Survival Tactics

You Just Gotta Walk the Walk

Keyla secured her gear in the shuttlecraft and began running pre-flights on the little ship. It was almost brand-new, like Discovery herself, and all her systems came up green—a fact that did little to quell her dissatisfaction. Conestoga-class shuttlecraft were powerful, but not quick—Clydesdales, not quarter horses. A Peregrine-class fighter would have been better, faster, and have better armament, but starships typically didn't carry fighters, as they were generally useless in deep space engagements. Keyla checked the burn rate on the impulse decks, and decided she could make this pack animal run if she had to. Still, she hated the panel-interface controls. A strap-on ship like this should have good old-fashioned joysticks.

Ideally, though, this would just be a chauffeur job. She'd fly in while Burnham futzed with her datapad and fly out while Burnham tended to their passenger. Best-case scenario: she'd have to trade maybe a half-dozen sentences with Michael Burnham.

If she were being honest, she'd have to admit she really did bring this whole situation on herself. It wasn't like she didn't know that Sylvia Tilly was Burnham's bunkmate when she noticed her across the blue-lit room, and that may have factored into her "it's-quarter-to-three-there's-no one-in-the-place-'cept-you-and-me" recklessness. True, a chunk of it was due to the fact that her latest dalliance—a Federation Marine that had been hitching ride with his unit to a Forward Operating Base in the Quarless Sector—had come to a messy end. "This is just a fling to you?" he'd wept. "I think we're in different places on this," she'd replied. "I wanted to introduce you to my mom," he'd exclaimed as he scrambled out of her quarters. It had been embarrassing for everyone involved—but mostly for him.

So when Tilly proved receptive to her flirtations she couldn't honestly say that along with the promise of a nice distracting rebound conquest there wasn't also some illicit thrill pulsing in the back of her mind from the possibility of making an aggressive move into Burnham's territory.

But she was reasonably certain that she hadn't considered the possibility that Burnham might walk in on them.

Pity, too, since what Tilly had lacked in experience with other women, she'd more than made up for in enthusiasm. Keyla had come to find that enthusiasm could go a long way in these short-term affairs she'd been experiencing lately. Sex was a nice distraction from war—it was positive and life-affirming amid the world of constant loss they all lived in—and as Grace Dobosu had whispered to her when they parted after their brief reunion, "You're alive until you're dead, Keyla. Never forget which side of the equation you're on." Tilly turned out to be good at reminding her she was alive.

The shuttlecraft's hatch opened with a pneumatic hiss. Keyla steeled herself and didn't look back at it. She heard Burnham climb aboard and stow her gear.

"Hello Keyla," she said tightly and settled into the copilot's seat. "Is everything prepped and ready to launch?"

Keyla tamped down the urge to tell her sit back and shut up. "Just say the word."

"Let's go then."