The Long Crawl: Part V

Posted on 20 Jan 2026 @ 9:50pm by Lieutenant Commander Elias Harlan

1,894 words; about a 9 minute read

Elias sat at the small desk in his guest quarters, nursing his second cup of coffee and staring at the same PADD screen he’d been reading for the last hour without really seeing it. The run-in with Jorik two days ago hadn’t gone as badly as it could have—nobody had ended up in sickbay, nobody had been court-martialed—but it had been tense, raw, and loaded with emotions he had no interest in unpacking right now.

So he’d taken to hiding in his quarters. It was the one place on the Intrepid where Jorik wasn’t likely to appear unless he deliberately sought him out, and Elias was betting on Vulcan pride (or whatever passed for it) to keep the man at a distance until they were both aboard the Arawyn. He swallowed another mouthful of the cooling brew, shook his head at his own reflection in the viewport, and tried to refocus on the Arawyn’s latest diagnostic logs.

The door chime sounded.

Elias flinched—actually flinched—his hand tightening around the mug handle hard enough to make the ceramic creak. He set it down carefully, squared his shoulders, and braced himself for round two.

“Come.”

The double doors hissed open.

Instead of the blue tunic and arched eyebrow he’d steeled himself for, Captain Alistair Harrington stepped inside—shoulders straight, posture regal, that familiar sparkle of mischief dancing in his bright blue eyes. He carried two PADDs, one tucked under his arm, the other held loosely in his hand.

“Captain,” Elias said, coming to his feet in a single smooth motion, surprise warring with ingrained protocol.

“Good afternoon, Mister Harlan.” Harrington’s voice rolled out in that crisp Received Pronunciation, warm and unhurried, as if he’d just dropped by for tea.

Elias gestured vaguely toward the door. “If you were looking for me, sir, I would have been happy to meet you on the bridge. There was no need for you to—”

Harrington raised a hand, gentle but firm, cutting off the protest. “It’s nothing pressing, Commander. I merely thought we might have a quiet word.”

He stepped further into the room, the doors sliding shut behind him, and extended the smaller of the two PADDs toward Elias.

“I’ve been doing some light reading,” Harrington said, eyes twinkling, “and I was hoping you might indulge me with a few answers.”

Elias took the PADD, glanced at the title page, and felt his stomach do a slow roll.

It was his own paper—his final-year Academy thesis on warp-field geometry, theoretical limits, and a speculative summary of a warp-field test protocol. He hadn’t looked at it in years. The title stared back at him in the old Academy font: Asymmetric Nacelle Field Modulation: Revisiting Early Transwarp Experiments and the Excelsior-Class Anomaly.

He’d written it when he was twenty-one, full of curiosity and zero scars. Back when the Federation’s brief flirtation with transwarp still fascinated him—back when the Excelsior-class had been the bleeding edge, and the failure of the “Great Experiment” had left more questions than answers in the classified logs.

He remembered the guest speaker that year: an old, white-haired engineer with a gleam in his eye, retired but still sharp. He had served on the Enterprise-D as an engineer and had been brought to the Academy for a lecture on the Dyson Sphere incident. After the formal talk, Elias had ended up in a quiet corner of the lounge with the legend, sharing a few rounds of Andorian ale. The guest speaker, half-drunk and nostalgic, had let slip something he’d overheard during another living legend’s brief stay on the Enterprise-D at the same time: the Excelsior’s transwarp drive hadn’t simply failed. It had been sabotaged—deliberately, surgically, in a way that the project engineers would never have caught without tearing the entire system apart and rebuilding it from scratch.

The revelation had lit Elias up like a plasma torch. He’d spent months chasing what-ifs, digging through declassified fragments, running simulations, writing theories that never saw the light of day. Then life—real life—had intervened: away missions, injuries, transfers, demotions. The starry-eyed cadet had grown into the tired lieutenant commander who knew better than to chase legends when the ship was bleeding plasma.

He looked up at Harrington, the PADD still in his hand.

“Sir… this is ancient history. I wrote that when I was still young enough to believe everything had a solution.”

Harrington’s smile was gentle, knowing. “And yet the questions you asked were sound. The discrepancies in the Excelsior logs, the computer models that never matched reality, the possibility of deliberate interference…” He tilted his head. “You never published the final version, did you?”

“No, sir.” Elias set the PADD down carefully. “Starfleet buried the transwarp program. I was told—politely—to move on to more practical studies.”

Harrington stepped closer, voice dropping to that warm, conspiratorial register. “And yet here we are, aboard an Excelsior-class refit, with a chief engineer who once dreamed of proving the old girl could have gone faster. I wonder, Mister Harlan… if the chance presented itself, would you still want to know?”

Elias felt the old itch flare—the one he thought he’d buried under years of cynicism. He met the captain’s eyes, saw the genuine curiosity there, the absence of judgment.

“Hypothetically,” he said slowly, “if someone were to propose a controlled test… I’d want to know the parameters. And the risks.”

Harrington’s eyes sparkled brighter. “Then perhaps we should discuss parameters. And risks.”

He gestured toward the small table by the viewport. “I brought the second PADD for a reason. It contains the Intrepid’s latest warp-field calibration data—post-refit, of course. I thought we might… compare notes.”

Elias exhaled through his nose, a short, almost-laugh. “You’re serious.”

“Deadly serious, Commander.” Harrington’s tone softened, but the mischief remained. “The Arawyn is five light-years out. We have time. And I suspect you’ve been waiting for a captain who wouldn’t clip your wings for asking the question.”
Elias looked at the PADD again, then back at Harrington.

He pulled out the chair.

“Alright, sir,” he said, voice low but steady. “Let’s talk theory.”

They both settled into the small table by the viewport, Harrington replicating a fresh pot of raktajino while Elias stuck with his black coffee—stronger this time, the way he liked it when he needed to stay sharp. The captain poured himself a mug, the spiced aroma filling the room, and they leaned over the PADDs like two engineers who’d forgotten they were supposed to be captain and chief.

Elias knew the dangers of pushing a ship beyond its design limits. He’d read every public briefing on the Intrepid’s post-refit status—or so he thought. As he scrolled through the second PADD Harrington had brought, he realized some details had been deliberately omitted from the open files.

He frowned, eyes narrowing as he read.

Structural shoring on the nacelle struts and bracing—complete removal of hull plating in those sections, followed by reinforcement of the space frame itself with tritanium alloy plating and embedded verterium cortenide dampers. The power transfer conduits running from the warp core to the plasma injectors had been replaced entirely with high-capacity theta-matrix conduits, their inner linings infused with beryllium crystal lattices for superior heat dissipation and flow efficiency. Redundant bypass junctions with auto-modulating regulators had been added to shunt surges before they could cascade.

He paged forward to the plasma injector specs and felt his eyebrows climb.

Variable-geometry injectors, coated in a ceramic composite that looked suspiciously like neutronium alloy—thin layers, not enough to raise eyebrows on a manifest, but enough to make a difference. Automated flow modulators synced directly to the engineering core for real-time adjustment, preventing hot spots before they could form.

Elias shook his head slowly, setting the PADD down with deliberate care.

“Captain, this is nuts.”

Harrington took a measured sip of raktajino, eyes gleaming over the rim of the mug. “You’ve spent years buried in the theory, Commander. Antares Yards, the Fleet Museum, that Corps of Engineers stint—they weren’t just pit stops. You’ve been chasing the edges of warp geometry since the Academy. Past designs, future projections… the kind of work that could rewrite the manuals if Starfleet ever let it out of the lab.”

“Theory’s one thing, sir,” Elias said, voice low and steady. “Putting it into practice on a ship this old… that’s asking for a cascade failure or a reprimand. Or one hell of an explosion if it goes south.”

Harrington turned to face him fully, that merry glint in his eyes sharpening into something more serious—invitation rather than command. “Precisely why we should try it. The Excelsior-class was built for experimentation. The entire line began with one ship—the ‘Great Experiment’ back in the 2280s. Yes, the transwarp testing officially failed, but it pushed the envelope. These refits have given her more than enough stability for a controlled test. Your notes on asymmetric field modulation could coax a bit more out of her coils.”

Elias leaned back, crossing his arms. “I’m guessing long-term component testing was part of the deal when the fleet authorized the upgrades.”

“Of course,” Harrington replied, settling back into his chair. “Occasionally we get test missions from R&D slotted into our schedule alongside our regular duties. Pieces of equipment arrive in shipments, the think tanks work out kinks, and we provide real-world data. It’s part of this ship’s primary mission—beyond the patrol and survey work we do for the fleet.”
Elias exhaled through his nose, a short, almost-laugh. “Now I see why she has a former engineer for a captain.”

Harrington’s smile widened, warm and knowing. “Indeed. So what do you say? I’ve scheduled the test run for 0900 hours tomorrow morning. Your sister will be on the bridge making sure we don’t fly apart. Join me in engineering. We’ll give them something to talk about at R&D, hmm?”

Elias stared at the PADD for a long moment, fingers drumming once against the edge. The old itch was there—the one he thought he’d buried under years of cynicism and transfers. Harrington wasn’t pushing; he was offering. A chance to see if the theory held up in reality, without the usual fallout from captains who preferred the book to the breach.
He looked up, meeting the captain’s eyes.

“0900,” he said finally, voice steady. “I’ll be there, sir. But if we shear a nacelle pylon, I’m blaming the raktajino.”

Harrington chuckled, low and genuine. “Deal. And Elias?” He paused at the door, turning back. “Thank you for trusting me with this. I know it’s not easy.”

Elias gave a small nod—guarded, but real. “Just don’t let my sister kill us both when the alarms start screaming.”
The captain’s eyes twinkled. “I’ll do my best.”

The doors hissed shut behind him, leaving Elias alone with the cooling coffee and the weight of tomorrow’s test.
He picked up the PADD again, scrolling back to his own old thesis.

Maybe—just maybe—the starry-eyed cadet wasn’t entirely gone.

 

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