“Warp Core breach in three minutes.”

A cold shiver ran down Vekora’s spine. The vice-like grip around her chest tightened, and her quick, shallow breaths did nothing to fill her lungs with oxygen. Instead, toxic smoke filled her airways, causing her to cough violently and reach blindly for support, finding it in the person next to her. 

“What do we do, Commander?”, the frightened voice of the young woman who Vekora was holding onto, asked, trembling and coughing, before transforming to a shriek as a nearby conduit sparked and overloaded.

Unable to speak, Vekora gripped Fisher’s arm. Her fingers dug into the charred uniform and the raw flesh underneath, any ounce of strength used to drag her towards a workstation. With each step, she felt laboured vibrations translating through the decks, growing in intensity before the ship rocked violently, inertial dampers failing for just a second.  

The dark grey eddies of smoke made it almost to see, leaving flashes of scarlet from one of the still-functioning terminals as their only means of orientation. On their way, they almost stumbled over something. A body, still warm, but devoid of the life that had filled it mere seconds ago, expression frozen in a mixture of incredulity and terror. 

“Here.”, Vekora managed to wheeze. The terminal they had reached was damaged, but functional. Its readout flickered, half of it had turned dark, but the underlying technology was functional. 

“I.. what do I do? I … please!” Fisher cried out. Her eyes wide in panic, and Vekora’s body involuntarily tensed, jaw set, teeth clenched, hands drawn into fists. When she forced herself to take a breath to speak, the electric scent of burnt circuits seemed to set her lungs on fire. 

“You tell me, Cadet.”, her voice came hoarse and ragged, barely rising above the discordant alerts and loud pulse emanating from the warp core. “This is your area.”

“We… we need to seal the micro fractures.”, Fisher tried, though sounding nowhere as confident in her abilities as she should be. 

Vekora’s nostrils flared. Her frustration had built to anger, unjustified as it was, and the dark spots that already impeded her vision seemed to grow with it. 

“How are we doing that?”, Vekora urged. Training and instinct were screaming at her to put an end to this, that Fisher wasn’t built for such situations, that this was a mistake. 

Fisher squeezed her eyes shut. “We… c-.. can manually seal them, but we need to lock down the magnetic constrictors.”

“Then do that!”

Through the thickening smoke, Vekora could barely see what Fisher was doing as her fingers sprinted back and forth across the display, but noted the cadet repeating the same steps over and over before they took. 

“Warp Core Breach in two minutes.”

As if to underscore that warning, a tremor rumbled through the ship’s superstructure, sending a nearby officer to his knees. 

“You know what to do!”, Vekora barked. She had to settle her emotions through conscious effort, slowing her breathing, releasing the tension in her body. There was no point in yelling. 

“Fix the microfractures manually..?”, Fisher asked, despite the suggestion coming from her in the first place. “But… but nothing is going to happen to me, right?”

“I can’t promise that.”, Vekora hissed.

“But…”

There were tears forming in Fisher’s eyes, threatening to spill over. And she wasn’t moving. 

“Get in there!” Vekora replied, and this time, she did yell. She tried to stop herself from simply shoving the Engineer into the direction of the warp core, but despite several years of Starfleet training, her old self had long won over. 

 “Warp Core Breach in one minute.”

“NOW!”

Fisher stumbled towards the toolbox that had once belonged to the Chief Engineer, and then hectically made her way to the warp core, but they had lost valuable time already. Too much. Vekora watched her standing within the barriers, tools raised, the first microfracture sealed, only to have it replaced by several others.

There was no getting out of this now. 

“I.. this.. I can’t… this isn’t working!”

Vekora didn’t even have time for a reply before blinding light erupted through the fractures, ripping the core apart with a violent brilliance. Jagged beams slashed across the room, for a split second only, before bathing terminals, officers and Vekora herself in the harsh light of impending destruction.

She closed her eyes. Not in fear, but in resignation.

When she opened them again, the tremors that had run through the ship had passed, and she once more felt her feet on solid ground. The noise had died down abruptly, as had the thick smoke and the taste of burnt circuitry. Around her, the metallic grid structure of the holodeck remained cold and unaware of just how badly this simulation had gone.

Vekora took a deep breath, allowing exhaustion to wash over her like a warm wave. The she turned to Fisher, who stood several feet away from her, wiping tears from her face. 

“I’m… sorry.” the young woman managed.

“Don’t be.”, Vekora said as she caught her breath, and regained her composure. She straightened, and tucked an out-of-place strand of hair behind her ear. 

“I… am. I failed because I hesitated… and … and because I started crying.”

“No.”, Vekora shook her head. “You succeeded because you did it anyway. That one minute wouldn’t have made a difference. Your mistake was not challenging the Chief Engineer when he redirected power from the shields.”

She decided not to address the crying part.

“But it was an order.”, the cadet argued. 

Vekora gave a slow nod. “And all you could have done was advise him of the consequences.”

“Would he have listened?” 

“No.”

“So this … was always going to happen?”

“Yes.”, Vekora replied indifferently. “Or rather – yes, most likely.”

Fisher turned away, her firsts clenched in anger. “That’s… unfair..”

Vekora’s voice softened, but only ever so slightly. She understood the other woman’s frustration, but no one had ever pretended that this was supposed to be fair. Starfleet coddled their cadets, but she wasn’t going to do the same. After all, Fisher had come to her for help in preparing for her practical instructions. 

“It is. But it’s also realistic. I am not measuring success by the outcome, but by what you as an individual do.”, she explained calmly. 

“Is that the Cardassian way of teaching?”Fisher spat, folding her arms in front of her chest, and still not looking at Vekora.

“It is.”, Vekora sighed. She had been taught in similar ways, and it had taught her to rise above her fears. It had made her efficient.

But at the same time, she had hated it.

She had hated her mentors, hated the training scenarios that so often didn’t have the comfort of holodeck safeties, and hated how she had been left to deal with her feelings afterwards.

Perhaps this kind of teaching wasn’t as valuable as she had once thought it to be.

She looked toward Fisher, who was headed towards the doors. 

“Wait.”, she said, and of course, Fisher stopped in her tracks and turned back around to her.

“Let’s… find a more pleasant program and… talk.”, she suggested. The words sounded strange coming from her. She wasn’t known for being touchy-feely. 

Fisher hesitated, likely thinking the same. Then, she gave a small nod, and an even smaller smile. “I’d like that. “