Among the Lost

Posted on 23 Dec 2025 @ 5:35pm by Lieutenant Commander Camila Di Pasquale

774 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: Epitaph
Location: Personal Quarters
Timeline: July 14, 2390 || 1900 Hours

Camila sat in her quarters aboard the Black Hawk and looked down at her hands. So many thoughts went through her mind and she didn't know where to start sorting them out. First and foremost was that she had failed to protect the ship and crew again. Then the ships of the task group she had been in charge of making the battle plans for.

Then there was the clones of not one, but two members of the crew. Not just any members, but Commodore Harvey Geisler and Lieutenant Commander Joelle Geisler. Joey to her friends. Mother of two precious children, Allison and Jamison who called her Titi Cammie. Children she was sworn to protect. Children that she had failed to protect in any way. Children who saw her shoot their dogs, Rico and Pequeno, and their parents. It didn't matter that their parents at that time had been the clones of their real parents. They saw her do it and the minds of children remembered such things if it was real or not.

How had all this happened? How had they slipped through the web of protocols and measures that she had put around every level of the ship? Joey had been replaced at Razmena so flawlessly it was like she had been placed there and ready. Then there was Commodore Geisler. He had been replaced after a alien shuttle had been brought aboard the Black Hawk while she was on her mission to Mellon to attempt to find out about G90B.

What she had discovered was the Carters, including Emily Carter, former Yeoman of Commodore Geisler, and her family, and an alien named D'Rimo who had managed to follow them from the other universe that the Black Hawk had torn a hole to. That she had torn a hole to when she detonated a tricobalt device next to a Romulan micro singularity generator in order to wipe out a thalaron cannon.

It was her fault that the other universe's D'Rimo had crossed over after they had discovered The Confederation and that there had been a price on Harvey's head over there. They had thought they sealed the hole once they managed to figure out how to get back, but the proof that they had failed appeared that nigh on Mellon when the alien D'Rimo showed up at a dinner party hosted by the Carters and tossed the Gamma Quadrant's native D'Rimo's head on the table and killed Emily's father in front of her.

A sob came from the Security Chief and she looked at the table where a bottle of whiskey sat untouched next to a tumbler. It was her career if she touched it. The Chief Medical Officer had made that clear. She didn't have anything else. She didn't have anyone else. She was alone and couldn't even take care of the people she had been entrusted to protect. She had to do it without anyone or anything to help her.

She had heard that it was unlikely for supplies to ever reach Mellon and the other world she had visited. She had made empty promises, but D'Rimo had acted as a savior to them by destroying Federation ships and bases and letting the word get out that supplies were to be had. She had came and lied to them that help would come. Help would not come. It would not come for them and it would not come for her.

She thought of Lieutenant Frex who she had accused of sabotaging the tricobalts. She doubted he would blame her, but she blamed herself. She thought of how easily she had been played while the real saboteur was right in front of her and had been the entire time. She thought of all the lives that had been lost when G90B had ambushed the task force when the tricobalts had proven worthless. She never wanted to see or use another of those things again, especially after D'Rimo had tried to use all his remaining ones on the Bajoran wormhole.

Now, she felt like she was among the lost. She didn't know which direction to go in to protect the ship anymore. She didn't know if Commodore Geisler's high standards of hope for the better side of Starfleet would keep him from enacting whatever protocols she did come up with. She didn't know anything except that she felt as if she were doomed to fail and for a moment, considered resigning from Starfleet before it took her life like the lives of so many already. She didn't know and had no plans.

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