A Friend's Last Duty

Posted on Sat Jan 24th, 2026 @ 5:32pm by Ensign Noah Balsam

Mission: Port of Call
Location: Jyl-eel's Quarters
Timeline: Mission Day 1 at 0000

Begin Personal Log... Noah Balsam...

The door hissed open and came with a cold waft of something perfume... something akin to myrrh and jasmine but sweet, crisp and alien. Noah had been here before, smelled it. It came from Ackadrian Dawn orchids. They sang... sort of tinkled... at the change of air pressure. Noah breathed out. Too much. Too soon. Too alone. His eyes closed and when they opened, they were liquid. He set his lips. He swallowed. He had to deal with himself. Do this... help them... then go and do something comforting.

"Prepare a copy of this to my parents... I'll send it when I arrive at Pathfinder... begin recording..."

Noah turned in almost military style. "Open door, Tor, Jyl-eel, Ensign. Temporary authorization, Balsam Iota 71 Charlie Delta 6 Ampersand." His eyes closed and he tried to finish the words once but they stuck, thick and sick, in his throat. A brow rose. "Funeral detail." Why her? She was a Botanist. A Botanist. A Botanist who liked hot chocolate and listening to her friend banter.

"Authorization accepted. You have ten minutes." The computer chimed with a cold dispassion. "Any further authorizations must be cleared by the Chief Executive Officer. Your entry has been noted in the Quartermaster's logs."

"Mute countdown..." Noah murmured with a quaver as the doors opened and he stepped inside. It came with a rush of memory.

"Hi Mom... dad.... per-personal log." He sighed. Tersely. Then he felt himself get stuck. Mentally. What words came made no sense just... a emotional diarrhea of things his very intellectual parents would just feel uneasy about. Yet they came, like a bursting balloon. "Oh my god..." He muttered. "I'm having... a, um, really bad time right now. I can't... don't... feel like I can burden anyone with it too much. Um. I think. Well? I dunno... maybe, probably, still in shock. But...I need to get it out somehow and... maybe someday I can share it better..." Noah's eyes shifted to the small round cafe-style table Jyl-eel had in her personal quarters. He could imagine the morning cup of Tarkalean tea, or Devidian hot chocolate she started the mornings with. It was her little ritual. But as his eyes followed the lines of the table, what he remembered were zucchini blossoms.

Zucchini blossoms... filled with a sort of cheese. That's what they'd eaten on her birthday. She said he'd have liked them even more than those cheese sticks he was so found of. Noah tucked his lips together and felt a soft cringe. He'd lied and said they were fantastic. He'd hoped his little lie would perk up her birthday. She'd lost a Haliian Hazel Blossom that morning. It was like her patient dying. As for the food... in reality they were... a bit odd to him. And she'd seen through his ruse.

"My friend... Jyl... was killed... a few days ago. We-we, uh, were attacked by the Kazon. She..." Noah couldn't finish it. "Died... and I'm not. I'm not handling it very... well..." Behind his closed eyes he remembered Jyl-eel setting down her last zucchini blossom, leaning over the table. Her hand had been a bit cold. But she touched his neck and their lips pressed together. It had been... more than friendly. Valt... kissed with mouths open when they meant more than friendship. Sort of like Humans.

Noah shivered and tightened his shoulders, rolling them, at the invasion of the memory... the taste and feeling and arousal that inevitably came. A hunger in him rose that... Noah had always been a little suspicious of. It wasn't like he was over-burdened with ennui about it... hardly had a great resume of experience with it at all. He always had to seem to... drop in to what it all meant right then. But his body had responded vociferously. It'd been... well... a bit more than a year and a half since he'd... done much more than self-care.

"I'm um... she asked me... in her last statement I guess... to pack up her things and send them back, to uh... to Valt Minor. She was Valtese? Is... um... was... yeah. Fuck.". His eyes closed. "Computer pause. Back two seconds..." He squinted them. Noah raked his fingers through his hair when it became too much. Too soon. It was a feeding frenzy of emotions: anger, loss, panic, regret. They were like cannibalistic piranhas going after each other. It felt hot and stiff and it all came out in a wheeze of pain.

Recentering himself felt impossible, like time was stopped. And the computer was breathing down his neck. So he did what he needed to do. Noah started to lift her personal effects and placed them on the dining cafe table. "Computer, summon Dot Beta... bring a type III anti-grav...." He said in a thick voice as the table quickly became overwhelmed with her knickknacks. "Time?"

"Seven minutes, two seconds."

Tor liked to carry a piece of every place she remembered... what she called being touched by a place. "Resume." "She was a Botanist... Valt Botanist. Her-her people had been bombed into the ground by the Kriosians and-and... well you know. It left her world dead. She was part of that generation... umm..." Sniff... breath... exhale. Noah choked. "Trying to bring new life back to her world. So they could leave their domed c-cities someday." Sniff. She liked Starfleet but... it was all about her home for her... I guess... Valt doesn't have a lot of um, B-Botanists. They're more interested in, um.". His brow rose with a little bit of disgust. "Latinum..."

"Shit..." It sprang to mind like lightning and struck. "Computer... pause." He waited for it to acknowledge. But before he could begin he could feel the weight of duty slump his shoulders. He mouthed fuck. "Open a new message... to um..." He rubbed the broad side of his nose and pulled at his mouth with a harsh sound. "The Kressari Federation... Kressari Horticultural Exchange Program..." He wet his lips. "Begin recording." he turned to the screen near Jyl's desk. "Uh hello. My name is... uh... Noah Balsam. I'm a um... a-a friend of Ensign Jyl-eel T..." His eyes closed. "Tor. I- pause."

It was like his throat closed. His chest tightened. Noah swiveled in to the chair of the cafe table and hunched. "This... sucks... sssso much." He growled between gritted teeth as the wet found the way down his cheeks. He rocked a few times... losing track and spinning. This overly perfumed room and these memories... and this... all of this. This ship. Noah closed off the scene before him, and tried to banish it all back to... an abyss.

"Re-open... personal log..." He said suddenly. He shook out his hands, started to pace.

"What if I-I left... I-I.... Mom... Da.... dad. What if I came home? I... I don't.... I know... think... I belong in Starfleet. Anymore. I don't think I do... " Noah stopped. His chest felt tight. Hello, old rival. Panic. He recognized it. Its spin. Its lies. His eyes, on the floor, felt like they were tunneling and drawn in... drawn in... drawn in until he felt spinning, and almost as if he could feel every atom and molecule in the floor.

"Its my ocean... its my ocean..." It was his arm cast out for shore, his muscle memory. He pushed down hard and flexed his toes to find the weight of his body. It passed over him like a wave of prickly heat. It was panic. He stared at it... he observed it. He'd never died of it, even as myopic and contracted it made the world feel. It would pass... see? He could feel the crest. The heat prickle... crescendoed... it started to slow.

"Resume..."

"The recording is active." The computer checked.

"Fine." He breathed in a deep breath that helped to push down the hot a little more. "I don't know if I belong here anymore, Mom... I-I just wanted to see some of the galaxy... build some... software. See some alien tech." His voice was soft, his brows knitted and furrowed. I could try for Cendo Prae again next year... come to Bajor... maybe find a-a job as a systems analyst there.". His head turned and tilted, one eye shut. "I-um- does the Bajoran militia take non-Bajorans?"

He swiped at the wet on one cheek and then the other. Sniff. "I... don't know what to do.... you guys. I got hurt. I had to hurt people... they were bad people but...." He scowled as he chuckled dryly, "That doesn't matter? I don't do that... I don't fucking do that. Why'm I here?" You need to ground... the voice was in his head, maybe a whisper from Ayah. So Noah obeyed. At first he hugged himself, then sat on the edge of the now vacant bed.

The doorbell chimed. "Pause log. Come."

The silvery sheen of one of the Dots appeared, its LED lit emoji face beaming in light blue. It entered, its hands clasping a medium sized grav sled. Noah tried to right his face, stained pink and blotchy as it was. "Right hi... um... Dot Beta. Thanks. I'm-I'm...." He looked at its placid, fixed, almost panic face. "I'm... nevermind. I-I need help moving her effects to the Assay Office..." He gestured at the table.

The Dot's enigmatically simple LED emoji face flickered down and up almost like a blink and it silently moved to start placing things from the cafe table to the anti-grav sled. Noah looked on and drifted, lost in a sort of limbo. So much for grounding. Instead he felt the old ghost memory of her cool hand pushing his shirt off his shoulders while he'd tried to fumble with the claps of her negligee... apologizing of course... he didn't do this much.

"Stop apologizing, Noah..." She chortled at him. Her hands had been cool and smooth with lotion. They'd passed over his almost nonexistent pecs, nickel-sized nipples. She tilted her head at them and then smoothed her digits down his sunken chest: pectis excavatum... Noah held his breath then, waiting for judgment that didn't come.

They found his waistband. Noah's memory eyes closed and felt the jostle. They, also, went slack and slinked down his body. Noah pushed back on the memory. His hands rose and pressed at still, cool air that smelled of dawn orchids. His eyes set on Dot Beta as it moved personal effect after personal effect. Noah looked on. "Love you Mom... Da... Close log..."

A Post By:

Ensign Noah Balsam
Systems Specialist