Young Kellan's Mission

Posted on Fri Jun 12th, 2026 @ 3:21pm by Lieutenant JG Zaire Byrne-Solwick & Eliana Kellan & Paislee Kellan

1,388 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: Episode 2: Mine of Taurus
Location: Holodeck

The USS Scharnhorst was a ship built of humming bulkheads and the rhythmic sound of the warp field, but to six-year-old Paislee Kellan, it was mostly a collection of very large legs and very shiny floors.

On this particular Tuesday, Paislee was on a mission. She moved through the corridors of Deck 12 with a determined waddle, clutching a plastic container shaped like a nebula. Inside were three "Star-Zest" cookies-chocolate chip shortbread that her mother, Eliaina, had baked in the ship’s galley only an hour prior.

Her destination was Main Engineering. It was a place of forbidden wonders, strictly off-limits to children unless they were escorted by a parent or, in Paislee’s case, possessed a level of cuteness that acted as a universal keycard.

Lieutenant Commander Zaire Byrne-Solwick was currently horizontal. He was halfway inside an open access crawlspace beneath the primary coolant manifold, his grease-stained hands dancing over a delicate web of fiber-optic relays. Zaire was a man who spoke the language of machines better than the captain gave his weekly lecture to the senior staff. He was tall, wiry, and carried the perpetual scent of ionized ozone and caramel mocha coffee.

"Hand me the micro-calibrator, Miller," Zaire grunted, his voice echoing from the metal housing.

A small, sticky hand placed a bright purple crayon into his open palm.

Zaire’s fingers closed around the wax. He paused. He knew the weight of a micro-calibrator. This was not it. He slid himself out of the crawlspace on his anti-grav sled, blinking against the harsh amber light of the Engineering bay.

Instead of Ensign Miller, he found himself looking at a pair of bright grey-bluel eyes and two messy pigtails.

"That’s not for fixing, Commander Zaire," Paislee said, pointing at the crayon. "That’s for coloring the stars."

Zaire sat up, wiping a smudge of plasma-grease from his forehead, only to leave a dark streak across his brow. "Paislee. I believe you’ve bypassed three security checkpoints and at least one very confused NCO to get in here."

"Mommy said you forgot to eat," Paislee informed him, holding out the nebula-shaped container. "She says engineers are like warp cores. If you don't feed them, they get... cranky."

Zaire felt a rare, genuine smile tug at the corners of his mouth. He looked up to see Eliaina Kellan standing at the entrance to the bay. The ship’s head chef was still in her whites, leaning against the doorframe with an amused expression. As the Captain’s wife, she had a certain leeway, but as the woman who kept the crew’s morale alive through her kitchen, she was arguably the third most powerful person on the ship.

"Cranky was the word I used, yes," Eliaina called out, walking toward them. Her gaze softened as she looked at Zaire. When they had first come on board, the chief engineer had immdediatly seized on to Paislee feeling like a fish out of water and with her mothers permission had befirended the young Kellan when he was in the galley for lunch. "You’ve been down here for ten hours, Zaire. The Captain told me the injectors were stabilized three hours ago. Why are you still bleeding on my floor?"

"The harmonics were off by index-zero-four," Zaire defended, taking the container from Paislee. "If I don't balance the frequency, the vibration will travel up to the saucer section. You’ll feel a rattle in your sauté pans, Eliaina. I’m doing this for the culinary arts."

Eliaina laughed, a warm sound that cut through the mechanical drone of the room. She knelt beside her daughter, tucking a stray hair behind Paislee's ear. "Well, the culinary arts are currently represented by those cookies. Take five minutes, Commander. That’s a direct order from the galley."

Zaire popped the lid. The scent of chocolate and butter filled the workspace. He took a bite, and for a moment, the stress of a fluctuating dilithium matrix vanished. "I don't know how you get the texture like this? It's like none other I''ve had and I am a chocolate chip expert!."

"Now you don't really want to know." Eliaina winked. "A chef has her secrets. Just like you have yours for making this ship go fast."

"Commander?" Paislee asked, tugging on Zaire’s uniform sleeve. "What does that big glowy thing do?"

She was pointing at the Master Systems Display, a massive translucent tower where the heart of the Scharnhorst beat in pulses of blue light.

Zaire looked at the clock. He was ahead of schedule, despite his own perfectionism. He looked at Eliaina, who nodded encouragingly.

"Well, Little Kellan," Zaire said, lifting the girl up and setting her on a clean workbench. "That is the heartbeat of the ship. Think of the Scharnhorst as a big whale swimming through the dark ocean of space. That light is what keeps her warm and tells her where to go."

"Does the whale get scared of the dark?" Paislee asked, her eyes wide. Sometimes she got scared.

Zaire paused. He had spent his life looking at the vacuum of space as a series of navigational hazards and mathematical constants. "Sometimes," he admitted softly. "But that’s why she has us. We’re the little fish that live inside her and keep her brave." He wondered if there were times Paislee got scared of the dark. He would talk to her mother later, he had an idea that might help her out.

He spent the next twenty minutes explaining the ship’s internals through the lens of a six-year-old’s imagination. The plasma conduits were "vines," the impulse engines were "giant flippers," and the computer was a "very smart lady who lives in the walls."

Eliaina watched them from the side, a quiet pride in her eyes. Life on a long-range explorer wasn't easy for a child. There were no parks, no blue skies, and no rain. But there was a community. There was a Chief Engineer who would stop a critical system diagnostic to explain science as magic, and a Captain who tucked his daughter in every night after a bridge shift.

Suddenly, a low chime echoed through the bay.

“Bridge to Engineering. Commander Byrne-Solwick, please report.”

Zaire reached for his comm-badge. "Byrne-Solwick here. Go ahead, Captain."

“Zaire, I’m looking at the efficiency readouts. They’re up nearly twelve percent across the secondary grid. Excellent work. Also... is my daughter currently bothering you?”

Zaire looked at Paislee, who had put his discarded micro-calibrator in her pocket.

"She’s currently acting as Chief Consultant for the New-Crayon-Initiative, Captain," Zaire replied. "And she’s brought reinforcements."

“Understood. Send the reinforcements to my ready room when you’re done. Internal sensors suggest there’s a distinct lack of hugs up here. Captain out.”

Zaire set Paislee back on the floor. "You heard the man. He’s suffering from a hug deficiency. That sounds like a Code Red."

Paislee gasped, her face going serious. "I have to go!"

"Take your cookies," Eliaina said, handing the container back to her daughter. She turned to Zaire. "Thank you, Zaire. For being patient. I know how much you hate interruptions."

Zaire picked up his wrench, his eyes returning to the crawlspace, but the tenseness in his shoulders had dissipated. "It wasn't an interruption, Eliaina. It was a recalibration."

As the mother and daughter walked away—Paislee skipping and Eliaina waving back over her shoulder—Zaire went back to work. The Scharnhorst felt a little lighter, the hum of the engines a little more musical.

He slid back under the manifold, but this time, he didn't reach for the micro-calibrator first. He reached into his pocket, pulled out the purple crayon Paislee had accidentally left behind, and placed it carefully on his tool rack—the most important instrument in Main Engineering.

Paislee couldn't wait to see her Daddy, his hugs were always special and made all the sadness go away.

"Computer, end program."

Paislee blinked as the holodeck program ended. She looked over at her mother in disappointment.

"It was just getting good!" she complained.

"You have school in an hour." Elliana reminded her. "There is more to life that holodeck adventures."

Paislee sighed loudly. She headed to her room, not interested in another adult lecture. Instead, she started plotting her next adventure.

 

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