel had inherited his mother’s curiosity and his father’s stubborn determination, though Marc often wondered which trait caused him more trouble. Watching him walk away with his school bag slung over one shoulder, Marc was reminded how quickly time moved. It seemed only yesterday that Daniel had been small enough to carry in his arms. Now he was navigating adolescence, friendships, and the complicated world of growing up.

After the house had fallen quiet, Marc stepped outside onto the veranda.

His home sat high enough above the city to offer a breathtaking view of Cape Town stretching out beneath him. The morning sun bathed the landscape in golden light, illuminating the familiar silhouette of Table Mountain rising majestically beyond the city. The mountain stood like an ancient guardian overlooking the bustling streets below, its rugged slopes softened by the thin veil of clouds drifting lazily across its peak.

Beyond the city, the deep blue waters of Table Bay shimmered beneath the clear sky. Ships moved slowly through the harbour, leaving faint trails behind them as they went about their ordinary business. The coastline curved away into the distance, where waves broke gently against the shore, carrying on a rhythm that had existed long before humanity had reached for the stars.

From this height, Cape Town looked peaceful.

Almost untouched.

It was strange, Marc thought, how a world could appear so calm after everything that had happened. How people could return to their routines while, only months earlier, humanity had faced annihilation.

He leaned back in his chair and looked out across the city, wondering how much longer Starfleet intended to keep him waiting.

He lifted his coffee cup and took a slow sip.

The rich aroma reached him first — dark roasted beans with hints of chocolate and toasted nuts, carrying the earthy warmth of a freshly brewed morning blend. The flavour was deep and smooth, with a slight bitterness balanced by a subtle sweetness that lingered on his tongue. It was the kind of coffee that demanded to be enjoyed slowly, a small reminder that not every moment needed to be rushed.

For a brief moment, Marc allowed himself to enjoy the peace.

No alarms.

No orders.

No battles.

Just the sound of the wind moving through the garden, the distant hum of the city, and the warmth of the cup in his hand.

Then the quiet was broken.

A soft chime echoed from inside the house.

The visitor at the door.

Marc sighed faintly, placing his coffee down on the table beside him. Whoever it was had chosen an interesting time to arrive, though he knew better than to assume anything was ordinary anymore.

He turned toward the open doorway.

"Come in," he called. "It's open."

For a moment, there was only silence.

Then footsteps.

And Marc Steyn had the sudden feeling that his brief period of waiting was about to come to an end.

To Dazad Targaryen, a planet with a thriving biosphere like Earth didn't just feel alive; it screamed. As he walked up the winding path toward the Steyn residence, the distant thrum of Cape Town's commercial traffic, the ocean waves crashing against Table Bay, and the steady, rhythmic heartbeats of thousands of civilians who believed they were safe all bled into his "Listening." It was a chaotic sea of vibrations that he had to actively force down.

Three months. It had been three months since his ship, the Soval, had been reduced to a hollowed-out, drifting tomb in the wreckage of Wolf 359. Three months since Dazad had stood on a burning Bridge and listened to the subspace frequencies as the Borg systematically silenced thirty-nine starships, one by one. While the rest of Earth returned to its comfortable, naive routines, the new Commodore was still hearing the dying screams of the fleet. He could still feel the vibration of the Collective's cutting beams. His own son, Wilkan, had been bleeding out on the hull of the Kumari only a few thousand kilometers away from him during the battle, forced to rip his ship in half just to survive because the Admiralty had paralyzed themselves with outdated protocols.

The Federation was soft. Coddled by decades of minor border skirmishes and fragile treaties, they looked at the empty berths at Utopia Planitia and thought they could simply rebuild the past. They wanted to treat Wolf 359 as an anomaly, but Dazad knew better. The monsters now had their coordinates and they would be coming. He adjusted the stiff collar of his new uniform. The single, solid bar of a Commodore felt heavy on his neck, a rank minted in the ash of the graveyard because Starfleet suddenly realized they needed the prophet they had ignored for a century. He hadn't spent forty years charting the lethal anomalies of the deep Delta Quadrant just to watch the Alpha Quadrant be assimilated in its sleep.

"Mister Steyn," Dazad said, his baritone voice cutting through the quiet morning air as he stepped onto the sunlit veranda, "I apologize for the lack of official correspondence from Command. The bureaucracy is still counting the dead and drafting hollow reports. I preferred to bring your orders myself." He walked toward the wooden railing, letting his hand rest against the structure. He tightened his fingers, focusing on the solid, stagnant vibration of the wood to ground himself against the overwhelming sensory hum of the valley below.

Steyn’s eyes fell upon the pip adorning the man’s collar — a single insignia encircled by an additional gold trim, marking him as a Commodore. Then came the recognition of the face regarding him now. Dazad, wasn’t it?

Marc had been scheduled to take up a position aboard Captain Dazad’s ship shortly before the Wolf 359 incident, but everything had changed in the blink of an eye. The battle had rewritten countless futures, his own included. Looking at him now, Marc could see that even Dazad had been marked by the aftermath. The weight of those events had aged him, leaving traces that no uniform could conceal.

“Commodore.”

Marc rose swiftly to attention, though he was acutely aware that his current appearance was far from acceptable Starfleet formal attire. He wore nothing more than a simple white shirt, left unbuttoned so he could feel warmth against his skin, and a pair of plain shorts — his attempt to enjoy the final days of the South African sun before duty inevitably called him away.

“Forgive my attire,” Marc said, offering a faint, apologetic smile. “I wasn’t expecting a house call from Command.”

He stepped aside, gesturing towards the interior.

“Please, come in. Would you care for some coffee? Freshly ground and its real. None of the replicated coffee in this house.”

"Coffee is a generous offer," Dazad declined with a slight, almost imperceptible shake of his head, "but I've already had enough to fuel a shuttlecraft and, quite frankly, the raw input of Earth is already testing the limits of my focus." He stepped past Marc, his posture rigidly straight as he moved further onto the sunlit veranda, his dark, unblinking eyes squinting slightly against the sudden glare of the morning sun. He took in the man before him—the unbuttoned shirt, the bare legs, the desperate attempt to cling to the warmth of a world that had nearly ceased to exist not long ago. It was a human sentiment Dazad understood, but one he could no longer afford to indulge.

"Don't apologize," Dazad continued, turning his ancient gaze back to officer, "But don't get too comfortable either. The future Starfleet had planned for you may've changed, but like our new enemy we too must learn to adapt." Reaching inside the breast of his immaculate, black-collared uniform, Dazad drew out a silver PADD and placed it flat on the table, right next to the hand-ground coffee. "Your medical leave is terminated, effective immediately," Dazad stated, the raw authority of his new rank settling heavily into the quiet Cape Town morning. "You're being assigned to the Starship Genesis."

"I'm not familiar with her," Marc said, reaching for the coffee pot. "I'm assuming it'll be as Chief Science Officer?"

He topped off his mug, watching the dark liquid swirl before taking a slow sip. One more coffee, he told himself, and he'd finally have enough motivation to go for the run he'd been putting off all morning.

Setting the mug down on the countertop, he picked up the PADD with little more than casual curiosity. He expected a standard personnel briefing—perhaps a transfer order or an assignment detailing the ship's scientific mission.

Instead, his eyes caught the words near the top of the document.

For a heartbeat, he simply stared, convinced he'd misread them. His brow furrowed as he read the line again, slower this time. The familiar hum of his home seemed to fade into the background as the implication settled over him. His pulse quickened, and he instinctively lowered the PADD just enough to look at the Commodore, searching for some hint that this was a mistake or an elaborate joke.

He looked back at the screen once more, his expression shifting from confusion to disbelief.

"You want me..." he began, almost to himself before meeting the other's gaze. "You want me to captain her?"

The words felt strange coming out of his mouth. Pride flickered beneath the shock, quickly chased by the immense weight of the responsibility being placed on his shoulders. Captaining a starship wasn't simply another promotion—it was the culmination of years of service, sacrifice, and trust. Of all the possibilities he'd expected to find on that PADD, this had never crossed his mind.

Dazad didn't answer, instead he let the quiet morning breeze sweep across the veranda. The Commodore was watching the way Marc’s fingers gripped the edges of the PADD. In his mind, the constant, chaotic hum of Earth seemed to pause, focusing down to the steady, accelerated pulse of the man standing before him. Dazad stepped closer to the railing, looking out over the sprawling beauty of Cape Town, his dark, ancient eyes reflecting the harsh golden sunlight.

"Command wanted to give you another science station," Dazad relented, his baritone voice calm, steady, and devoid of hesitation as he looked out at the city. "They wanted to place you somewhere comfortable, somewhere safe, where you could write reports and pretend the universe hadn't fundamentally changed." The Commodore turned, "I overruled them. Starfleet doesn't need another cautious scientist analyzing sensor ghosts in a comfortable lab. We need leaders who have smelled the ozone of a burning Bridge and survived."

Dazad's posture was as rigid and commanding as the uniform he wore, "I didn't choose you out of sentimentality or favor. I chose you because you know the cost of failure, and you have the spine to bear it. You are the Captain of the Genesis. Now read your orders, get dressed, and go build the damn future before I change my mind..."

Marc felt almost assaulted by the words, as though the choice had been taken from him before he'd even realised there had been one. He was Captain now, whether it was something he had wanted or not.

In many ways, he understood what the Commodore meant. Since Wolf 359, the harsh realities of space—and the limitless dangers hidden within its boundless frontier—had shifted into something far starker than anyone had imagined before that battle.

Was the captaincy something he truly wanted?

He turned the question over for only the briefest moment. It was all the time he needed.

Yes.

"Understood, Commodore."

He snapped to attention, the entire debate within his mind lasting little more than a heartbeat before settling into certainty. He would never have called himself a veteran—not by any stretch of the imagination—but he now understood the true meaning of loss and failure. Eleven thousand souls, their sacrifice still painfully fresh in his memory, were testament enough to that.

"With her being an explorer, will families be permitted aboard, or will I need to make alternative arrangements for my son, Daniel?"

"The Genesis is not a nursery, Captain," Dazad replied, his voice devoid of sympathy but heavy with a grim, pragmatic finality. "She is a front-line combatant masquerading as an explorer. We are heading into waters where the Borg have already tasted blood, and they will be hunting for any weakness we leave exposed. If you bring a child into that, you are not being a father—you are being a liability."

He watched the internal war play out on Steyn’s face, recognizing the exact moment the man chose his duty over his hearth. It was the same look Dazad had worn when he watched his son, Wilkan, fighting to keep the Kumari together during the slaughter at Wolf 359. He had watched from the Soval as Wilkan - brilliant, desperate, and stubborn - had essentially ripped his own ship in half to vent the plasma fires and save his crew from assimilation. It had been the only reason Wilkan still breathed, and the memory of that narrow escape still burned in Dazad’s mind like a cooling star.

"I have already bypassed the civilian board to secure a placement for your son at the Academy prep program on Mars," Dazad said, his tone softening only by the smallest of margins. "It is the only place in the Federation that remains effectively out of reach of the Collective’s current operational parameters. It will be hard, and he will resent you for it, but he will be alive to resent you. That is the only promise I can offer you in this new reality."

He stepped toward the veranda steps, pausing to glance back at the man who was now tasked with the Genesis, "Six hours, Captain. The drydocks won't wait for your grief, and neither will the Borg. If you are going to break, do it now, while you are still standing on solid ground. Once you step onto that ship, you belong entirely to Starfleet. Do we understand each other?"

"With all due respect, sir, if Genesis is to be defined as an explorer, then let her be exactly that." Marc's voice remained calm and measured, but there was a quiet conviction behind every word. "Let her become the symbol that Starfleet—and the Federation—needs right now."

He held the admiral's gaze.

"We don't need another battleship prowling the frontier, reminding every world that our first instinct is to prepare for war given what we have suffered. We need more ships like Enterprise out there—vessels that embody the ideals Starfleet was founded upon. Exploration. Discovery. Diplomacy. Hope. Every time one of our starships arrives in orbit, we need people to see the Federation extending a hand, not clenching a fist."

His expression hardened, though not with anger. It was the resolve of a man who had lived through the consequences of conflict.

"I have no illusions about why I was offered this command." The words caught in his throat, and for a fleeting moment he looked away. It took a conscious effort to force out the next sentence. "I was chosen because..." He stopped, swallowing against the weight of the admission. "...because I survived."

The word lingered between them with uncomfortable finality.

"I survived when so many others didn't. Starfleet knows that. The Federation knows that. Whether I like it or not, people see something in that. They see resilience. They see hope. If my taking command of Genesis helps remind people that we can endure—that we can rebuild after tragedy—then I'll shoulder that burden. I'll be that symbol every bit as much as the ship herself."

His shoulders relaxed almost imperceptibly, the certainty in his voice giving way to something far more personal.

"But I can't do it alone."

The confession came quietly, stripped of rank, protocol, and ceremony.

"I need my family with me, sir. If I don't have that... then I can't accept this assignment."

He drew a slow breath before continuing.

"David has spent the last few years watching his life be packed into cargo containers every time I received new orders. He's lost his mother. He's been separated from everyone, displaced from where he called home more than once. For the past year he's lived with Dana, my ex-wife's sister, because it was the only stability I could give him while I served where Starfleet needed me."

Marc shook his head, regret etched across his features.

"It was the best decision I could make at the time, but it wasn't the right life for a boy his age. He's sacrificed enough because of my career."

His voice softened further.

"He's only fifteen years old, sir. Fifteen. No child should have to endure what he has, and I won't ask him to bear any more of that burden if I have a choice."

For the first time since Commodore arrived, Marc's appeal ceased to be that of a seasoned captain addressing a superior officer. It became something much simpler—and far more difficult.

"I'm asking you to let me be both the captain Starfleet needs... and the father my son deserves."

Dazad’s jaw tightened, the deep lines around his eyes hardening into granite as he stared at Marc. For a long, suffocating moment, the silence on the veranda was broken only by the distant roar of the ocean below. The Commodore didn't answer with heat or anger. When he spoke, his voice was dangerously quiet, vibrating with a cold, absolute conviction that seemed to draw the warmth right out of the South African morning.

"Hope doesn't shield a hull against a graviton beam, Captain Steyn," Dazad said, stepping back up the veranda stairs until he was mere inches from Marc, "and symbol or not, a Borg cutting beam will melt through a family deck just as easily as a main engine manifold. You talk of Enterprise and the ideals of the Federation as if the universe didn't just watch thirty-nine starships turn to ash in less than an hour. Remember, even Enterprise wasn't shielded when they lost 18 members of their crew during first contact."

Dazad turned his gaze toward Table Mountain, his hands clenching into tight fists behind his back as he forced down the overwhelming mental noise of the planet around them. He thought of Wilkan. He thought of the blood on the deck of the Kumari, the smell of burning plasma, and the sheer, agonizing horror of knowing his own boy was seconds away from death while he stood helpless on a burning Bridge. He didn't want that horror for Marc. But he also recognized the stubborn, unyielding core of the man standing before him.

"I buried enough fathers and sons at Wolf 359 to last a dozen lifetimes, I will not watch you turn your own flesh and blood into collateral damage to satisfy a comforting illusion. The Genesis leaves drydock with or without a full civilian complement," Dazad said, his tone shifting from thunderous authority to a grim, begrudging compromise. "If you bring him aboard, he adheres to full crisis drill protocols and the moment - the exact moment - this ship enters a high-threat situation, you send any nonessentials off the ship. You do not gamble their lives on your ideals."

"That is not up to negotiation, Captain. That is my condition for leaving him in your care. Now make your decision, pack your gear, and tell your son that his father just traded his quiet retirement for the front line." Without waiting for a response or a formal salute, the Commodore turned on his heel and strode down the veranda steps, his heavy footfalls echoing off the stone path as he headed back toward the transport site, leaving Marc alone with his coffee, his PADD, and the crushing weight of the future.

Marc remained standing in the garden for a long moment, listening as the commodore's footsteps retreated down the path. They gradually faded from earshot, replaced by the gentle sounds of the afternoon around him—the rustling of leaves in the breeze, birdsong drifting through the neighbouring trees, and the distant murmur of life carrying on beyond the garden.

Only when Dazad had disappeared completely did Marc allow himself to exhale.

A slow smile spread across his face, equal parts relief and disbelief.

"Did I just win an argument with Commodore Dazad?" he murmured to himself.

A quiet, almost disbelieving laugh escaped him as he shook his head.

"I should probably count myself lucky and not give him the chance for a rematch."

Still smiling, Marc slipped his hands into his pockets and took one last look around the garden. For the first time in weeks, the future seemed just a little less uncertain.

END

RSS Feed