Enemies to Allies

Posted on Sun Mar 29th, 2026 @ 9:07pm by Captain William Abernathy

1,060 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Forgotten Wounds
Location: USS Arcadia | Captain's Quarters

Confident, steadfast, and commanding. Captain Abernathy was all of those things, but once he crossed the threshold of his quarters, the door slid shut with a soft hiss, sealing out the steady rhythm of the ship behind him. It was here that he could be a version of himself that he could not be in front of the crew. For a moment, he didn’t move. The quiet pressed in around him. It was different from the silence of space, heavier somehow, filled with the things a captain didn’t say aloud.

He crossed his quarters slowly to the viewport.

The USS Arcadia was hanging in careful formation with the Klingon D7 battlecruiser, its angular silhouette unmistakable against the scattered light of distant stars. Even when the Klingon vessel was resting, it looked as though it was ready to lunge with fury. Klingon ships always did that. They were predators, and predators never forgot what they were just because they were told to wait or to act differently. Klingons being diplomatic was unsettling.

Abernathy folded his arms. Working with them. When he was in the war, that was not fathomable.

He exhaled sharply through his nose, the memory surfacing. Unwarrantedly. Donatu V, 2245. Smoke, fire, and that distinct taste of blood in his mouth. Klingons in the corridors of the USS Onondaga, roaring as they cut through his crew. He remembered the weight of the d’k tahg in his hand, the resistance as it carved through Klingon flesh. The look in that commander’s eye.... right before Bill Abernathy gave it a good carving.


He flexed his fingers unconsciously, as if expecting to feel the blade again. Bill had looked as though he were haunted by a phantom of his past when he saw that face again on Arcadia's viewscreen.

Back then, the Klingons had come for blood. Not territory. Not leverage. Just blood, guts, and glory.

And now Starfleet expected him to sit across from them, to coordinate, to trust them?

Abernathy turned away from the viewport, pacing once across the room before stopping at the small table where a PADD lay darkly idle, waiting. Reports. Minefield projections. Civilian manifests. The names of thirty-seven innocent children aboard that transport. Families. People who had nothing to do with old wars or new diplomacy. Their lives were mangled by mines that they waded into unknowingly.

They were the reason he was here. Not the Klingons, but the Klingons had offered themselves up for a joint venture.

He picked up the PADD and activated it, bringing up the joint operation outline. Klingon assistance was not optional, but Starfleet Command deemed it necessary. Because of their experience with the mine types, their ability to read patterns Starfleet had never officially acknowledged. Without them, the odds of getting those civilians out dropped sharply.

Abernathy’s jaw tightened. Klingons. He would never confess to being a prejudiced man, and he would never permit himself to be overt about it, but he was just that. Prejudiced and in pain.

He didn’t trust them. Not their instincts nor their 'restraint'. A Klingon saw a minefield as a challenge to be overcome, not a hazard to be carefully dismantled. Precision wasn’t their way. Honor was. And even their honor, in Abernathy’s experience, had a way of getting people killed when it was allowed to take the lead.

But they had come. That mattered. At least it did in the eyes of the Federation and Starfleet Command.

He set the PADD down again, more forcefully than intended, and dragged a hand across his face. This wasn’t Donatu V. This wasn’t a battle for survival against an enemy that refused to listen. This was something else, and it was far more fragile.

Peace

Or at least the beginning of something that might one day resemble it. Believe it or not, Bill Abernathy did want peace, but with the Klingons?

Abernathy moved back to the viewport, his gaze settling once more on the Klingon ship. Somewhere aboard that vessel was the same commander he had fought years ago. The same man whose blood had stained his hands. A survivor, like him.

They had recognized each other instantly.

There had been no mistaking it. The flicker of memory, of violence shared and endured. And yet neither of them had reached for weapons this time. Not yet, at least.

“Strange,” Abernathy muttered to himself.

The word felt inadequate.

He rested a hand lightly against the cool surface of the viewport. Out there, beyond the two ships, lay the minefield. Silent. Invisible. A graveyard waiting to happen. Federation ordnance, abandoned and forgotten, now served as a serious threat to the very people it had once been meant to protect. The lives of Federation civilians hung in the balance. Waiting.


Waiting for Starfleet. Waiting for him. Waiting for Klingons to help....

Abernathy closed his eyes briefly. He could feel the old instincts pressing in the part of him that knew how to fight Klingons, how to outmaneuver them, how to hurt them before they could do the same. That part of him was simple. Reliable. Honest in its brutality, but this? No, this was harder.


To stand beside them. To rely on them. To believe, even for the span of a mission, that they would not turn on him, on the Arcadia?

He opened his eyes again. “They won’t,” he said quietly, as if testing the words. Not today.

Because today there were children in the dark, and even Klingons understood what it meant to protect the helpless, even if only to prove their own strength. Their honor could be a weapon, but it could also be a shield, if pointed in the right direction.

Abernathy straightened, the tension in his shoulders settling into something firmer. Resolve.

He didn’t have to trust them.

He just had to understand them.

That was enough.

His gaze shifted once more between the Arcadia and the D7, two ships from worlds that had bled each other for decades, now holding position side by side. Uneasy. Temporary. Necessary.

“Do your part,” he said under his breath, though whether he meant the Klingons or himself, even he wasn’t sure.

The room remained silent.

Beyond, the stars burned cold and indifferent, the minefield waiting just out of sight.

 

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