Samantha Beresford has injected me with about a bucketful of drugs. Not just hyronaline for the radiation, but anti-toxins for the fumes when Storm Command burned, and half a dozen agents for adjusting my neuro-chemistry after the pounding my nerves took in Bresar's mindscape. And she made me sleep on the flight back from Vulcan, and she wants me to sleep now.
For that matter, I want to sleep now. I feel woozy and nauseous and very, very tired. But there is so much to do -
So I sit at the desk in Experimental Engineering, and I try to sort out the most important things.
The Tellarite, Slett, at least kept things moving while I was off the station. But there is still a mammoth job to do on the repairs... and our communications still need disentangling. I have about six dozen conflicting high-priority requests in front of me, and I have to work through them all, and still find time for essentials of my own. Like the series of debriefings on the whole wretched business, or the board of inquiry where I'll have to defend the hapless Captain Willis over the loss of the USS Marengo....
Of course, my problems are the same as everyone's. The sudden appearance and equally sudden crash of the Hegemony of Bresar has left a monumental mess, everywhere....
The disruption of Starfleet's communications left us exposed against the Klingons, and the KDF took full advantage. The hard-fought salient at Aznetkur has, finally, collapsed. T'Nae and Paul Hengest and many others managed to salvage something from the ruins, though - the Klingons didn't claw back all their territorial losses after the Bercera business. And what they did re-take, they paid for. In blood, for every cubic centimetre of space.
The repercussions of the Hegemony will still be felt across the Federation. There were many, many deaths on both sides in the battle of Andoria, and those losses are keenly felt. Chancellor th'Oziph, though, has agreed to a deal with the provisional Vulcan government - now that the Hegemony's leadership is dead or imprisoned, a blanket amnesty will be granted to everyone else involved. It's the right thing to do - it galls my Andorian instinct for clan-honour and blood-vengeance, but it is the right thing to do.
There will be a coolness, though, in Vulcan-Andorian relations until the rift heals... and we need that healing. We still have the matter of the hundreds of thousands of Romulan refugees accepted into Vulcan space under the Hegemony's aegis. And we owe Obisek and the Romulan Republic for their help... and that is an edge of worry for me, too, because they are our allies, but not necessarily our friends.
And events in Romulan space are... turbulent. The loss of the Hegemony fleet has left the Tal Shiar resurgent, taking back their losses with brutal efficiency. Valikra's home system of Porruma is the last holdout, and it is under daily bombardment by Tal Shiar forces - they will send in an occupation force soon, though there may be very little left to occupy. But to mount this military operation, the Tal Shiar must have sold itself further into bondage to the Elachi and their shadowy Iconian masters....
And there are other fronts, the Borg and the Dyson Spheres, the terrorist resurgences in Cardassian space....
It is all a big mess, and we need to clean it up. We need to pull ourselves together, to heal from this. We are wounded, and we can't go on being wounded.
And dealing with all these urgent engineering requests is - a very small step in the right direction. I sigh heavily and start putting the PADDs into some sort of order.
It takes a moment for me to register that the office door has hissed open. I look up.
"Vice Admiral Shohl." Admiral Semok is standing in the doorway. He is blinking, and looking - for a Vulcan - distinctly embarrassed. "Ah," he says, and stops.
We need to heal. Let it start here, in a small way. I stand up, and give him my best military salute.
"Welcome back, sir."
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