Personnel Log – Chief Petty Officer Lyara Dahris, USS Intrepid, Stardate 2404.041
Posted on Thu Sep 25th, 2025 @ 7:56pm by Chief Petty Officer Lyara Dahris
549 words; about a 3 minute read
Six months into this assignment, and the galaxy still feels unsteady beneath my feet. The Federation survived — barely — but it’s not the same Federation I swore myself to at eighteen. After Mars burned, after the Romulans turned inward, after the Borg nearly consumed us from within on Frontier Day, it feels as though every star is just waiting to flicker out. And yet, we’re still here. I’m still here. Somehow.
The Intrepid is young, gleaming, unscarred. Her hull still smells of drydock; her systems respond like a heartbeat under my fingertips. A Constitution III, one of the first to launch without those cursed fleet integration protocols that turned our ships into Borg puppets. Flying her is like breathing. Every maneuver, every course correction, is clean, sharp — alive. I’ve flown Novas, Excelsiors, even an Ambassador for a short stint, but nothing has ever felt this responsive. Sometimes I think the ship and I understand one another in a way no words could capture.
But in the quiet hours after my shift, when the stars outside my quarters are just streaks of light, I feel the weight of it. Being enlisted, being one of the few Kriosians in the fleet, being “the blonde one” that everyone remembers — it all leaves me standing apart more often than I’d like. I’ve given my best years to Starfleet, from twenty to now twenty-six, and I wonder what it’s cost me.
The crew is still new, still forming bonds. You can feel it in the mess hall — tentative conversations, polite smiles, the soft edges of people still deciding how much of themselves to reveal. Sometimes I sit with them. Sometimes I eat alone. It depends on the day, on whether my walls are up or down.
And yet… there are moments. Small ones, but they linger. A laugh shared with an engineer while recalibrating the inertial dampers after a rough warp jump. The lingering glance of a tactical officer on the bridge when we came out of warp near the Neutral Zone. These things stick with me more than I’d like to admit.
Maybe it’s foolish. The galaxy feels like it’s always ending, always collapsing, and here I am thinking about whether I might finally let myself find a lover aboard ship. My father used to tell me that Kriosians are born to passion — to bond deeply and fiercely. He said my rare hair was a sign I would always stand apart, but he never said it meant I had to stand alone.
Duty has always come first. But I can’t shake the thought that maybe, just maybe, it’s time for something more. Someone more. I’m not naïve — shipboard romances are messy, dangerous, distracting. Yet when I close my eyes at night, I find myself wondering whose voice I’d want to hear in the dark, whose warmth I’d want at my side.
The Intrepid feels like a beginning, even in the ruins of what’s been lost. Maybe that’s what Starfleet is now — not the perfect Federation of ideals, but people like me, broken and scarred, still choosing to fly forward together. If that’s true, maybe there’s room for me to stop flying alone.
End log
Tags: Lyara Dahris, Personnel Log, USS Intrepid, Constitution III, Chief Helmsman, Starfleet Enlisted, Borg Uprising, Frontier Day, Love, Personal Reflection
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