Blind Spot

Posted on Fri Jul 31st, 2026 @ 6:40pm by Lieutenant Commander Hadir Prenar & Lieutenant Junior Grade Ralen Vessa
Edited on on Fri Jul 31st, 2026 @ 6:48pm

2,826 words; about a 14 minute read

Mission: Mini Mission-Adjustments [USS Orcrist]
Location: Tactical Simulation Suite, USS Orcrist

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Vessa had not hacked anything.

That felt worth remembering.

She had used her own clearance, followed three perfectly normal menus, ignored one warning she considered badly worded, and found herself inside a tactical simulation package that probably should not have been sitting under flight readiness without a lock on it.

That was not hacking. That was Starfleet leaving a door open and then acting surprised when a pilot walked through it.

The tactical simulation suite was dark except for the curved holo-display around her and the hard glow of a fighter control rig in front of the seat. It was not a true cockpit, not really. No smell of heated systems, no vibration through her boots, no pressure in the harness when the engines bit. But it was close enough to make her hands settle naturally over the controls.

On the display, the USS Orcrist turned slowly in simulated space.

Vessa sat forward, eyes narrowed.

“Computer, reset attack vector. Same run. Start me thirty thousand kilometres out, low sensor profile, port ventral approach.”

The computer chirped. “Scenario parameters have been reset.”

“Good.”

The stars shifted.

Her simulated fighter dropped into the run, small and ugly against the larger ship’s defensive model. The Orcrist was impressive from a distance. Clean lines, strong shield geometry, good overlapping phaser coverage. The kind of ship people trusted because it looked like it had already thought of everything.

Vessa did not trust things that looked finished.

She cut speed, angled beneath the port-side plane, and watched the tactical overlay adjust. The defensive response came fast. A phaser arc swung toward her. She rolled under it, pushing the fighter close enough that several warning indicators began flashing across the board.

“Yeah, yeah,” she muttered. “I see it.”

The ship’s simulated shields flared. The computer marked a kill shot across her projected flight path.

Vessa swore under her breath and killed the run.

“Reset.”

Again.

This time she came in higher, letting the Orcrist’s lateral sensors catch a whisper of her before dropping hard under the saucer’s shadow. The model responded exactly as it should have, which annoyed her. She wanted the flaw to be obvious. Obvious flaws were useful. Clean ones were the problem. They waited until people were tired.

The third run got her closer.

The fourth would have scraped paint if any of this had been real.

By the fifth, she had found it.

Not a hole. Not even a weakness, not in a reportable sense. Just a tiny delay where the defensive sweep prioritised a false high-side threat over a low, fast pass from a craft running cold. Less than three seconds. Nothing, if the pilot was average. Plenty, if the pilot was desperate or stupid or very good.

Vessa sat back, chewing the inside of her cheek.

“Computer, mark that sequence.”

“Sequence marked.”

“And flag it for East Mark review.”

“Unable to comply. Scenario file is assigned to Tactical Department.”

Vessa looked up at the ceiling.

“Of course it is.”

A line of amber text appeared on the display.

ACCESS REVIEW INITIATED. SECURITY NOTIFICATION SENT.

She stared at it.

“Oh, come on.”

The computer remained politely silent, which was rude in its own way.

Vessa pushed herself out of the seat and stretched one shoulder, feeling the old stiffness settle there. She could have exited the programme. She could have pretended she had opened the wrong file and got lost. She could have made this someone else’s problem, which was usually how Starfleet preferred its problems presented: clean, apologetic, and heavily sanitised.

Instead, she saved the marked sequence under her name.

Then she folded her arms and looked back at the frozen image of her fighter tucked under the Orcrist’s port ventral line.

If Security wanted to have a conversation, fine.

She had found their blind spot.

Behind her, the doors opened.

Hadir was ensconced in his office, his home, his private lair as it were. The holo display showed a number of areas on the ship. Nothing was there to note just another day on the Orcrist. He turned away to pour himself a cup of red leaf tea and when he turned back one screen was lit red.

"Hello, what do we have here." A Bajoran woman that Hadir recognized from her service record was Lieutenant Junior Grade Ralen Vessa. A Bajoran now assigned as the Assistant Commander of the Air Group. "What are you doing there?" He said as she entered the tactical simulator. His hand hovered over his comm badge as he was going to summon a security team. It lingered as he looked at her face on the screen, and then the hand dropped as he decided to handle this himself.

When the door opened he stepped in with a trademark smile. "Now, Lieutenant Vessa your authorization does not clear you to be here."

Vessa turned at the sound of his voice.

Her eyes flicked over him—uniform, posture, the whole very-official package—and yeah, Cardassian. That registered, sure, somewhere in the background noise of her upbringing. But it didn’t stick.

“No, it doesn’t,” she said lightly.

She tipped her chin toward the frozen tactical display.

“I didn’t break into anything. The file was sitting in a flight readiness path, so I opened it. When the computer flagged me, I didn’t try to hide it.”

A small shrug.

“But before you decide what to do about that, you should look at what I found. Port ventral approach, low sensor profile, false high-side contact. Defensive sweep drops out for just under three seconds.”

Her expression sharpened just a fraction.

“That’s enough time for someone very good—or very desperate.”

Hadir's expression did not change. However, he was impressed. She had broken into an area that she was not supposed to be in, found issues in his security protocols and was rather stunning to boot. He stepped toward her to have a look at her data.

Hadir looked at the data and then up at her. "This is a program that is a work in progress. There is not only no reason for you to be here, but there is no reason for you to access the program." He stopped and looked at her stone-faced. "However, one cannot ignore what you have found here."

That took a little of the fight out of her posture, though not enough to make her look harmless.

“Good,” Vessa said.

She looked back at the display, eyes tracking the frozen approach path.

“Because I’m not here to make your department look bad. I don’t care who finds the gap. I care that it’s closed before someone outside this ship finds it.”

Her mouth curved faintly.

“And for what it’s worth, Commander, if I wanted to sneak around properly, you wouldn’t have got the alert until I was gone.”

"I received no alert Lieutenant. On most ships it is the Captain of a vessel that knows everything that happens and why. But most ships do not have a Cardassian running Security. On this ship it is I who know what happens before it happens. Which brings me to the point that regardless of what you found, and how helpful it may be. There is still the matter that you are here. Your curiosity is not a good enough answer to justify entering a secure area." Hadir could not put his finger on it, but there was something about this woman. Something that was both infuriating and intriguing at the same time.

Vessa’s smile stayed, but it changed a little.

Less joke. More careful.

“Curiosity isn’t my answer.”

She glanced at the display, then back to him.

“Readiness is. I’m Deputy CAG. If there’s a tactical scenario sitting where flight can reach it, and it involves someone putting a fighter under this ship’s defences, I’m going to look. I should have asked first. That part’s on me.”

There. Admission. Clean enough to count.

Her eyes held his for a second longer than they needed to.

“And as for knowing what happens before it happens...” Her mouth curved a little sharper this time, something warmer threading through it. “That must make conversations with you very difficult, Commander. Hard to keep anything interesting when you’ve already seen the ending.”

She let that linger just a fraction too long, gaze steady on his.

Then she tipped her chin toward the marked run.

“So tell me what you want.” A faint tilt of her head, almost inviting. “I can leave, you can write me up, and we both pretend this was a discipline issue with a useful accident attached.” A beat. “Or I can show you exactly how I got through… and you can decide whether you’d rather close the hole, or see how far I can push it.”

There it was, the Bajoran steeliness. There was an attraction, one that he made sure to keep hidden, welling up within him. Out of all the women he had met, this was one who would not back down and that was breathtaking. There was a moment where he wanted to show her the power he held aboard this vessel, make an example out of her, and place the report in her file. But, the other side of this equation was that he needed a reason to remain in her presence. Her eyes, they were what held him the most. Two pools that showed her defiance and strength, laced with softness and a love of life. All at once he had his answer. "Show me what you have. The paperwork will be there when we are done."

Vessa’s mouth twitched.

“Your paperwork, I hope.”

She let that sit for half a second, then moved back to the control rig before the line could become more trouble than it was worth.

“Computer, replay marked sequence. Half speed.”

The frozen image shifted. Her simulated fighter pulled back from the port ventral line and began the approach again, slower this time, every movement stripped of speed and drama. Vessa stood beside the display, arms loose now, her attention on the run rather than on him.

“Here. First contact is deliberate. I let your lateral sensors catch just enough of me up high to make the sweep care.” She pointed to the false high-side return as it blinked across the overlay. “That is the bait. Not much, but enough.”

The projection advanced. The defensive arc adjusted.

“Then I drop cold underneath the response. Low power, tight angle, no active targeting. Your system does what it is supposed to do, mostly. It prioritises the cleaner threat.”

Her finger moved to the lower approach path.

“But for just under three seconds, this lane is soft. Not open. Soft. There is a difference.”

She glanced at Hadir then, all attitude tucked behind something sharper and more useful.

“If I’m attacking the ship, I probably don’t take the shot on the first pass. I mark it, pass it to my wing, and make you defend two bad choices at once on the second.”

A small pause.

“Which is why I saved it instead of pretending I hadn’t been somewhere I shouldn’t.”

Hadir watched the replay stone faced. She was right, the weakness was plain as day. But then again. "These maneuvers that you executed, are not standard maneuvers. They are a higher level of flying. That said, most of the enemies that we are up against are not as skilled as you." It was a compliment, but one that came from a Cardassian. So, it was hard to tell if it was sincere. However, it also had the benefit of being true. "A widening of the point defense grid would destroy your fighter during the maneuver."

Vessa looked at him, one eyebrow lifting.

“That almost sounded like a compliment.”

The smile was brief. She turned back to the display, studying the widened defensive envelope in her head.

“Then widen it. If it kills the fighter, it fixes the problem.”

She tapped the lower approach path.

“But run it against our own flight patterns first. East Mark, Edoras and West Mark will all be operating close to the ship when things get busy. No point closing the gap if Tactical starts shooting down its own pilots.”

Her eyes moved back to him.

“I’ll give you our approach and recovery profiles. You tell me how far you can push the grid without clipping them.”

"Agreed!" There was a tone of both competition and something more in the tone of his voice. Hadir watched the simulation run through again. He wanted to see her maneuvers before he reconfigured the simulation's point defense grid. When the simulation finished he stood there with his hand on his chin silent for a moment. "You know, there is elegance in your tactics. Every move has purpose, every sacrifice measured. I confess... I admire beauty in all its forms." He added the last sentence over his shoulder as he reprogrammed the point defense grid.

Vessa’s mouth curved a little more.

“Good thing I cover a few categories, then.”

She held his gaze for a beat, enough to make it clear she had heard everything in that last sentence, not just the tactical part.

Then she turned back to the display and settled into the control rig again.

“Don’t get too distracted admiring the work, Commander. I’d hate to think Tactical missed the shot because you were busy being poetic.”

"Poetry has its place, but it is not a distraction." Hadir began and then stopped himself from adding that she on the other hand was a distraction. "Computer reconfigure point defense grid to close the ventral gap. Configure within 300 microns all arks. Read transponder codes of all fighters and hold fire when transponders are in range. Re run simulation when ready." The computer chimed its acknowledgement and began to reconfigure the simulation.

Vessa watched him programme the grid, the smile still sitting at the corner of her mouth.

“You nearly said something else.”

She stepped closer to the controls, near enough to look over the new parameters without quite giving him the space back.

“Poetry isn’t the distraction, is it?”

Her eyes lifted to his, calm and openly amused. The history between their peoples was there somewhere, but so was the fact that neither of them appeared interested in behaving sensibly about this.

“Don’t worry, Commander. I won’t tell anyone the Cardassian Chief of Security lost his train of thought over a Bajoran pilot.”

Hadir was going to respond, in fact his mouth opened to respond. However, no words came. She had him dead to rights as it were and he had nothing to say. Being put in check by a woman was perhaps the sexiest thing a woman could do to a Cardassian male. At the moment Hadir wondered if she knew that. The simulation completed and that gave Hadir something new to talk about. "Yes, see I was right. A simple recalibration repaired the issue." He decided not to address her comment.

Vessa looked from the repaired grid back to him.

“You were right?”

A quiet laugh escaped her.

“I found the hole. You closed it. Pretty sure that makes us both right.”

She settled back against the controls, still watching him.

“You could just say thank you, Commander. I promise it won’t kill you.”

"You couldn't even if you wanted to. But, for what it is worth thank you Lieutenant. Just do me a favor next time. Simply ask if you could work on the simulations rather than just doing. Impulsiveness will get you nowhere." Hadir almost needed to get out of there. The idea was if he could, it would be a personal reset of sorts. He would be able to shake this awkward attraction off.

Vessa’s mouth pulled to one side.

“Impulsiveness found the problem.”

She transferred the marked sequence and East Mark’s flight profiles across to Tactical, then shut down the control rig.

“But fine. Next time I’ll ask first.”

She moved past him towards the doors.

“Probably.”

At the threshold, she glanced back.

“And thank you. See? Still alive.”

Her smile sharpened.

“Try not to miss the distraction too much, Commander.”

Then the doors closed behind her.

Hate to see her go, but love to watch her leave. Hadir thought as the woman left. For the first time in a number of years Hadir Prenar needed what humans called a cold shower. He decided to make his way to his quarters to do just that and try to forget about everything that had just happened. He could not understand precisely how this Ralen had gotten under his skin. Has the thoughts plagued him he stepped into the corridor and went about his day.

 

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