Chapter Text
It was just another day on board the U.S.S Athena.
The galley's windows were small and rectangular, repeating every few inches around the outer bulkhead. They provided prime viewing of a gorgeous and large wormhole sat outside, a safe distance from the learning vessel. They were in orbit around a black hole, safe enough that they wouldn't be pulled in, but close enough for studies. Korva found the event horizon and accretion disk beautiful even though she knew they were deadly.
The Chancellor who also acted as their captain had decided a field trip might be a fun way to start off the week.
Korva thought otherwise, but she was in no place to argue against that as a cadet.
The overhead lights were already at full intensity, far too bright for an hour that should have still belonged to shadows. Korva blinked at her plate, eyes burning, the low hum of the ship resonating through the table and into her forearms.
She'd never been a morning person. Christina had never handled mornings well either. Karva, on the other hand, had always woken like battle was already waiting for her.
She started eating and then frowned after a while.
A painfully long while.
The awareness crept in uninvited, a weight just off to her left, breath where there shouldn’t have been any. She frowned and with a slow precision set down her fork.
"How long have you been there?" she asked.
"Embarrassingly long." the newcomer grunted in turn, but was surprised to hear the familiar deep cadences of another Klingon. She was aware their first officer and second in command was one like her. A hybrid. She hadn't known there wasn't another on board.
"I wasn't aware there was another of us on board." she said, yawning.
"You mean beside the cadet master?" Someone else unfamiliar asked as he sat next to her first bit of company. A chair dragged up to her table set her teeth on edge.
She groaned unhappily with a bombastic eyeroll. "Yes, besides her. Did you have to sit here?" she asked, shooting the newcomer a glare.
Much to her annoyance Korva heard another set of footsteps.
This time, they were familiar.
"Ah, don't mind her," a deep voice called. "Korva doesn't do mornings until she's had her third cup of Raktajino." as smooth as his words, her brother swept in beside them, confident enough to make the surrounding conversations shift and bend around him like a shuttlecraft settling into a bay.
"Well, you managed to inherit all of grandad's good genes." Korva rolled her eyes, sipping from her Rakatjino.
Her brother elbowed her, but not enough to slosh the drink out of her mug. "Hey, now, just because you're not a morning person doesn't mean anything. You can still work Gamma watch."
"Yeah, and Alpha gets all the fun." she retorted which got a few chuckles. Korva tensed her jaw to fight an incoming yawn.
"Aren't you going to introduce yourselves?" the human male who'd sat down beside the other hybrid asked.
The lights felt harsher every time she looked up, like they were personally offended by her continued existence.She could return the sentiment. "Only if you do." she retorted with a growl.
The human shrugged. "Fair enough. Name's Caleb Mir and this here," he elbowed the Klingon beside him. "Is Jay-Den Kraag. Don't let his dour demeanor turn you away. He's half Tellarite."
Jay-Den glared down at him, jaw tightening, breath huffing through his nose. "I can introduce myself, Caleb. And I am <i>not</i> dour."
Another set of boots reached her ears and another chair slide made her almost wince. Shortly thereafter yet another person joined them. The table was getting awfully crowded.
"Introductions? I'm Genesis Lythe." The first one responded.
"And I'm SAM!" the second responded. Korva growled a little. SAM didn't seem to take notice that her over-exuberance seemed to annoy her. Contrary to her Klingon side, Korva didn't have heart for arguments. At least, this early in the morning. She stabbed at her Targ, noticing Altair finally eating as well.
"Lythe…isn't your father an admiral somewhere? Name rings a bell." Asked Korva, watching Gensis settle in.
"Something like that, yeah. I'm assuming these two idiots already introduced themselves?" she asked with a jerk towards Caleb and Jay-Den.
"Hey!"
"We are not idiots."
The hybrid chuckled despite herself. "Annoyingly, yes."
"Good, then I don't have to do the job for them." she teased, which got her two sets of glares.
"I'm Altair and this grumpy one here is my sister, Korva. We're half human-half Klingon with a little Illyrian thrown in for spice and good times."
SAM glanced between them with a pointed sort of frown like she was trying to figure something out. Then, she broke into a bright grin. "Hold on a second...you're Heterochromatic too!" she gasped and Altair let out a rumbling sort of chuckle.
"Got it in one. Point for SAM!"
Ugh, does Altair always have to be this cheery in the mornings? It's annoying.
Korva glared at her brother. "I can introduce myself," she echoed.
SAM frowned a little and looked at both of them. "Wait, Illyrian, are you by any chance related to Una Chin-Riley?" she asked.
Korva and Altair glanced at each other and she nodded. "Yes, she was our grandmother. We're of the Pike-Riley household."
Caleb looked lost along with Jay-Den.
Someone’s knee bumped hers under the table. Korva shifted, then shifted again, irritation sparking hot and fast before she forced it back down. As she shifted to make more space she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. Other students had heard and glanced her way. She shifted again, but this time it was an awkward movement. That last name carried here as she thought it would, but she wished it didn't.
Genesis' fork paused and both her and SAM's eyes widened measurably.
"Wait, seriously? You're not kidding?" SAM asked with a gasp.
"Does she look like she kids?" Altair asked jovially, elbowing her again which returned a glare. "Go back to your Kradag." she retorted with a growl, sipping from her Raktajino and glaring at him from over the rim.
"Why's that such a big deal?" the one called Caleb asked, digging into his own breakfast of pancakes and sausage.
"They're only two of Starfleet's best officers." Gensis replied. "Next to James T Kirk and Jonathan Archer."
Caleb frowned, still looking confused. "I'm still lost…"
The Dar-Sha stared at him in shock. "How can you not know Jonathan Archer? He literally founded the Federation!"
A few nearby conversations faltered and someone laughed under their breath. Korva felt the attention brush her skin like static and hated it.
The human rolled his eyes. "Not all of us go around bootlicking Starfleet and the Federation." he grumbled and stabbed at a sausage.
SAM looked particularly confused. Korva could've shared the sentiment since she didn't have food in front of her until she reminded herself that SAM was the first hologram student. "If Una is your grandmother, who's your grandfather? And how does that even work? They lived like centuries ago."
"Christopher Pike was." Altair said proudly. Korva rolled her eyes as his grandeur and took a bite of Targ.
"And for your second question, Mom was on the Discovery when they made the jump through the wormhole. And before you ask, no, we didn't know either before you ask."
The targ was tougher than she expected and Korva chewed longer than necessary, giving herself time to think.
It was strange, being expected to feel something about people she’d never spoken to, never argued with, never disappointed in person. To Korva they were history. Holograms, recordings, pictures. That sort of thing. She'd never actually met them and yet, here, they carried expectations. Korva had thought this sort of thing would happen. Christina had warned both of them it would. She suspected Altair felt closer to them than she had, but they'd never really discussed it.
“Your heart rate just spiked,” SAM said brightly. “Not dangerously, but significantly above baseline for a social interaction.”
Korva’s fork paused halfway to her mouth, but she did not look up.
“SAM,” Genesis said carefully, “Inside thoughts.”
"Sorry…I'm still learning." SAM apologized.
"It's alright, Sam." Altair said amicably. "Korva doesn't like being the center of attention."
SAM looked confused. "Why not? It's fun being the center of attention."
Korva glared at her from over her mug, but there wasn't any malice to it. She went to take a sip and set it down harder than she meant. It jostled the table. Altair exchanged a Quick Look at her that seemed to say, "Keep your strength in check." She turned her glare towards him.
Altair had chosen a seat so that when she looked at him, she had to look at the black hole. She frowned when something caught her eye. It looked…different now. The colors had changed and it seemed bigger or something. Korva couldn't quite put her finger on what had changed.
"Uh, is anyone else feeling light?" Caleb called suddenly. Korva stared at the table and utensils and plates and food started floating. Soon enough, so were they.
"What do we do?" SAM called as she tried to reach down for the table but even that was floating now as it wasn't anchored. The other students who'd been eating started floating too.
"Yellow alert. Warning, gravity anomaly detected in the mess hall." The computer intoned.
"Yeah, no shit." Korva heard Caleb retort as the familiar golden glow of yellow alert flashed.
"Grab onto something bolted!" Altair called, but Korva was already doing that, using her inertia to push herself towards the bulkhead, grabbing the golden flashing lights. A few of the other kids had too.
Just as suddenly as it had come, they all dropped back to the floor. Plates clattered, creating an impressive cacophony intermixed with exclamations and expletives. Korva grunted as she landed.
"What was that?" called Genesis.
"Felt like the gravity system failed for a few seconds." Korva responded. "Maybe in reaction to the black hole?"
"How'd you know that?" Caleb shot at her, having the ill luck of landing on his back.
"Engineering division with a focus on the warp core." she retorted, glancing back at the wormhole. A handful of other students who'd recovered had rushed over as well as if they realized something interesting was finally happening.
The rest of her table came over, intrigued. "I sure hope we get reimbursed for this. Or extra breakfast time." Genesis grumbled from behind them.
Korva hadn’t looked back. Her sight stayed fixed on the black hole, breath catching as the wormhole shifted in her peripheral vision. Its edge no longer held a clean curve; one side lagged behind the other, like fabric drawn unevenly through a ring.
The accretion disk’s light bent strangely across the wormhole’s surface, reflections skewing as though the two no longer agreed on how gravity should behave. Gold along the rim smeared and bled into darker hues that didn’t belong, the color losing its boundaries as if light itself had forgotten where it was meant to settle. Even the gold changed, slipping through shades that felt uncomfortably familiar.
To Korva’s eyes, it almost mirrored the gold of their own uniforms.
The accretion disk’s light bent strangely across the wormhole’s surface, reflections skewing as though the two no longer agreed on how gravity should behave. Lensing twisted in directions it hadn’t before, shadows forming where there should have been none, the black hole and the wormhole slipping out of alignment with each other.
Something moved inside it.
Korva was barely aware of the people chatting and gasping around her, pointing at the wormhole outside.
It wasn't light, but it also wasn't a reflection. The brightness parted briefly around a darker shape, as if mass were passing through, and then closed again—leaving the distortion behind.
Suddenly, the wormhole changed again. It seemed to fold in on itself, as if it was collapsing. Yellow alert changed to red alert, but Korva was barely aware of the computer intoning that cadets should return to their dorms. She even felt Altair's hand on her shoulder but shrugged it off, remaining there.
Caleb, Genesis, Jay-Den, and SAM we're crowding around her for a good view of what was happening.
Grasping the bump outs of the bulkhead where the lights sat in between the small windows she and other students watched on raptly.
The wormhole folded in on itself a second time, but this time something was coming out.
Light broke free first, a hard white-gold glare that flared across the glass and fractured her reflection into overlapping ghosts. The brightness scattered and bent, lensing violently as something solid forced its way through, peeling the wormhole’s edges back around it.
Then the light thinned.
Korva squinted until the light dimmed enough and she let out a gasp.
The gleaming edge of a sharp, silver saucer hull cut cleanly into real space. Light from a nearby star bounced off it, cutting a sharp silhouette against the inky blackness.
The Klingon hybrid remembered a trip to Qo'Nos once. She'd seen a Targ give birth and this moment weirdly reminded her of that, but a lot less gross and way more cool.
She could hear the gasps of her fellow students as they realized what they were staring at.
The hull emerged at an angle, silver plating flashing as it scraped light from the wormhole’s rim. For a suspended instant, it seemed to hesitate there, caught between realities. Then it lurched, rolling a fraction too far as the wormhole buckled around it, light snapping back in ragged arcs.
The drive section followed, then the nacelles. One cleared cleanly, the other lagging, dragged sideways by the wormhole’s collapsing edge.
As soon as the ship cleared the black hole, the wormhole collapsed in on itself. The angle was wrong.
The leading edge kept coming, silver cutting clean through the dark, its trajectory uncorrected and unforgiving. Korva's grip locked painfully into the bulkhead. Metal crunched underneath, but she didn't notice. While she was no pilot she knew math just as well as anyone in engineering did. It just finished itself in her head.
That ship wasn’t drifting.
It wasn’t slowing.
It was coming straight at the Athena.