Lt. Ryden Sylvax - The Story Begins
Ryden Kel
The hug caught Ryden completely by surprise.
For half a heartbeat, he simply stood there before a warm smile crossed his face and he wrapped an arm around Ivalyan in return.
At this distance, he certainly didn't need to make any effort to sense what she was feeling. The counselor was practically radiating enough emotion to overwhelm whatever remained of his carefully cultivated Betazoid restraint. But beneath the embarrassment, anxiety, gratitude, and several other things tangled together too tightly for him to distinguish, something had shifted.
And she'd called him "Ryden."
He'd take the win.
When they separated, Ryden gave her a final smile before turning his attention back toward the PADD resting on the biobed. Somewhere along the way, their inspection of Sickbay had transformed into something considerably more personal than checking emergency supplies and making certain the new biobeds worked.
Not exactly what he'd planned.
Then again, perhaps learning the people who would work here was every bit as important as learning the room itself.
A low vibration suddenly passed through the deck beneath his boots.
Ryden stopped.
It was subtle at first, more felt than heard... the steady hum of the Aurora-A's engines changing beneath them as power flowed through systems that, until now, had only been waiting.
His eyes instinctively lifted toward the ceiling.
Another vibration followed, settling into a quiet resonance through the deck plating. There was no window in Sickbay to mark the moment, no stars sliding past to announce their departure, but Ryden could feel it nonetheless.
They were moving.
A grin slowly spread across his face.
The Aurora-A was underway.
For a moment, Ryden forgot about inventories, diagnostics, and whether Counselor Keros was inexplicably terrified of him. He simply stood there and allowed himself to appreciate what this moment meant.
A new ship.
A new Sickbay.
A crew taking their first journey aboard her together.
Whatever awaited them beyond StarBase 118, this was where the Aurora-A's story began.
And Ryden Sylvax was rather pleased to be aboard for the first page.
END