Martian Hospitality

Posted on Tue Sep 15th, 2026 @ 11:59am by Commander Atna & Commander Intharia T'Zor & Captain Rovak & Commander Alex Flynn & Doctor Hlogun Sutulhar FRS, ScD, QSsD, FZMI

1,987 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Shifting Shapes [4-5]
Location: Stargate Bay - Delta Dock - DS13
Timeline: Mid-Shoreleave

Alex and Thari watched the gate being dialed, from the control room upper level viewing the main stargate bay in Delta Dock. There was something very elegant about the process. Like one could watch it over and over again comfortably. And then the ka-whoosh! as the vortex stabilised. It was a hell of a thing, as Ambassador Velt said every time he spoke of it.

"Farewell, and good luck." Rovak said with a nod. He'd had Atna's strangeness reported to him from several sources, but by all accounts she was doing field-leading work on Mars with the salvaged systems and multiversal exploration protocol. The ending of her relationship with T'Zor was unfortunate, but she was ever the logical Vulcan, feelings were irrelevant. The only distinctly abnormal response he'd seen was her change of hair, but that was not uncommon to those who had suffered similarly with symptoms of mental parasitism. Perhaps it simply affected her more than she would admit to anyone, and a quiet escape was the easiest option. Logical.

The Commanders stepped out of the puddle into the Mars Stargate Ops centre, where three security staff waited. Odd.

"Commander Atna hasn't cleared your presence here, Commanders. I'm afraid I need to limit you to unclassified areas." The Deltan security chief told them.

"No? That's a shame. Fortunately Dr Sutler here will vouch for us, right Logan?" Alex called out to the sturdy bearded man across the room, in deep but suddenly interrupted conversation with the new Trill girl in Ops.

"Alex?" He responded suddenly, before excusing himself from the Operator.

"Good to see you. I'm sure you're familiar with Intharia T'Zor?" Alex asked.

"Ah, yes. Quantum Interloper 001. Well, actually closer to current starfleet registries in total count with all the mirror knock-offs we've had, but number one of the Dreizhen variety. Professor Hlogun Sutulhar, Federation Science Council representative on Project Chappa'ai."

"Charmed. Alex has told me a great deal about you." Intharia said with a polite bow.

"I certainly hope not, those stories aren't for general audiences." Hlogun said, folding his arms and facing Flynn.

Alex just rolled her eyes at him.

"Actually, if Commander Atna is available, we'd like to have a word with her." T'Zor finally asked the security officer.

"You'll have to speak with her yeoman, ma'am." The Deltan said as he put a finger to his ear, listening to something being communicated to him, before leaving with a nod.

"I'll get you in there. Want to go now?" Hlogun asked.

"Absolutely." T'Zor agreed.

"This way. It's a bit of a hike. Lifts are out for maintenance. Some people can't go longer than five minutes up stairs without sitting down. Scientist-types." The scientist said dismissively. "What brings you to our corner of reality, Commanders?"

"You and I are going to catch up." Flynn told Sutulhar. "She's going to have a chat with Atna."

"Oh? Did she borrow a microscope and forget to give it back?"

"No. It's complicated. And personal. And shut up." Flynn told him.

"Right, well. Upsie-daisies." They reached a series of stairs.

"Quite the thing you've found, this Stargate. I'd love to pick the brains of the people who built it."

"They're all gone, we're told. Even their ascended consciousnesses were destroyed in a war. Just goes to show, being smart isn't everything." Alex said in a thinly veiled criticism of Hlogun.

"Maybe back then a million years ago when everything was protomorphic being smart wasn't everything. Nowadays, there's untapped stores of energy going to waste in every moment, entire realities whose blinking in the quantum foam releases all the energy that entire universe once contained, handily siphoned into a battery. This Stargate proves it. Zero-point energy through self-sustaining subspace boring. Bloody brilliant."

"I've heard similar theories elsewhere. I hope you're correct." T'Zor said affirmatively, taking the steps with ease.

"It's me curse." Sutulhar grumbled as they continued.

"How have you found Atna's command?" Alex asked.

"Fine. We don't see her. She does late shift, lets the XO take the day. Very effective. Works best alone, we're told. Doesn't bother me, I get all the approvals I need, so I don't have any complaints." Sutulhar said with a shrug.

"Nothing weird?" Alex double checked.

"Nope. I mean she's certainly gotten lucky more times than expected on breakthroughs with the Stargate tech, but she is a smart cookie." Sutulhar admitted.

"So this is it?" Flynn asked when they reached a hall with 'COMMANDER'S OFFICE' pointing down the hall.

Thari took a deep breath, and pressed the chime on Atna's door.

The door opened at once.

Atna stood waiting in the doorway in the dark uniform of Mars Operations, severe and immaculate, her new hair making her look even less like the woman T'Zor remembered.

"Doctor T'Zor. Commander Flynn. Doctor Sutulhar." she said. "This is unexpected."

"Good." Alex said. "Then we're even."

Atna ignored that. Her eyes stayed on T'Zor.

"You may enter." she said.

The door closed behind them.

The office was larger than her quarters on DS13 had been, and somehow emptier. A desk. Two chairs. PADDs stacked in perfect order. A rotating Stargate schematic on the wall. Nothing personal. Nothing soft.

Atna sat. T'Zor remained standing for a second, then took the chair opposite her.

"I assume this is not a professional visit." Atna said.

"No." T'Zor replied. "You left without speaking to me."

"Yes."

T'Zor stared at her. "That's all you have to say?"

"It is what occurred."

"It's not an explanation."

"No."

The silence sat between them.

T'Zor had rehearsed this. She had planned to be calm, measured, fair. Atna had always deserved that much. Even now, after being abandoned without warning, she still wanted to give her that.

"What you did was uncharacteristic." T'Zor said at last. "You're abrupt. Private. Controlled to the point that it's infuriating. But you're not careless, and you aren't cruel."

Atna's face did not change.

"You ended things without discussion and left the station as if I were nothing to account for." T'Zor continued. "That isn't the conduct of the woman I knew."

Atna lowered her eyes for the briefest moment.

"The encounter with the Goa'uld symbiote was brief." she said. "That does not mean it was insignificant."

T'Zor's anger faltered.

"To experience mental intrusion so completely," Atna went on, "and then to discover that telepathic contact must thereafter cease, was not a minor alteration to my sense of self. Not only was I told I could not meld my mind for my own well-being, the idea of such an intrusion quickly became repellent to me."

"And so no telepathy."

"Yes."

The answer she already knew was the one that hurt most.

"Particularly with me." T'Zor said.

Atna took half a breath too long. "Yes."

T'Zor looked down, then back up. "So that was it."

"Clarify."

"Our bond." she said. "You decided that without telepathy there was nothing left worth trying to save."

Atna's jaw shifted slightly. "Our relationship was formed through unusual certainty." she said. "We knew one another's thoughts. We knew the mutuality of feeling. We did not need to speculate. We did not need to guess."

"No." T'Zor said. "We didn't."

"When that ceased to be possible, the foundation of the relationship was materially altered."

"It wasn't all we had." Intharia argued calmly, only mildly annoyed.

"No." Atna said. "But it was the primary means by which we bonded."

That landed harder than any cruelty would have.

T'Zor held herself still by force. "You could have spoken to me." she said.

"Yes."

"You could have told me you didn't know how to do this anymore."

Atna's expression tightened, barely. "I did not know how to proceed," she said, each word exact, "without the one form of intimacy in which there had never been any uncertainty. I had been violated. I was being asked to surrender telepathy forever. I did not consider it logical to continue as though nothing essential had been lost."

T'Zor's throat felt tight all at once.

"You decided that alone."

"Yes."

"You decided what I could bear."

"I decided," Atna said, quieter now, "that continuing while privately resenting what had been taken from me would poison what remained."

That was honest. Cold, devastating, and honest. T'Zor looked at her for a long moment and found no softness there to reach for, only control so complete it had become distance.

It hurt more because it made sense.

"I am sorry for your mother." T'Zor said finally. "And I am sorry for what was done to you. And I understand that leading here was an opportunity that it would be illogical to ignore."

Atna did not answer immediately. For one instant she looked very nearly like she might.

Then it was gone.

"Thank you." she said.

T'Zor stood. After a moment, Atna did the same.

"I only came here to hear that there was a reason." T'Zor said.

"There was."

"I know."

Atna moved to the door and opened it.

"I trust this matter is now concluded." she said.

It was such an essentially Atna sentence that it nearly broke T'Zor's heart.

"Yes." she said. "It is."

She stepped out into the corridor, where Alex pushed off the wall immediately. One look at T'Zor's face was enough. Alex said nothing, only fell into step beside her as they walked away.

The door closed.

Inside the office, Atna remained standing with one hand on the panel.

Stillness.

Then the hand tightened until the metal buckled.

The conversation replayed, each word perfect, each expression catalogued, each weakness assessed.

The calculation had come and gone in an instant while T'Zor sat across from her: distance to the throat, angle of approach, force required, time to death, time to security response. Not anger. Not impulse.

Utility.

Atna's eyes closed.

Deep down, somewhere beyond reach, something battered wordlessly against the inside of her own skull. A mute terror. A desperate refusal. A soundless, endless scream that could not reach her mouth.

Her eyes opened again.

Not Atna's eyes. Not really. Only her memories looking out.

The thing inside her considered the exchange with cold satisfaction. It had used her discipline, her grief, her history, every precise Vulcan truth available to it. The explanation had been almost entirely real. That was why it worked.

That was why T'Zor had accepted it.

Somewhere beneath that vast, sealed dark, Atna watched. She knew exactly what had been said with her voice. She knew how close T'Zor had come. She pushed and pushed and pushed against the prison of her own body and could not move a finger, could not change a breath, could not force a single word past lips that belonged to something else.

She screamed in silence until there was nothing in her but the scream.

The Goa'uld consciousness straightened Atna's uniform and returned to the desk.

Had T'Zor pressed harder, stepped closer, refused to leave, it would have killed her with Atna's hands.

Not in rage. Not with pleasure. Well, not for pleasure.

Simply because that would have been the correct solution. This body was among the most skilled at violence that it had ever inhabited. T'Zor was an alien to this universe. DS13's staff may have trusted her enough to award provisional rank, but she was still a relative unknown to the rest of Starfleet. For a Vulcan Commander to claim to have killed her in self-defence might have raised the suspicions of Flynn and the others, but she estimated she would face no real consequences.

It sat down at Atna's desk, placed its hands neatly beside the waiting PADDs, and resumed work on the Stargate diagnostics with all of Atna's knowledge, all of her habits, all of her flawless control.

Outside, T'Zor kept walking, already feeling that she should have left it alone.

Inside, the real Atna went on screaming into the silence of the strange void she had been banished to, behind her own eyes.

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