Best Laid Plans

Posted on Wed Jun 10th, 2026 @ 1:26pm by Lieutenant Thomas Fletcher

952 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Preamble
Location: New Bajor

To finally set foot on New Bajor felt oddly surreal.

The colony had occupied a place in Starfleet reports and briefings for so long that it had almost ceased to feel like a real location. For years it had existed as a collection of casualty figures, historical summaries, tactical assessments and political discussions. A place whose destruction had become one of the earliest signs that the Gamma Quadrant was far more dangerous than anyone had wanted to believe.

Now it was simply a colony.

A living one.

People walked its streets. Children played outside its homes. Farmers worked fields that stretched across the countryside beyond the settlement.

Life had returned.

Not that Tom had seen much of it upon arrival.

His transport had landed well after dark and deposited him directly outside the local Starfleet command post.

The experience had been considerably less profound.

"Sit tight, Lieutenant," the fleet liaison had informed him after a brief glance at his transfer orders. "The Venture is due shortly, so remain available."

Tom had let his duffel bag slump onto the floor beside him.

"How long is shortly?"

The liaison lowered the PADD that had clearly occupied the majority of his attention throughout the conversation.

An uninterested smile appeared.

"Shortly."

Tom regarded him for a moment.

The liaison regarded him not at all.

"Helpful."

"I try."

"Clearly."

The smile widened fractionally.

"Take in the sights, Lieutenant. Enjoy the downtime. There isn't anything for you to do here."
Tom should have recognised those words as a challenge.

In hindsight, he probably did.

He simply chose to ignore the warning signs.

---

It had started, as many of Tom Fletcher's self-inflicted complications did, with a conversation he was never supposed to overhear.

The market occupied the centre of the settlement and had quickly become one of his preferred destinations during the days following his arrival. New Bajor was still rebuilding itself in many ways, and nowhere was that more apparent than amongst the stalls and traders that lined its streets. Farmers sold produce grown in Gamma Quadrant soil. Craftsmen offered goods fashioned from local materials. Children darted between customers whilst parents pretended not to notice.

Tom had been browsing without any particular purpose when he overheard a woman several stalls away discussing irrigation systems with considerably more volume than discretion.

"...and he insists they can make do."

The woman threw her hands into the air in exasperation.

"We've only been 'making do' for six months."

Tom slowed.

"...the pressure node keeps failing."

He slowed further.

"We don't need to hire somebody," came a male voice from somewhere nearby.

"We absolutely do."

Tom stopped entirely.

In hindsight, this was the moment things had become inevitable.

The woman in question turned out to be Lenara Kalen.

A friendly conversation became an introduction. An introduction became an explanation of the problem. An explanation became a request for advice.

Tom had intended to spend perhaps half an hour looking at the faulty irrigation node.

Forty-five minutes at most.

Instead, he found himself standing beside a muddy trench while Taran Kalen explained three years of increasingly creative repairs and several reasons why replacing the system entirely was unnecessary.

It took Tom less than five minutes to identify the problem.

It took considerably longer to resist fixing it.

Dinner had followed shortly thereafter.

The invitation had been offered as a simple gesture of thanks.

Tom had accepted under the entirely reasonable assumption that he would eat, offer a few recommendations, and continue on his way the following morning.

Instead he had woken up in the guest room to discover that Taran had questions about filtration efficiency.

The head of the Kalen family possessed a practical intelligence that Tom had quickly come to respect. Like many farmers, Taran viewed machinery as little more than a tool; if it worked, it was good enough. If it didn't, it needed fixing. The finer points of engineering interested him considerably less than whether his crops were getting enough water.

His eldest daughter, Jera, proved to be the exact opposite.

Bright, inquisitive, and perpetually curious, she seemed determined to absorb every piece of technical knowledge Tom casually mentioned. What began as polite questions about irrigation systems quickly expanded into discussions about warp cores, starships, and Federation engineering practices.

Ralen, meanwhile, had questions about absolutely everything.

At eleven years old, the youngest Kalen possessed an enthusiasm that bordered on dangerous. By the third day he had appointed himself Tom's assistant and could usually be found carrying tools, asking questions, or appearing unexpectedly from behind machinery Tom had been certain was unoccupied moments earlier.

Pela occupied a position somewhere between amused observer and occasional accomplice.

The younger Kalen daughter had little interest in irrigation systems but considerable interest in ensuring nobody spent too much time discussing them. Whenever Tom and Jera became excessively technical, Pela inevitably appeared with a suggestion, invitation, or distraction that somehow resulted in everyone being elsewhere within minutes.

Lenara alone seemed entirely unsurprised by any of it.

Warm, welcoming, and possessed of a quiet authority that somehow managed the entire household without ever appearing to do so, she had swiftly adopted Tom into the family's orbit. Whether that had been intentional remained unclear.

By the end of the second day, Tom was helping replace irrigation components.

By the first week, he had acquired a standing invitation to dinner.

By the second, Lenara had begun introducing him as "our engineer."

Tom had attempted to object.

Nobody had paid the slightest attention.

Looking back, he could no longer identify precisely when he had become part of the Kalen family's daily routine.

He only knew that somehow it had happened.

The irrigation system, admittedly, was significantly better for it.

 

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