Requiem for an Old Friend
Posted on Thu Aug 14th, 2025 @ 1:41am by Captain M'Raz & Lieutenant Noah Clarke
1,135 words; about a 6 minute read
Mission:
The Raz Defense
Location: Deep Space Repair Beta Two, Theta Sculptoris
Timeline: MD004 - 2150
Raz, still in his burnt and torn up uniform, stood at a viewport, his pale gray gaze trained on his ship, tethered now to a space frame, with gaping holes in her sides and the raw wound of a sheared off nacelle. He could see places that weren't meant to be seen, disrobed, without the sea of lights he expected to see. His paws ached to touch her again, to walk her corridors, to return to the home he'd made for himself when his world threw him away.
Clarke lingered just inside the threshold of the observation deck, the heavy doors whispering shut behind him. He hadn’t intended to stop — he had a datapad full of damage readouts, a dozen engineers waiting on his word, and systems screaming for attention the way only half-dead starships could — but his feet refused to carry him any farther.
Beyond the glass, the Jane Addams hovered in her sling like a gutted animal hauled up for examination. Gaping wounds ran along her flanks where decks had once been sealed, whole sections of her secondary hull torn open to the vacuum. The starboard nacelle was simply gone — and without her usual halo of running lights, she looked… naked. Violated.
He should have felt numb by now.
The Borg had already taken one ship from him — the Archimedes — and most of the faces who’d elbowed him awake during gamma-shift maintenance crawls were now dust dispersed across space. He’d promised himself not to make the same mistake twice: don’t get attached, don’t fall in love with bulkheads and personalities. Ships were tools. Jobs were assignments. Engineers survived by staying detached.
Except somewhere between the emergency rescue and today’s hellfire, he had. The Jane Addams wasn’t sleek or glamorous, but she had soul. Old ships always did — you could feel it in the way they rattled through warp, in the stubborn thrum of systems that should’ve given up decades ago but refused to die. He respected that kind of fight. Maybe even needed it...
"Spent an hour 'talking' to Anders," Raz said, "about our ship." He turned toward his Chief Engineer, his gray eyes shadowed, brimming with thoughts and feelings he couldn't quite contain, as he shook his head. "Not good, I'm afraid. They're shutting down this base, too close to the action." He paused and turned his attention to the tips of his boots. "They say she's a lost cause. That even if there weren't any Borg to worry about, it's not likely Starfleet would agree to fix her."
Clarke stepped forward slowly, each footfall soft against the deck plating. He didn’t rush — didn’t need to. The damage had already been done, and the words Raz had just spoken confirmed what the engineers had already whispered in the hangars and repair bays.
“She did what she had to do,” he said quietly, eyes still trained on the broken silhouette of the Jane Addams beyond the viewport. He let out a breath through his nose, the kind that didn’t quite qualify as a sigh but had the same weight. “Whatever else they say… she got us home. Gave us a chance to fight another day.”
There was no bitterness in his voice, just a weary kind of reverence. He wasn’t ready to call her a lost cause (not aloud) but he wasn’t in the business of false hope either.
Not anymore…
“She bought us time,” he added, glancing sideways for the first time, voice like gravel under pressure. “And in this war… that might be the only currency that still matters.”
"Always thought of her as a member of the crew," Raz said quietly. Contained emotions betrayed but just the slightly rumble as he spoke. "And I feel like ... we let her down ..." He turned back toward the view port. "I just hate to see this her way."
Clarke's jaw tensed, and for a moment, he said nothing. Just stood there, the silence stretching out between them like a respectful pause at a graveside. “I know what you mean,” he said finally, his voice low and steady. “Feels wrong, seeing her like this. Like we’re supposed to do more — patch her up, bring her back online, give her the ending she earned.”
He swallowed once, throat dry. “But we didn’t let her down, Captain. We kept her running long past the point any sane system should’ve folded. Hell, we dragged her through fire with half her guts hanging out — and she still brought us home.”
He looked back to the Addams, scorched and broken in the frame. “It's more noble an end that silently going to the scrap yards, forgotten, like most ships. She went down fighting. That’s not failure. That’s loyalty.”
"Well said." Raz turned to his Chief Engineer. "And you're right. She was loyal, got us here and safe, and kept going long past the point a lesser ship would have given up. I"ll never forget her. Couldn't." He paused for a moment, staring down at his boots, searching for the words. "I want you to make something happen for me, Lieutenant. It might sound morbid but ... I'd like a piece of her to carry with me to wherever we go next. Mount it in a clear cube, with her name and registration number on it. I kind of need it ... y'know?"
Clarke didn’t answer right away. His eyes lingered on the broken silhouette of the Jane Addams, framed against the stars like a ghost that hadn’t quite let go. He thought about the noise she used to make—the familiar hum of the core, the rhythm of her systems, the way her deck plating groaned just slightly when she was running hot. She wasn’t just a ship. Not to the people who’d lived inside her.
Finally, he gave a small nod. “I hear you.”
His voice was quiet, but steady. Something grounded in it, despite everything they’d lost. “I’ll see what I can do. Something fitting.”
He didn’t say more. Didn’t need to. But as he turned back to the viewport, a flicker of thought tugged at him—about whatever ship might come next, and whether it could ever measure up. Whether he could. The Jane Addams had carried them through hell. Now, they’d have to carry a piece of her forward into whatever came after.
"C'mon," Raz said, though reluctance to move was etched into his features, "the engineering team wants to talk to us." He sighed quietly. "Feels a bit like being required to attend an autopsy. Still, they are our hosts."
Captain M'Raz
Commanding Officer
USS Jane Addams
and
Lieutenant Noah Clarke
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Jane Addams
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