Trauma, Memory, and the Future We Build

Posted on Tue Oct 28th, 2025 @ 10:43pm by Commander Cressida Vale MD & Petty Officer 1st Class Alina Tevaris

2,231 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Prologue
Timeline: You’ll See

Earth, Late August 2375

Despite what the Dixon Hill holonovels suggested, it rarely rained in the City by the Bay.

At least, that was how it seemed to Cressida Vale, who in just two weeks would start her fourth year at Starfleet Academy.

How exciting it was to be back!

Certainly she had spent her four weeks of leave productively. So many of her classmates had gone back to their homeworlds, but Cressida saw her family on Titan often enough that she didn’t feel compelled to spend the month lounging on their sofa. It had been her opportunity to see the Galaxy on her own terms. Though many of her Sol-based friends spent their time hiking in Federation-famous nature preserves, Cressida had the time of her life wandering the quiet, hidden spaces underneath the glitz and glam of Stardust City on Freecloud.

But now here she was, back in the quad on yet another sunny day, back in her dark grey, blue-shouldered, form-fitting two-piece uniform, a fourth gold elongated pip on her collar marking her as a Senior Grade Cadet, ready to start her final year of on-campus learning.

She wasn’t the only early arrival. In Boothby’s famous garden she spotted a familiar face reading under an old elm tree.

“If it isn’t Malik Vance!” she exclaimed as she got within a few meters, grinning. “I thought you were still on Morassia!”

Her friend got to his feet, held his PADD to his side, and wrapped his other arm around her in a hug. “I got back two days ago. Getting settled, like you.” He let go of her and stepped back to a comfortable distance. “It’s good to see you, Cress. How was your leave?”

“You’d have hated it, but it was better than I could’ve imagined!” Cressida answered, beaming. “I got into a reserve lift that brought me to the roof of one of the tallest towers on the planet. You could see bright lights all the way to the horizon.” She sighed.

“Glad you had fun,” Malik said. “Oh, Elise says hi, by the way.”

Cressida cocked her head and studied the look on her friend’s face. The slight smile. The glow in his eye. The way he held himself. “You finally made a move.” His smile grew wider. “Took you long enough. Where is she?”

“She’s here,” he answered. “We’re meeting a few people for drinks tonight, want to come?”

“You know it!”

“Great, I’ll let her know.” Malik tapped his commbadge, but rather than chirp and connect to the comm network, it gave off a sad error sound. “Huh.”

“I’ll try mine.” Cressida tapped her badge and heard the same error noise. Another tap. Another error. “They doing maintenance on the network?”

“They usually announce that sort of thing,” Malik replied. “And they do them at night.” Another cadet, one with red shoulders, walked past them, and Malik approached him. “Hey man, sorry, is your commbadge working?”

The stranger tapped his badge, eliciting the same error. But before he could say anything, the campus was blanketed by a blaring howl that they had only ever heard once, during their campus life and safety orientation session years earlier.

Cressida had never expected the Planetary Air Raid Siren to be quite so deafening.

She set off at a brisk run to the nearest muster point, her friend and the stranger following closely behind.

They stopped in their tracks and steadied their footing against a shockwave, as across the quad, the Marin East Transit Station exploded in a fireball.

The gathering point wasn’t far. They got close enough to a senior officer who was midway through shouting instructions.

“--anyone flight certified get to the Shuttle Port, where someone will get you into a craft. Once you get airborne, it’s weapons-free. Anyone with medical training, get a first aid kit from the Headquarters lobby. Let’s move!”

The cadets scattered, with the stranger heading for the Port while Cressida and Malik ran to the HQ building. They fell backwards when a bolt from the sky clipped the roof and landed barely fifty meters away. Malik stood first and pulled Cressida to her feet.

They found the stack of first aid kits. Professor Steinberg, one of Cressida’s mentors, was shouting orders to anyone who came close enough.

“Vance, get upstairs, help with the evacuation,” she instructed. “Vale, get to the Clark Building! There’s a triage unit set up there.”

Both cadets responded with a rapid “Yes ma’am”. They nodded to each other as Malik ran up the stairs to go further into the HQ building while Cressida turned away and ran back outside.

Running across the quad, she fell to the ground as a fighter-craft she didn’t recognize made a low pass, firing green disruptor bolts at anything it could aim at. A Starfleet shuttle followed suit, its red-orange phasers trying to weaken the attacker’s shields, but having little effect.

She tried to stand, but another, much more intense shock of superheated air and fire blasted her back down. She screamed as she lay flat on the grass, her now shaking hands covering her head.

After a few seconds she rolled onto her back and looked to where she had been, to see the Starfleet Academy Headquarters building engulfed in flames.

Malik…

He’d been her partner in the lab. Her wingman at the bar. Her friend. And he was gone.

As was Professor Steinberg. And so many others that wouldn’t have been able to get out in time.

Before she could even finish processing the loss, yet another ship flew overhead, this one higher up and much bigger. This one she recognized from Starfleet Operations 101, its design of superimposed crescents giving it a most alien profile. Breen. Heavy disruptor bolts rained down from its forward weapons emplacement, striking Starfleet and civilian buildings on the far side of the Bay. Another shot tore through the Golden Gate Bridge, probably harming no one but sending a message that even a cadet like Cressida Vale could understand.

Not even this precious paradise at the heart of the Federation was safe.

No one is safe.

Cressida balled her fists and used the anger and frustration and fear to drive her back to her feet. She ran toward the Clark Building, but through the cacophony of explosions and screams she heard a voice calling for help.

The nearby Georgiou Building had been hit and collapsed when Cressida was getting her first aid kit. Thankfully the freshmen had not moved in yet, otherwise the destruction of their dormitory would have been catastrophic. Still, someone had been inside, and that person was calling out as loudly as their lungs would allow.

Cressida followed the voice inside.

The lights in the hall lobby were out; occasional bursts of sparks from a ruptured EPS relay provided the only available light.

“Hello?” she called out. “Is someone there?”

“Oh thank god!” a young man said. His voice came from a pile of debris on the ground near the stairs. “Over here! Are you a doctor?”

Cressida approached, carefully sidestepping jagged-edged shards of transparent aluminum and tritanium until she could get to him. He was mostly covered with a sheet of bent and sharpened tritanium, but she could tell that he was human, young, and wearing a gold-collared Operations uniform with an Ensign rank pip.

“Not yet,” she answered truthfully as she knelt next to him. “I’m a Fourth Year Starfleet Medical Cadet. Let me see if I can help you.” She shifted the metal covering him, prompting winces and groans as the things causing his injuries shifted their weight, no doubt agonizingly.

She gasped when she laid her eyes on his torso.

Patient is human male, she thought, working through the problem in her mind like she was trained. Age twenty-two to twenty-five. Multiple impalement injuries across the torso. Multiple fractures of the ribs and limbs. Indicative of a major spinal injury.

“Listen,” she said to him, as calmly but firmly as she could muster. “I can’t help you but I can find someone who can. There’s a doctor’s station at the Clark Building. I can bring someone–”

“No!” the young man cried out, reaching for her, clasping his blood-soaked hand around her forearm. “No,” he said more softly now, tears in his eyes. “Please don’t leave.”

That look in his eyes. Pure terror. Desperation. A complete lack of hope.

No matter what she did, what anyone did, this man was going to die.

She knew it.

He knew it.

“Okay,” she said softly. She knelt beside him and held his hand. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.” She took a breath and smiled as warmly as she could. “My name’s Cressida Vale. What’s yours?”

“A-Anton ,” he answered. “Anton Ashford.”

“Well, Anton, is this where you’re posted?”

He nodded, trembling as he did. “N-new cadets moving in next week.”

“And you’re the one to make sure they had places to stay,” she affirmed. “It’s a mighty important job. For most of them it’s their first time staying away from home. Whether or not they’ve ever told you, they’d have been incredibly grateful.”

He smiled weakly. “Miss Vale—”

“Cressida,” she interrupted.

“Cressida,” he repeated back to her, wincing. “It h-hurts, Cressida. Do you have something to help?”

She nodded. “Right here, hang on.” She got a hypospray out of her kit, inserted a heavy-duty analgesic into the bottom, and pressed it to his neck. “There you go,” she said as she depressed the trigger.

The hypo hissed and Anton’s expression relaxed. “Thank you,” he said. “And thank you for staying.”

“I’ve got nowhere else to be,” she told him, going back to holding his hand. “I’m here. You’re safe.”

Anton Ashford smiled and nodded calmly. He closed his eyes, and seemed to fall asleep, safe in the Cressida’s company.

The grip on Cressida relaxed, and Anton’s hand slipped away.

The sound of chaos outside reverberated in the Georgiou Building’s entrance, but for Cressida, for just a moment, it was the silence that was deafening.

“You’re safe, Anton,” she whispered solemnly, wiping the tears from her cheeks. ”I need to help some others now, okay? But I’ll be back for you. I promise.”

Leaving the still Ensign Ashford behind, Cressida pulled herself to her feet, gathered her supplies, and ran back out into the chaos of the Breen attack against Starfleet Academy.

**

USS Guinevere, midway through 2391

Cressida bolted upright in bed, panting, her brow covered in sweat.

“Hey!” Next to her was Alina, sitting up alongside her, one arm wrapped around her waist while the other held her hand. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”

Cressida’s eyes darted to Alina’s and her breathing started to come under control. Her heart rate slowed back down. She was home. In bed. Next to her wife, who held her tight.

”Which one was it this time?” Alina asked.

”The Breen attack,” Cressida answered. “It’s usually the Breen attack.”

”People don’t usually forget their first major trauma,” Alina said. “Especially one where more than two thousand people died.”

”Two thousand one hundred forty seven,” Cressida corrected. She’d never forget that number. Nor the names of those among the dead that she knew. Respected. Cared for. “And that was just at the Academy.”

Alina adjusted her pillows so she could be comfortable sitting up for a while and gently patted her thighs. Cressida smiled and rested her head, allowing her wife to gently stroke her hair. An act of reassurance that never failed to remind her of where she was, and that she was loved.

The doctor leaned the back of her head into Alina’s belly, which was growing bigger every day. “How is he?” Cressida asked.

”He’s having a great time,” Alina answered playfully. “I think he’s decided that we’re up for the day and now’s the best time to practice his soccer moves.”

Cressida grinned and turned her body so she could still rest her head on Alina’s lap but look up at her too. She put a hand on Alina’s bump, and Alina guided it to where she was feeling the kicks. Tears welled in both of their eyes as they lived this precious moment together.

“Hey Alina, what do you think of the name Anton?”

Alina considered it a moment and nodded. “Anton Raymond Vale. It has a nice ring to it.” She took Cressida’s hand to kiss it and then put it back. “We’ll add it to the list. Where did that come from?”

Cressida’s closed her eyes and nuzzled into Alina’s lap. “Someone from that day. Someone I’ll never forget.”

She drifted back to sleep in this moment of utter contentment, glad to be safe from the nightmares, and looking forward to the future she was building with the love of her life.


END



Cadet (later Commander) Cressida Vale (later MD)
Medical Student, Starfleet Academy (later Chief Medical Officer and Second Officer, USS Guinevere)

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