When she came aboard, it didn’t take her long to realize the sorry state the station was in. It wasn’t the duty rosters or the damage systems that worried her. Those could be fixed. More concerning was the crew, and the glaring absence of its senior leadership. 

And she knew right where she needed to start. At the very top.

Commodore Rachel Sinclar strode briskly out of the turbolift into the large command center at the heart of Archanis Station. It should have been a hectic and busy place, the heart of the Canopus class starbase at the center of sector operations, but on this day, it was a sedate affair. People were doing their work, sure, but it looked more like they were going through the motions than anything else.

She looked over at the office with a placard on the door that read Commander, Archanis Sector Operations. “Is he in there?” While she’d just been appointed as the new commanding officer of the station itself, Vice Admiral Alex Grayson was still the top dog around these parts, and if she’d learned anything over her first three days aboard Archanis Station, it was that the crew looked to him for guidance and counsel.

“He hasn’t been up here in days,” Commander Ari Skye admitted. Not that she blamed him. She didn’t want to be here either. None of them did. Not after what they had been through. She’d been one of only three to make it home from their fighter squadron, and what awaited her in the hangar bay after Vice Admiral Grayson gave the recall order, it had been nothing short of hell. She’d been forced into hard labor repairing the very ships the Vaadwaur used to exert their will over the rest of the sector. It wasn’t just trauma she was coping with. It was guilt too.

“You might try the gardens,” Chief Petty Officer Gabriel Salazar offered. The command chief made it his business to know everything about the station’s goings on, even in moments like this. How else could he lead for those that depended on him as the senior-most NCO on the station? “I’m told that’s about the only place he goes these days besides his quarters.”

The gardens? Yes, this was going to be a problem. Quite a problem indeed. 

Commodore Sinclair spun on her heels and stepped back into the lift without another word, and after a short turbolift ride, she arrived at the gardens. Not that gardens truly described the sight. The facility was immense with voluminous ceilings arching at least five decks high overhead and a landscape that looked to be almost a quarter kilometer across. It seemed a quite strange use of space given the utility of holodecks and the lush landscapes of Gorion VII just beneath them.

The commodore began to wander, walking down a damp dirt trail, pushing past fronds and ferns, and crossing a quaint wooden bridge over a rocky brook, the sound of freshwater and the chirp of birds a quite odd experience compared to the rest of the station.

Eventually, she came to a sand garden, set amongst bonsais and cherry blossoms. Sitting there on a bench, staring at ripples in the sand before him, was exactly the man she was looking for.

“It is customary to check in with the officer assuming your command – oh, I don’t know – within the first three days at least, wouldn’t you think?” Commodore Sinclair opened, puncturing the serenity with a bit more harshness than she’d intended. “Sir.”

The man turned slowly, revealing a face devoid of life and well-developed scruff a few days past the regs. “Why, hello to you too, commodore,” Vice Admiral Grayson offered with a meek smile, gesturing to an empty seat beside him. “Would you care to join me?”

“Join you to do what?” Commodore Sinclair asked pointedly. “To stare at something that does not change?”

“That’s what makes it beautiful, don’t you think?” Vice Admiral Grayson replied reflectively. “All around us, there is so much change, but here, these kernels of sand, they sit motionless and undisturbed.”

“Until the groundskeeper rakes them,” Commodore Sinclair countered. “Just as you need to here.”

Vice Admiral Grayson looked at her, not following.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, sir, but I’ve been here all of three days, and I can tell you already,” Commodore Sinclair pressed. “This station and its crew need their caretaker, someone to make them anew, to nurture and support them –  like the guy who rakes this sand does – but instead, here you sit, just staring at a pile of rocks.”

Her bluntness caught him off guard, but didn’t have the fight in him to push back. Instead, he just sort of sat there, staring at her numbly.

“I’ve read your dossier, Vice Admiral Grayson. Ace fighter pilot during the Dominion War and a borderlands commander even when Starfleet wanted no such thing. You know what it takes to lead,” Commodore Sinclair acknowledged. “I walk around and listen to what others have to say. They all say the same thing about you.” But it didn’t match the man sitting here.

“A dossier doesn’t paint the full picture,” Vice Admiral Grayson replied, his tone full of regret and sadness. “It doesn’t tell the story of the people under your command that you could not save, the people you led into battle but couldn’t bring home.” Like Fleet Captain Elsie Drake and Commander Mike Owens, executed right in front of him because he refused to bow.

The commodore just stared at him. What did he want her to say? That she was sorry? That it was okay for him to just sit here, a miserable mope, when the station needed him?

“Tell me, commodore,” Vice Admiral Grayson asked pensively. “How many folks have you lost under your command?”

“A few,” Commodore Sinclair replied truthfully. A few years younger than the man across from her, she had just barely missed the Dominion War, and while she’d had a number of premier postings over her career, they’d all been set well within the Federation’s core. 

“Count yourself among the lucky,” Vice Admiral Grayson offered. “I’ve lost so many I can’t even count anymore. The Dominion War, it was a revolving door of pilots who didn’t even have time to fill their locker before we were cleaning it out, and at Mars, I lost nearly every friend I had made over a decade out of Utopia Planitia.” It’d only been on account of a meeting back at Earth on supply chain logistics that he hadn’t ended up among the dead.

“But still onward you pressed,” Commander Sinclair noted. “You didn’t sit there then, feeling sorry for yourself. You got up and did something about it.”

“Yes, I set out to solve the problem,” Vice Admiral Grayson agreed. “Not just at a micro level, but at a macro one. I set out to build bridges with our neighbors, to prevent wars before tensions could ever simmer. But what good has that done?” Nothing he had done had mattered one bit, not when it came to the Lost Fleet, the Borg, or the contagion unleashed on Archanis, and the Vaadwaur hadn’t even been a thought in anyone’s mind when they came racing out of the Underspace with the intention of setting the quadrant ablaze. 

“You can’t fix the galaxy, sir,” Commodore Sinclair replied. “But you can fix this station and better this sector, and that has got to count for something.”