Minimum Safe Distance
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Pairing: Gen
Series: Becomes, a Woman
Her focus was command; she majored in astrophysics. She's a pilot. She knows how to run a starship. She's been through the simulations. And this? Is the goddamn Kobayashi Maru. Pike's gone; Sulu and that Kirk kid are on some fool mission to destroy that thing out there; Spock is in the transporter room with Chekov; and even the Kobayashi Maru wasn't this insane. No-wins she can deal with, but this is fucking ridiculous, and nobody on the sim was this crazy.
She was always the captain when she played Starfleet with her brothers. It's what she's always wanted, to fly starships.
Her father was a teacher, her mother a jeweler. It was her grandfather who inspired her. He was a retired Lieutenant Commander, a tall, strong man with large, calloused hands. She knew the parts of a starship, knew ranks and titles and star charts before she was in high school. This is her life. And her death, should it come to that.
It just might come to that.
Her father was quiet and bookish, much too reserved for her. When she was fourteen, the duty of teaching her to drive was given to her grandfather. He was the only person in her family who could talk over her.
"Jo," he would say sharply whenever she made a mistake. It was never Jolene with him the way it was with her parents. He never raised his voice at her, but he never coddled, never treated her as if she might break. It was simply "Jo," and he would trust her to correct the problem herself. She would learn-did learn. It made her strong, got her here, to the Enterprise.
She still hears an echo of his voice in her head when she's flying. He was always her best teacher. She needs him.
She is in command, if only for a few minutes, of Starfleet's flagship. She cannot make a mistake. The lives of 400 people rest on her shoulders, and she cannot allow this to break her.
Later. Later, it will hit her that six billion people are dead, that Vulcan is gone. That she saw it happen, and that everything they did, that losing Pike and almost killing half their senior officers, wasn't enough. Later, she will light candles and say prayers. Maybe she will call home, and maybe she will even cry.
But for now, she is sitting at her station, watching the viewscreen, unable to tear her eyes away. No one should have to see this. Which is very likely the reason she is still watching. Starfleet was her life before she even knew what it meant.
"This is it, Jo." It's her grandfather's voice, but not the strong, unflappable one she knows so well. It's tired, sad. It's all the things he never allowed her to hear. This is part of it, she knows.
He never told her how hard it could be. Granted, he never witnessed the death of a planet, but still. The Federation was barely twenty years older than him; he was there as it struggled through its own adolescence. He understood what she would be facing, and he expected her to deal with it, to be a good officer.
She would be. She had the echo of her grandfather's voice in her mind; she would be strong.
When Commander Spock-Acting Captain Spock-returns to the bridge, when Sulu retakes his station, she will return to her quarters and she will thank her grandfather. Then, she will light candles and she will say prayers for the dead. Not for herself. She has had enough of that, and she must be strong.
"Jolene Davis," her grandfather's voice says, "Do me proud."