The Long Way Around: Part 1

Posted on 01 Feb 2026 @ 6:35am by Lieutenant Commander Grayson McKinney

1,975 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Lathira Shoreleave
Location: USS Cairo (Excelsior-II Class), En Route to Lathira System
Timeline: 2426.01.31

The USS Cairo smelled of recycled air and other people's ambitions.

Lieutenant Commander Grayson McKinney stood in the turbolift and watched the deck numbers bleed downward. The ship was running at Warp 8.6, a sustained speed that left a high-frequency tremor in the bones of old Excelsior hulls. Most passengers stopped noticing it after the first day. Grayson had noticed it immediately and spent forty minutes that morning tracing the vibration to a plasma injection imbalance in the port nacelle. Not dangerous. Just inefficient. The kind of thing a tired chief engineer lets slide when a ship spends more time hauling officers than hunting threats.

He drummed his fingers against his thigh. Thrum-thrum-tap. The rhythm of a samba he'd learned in childhood, back when Rio summers meant freedom and starship corridors were something his father disappeared into, not something Grayson lived inside.

"Deck Twelve," the computer announced.

Grayson stepped out into a corridor designed for people shorter and narrower than he was. At 1.93 meters and 115 kilograms, he didn't so much walk through the Cairo as occupy it, a fact made clear when two ensigns flattened themselves against the bulkhead to let him pass. Their eyes widened, not quite fear, more like recognition that the laws of physics had opinions about right-of-way.

He was dressed for the holodeck: heavy compression pants, a gray tank top that showed the Carranca tattoo on his left deltoid, and boots he'd unlaced for comfort. His face, broad and handsome, the kind that belonged on recruitment posters if they allowed for impeccably groomed mutton-chop sideburns, split into an easy grin.

"As you were," he said, voice a warm baritone that suggested he found the whole situation mildly amusing.

The ensigns nodded and hurried past.

Grayson rounded the corner to Holodeck 2. He'd bartered for the time slot three days prior, trading a bottle of Lagavulin Distiller’s Edition he'd been saving for a better occasion.

The Quartermaster looked at the label, then at Grayson, and said, "Two hours. Private lock. Don't break anything expensive."

"No promises," Grayson had said, and meant it.

He palmed the access panel. The door hissed open.

The Cairo vanished.

The air struck him: salt, humidity, the dense warmth of Rio at dusk. The holodeck had painted the city in gold, sun bleeding into the Atlantic, favelas climbing the hills in a patchwork of pastel concrete and steel. Below, a bass line thumped, echo of those endless summers on his grandmother’s porch, Copacabana’s skyline lit against the dark, anti-grav taxis humming with the old samba drifting on the breeze. His toes tapped on memory’s floorboards, the city shaped by centuries and Federation hope. Homesickness, sharpened suddenly and unwelcome, anchors the scene in something real.

In the center of the rooftop sat an MMA-style cage. Chain-link fencing rose to eight feet, the steel mesh gleaming in the light. The mat inside was scuffed, stained with sweat and decades of imaginary blood. It looked like every no-frills fight gym Grayson had ever loved.

"You are three minutes late, Grayson."

The voice came from a corner of the cage, cool and precise as a targeting computer.

Commander T'Mara stood, wrapping her hands with the methodical care of a surgeon preparing for an operation. She was Vulcan, though she wore it less like heritage and more like a uniform she'd tailored to fit. Black tactical sparring gear. Hair pulled into a severe knot that emphasized the sharp angles of her ears and cheekbones. Grayson had known her for five years, shared a foxhole during the syndicate wars on Freecloud, pulled off an undercover extraction from an Orion pleasure barge that neither of them discussed in polite company, and once spent three days in a depressurized cargo bay playing twenty questions to stay awake while life support rerouted.

She was currently hitching a ride to the sector for what she called a "communications audit." Grayson called it a hunt. T'Mara had never corrected him.

"I'm never late, T'Mara," Grayson said, dropping his gym bag on a bench. "I operate on Brazilian time. We arrive when the narrative requires us to."

"That is an illogical justification for poor time management."

"And yet," Grayson said, sitting down and unlacing his boots, "here we are."

He began taping his hands. Wrist. Thumb. Knuckles. Wrist. The repetition centered him, quieting the part of his brain still calculating the Cairo's shield harmonics and wondering why a Sovereign-class starship was parked in orbit of a pacifist colony. The tape pulled tight. The ritual steadied him. It always had.

"Lathira System," Grayson said, keeping his tone casual. "Big detour for a comms audit. There are three subspace relays closer to the core."

"Lathira IV is a key node in the Spinward March frontier," T'Mara replied, her voice smooth as polished duranium. "The efficiency of its long-range arrays is... of interest to Command."

Grayson chuckled, the sound low and rolling. "Of interest. Right. Just like that 'agricultural survey' on Romulus was of interest."

He stood, flexed his shoulders, and walked to the ring. He climbed through the ropes and bounced on the balls of his feet, finding the rhythm in his head. Thrum-thrum-tap.

"You know," Grayson said, resting his arms on the cage fencing, "for a species that cannot lie, you people are terrifyingly good at being vague. It's like my Vovó used to say, 'Quem não arrisca, não petisca.' It's a good reminder that clarity isn't an absence of truth, but sometimes, a veil over it."

T'Mara rose from her stool. She was a head shorter than he, but she moved with such kinetic density that the difference was irrelevant. Vulcan's muscle fibers were denser than those of humans; pound for pound, she was stronger. Grayson had the reach and the mass. It made for interesting matches.

"Vagueness is not deception, Grayson," she said, stepping into the ring. "It is economy. Shall we?"

Grayson grinned. "Lights out, Spock."

The bell didn't ring. Instead, a church bell tolled somewhere in the simulated favela below, distant and mournful.

T'Mara moved first.

It was a linear attack, a palm strike aimed at Grayson's solar plexus. Efficient. Brutal. If it connected, it would collapse his diaphragm and end the fight in three seconds.

Grayson didn't block. He slipped.

He rotated his hips a fraction of a second before impact, letting the Vulcan's hand slide harmlessly past his ribs. He used the momentum to step inside her guard, bringing his mass into play. Today, he wasn't a striker. He was a grappler.

He wrapped an arm around her waist and drove his shoulder into her chest, hunting for a takedown.

T'Mara didn't panic. She pivoted on her back foot, using his own weight as a lever, and clamped a hand onto his wrist—her grip like a hydraulic vise. She redirected his force.

They spun, a tangle of limbs and leverage, and hit the canvas together.

Grayson landed on top, but T'Mara already had her legs locked around his waist in a guard. She bridged her hips, trying to roll him. Grayson sprawled, widening his base, making himself heavy. He was breathing hard. She wasn't breathing at all.

"You're favoring your left side," T'Mara stated calmly, even as she grunted with the effort of holding back 115 kilograms of human male. "The injury from the Gorn simulation?"

"Just a tweak," Grayson said through gritted teeth as she dug a knuckle into a pressure point on his ribs. "And stop analyzing me. Fight me."

"Analysis is fighting," she countered.

She released the guard and exploded upward, kicking him in the chest. Grayson flew back, rolled with the impact, and scrambled to his feet. T'Mara was already up, her stance perfect, her breathing unchanged.

Grayson circled her. He wasn't smiling now. His face had settled into what his Academy instructors had called the "Targeting Array" look, eyes flat, calculating, reading angles and vulnerabilities.

Grayson circled her. The smile was gone, replaced by the flat, calculating stare his Academy instructors called the Targeting Array. Angles, vulnerabilities, all measured. Doubt edged in as he moved. Lathira: model colony, low crime, high yield, peace on paper. So why did Intelligence care?

T'Mara watched his shoulders, not his eyes. Grayson knew she was reading his body for the tell that would precede his next move.

"Stability is often a facade for stagnation," she said. "Or concealment."

Grayson feinted a jab, then launched a heavy, sweeping leg kick. T'Mara checked it with her shin—crack—but the force knocked her off balance.

"Or," Grayson said, stepping in with a controlled hook that she barely parried, "you suspect the peace is fake."

He drove her into the cage. T'Mara ducked under his arm, grabbed his collar, and used a judo throw to send him flying across the canvas.

Grayson hit the canvas hard. He lay there for a second, staring at the holographic sunset, lungs burning.

"Peace is never fake, Grayson," T'Mara said, standing over him. "But it is fragile. And it requires maintenance."

Grayson laughed, a breathless, pained sound. He reached up a hand.

"'Maintenance,'" he repeated. "Is that what we're calling it now?"

T'Mara looked at his hand. For a second, the Vulcan mask slipped, just a millimeter, revealing a glimmer of old camaraderie.

She took his hand and hauled him up.

"It is what I call it," she said. "You call it 'hunting.'"

Twenty minutes later, the holographic sun had set, plunging the rooftop into purple gloom lit by the twinkle of city lights below.

Grayson sat against the cage, a towel draped over his head, a bottle of water in his hand. T'Mara sat on the canvas, in the corner, meditating. Or resting. With Vulcans, it was hard to tell.

"So," Grayson said, his voice muffled by the towel. "The Arawyn."

T'Mara opened her eyes. "Sovereign-class. Command codes indicate Captain Corbin has taken the center chair. A capable officer, though untested in deep-frontier crisis management."

Grayson pulled the towel down. His face was flushed, sweat gleaming on his teak skin. "She's sharp. I read her logs. She thinks like an engineer but acts like a pilot. I like that."

"She will need a strong Second," T'Mara noted. "Someone to temper her impulses with... pragmatism."

"Is that your polite way of saying she needs a paranoid watchdog?"

"Paranoia is a human emotion," T'Mara said. "I would say she needs a tactician who understands that the universe does not grade on a curve."

Grayson took a long drink of water. He looked out at the simulated ocean, watching the holographic waves catch the light.

The silence stretched. He drummed his fingers on his knee. Thrum-thrum-tap.

Silence spiked his pulse. It tasted of stale oxygen and forty-seven hours adrift in a dead runabout, waiting for Orion shields to drop. He filled the silence now, music, banter, the hum of a charging phaser. Anything but quiet.

"You think I'm walking into a trap," Grayson said. It wasn't a question.

T'Mara stood. She picked up her bag. "I think, Grayson, that you are a hammer. And the universe has a habit of providing you with nails. Even in a garden."

She walked to the cage door and paused.

"Enjoy the view, Commander. Lathira is beautiful. Try not to blow it up before I finish my audit."

Grayson grinned, the wry humor back in his eyes. "No promises, T'Mara. If the garden shoots at me, I shoot back."

She raised an eyebrow, the Vulcan equivalent of a laugh, and exited the holodeck.

Grayson sat alone in the simulated twilight. The city below hummed with life. The ocean whispered against the shore. He closed his eyes and let the sound wash over him.

There's always a move left on the board, he thought. Even when the board's on fire.

End Log

Lt.Commander Grayson McKinney
Chief Tactical Officer
USS Arawyn

 

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