What do you fear?

Posted on 2025, Tue Nov 11th, @ 3:13am by Rear Admiral Jacob Hawks Esq, SMH PMV & Vice Admiral Jack Reacher Jr & Major Yadira Tristan & Corporal Roy Fitzroy

1,859 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: Halloween 2025 - The Magical Mystery Tour
Location: Savok Nor-Abandoned Cardassian Station
Timeline: PRIMARY

Roy stood in line at the mess hall. You would think that a space station would have a big enough mess hall to have more than two replicators to serve people. But then again, this station was Cardasian-made and operated, and they were notoriously cheap.

After punching in his order, Roy waited for the familiar sound of the replicator doing his job. Roy grabbed his tray and looked for the condiments. His eye crossed the mess hall, and looking down, he noticed a large eyeball staring back at him. His Swedish meatballs looked more like Salisbury steak with a giant bloodshot eye blinking back at him. Roy used to interacting with hundreds of data points, was ill-prepared for the single eye staring back at him. It held the look of a being that had seen everything the universe had to offer and found it boring.

Roy did not even realize the scream dominating the room came from his mouth. Roy took all of a half a second to let go of the tray. As the tray fell from Roy's limp fingers, the eye frowned at him, like he was insulting a being of outrageous power. Right before the tray hit the floor, the Eye and the stake vanished like they were never there. Roy looked at his meatballs that had returned as if they had been there all along.

Every action has an opposite but equal reaction. When the tray impacted the floor, the Swedish meatballs exploded in all directions. Everyone within 15 meters was covered by a litter of red meat and sauce. The amount of food debris was horrifyingly overdone. Like he was the but of a grand practical joke.

Losing his appetite, Roy turned to leave the mess hall. Looking down, nothing had splattered his uniform. "I guess it was not that bad!" Roy muttered not quite under his breath. Then with a shock, he realized that he was still holding his tray with the unspilled Swedish meatballs on it.

Hawks had recognized it right away.. It wasn't the first run-in with the Q continuum. It was his old friend from his days on the Concord and during his time on Starbase Liberty. Q4. He was always literal and always told his human playthings exactly what he was he was going to do. Hawks, though, was conceited enough and had badges and medals that he thought conclusively showed that he feared nothing. He would very shortly discover how wrong he was. No humanoid was ever truly fearless.

The world snapped back into focus with a gut-twisting jolt. The hum of the Halo’s engines was gone — replaced by the cold, hollow silence of an abandoned station. Reacher exhaled slowly, eyes narrowing at the flickering Cardassian panels that barely clung to life.

Savok Nor.

The name was burned into the wall beside him in old, flaking script. He’d read about it once — a logistical outpost from the Dominion War era that vanished off the charts. No wonder the air smelled like dust and ghosts.

He moved through the corridor, hand brushing the worn bulkheads, the metallic creak echoing underfoot. Then came a scream.

Instinct took over. Reacher pivoted toward the noise, hand brushing the phaser at his side. The doors to the mess hall hissed open just in time for him to see Roy standing in the middle of the room — tray on the floor, food everywhere, eyes wide like he’d just looked into a warp core mid-breach.

For a moment, nobody spoke. Then, just as suddenly, everything reset — the tray was upright, the food normal. Like the chaos never happened.

Reacher frowned. That kind of distortion wasn’t tech. It was power.

He muttered under his breath, “This feels familiar.”

His gaze shifted toward Hawks, who had appeared near the doorway, expression unreadable. Reacher could see the recognition in his eyes — and that told him everything he needed to know.

“Let me guess,” Reacher said dryly, voice echoing through the dim light. “Old friend of yours?”

The air shimmered faintly, and Reacher almost expected the laughter — that smug, cosmic chuckle that came with a Q’s arrival.

“Figures,” he continued. “Q4. Same theatrics, same games. And here I was hoping for a normal Halloween.”

He stepped closer to Roy, lowering his tone. “If you saw something, don’t dismiss it. That’s how they get under your skin. Make you second-guess what’s real until you’re the punchline.”

Turning back toward Hawks, Reacher’s expression hardened. “You know his patterns better than most. If he dragged us here, there’s a reason — and it’s not just for fun.”
"He's never harmed anyone in any of his recorded interactions, well, physically harmed anyway. If he said he is gonna show us what were fear most, he'll do it. He's honest to a fault this one. But as far as Q"s go, if you're going to encounter one, he's probably the safest." Hawks would soon regret that false assumption.

Reacher took a steadying breath, eyes scanning the silent, decaying room.

“Savok Nor,” he muttered. “Looks like this ghost station just became our playground. Let’s figure out what Q4 wants — before he decides to start the real game.”

Roy Fitzroy, looked back at the person who obviously knew classified data, as he recognized something that only existed in his nightmares. The non-classified briefings of the USS Enterprise and their interactions with the Q were required reading back at the academy. But nightmares were not mentioned at all.

Roy asked, "How do you fight something that powerful that it can change your reality on a whim?"

Reacher’s gaze didn’t waver, though the chill crawling up his spine reminded him how fragile the world could feel when confronted with the incomprehensible. He clenched his fists loosely at his sides, weighing the question carefully, as if the right answer might somehow keep him from slipping into the madness of imagining it.

“You don’t fight it,” he said finally, his voice low and steady, carrying the kind of certainty born from countless impossible situations. “Not directly. You survive it. You outthink it. You find the one thing it can’t touch—and you use that. Reality may bend, twist, even break around you, but some things remain untouchable: your choices, your focus, your willingness to act when it matters.”

He took a slow breath, letting the words sink in, eyes narrowing slightly. “The rest… is luck. And if luck runs out, you keep moving anyway. You make it matter in spite of the nightmare.”

Lounging in "Viper 1", Yadira started to dream. It started out as a normal day of relaxation until she started to smell smoke and out of nowhere came all the burning seats along with "OMG launch everyone launch" she screamed. Sitting down then looking at where her controls were not where she left them. Instead we're a pair of two bones each covered in eerie flames. Something Inside her head said "Reach for them. They will not hurt you, but if you fight me I will burn them" now Dira had one choice grab or risk getting burned. She grabbed them as soon as she did, the fighter turned into a flaming war fighter. The harder she tried to regain her composure the harder it became. Grabbing her head she jumped down to the deck only to see this Large creature that was on fire behind her as she ran holding her head. Out of the ground came a ring of ice cold and grabbed her leg and ice started to move up her leg. Between fire and the ice and trying to run, she felt herself moving through the air and crashed into the wall with a thud and passed out. Once in sickbay they started to heal her superficial wounds. Then they pulled out small metallic device to monitor her emotions and it also could help keep her steady.


((An hour later))

Q4 and Hawks had gone way back, having run across eachother 4 separate times in the past quarter century. At one point the member of the continuum had even offered to make Jacob a Q himself. An offer he politely refused.

On another occasion Q4 had saved Hawks from death during a kamikaze run trying to take out a Romulan Warbird that was about to get its hands on a doomsday weapon. Q4 had nearly been kicked out of the continuum for that stunt.

This time though, the non-corporeal and omnipotent being had heard a fantastical rumor from some other non-corporeals he would hangout with/spy on from time to time. The Bajoran Prophets had been telling a story about some wild things that were going on deep in the coreward region of the Beta Quadrant. Knowing that Starfleet and the Federation wouldn't be able to resist the urge to be a bunch of goody two shoes.

So he decided to try and toughen them up a bit, and give them a small taste of what was to come. In the case of Hawks, Q4 had teleported him to the fence line of a far away Breen Slave camp.

While there, Hawks had seen his long lost wife Jana. She, like him, was 17 years older. But sure as shit, it was her. She was busy smashing Rockstar with a hydro sledge, the Breen had obviously captured her and some of her fellow crew from the Hyperion-B.

Just as he went grab the fence and scream her name Q4 winked and teleported him back to Savok Nor. Right where he had been with Roy and Reacher.

Hawks stood there for several seconds, mortified, with a look of pain, remorse, and terror laden on his face.

"What happened Jake? Whats going on?"

"Shes alive Jack...Jana." At that point, thebsepf proclaimed coolest guy in the galaxy, recipient of the Starfleet Medal of Honour, who had recieved the Pike Medal of Valour, TWICE, broke down and wept like and infant.

He thought he was fearless, but again Q4 had showed he was wrong. His biggest fear, was that Jana was alive out there somewhere and that he had given up on the search for her 17 years ago.

((1 hour later))

After showing everyone else what they feared the most, Q4 gave them a cryptic speach about how what he had just shown them was far tamer then what theybwoukd soon encounter. He advised them all to resign and return to the Alpha Quadrant if they values their sanity and their lives.

He then teleported each of them back to the exact instant and location that he had plucked them from.

"Jack." Hawks said as they returned to the place on SB113 they had started in.

"You don't need to ask Jake, what are you still doing here? Go find your wife and anyone else from the Hyperion, bring 'em home." Reacher said as he patted his old friend on the shoulder. Sure they were busy, and sure he needed his Deputy Commander, but Jack knew Hawks would be useless to him until he figured out if what Q4 had showed him was true.

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