Dinner Survived
Posted on Fri Sep 4th, 2026 @ 5:57pm by Commander Vren'desh Son of Rukas & Captain Saelira Venn
2,341 words; about a 12 minute read
Mission:
Mission 1: Through the Janus Gate
Location: Saelira's Quarters, USS Resolute
Timeline: MD003 - 1900 hours
Saelira’s quarters were quieter than the rest of the ship.
The lights had been lowered, the formal edge of the room softened by the warm glow from the table and the muted shimmer of stars beyond the viewport. Dinner waited beneath covered dishes, something Klingon at the centre of it, though she had taken the liberty of adding a few less confrontational choices around the edges.
The bloodwine was already open.
She had changed out of uniform, though not into anything elaborate, and stood near the table making a final adjustment that did not need making. There were conversations better held away from the bridge, away from reports and rank and the constant sense that someone might call them back to duty.
The chime sounded at nineteen hundred exactly.
Saelira smiled to herself.
“Come in.”
Her attention turned towards the door as it opened.
“Perfect timing,” she said. “Dinner survived.”
Vren'Desh had changed into a pair of leather pants, and a linen tunic. Traditional clothing for a Klingon. He still wore his familial sash as he made his way to the Captain's quarters. "There are two things a Klingon is never late to. The first is a battle and the second is a meal." He said with a broad smile as he stepped into her quarters. The doors closed behind him and he added. "It seems that we have put quite the crew together."
Saelira laughed, the sound easy in the quiet of her quarters.
“Then I’m glad I didn’t invite you to discuss battle plans over an empty table.”
She stepped aside to let him further in. The warmth coming from the small kitchen carried the rich scent of roasted meat and spice through the room. Nothing on the table had come from a replicator. A deep dish of rokeg blood pie sat beside a platter of fire-roasted targ, while the gagh in its serving bowl remained very much alive and apparently offended by the evening’s arrangements.
Saelira had learned years ago that feeding a Klingon properly required commitment.
Her gaze moved briefly over him, taking in the traditional clothes and familial sash with familiar approval, before returning to his remark.
“We have,” she said. “More personality than one ship should probably be allowed, but I think they’ll hold together.”
She drew out the chair opposite her, then reached for the dark bottle waiting near the centre of the table.
“And before you accuse me of insulting you, yes, it’s real.”
The seal released with a low crack. Saelira poured the bloodwine into two heavy glasses, the deep red catching in the lowered light.
“An old bottle from a very good year. Strong enough that I was advised not to open it unless I had a Klingon nearby to take responsibility.”
She offered him one of the glasses, amusement warm in her eyes.
“Fortunately, I planned ahead.”
"Then sister we must feast and tell the tales." Vren'Desh said. His usual reserved manner replaced by a more boisterous or more "typical" Klingon persona. This was the way when he was with Saelira. He felt he could be his truest self. "This situation with the Pakleds is something that seems very much out of the ordinary. There are just so many questions."
Saelira gave him a look over the rim of her glass, amused by the sudden arrival of considerably more Klingon in her quarters.
“Feast first. Tales improve with food.”
She set her own glass down and returned to the table, lifting the cover from the targ and letting another wave of heat and spice roll into the room. A plate was placed in front of Vren’desh before she began serving from the dishes, generous with the meat and leaving the gagh within comfortable reach of someone who would appreciate that it was still attempting escape.
“The questions are the problem,” she said as she worked. “If we knew they’d stolen the Core deliberately, or bought it knowing what it was, I’d almost feel better. At least then we’d have intent to work with.”
She added another piece of targ to his plate, apparently deciding the first portion had been inadequate.
“Instead, they have something they probably don’t understand, it does something impressive to their ship, and their response is ‘Good Power.’”
Saelira finally sat opposite him and reached again for the bloodwine.
“That’s the part I keep coming back to. They’re enjoying it.”
Her mouth pulled slightly to one side.
“And now we have to convince them that letting us near their wonderful new toy is somehow their idea.”
Vren'Desh attacked the food with gusto as Saelira spoke. Klingons experienced their food and at the moment he wanted to savor all of it at once. The targ was cooked to the perfect rarity, the bloodwine was young and fresh, the gagh moved. This was not just a meal, for a Klingon like Vren'Desh this was art.
He sucked some gagh through his lips as one may have slurped spaghetti. When he swallowed, he spoke. "The way I see it the Pakleds acquired something. They had no idea what they got but somehow figured out how to hook it to their systems. It bolsters their power, which is what they wanted and so they are happy. What we are going to have to do is show them that we can provide them with better power, and one that will not make them explode. If we make the core inferior and dangerous, while providing them with something better they will jump at the chance.
Saelira watched him work his way through the gagh with the kind of wholehearted enthusiasm that made the trouble of preparing it properly worthwhile. She took another drink of bloodwine while she considered what he was saying, the glass lingering in her hand as her attention drifted briefly towards the dishes between them. There was sense in Vren’desh’s thinking, though one part of it bothered her.
“I think you’re right about making the Core dangerous in their eyes,” she said. “I’m less convinced we can offer them something better. Whatever it’s doing to their ship, they already think it makes them stronger. If we turn up claiming we have something even more powerful, there’s every chance they decide they want that as well.”
A trace of amusement touched her expression before she reached across to take another piece of targ for herself. “But if we can make them understand that every time they use the Core, they’re damaging their ship, that’s different. Pakleds understand things breaking. They understand engines failing, bulkheads rupturing, ships exploding. We don’t need to explain quantum instability to them. We need to make ‘Good Power’ become ‘Bad Power’ before they decide to test just how good it can get.”
She settled back into her chair, the earlier humour still there but quieter now as she looked across the table at him. “Then we’re not trying to convince them that we want their prize. We’re offering to remove the thing that’s going to destroy them. That feels like a much easier story for them to believe.”
"Pakleds understand assistance. So, yes this would be the best course of action. Once we have the Core we have to decide what to do with it. It is entirely too dangerous to simply turn over to Daystrom, and if the Romulans catch wind that we have something like that all hell would break loose." Vren'Desh knew tactics, but the aftermath, things in that realm eluded him from time to time. It was perhaps the reason he still did not have a command of his own.
Saelira cut into the rokeg blood pie while Vren’desh spoke, apparently having acquired a genuine taste for it somewhere during their years together rather than merely tolerating it for his benefit. The first bite was followed by a thoughtful look across the table, and she washed it down with bloodwine before reaching for a little more. Of everything she had prepared, this was one of the dishes she had long since stopped thinking of as exclusively Klingon.
“I think you’re assuming I intend to let anyone have it.”
There was no humour in that part. Saelira rested her fork against the edge of the plate and considered the dark red wine in her glass for a moment. “I certainly don’t want the Romulans anywhere near it. The moment they learn the Dominion built something capable of doing this, every intelligence service they have will start deciding why they’re the only people responsible enough to possess it.”
A quieter trace of amusement returned at that, although it did little to soften the thought itself. Daystrom was different, but not different enough to make her comfortable. Saelira had spent too many years watching dangerous discoveries become research projects because somebody believed understanding a thing justified keeping it.
“Starfleet will want it studied. Daystrom will probably want half a dozen departments arguing over who gets first access.” She picked up her fork again and took another piece of the blood pie before continuing. “Maybe they’ll even have good reasons. But there are some things I’m not convinced anybody needs to own, Vren. Especially something that can interfere with space and time because somebody connected it to the right power source.”
Her eyes lifted to his, and something older showed through the easy atmosphere of dinner then. Not fear exactly, but a caution that had little to do with Starfleet regulations.
“My preference?” Saelira took another drink of bloodwine. “Find the nearest black hole, fire the Core into it and make very certain nobody follows it in.”
The corner of her mouth lifted.
“I suspect Admiral Thorne may have opinions about that plan.”
She reached across to move one of the serving dishes aside, revealing the smaller covered plate she had been keeping behind it.
“And before you start mourning the end of the feast, there’s dessert. I made Klingon spice cake.”
Saelira regarded him over the table with quiet satisfaction.
“I’m told mine is acceptable. Which, from the Klingon who taught me, was practically a declaration of love.”
Vren'Desh leaned back in his chair and sipped his blood wine. His posture was that of someone who was sated and needed a short respite from eating. "I can see and agree to your point of destroying it, and the fallout from the Admiral that would follow that plan. However, if Starfleet has taught me anything it is that nothing is ever truly destroyed. Once we have the Core in our possession we should transfer it to the Department of Temporal Investigations. Let them deal with it, and protect it etc..." Another sip of the blood wine, this one was followed by a broad Klingon smile. "If I did not know any better, I may think you were trying to fatten me up sister. But, work talk is over. The time for dessert and tales has arrived."
Saelira’s fork paused halfway to her plate at the suggestion.
“Jeremiah?”
The name came with enough history to sour the idea before she had even finished saying it. She set the fork down and reached instead for her bloodwine, taking a smaller drink this time. “I’ve dealt with Director Isaacs before. More than once. The first time, I was still in Intelligence and spent the better part of two days arguing with him over a piece of chronometric technology his people had supposedly secured for containment. By the end of it he’d already designed three tests he wanted to run on the damned thing.” Her mouth twisted faintly at the memory. “Years later, aboard the Hestia, he hadn’t improved. Jeremiah is very good at protecting the timeline. His problem is that he’s also desperately curious about anything capable of breaking it.”
She looked across the table at Vren’desh, her decision far less complicated than the bureaucracy that would inevitably follow it. “No. If we get the Core away from the Pakleds intact and there’s a safe way to destroy it, I’d rather do that before it ever reaches Jeremiah, Daystrom or anyone else with a laboratory and a persuasive argument. We already know enough to know it shouldn’t exist. I don’t particularly care which department thinks it deserves the opportunity to prove me wrong.”
His accusation about fattening him up finally pulled her away from the subject. Saelira laughed and pushed herself from the table, gathering a couple of empty dishes as she headed towards the kitchen. “You can work it off later. Or I keep feeding you like this until you decide standing extra bridge watches is the only way to save yourself. Either outcome works remarkably well for me.”
She returned carrying the Klingon spice cake, still faintly warm from the kitchen, and set it between them before cutting two generous portions. The scent of dark spice and heat quickly displaced what remained of the targ and blood pie in the room, and Saelira slid the larger piece towards him without comment on the obvious contradiction between that and her supposed concern for his waistline.
“Right,” she said as she sat again, reaching for her own fork. “No more Pakleds, temporal investigations or things capable of damaging reality.”
Her glass lifted towards him, green eyes bright with the easier mood that had brought them to dinner in the first place.
“You promised me tales.”
Vren'Desh laughed, for the first time in a while. It was the laugh that most came to expect from a Klingon. Loud, and filled with life, one did not spend time with a Klingon, one experienced every moment with them. "Well then, there we were. Just me and two other warriors. Surrounded on all sides..."
A Joint Post By
Captain Saelira Venn
Commanding Officer
Commander Vren'Desh
Executive Officer
RSS Feed