Away Team: Best Foot Forward, Part I

Posted on Sat Aug 1st, 2026 @ 5:48pm by Commander Cornelius 'Kit' Hanlon

2,154 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Mission 1: Behind the Curtain
Location: USS Fenrir, On the way to the Transporter Room
Timeline: Day 1

[ON]

By the time the call came from the bridge to confirm that Apsloe transporter coordinates were locked in, the briefing felt as if it could have been years ago, yet also five minutes ago. The vagueness of it, the raised eyebrows.

Commander Kit Hanlon walked the curve of the corridor with a PADD tucked under his arm as he walked, letting the familiar vibration of the Fenrir’s warp core settle his thoughts into order. Ahead, each step of the now-familiar layout counted him down towards Transporter Room One. Behind his eyes, the layout of the briefing room replayed itself, chairs, mugs, the PADDs that had carried far too little information.

Second contact, he thought, as he took the next junction. It sounded reassuring when you said it out loud. As if they were going back to somewhere already understood. Coffee, carafes of water, senior staff leaning over a report that could have been written with an ancient writing implement on the back of a tricorder. Apsloe, warp capable, cultured, intelligent, science and art in equal measure. No details on economics, infrastructure, internal politics. Just one Vulcan captain’s elegant way of saying there was more disorder in their society than expected.

Higher entropy, a beautiful world. Youthful faces and long lives...and not much else.

He had watched Blake’s mouth tighten when she spoke about the Brahma’s dossier, had heard the edge under her promise that they would not make the same mistake. His own words had come easily enough at the time. Best foot forward. Be good guests and do their jobs. Enjoy the view without being distracted by it. Simple on paper. Harder when you were standing on the surface with someone else’s sky above your head. Harder when you had to consider who to bring with you to represent the best of the Federation.

He glanced down at the PADD in his hand, more for the movement than because he needed to see the names again.

Dr J. R. McEntyre sat at the top of the away team list. Lieutenant, Chief Medical Officer. Brown and grey fur, glasses instead of Retinax, the easy drawl of Old Texas and a service record that ran from war MASH units at Chin’toka to Cardassian relief. He was what Kit’s Dad would have called a country doctor…but for Kit he seemed like someone who had spent far too long practising medicine in places where the walls shook and the power failed. But there was a good reason why McEntyre had been chosen for this away mission. The Apsloens’ physiology was still mostly an educated guess. Having a doctor with you was just good practice, but McEntyre had been chosen for his experience, his understanding of things and yes, also to show that the Federation were more than just one species and that diversity made them stronger. So yes, a little bit showing off. Also, it made sense to bring someone with that level of experience considering the next name on the list.

Lieutenant Junior Grade Lovisa Montague. Science. Dark eyes, pale skin, a smile that reached people before her rank did. Kit had instantly liked her the first time he had spoken with her. Raised on starships, academically solid, quietly conscientious. The report had described the Apsloens as cultured and curious, a people who held science and art in equal regard. Lovisa fit that well, and would be able to talk sensor grids and stellar phenomena without making anyone feel as if they were in a lecture theatre. But of course, her medical file was the kind that made doctors choose their adjectives carefully. SLRV, progressive, corrosive to the body over time, usually terminal after a few decades. Lovisa clearly had worked hard to get through the Academy when most would have been well-meaning and yet ignorant enough to try and encourage her not to. She had graduated, served, and was now sitting at Fenrir’s science lab working as hard as anyone else. When he had been choosing names, that had weighed more than any risk did. If they were going to show the Apsloens who the Federation was, he liked the idea that part of that picture included someone who understood exactly how finite a life could be and had chosen to spend it doing this anyway. And besides, she deserved as much away team experience as everyone else.

He turned another corner, passing a pair of crewmen who stepped aside automatically, and he rewarded them with a smile and a nod. The corridor was quieter down here, traffic thinning out as he approached the transporter section. The air always felt a fraction cooler near the pattern buffers, a psychological thing more than an environmental setting. Or maybe it was just knowing the mechanics of what was going on. His eyes went to the PADD again, blue eyes narrowing slightly as he read. Not out of anything bad, just the text on black sometimes made his eyes ache. He should get an appointment to look at that.

The next name on the list was Lieutenant Rosaleen O’Donnell. Chief Engineer. On the surface, a small, red-haired woman whose body language said she had no intention of being underestimated. Under the surface, Ka’Bu, centuries of experience, El-Aurian defence fleets, prototype design bureaus, classified projects, ship classes that had defined a generation. Her personnel file contained enough black ink and special notations to make most flag officers twitch. But Kit knew her. Liked her operating style and had found common ground with her. People were more than their files. Besides….Unknown civilisation with advanced technology? Bring your chief engineer. Let her see how they attach things, how they route power, what they consider good enough.

He glanced at the PADD again. Riaothren ch’Shaorhs, Ren to almost everyone, followed. Andorian chan, Assistant Chief Operations Officer. Sensitive for his species, the sort of person who read systems and people both, antennae tuned to every shift in the air and every change in energy. His file carried its own quiet history. A family unit that had fractured, a duel that had taken the parent he was closest to, a marriage, a husband gone missing on a Section 31 operation that had never fed back anything satisfactory, a younger brother adopted in the aftermath. Ops officers lived in the flow of power and information. Ren added a layer of instinct on top of the numbers. His antennae could feel electrical fields and pressure changes before a tricorder bleeped. On a world where the previous report had mentioned higher than expected cultural entropy and yet somehow failed to say what that meant in practice, having someone who noticed when the air in a room shifted felt like a necessary luxury.

There had also been Lieutenant B'Lakkam Slichez to consider. Their new Chief Counsellor. He was a Blue Orion, which was rare enough in Starfleet to make people look twice before they remembered their manners, or mistake him for a Bolian with hair. His file read well on the surface: psychological training, hospital residency, strong Academy performance, service on the Lincoln and the Alaska before Fenrir. Underneath that sat the faint suggestion of someone more layered than his counselling credentials alone accounted for. Much better than average with weapons and martial arts, and a psychological note that politely implied he kept parts of himself behind a locked door. None of that had been enough to worry Kit. If anything, it made him more inclined to trust the man’s instincts. A counsellor who understood people, knew how to hold his own if things turned sour could be useful on a mission where the previous report had managed to say almost nothing of substance. If the Apsloens were as welcoming as advertised, B'Lakkam might help them understand what sat beneath the smiles.

Further down the list, the name of Lieutenant Commander Christopher Evans sat with its own quiet gravity. Chief Operations Officer and Second Officer. Starship born, Academy trained, early years spent coaxing more life out of an elderly Excelsior and then a Nebula. The Bradford, then the Harper, where he had quietly stolen a few percentage points of efficiency from her power regulators and shields, the sort of small gains that made the difference between a near miss and a casualty report.

There had been a stint at the Academy after that, instructing. Kit had met enough former instructors to recognise the way they watched a room, the habit of checking who was following and who was drifting. Evans had that instructor’s eye paired with a southern cadence that made even blunt information sound almost gentle. From there, the Razorback, a Defiant class with sharp teeth, where he had been trusted with Ops and then the Second Officer’s chair.

It was part of the reason why Kit wanted him there. A Second Officer was just the stepping stone to First Officer, and to get there, you needed to see the larger picture, beyond the ship’s power and departmental politics. Being on the Bridge, being a First Officer, meant away teams. It meant diplomacy. So…it was natural to bring Evans here.

And yes, it was good for him to have some backup. Two team leaders worked better than one if you had a team this big.

And that is why part of this away team was security. It wasn’t a polite suggestion in the Starfleet Away Team manuals. It was a requirement.

Lieutenant Commander Daniel Masters, Chief Security and Tactical. Vega colony, Academy accelerated by the looming Dominion War, thrown onto the Exeter before he was really old enough to have seen Betazed on a viewscreen, let alone in flames. Counter attacks that had gone badly. Another Chin’toka veteran, then Cardassia, disruptor wounds that should have been fatal and somehow were not. Parents lost on another ship while he healed. His file did not talk about trauma in dramatic terms. It did not need to. Kit recognised the pattern. People who had been over that particular edge and hauled themselves back up tended to end up with the same vocabulary. Masters had the look of a man who counted exits automatically and never assumed that a beautiful world was a safe one. When Daniel had said in the briefing that beauty made excellent camouflage, Kit had felt the small, clean click of a piece falling into place. Right person in the right chair.

Petty Officer First Class Gabriel Stark was a different kind of security. Human, Earth, second son of a political dynasty that would probably never quite forgive him for choosing a uniform instead of a podium. Officer track derailed by a bar fight and substances on the wrong day, a year in a cell, a second chance as an enlisted cadet. High intelligence, higher volatility, a temper he had had to learn to chain to something useful, advanced combat and hazard team training that had nearly broken him and left him standing straighter afterwards. There were risk markers all over his psych profile. There were also notes about insight, loyalty, and work that went beyond what his rank demanded. Kit had kept coming back to that when he had been putting the team together. You did not take someone like Stark to an unknown world because you wanted a recruitment poster. You took him because he knew exactly what it cost to lose control and had decided not to do it again. On the ground, Masters could watch the big picture. Stark could watch the edges and use his instincts to navigate.

The last name was Lieutenant Azree Kar, Chief Flight Control. Trill, unjoined. A career that had gone from Academy flight courses to fighter squadrons and squadron command, then an asteroid, a crash that should have killed her, months of rehabilitation, and a medical line that now said she was cleared to fly starships but not fighters. Symptoms of trauma were described as occasional rather than constant.

He could have left her on the bridge. It would have been easy to justify. The ship needed its Conn. She had already spent enough of her luck. Pilots had a way of being told to keep looking down at worlds without ever touching them.

In the end, he had put her name on the list anyway. Partly because a pilot’s sense of atmosphere and motion might be useful if the Apsloens offered a ride in their own craft, partly because there was something very Federation about letting a woman who had already crawled out of twisted metal stand under a new sky again with a tricorder in her hand.

[To be Continued in Part 2]

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Commander Kit Hanlon
First Officer
USS Fenrir

 

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