Captain’s log,

Republic has been asked to look into an issue in the Archanis Sector at the request of Starfleet Intelligence. While I’m confident that they could have found a closer ship to investigate the matter, say a ship under Admiral Reyes command, it would appear that Commander Sadovu’s unique expertise and former occupation is apparently going to come into play.

I have no doubt then that this is going to become an interesting experience for all involved. I just hope it doesn’t become too interesting.

There was no thought just yet. Barely even an awareness of self. There was comfortable warmth all around, with greater still pressing in on one side. Tendrils of that same greater warmth wrapped around, ensnaring, trapping oneself in this cocoon of warmth and pleasantness.

Then came the whispers, soft and nonsensical. An undertone to them brought more pleasant sensations. An awareness then of ears was required, those whispers said from close by, the breath of them on one’s ear as they poured in.

But there was still no thought. No understanding beyond this was a trusted voice, a safe place and the bonds around oneself were barely there anyway.

Then there was a sharp pressure on one’s ear. The ear that the whispers had poured into. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it was sharp. It pulled ever so slightly before releasing, then returned in almost the exact same spot. The sharp pressure finally brought forth a single response.

“Mmm.”

“Come on sleepy-head,” the voice said, now louder and more insistent, the meaning of the words finally registering and provoking thought.

“Mmm,” she repeated, awareness of self finally breaking through.

Sidda Sadovu. Luckiest woman in the galaxy. Or at least the most comfortable one right now.

Revin was curled around her, a tangle of arms and legs wrapping around her possessively, her delicious body-warmth threatening to send Sidda back to sleep. In opposition however were Revin’s fingers as they drew little patterns along her skin, her touch gently stirring her from slumber with a faint but ever-present insistence.

And then came the nibbling along her ear again, this time more forcefully. It broke through any sleep-fog that remained as Revin rolled around her, straddling and pinning her down to the bed, pulling away just enough to look down at her, a smile encompassing Revin’s entire face. “I said it’s time to wake up.”

“Mmm,” was her response. She tried to move her arms, to wrap them around Revin and pull the smaller woman close and tight. But they refused to move. A second try and she could recognise that Revin had her by the wrists, pinned to the bed above her head. She tried to move her hips, to roll over, but again Revin had her well enough that the only way to force the matter would be with real force.

So she stopped struggling and surrendered, offering a smile to her wife. “Alright, I’m awake.”

“Good.”

Revin’s lips met hers, the kiss passionate and filled with energy. She couldn’t move even if she wanted to. The moan that escaped from her came from deep within as she luxuriated in the demanding attentions of her wife. An eternity later Revin finally broke the kiss, sighing as she did so.

“I’m going to be late for work, aren’t I?” she asked Revin.

“Why do you think I woke you up early?” And Revin descended on her again, lips on her neck, body pressed against her own. “Plenty of time,” Revin said as she continued her ministrations. “Secret-keeper.”

It took an incredible effort of will to eventually drag herself away from Revin. It took an even greater effort of will not to go back and strangle Revin when she checked herself over in the mirror before stepping out of their shared quarters. Her growl of annoyance was met with a snickering from the bedroom as Revin curled back under the duvet.

“Morning Commander,” Captain Charles MacIntyre said in greeting as she eventually emerged onto the bridge, settling down into the right-most seat. “Did you decide to take the stairs this morning?”

“Sir?”

“You look like you’ve run through the ship.”

“Because I have.” She’d bolted from her quarters to sickbay, running from turbolifts when she could. She’s accosted a nurse for a dermal regenerator and a mirror, waving away the dark-green blemish that had appeared on her neck. She’d been prepared to swear the nurse to secrecy about what he’d seen, but the man had shrugged, muttered something about ‘not the first, not the last’ and offered to actually fix the hickey properly.

“I thought you worked out in the evenings?”

“I do.”

Mac took a moment, then nodded. “Ahh,” he said as he reached some sort of conclusion, which likely wasn’t too far off from the actual mark. “Well then. We should be entering the Kyban system in a few minutes. Anything Ms Beckman should be aware of, since you are the one with the local knowledge?”

“Don’t let traffic control bully you around. Don’t be surprised if they put us in a high parking orbit, they do it with every ship that could be a threat to the smaller orbital platforms. And,” she turned to look to Selu Levne for this last point, “don’t be surprised if there’s a K’Tinga-class battlecruiser in orbit somewhere.”

“Klingons? Here?” the Orion-Vulcan tactical officer asked.

“No, just a pack of miscreants, ne’er-do-wells and loveable rogues,” she answered, grinning from ear to ear.

“The Vondem Rose,” Mac clarified. “One day you’ll have to tell me how you managed to get it registered as an armed merchantman.”

“That’s between me, the Bureau of Ship Registries and Commodore Rourke. But there is one way I might tell you.”

“I’m not going to regret just hearing about this offer, am I?” Mac asked.

“There’s a restaurant in Banksy City, Plate, super difficult to get a table at. I’ve tried, never managed to get one. Owner has something against…honest merchants.” Mac’s raised eyebrow told her he wasn’t buying that one. “But they keep a table open for visiting Starfleet captains. The owner is a big fleet supporter, likes to brag about having captains visit their establishment. Book us a table, we’ll bring the girls, I’ll tell you the story there.”

“The girls?” Mac asked with another shake of his head. “If we have time, I’ll see what I can do.”

“Coming out of warp now,” Willow Beckman announced, as streaks of light filling the viewscreen gave way to the normality of sub-light. A dusting of lights in orbit circled the bright blue and green marble of Kyban as orbital platforms, transiting ships and a bevy of satellites orbited the world.

The crown jewel of Kyban’s orbitals, Thames Station, was unmissable, both in its proximity to Republic and appearance. It wasn’t so much a station as a collection of smaller ones that had been assembled into a larger piece over the last century. It was a web that threated to ensnare any station, or particularly large starship, that came to close and add on its own mass. But for all its fragility, it also packed a bevy of defences, curtesy of that same century of growth and the Federation’s erstwhile ally to the galactic south, who not too long ago had been an enemy and was threatening to do so again.

“Holy hell,” Willow exclaimed. “What is that?”

Her raised finger wasn’t pointing at Thames Station, but at another large mass nearby. The ship, if you could call it that, looked like nothing any sensible mind would conceive of. The ship’s drive section looked like a flat plate, engines prominent along one side. Jutting upwards from that plate were four enormous towers in a slight curve on the side of the drive-plate opposite the engines. The middle two towers were about as tall as Republic was long, the shorter outer towers were about a third shorter.

But the styling on the towers was the real eye-catcher. They looked like they belonged to a fairy-tale castle. Tall structures, complete with peaked roofs on the top structures, with an enclosed bridge connecting the towers about halfway up the taller ones. To complete the look the drive-plate had what looked like an actual castle wall around its edge, dotted with what looked like ballista emplacements at regular intervals.

“Oh no,” Mac muttered.

“Hmm?” she asked. “You’ve seen this…ship…before?”

“Hopefully it’s not the same ship, but I’ve seen it’s like before.” Mac shook his head. “That’s a Hysperian Neuschwanstein-class starcastle.”

“Hysperians? The stuffy, over-inflated cosplayers pretending to live in some fantasy world? I thought they were just a joke.”

“Oh, they are at that.” Mac rose to his feet. “And if there’s a Neuschwanstein here, then it means someone very, very important from Hysperia is here. Here just as we’re arriving.”

“Could be coincidence,” she said, coming to her feet and beside Mac, looking at the viewscreen and the absolute spectacle before them. “Likely is, after all. I mean, just look at that thing. It’s so stupid.”

“Maybe,” Mac replied. “But I doubt it.” He took a moment, drew in a deep breath. “Lieutenant Beckman, standard orbit please. Lieutenant Levne, you have the bridge. The Commander and I are heading planetside to meet with Starfleet Intelligence.”

“And if we’re not back in three hours,” she said jokingly, “storm the castle and come rescue us.”

“Which one?” Selu asked, which actually caused her to stop and have to consider the question for a moment.

“Dealer’s choice,” she answered as she stepped into the turbolift with Mac. “Federation Plaza, that thing,” she said, waving at the viewscreen. “Go with what feels right.”

Mac stepped forward, a hand on the door frame to halt it from closing. “No storming of any type, thank you. We’ll be back when we’re back.”

As the door slid shut, Mac shaking his head at her. She smiled as innocently as she could at him.

“I for one think you’d make an excellent damsel in distress,” she said.

“Only if I can wear baby-blue,” Mac answered. “Pink doesn’t work with my skin tone.”

Warm orange light poured through the streets of Banksy City, reflecting off of glass facades and polished concrete, bathing the city in the last light of the day as late afternoon slowly morphed into evening. Federation Plaza was busy with a mass of people heading away from work, crossing this way and that as they conversed with colleagues, met friends or otherwise navigated the tumult to escape to anywhere but here.

Mac stopped as they stepped outside, closed his eyes and took a deep breath, luxuriating in the fresh air, the hint of salt, the warmth of the sun on his face. After hours inside a climate-controlled building without so much as a window, this was needed. Starfleet Tower, for all of its amenities, features and resources, felt like it could have easily been in space and there wouldn’t have been much of a way to tell the difference.

“It was goddess damn noon when we went in there,” Sidda complained as she and Mac stepped out of Federation Tower, irritation evident in her voice.

He couldn’t help but smile at that. It was smile, or agree with her, and then they’d both be miserable about losing what looked like had been a beautiful day. “At least they put on afternoon tea for us,” he said. “Wasn’t expecting freshly baked goods.”

“You mean Revin always having something in the Pynx for senior staff hasn’t spoiled you yet?” Sidda asked, irritation disappearing, or at least subsiding for now.

“Blake, no, Doctor Pisani, has suggested I watch my diet,” he replied. “But I think that’s just revenge for me chomping down all the chocolate macaroons, what, a week ago?”

“No, it’s because of me.” Sidda shrugged, then with a nod of her head in one direction, had both of them walking away from Starfleet Tower. “You know, when we have snacks at briefings, you’re always trying to keep up with me.”

“Am not,” he responded immediately. “Am I?”

“Maybe not consciously, but you’re always filling up your plate about the same time I am. But you’ve got that measly human metabolism going for you. And you’ve not been hitting the gym as much either.” She was leading them both away from the transporter stations around the plaza and away from the main avenue that cut through it, forming one of the backbones of the city.

“Someone has to do the paperwork,” he shot back. “Where we going?”

“Polo club,” she answered, refusing to elaborate further. “Just trust me, you’ll like it.”

Since day one his instincts had always screamed at him when Sidda Sadovu said ‘trust me’ to him, but every time it had worked out well enough. He’d learned her story, or most of it, at any rate. What he was allowed to learn and what she was willing to elaborate on, and it hadn’t helped those instincts at all. She said it in much the same way that his previous commanding officer would say it; with the confidence of someone bull-headed enough to charge through any difficulties that might arise, as if it was all part of the plan. His instincts likely screamed because some other part of his brain always added another phrase after those words.

‘What’s the worst that could happen?’

Plenty, as he’d seen over his career.

But once again, it worked out. Once again, trust was given and rewarded as Sidda led him a couple of blocks away, then down between two buildings into an arcade crammed full of different eateries, curio shops and other frontages. There was a simple, unassuming red door between a restaurant and a flower shop she led them to, the former crammed full of people enjoying the evening, the later shut at this hour. No signage, no indication of what was behind the door, just a couple of potted plants on either side of it. A large man stood outside in an immaculately tailored suit, looked them both over, then shrugged, stepping aside without a word.

“Keep up the good work, James,” Sidda said to the man as she pushed the old manual door open. The man’s name got a response, but it was somewhere along the lines of ‘huh’ before Mac was himself through the doorway, the door swinging shut behind them.

A more perfect recreation of a speak-easy he hadn’t seen outside of a holodeck program. A short bar occupied one side of the small space, six stools in front of it. The opposite wall was taken up by a handful of booths, with only a couple of those occupied, a couple of patrons each. Otherwise the space was vacant save the barkeep, who was busy mixing a couple of drinks as Sidda led him in and straight to the bar, stopping to point to the neon sign above their heads momentarily.

The Polo Club

“What’s good?” he asked, conceding at least to himself that she’d steered them in a not-bad direction.

“Your best whiskey from Scotland, double, on the rocks, for the captain,” she said to the barkeep. “And dealer’s choice for me as long as it’s…purple. And the cheese platter, too.”

“Certainly, Captain Sidda,” the barkeep said with a smirk. “Or is it Commander these days?” The man rubbed at his collar, at imaginary pips.

“Just get us our drinks.” Sidda’s nod to a booth had them both sitting there in quick order, followed by her tapping at a device embedded into the table’s top. He hadn’t noticed the slight whir of fans, the humm of lights, but it had all gone silently instantly, absence now only bringing awareness. “Best drinks within walking distance and the cheese platter is pretty respectable.”

“And the booths have privacy screens,” he added. “You know, we could have returned to the ship.”

“Do you have purple alcohol hiding somewhere?” she countered. “Or Scottish whiskey?”

“No, but you do.”

“Not since last week. Brought the last of it out when we had that formal dinner with the Betazoid merchants.”

He shook his head, wanting to forget that entire escapade. There was no need to repeat it at all. Drinks eventually came, delivered by the barkeep pulling double duty on a night like tonight. Then again, a Monday night wasn’t likely to be the busiest. A small sip of the whiskey and the sigh was totally involuntary. It burned just right, leaving a delightful warm afterglow, totally unlike Blake’s hooch that could and did serve as a cleaning agent from what he’d heard.

“So, The Last Pirate King, not as dead as you thought, huh?” he finally asked. And with just those words Sidda’s irritation was back, evident on her face, the squint of her eyes, the sudden inward curl of her shoulders.

“He bloody well should be,” she sulked. “Both of them.”

“T’Rev of P’Jem, who died in prison and his chief lieutenant, Jamal al-Jabar, who Starfleet Intelligence told us not three hours ago had died in infighting as T’Rev’s little organisation imploded after your kidnapping of him.” He sighed as the look she gave him told him that wasn’t the truth of the matter. “Where’s al-Jabar?”

“Last I saw him, I was beaming out with a cup of tea in one hand, a disruptor in the other and an armed photon torpedo sitting next to him on a five second timer.” She sipped at her drink, then another larger sip. “I fucking didn’t see the body, just trusted that a torpedo would do the trick. Trusted the explosion vaporised the bastard.”

A photon torpedo for one man was a bit overkill. But how she’d just blithely said it made it unreal to him. Like it was just something you did. No attempt at taking al-Jabar prisoner, handing him over to authorities like she had T’Rev. No, she’d just launched a torpedo at him and walked away.

“A torpedo?” he asked.

“He traded in slaves, murder for hire, violent extortion and piracy of the worst sort. When I go before the goddesses one day, I know I’m going with more good deeds than bad behind me. And I saved the Federation the trouble of a trial and then finding some deep, dark miserable hole to bury his ass in.”

“You were a pirate, too,” he challenged.

“Oh barely. Sure, I took from the haves to give to the have-nots occasionally, but otherwise I tended to only pirate, well, pirates.” She finished her drink in one large gulp, then waved to the barkeep for another before diving into the cheeses before them, stacking slices on crackers with abandon. “I never hurt anyone. Well, I never killed anyone. Plenty of bruises, broken arms. Maybe a leg or two. But I never killed anyone who didn’t need killing first. But now someone is out there claiming to be The Last Pirate King. And all this warning about black market deals and dangerous tech we got doesn’t take a genius to put together.”

“Intelligence is worried that if someone is pretending to be The Last Pirate King, then perhaps they have something of worth to back up their claims on an empty pirate throne?” He didn’t like that idea. “You think a title like that is going to be enough to rally T’Rev’s disbanded organisation back into existence?”

“Maybe,” Sidda replied. “He wasn’t a fan of the Orion Syndicate and tended to collect those with similar viewpoints. Someone using the title might be able to rally a few folks back to the banner. Maybe even make a play on some of this technology the Syndicate wants their hands on as well. And I don’t think I like that one bit.”

“Why?”

“T’Rev kept the more dangerous aspects of his people in check. Usually with brutally efficient punishments for disobeying his commands. But everyone under him was a bloody psychopath waiting to be let off the chain. Like, just the worst type of people. I wouldn’t want them so much as having a coffee mug from Daystrom, let alone anything else more interesting. Mainly because they’re the sick sorts who would use such things against innocent people ‘just for fun’,” she said, air quotes and all.

“Well then, looks like we need to find the newest Last Pirate King and make the title stick this time,” he said to Sidda, earning a nod of agreement from her. “So, where do we start, then?”

“Ardot Kresh,” she answered. “In the morning. You need some sleep and I believe I have the evening shift, yes?”

“After another drink.” He downed his own and waved at the barkeep, flicking a finger between the two empty glasses to signal another. “Captain’s prerogative. Besides, I’m sure the kids can keep things from exploding for just a bit more.”

Parked in a safe orbit and with little to do, it was little wonder that the bridge was down by a few officers from normal operations. Or that no one was seated in any of the command chairs, either. Willow Beckman was only holding the conn in case traffic control called and wanted Republic to move to another orbit. Jenu Trid was muttering to herself at Operations, complaining about something she kept deflecting as ‘nothing major’. And the man responsible for the mighty ship at the moment was, instead of at the centre of the bridge, at his normal science station, undertaking a series of discreet scans on the only thing in the entire star system that seemed worthy of attention.

Matt Lake was busy trying to pry as many secrets from the Hysperian’s starcastle as he could using passive sensors only. It was proving to be a mostly futile endeavour as they, like Republic, didn’t need to bring certain systems online when parked in orbit, limiting emissions and the secrets they could give away. But he’d pry what he could before giving up and consulting Starfleet’s vast repository on knowledge on what other ships had learned about this eccentric starship.

“Commander, incoming hail,” Lieutenant Jenu said after a series of beeps, breaking the silence that had hung over the bridge since shortly after they’d relieved Levne and her shift. “It’s the Hysperians.”

“Looks like you finally got their attention,” Willow commented from the helm, going from looking bored to at least like she was pretending to work. Helpful if they were about to be talking with someone after all.

“I’d hope not,” Matt said, rising from his station and crossing to the centre of the bridge between the other two, not bothering with the centre seat. A quick pat of his tunic, a tug on one sleeve, and he nodded to Jenu. “Put them on.”

The riot of colour that spilled out of the viewscreen was enough to send him into a fit of blinking at first. Dazzling colours, bright lights, gold or polished brass fixtures everywhere. Portraits lined the back wall of the Hysperian’s bridge, banners hung uniformly around the bridge, equally with the crest of the Hysperian Kingdom and whatever noble house the ship likely belonged to.

“Starfleet vessel, this is Knight-Captain Filippo Calvacanti of the Hohenzollern. I bear a message from my liege for your captain. Where might he, or she, be?” The Knight-Captain stood in the middle of the expansive bridge, polished breastplate catching a no-doubt well positioned light, a sword at his side and a dark red cape just catching a breeze from another well-positioned air vent so it fluttered just so. Sunkissed skin, well-kept black hair and a magnificent moustache rounded out the impression of the Mediterranean knight.

It was all a bit much honestly. There was committing to the bit, and then there was forgetting the bit and living the fantasy, which Hysperia had embraced with abandon.

“Lieutenant Commander Matt Lake, USS Republic,” he offered with a smile. “Captain MacIntyre is somewhat indisposed with matters planetside at the moment. I can however relay any message you have to him upon his return, or make contact with him for you if the matter is important.”

“All matters from my liege are important,” Calvacanti said. “You wear that rather drab blue. Are you per chance an alchemist or an apothecary?”

Matt had to stop and think, trying to translate the clearly recognisable words into sense. “You mean scientist or doctor, yes?” He didn’t wait for Calvacanti to protest. “Chief Science Officer and Second Officer for Republic.”

“Republic, what a tiresome word.” Calvacanti’s use of the ship’s name sounded like a curse. “My liege, the great Viscount Otto Birmingham Elroy Biscotti Crashanburn, third of his name, has tasked me to enquire if we might be able to consult with a number of your engineers regarding some difficulties the Hohenzollern is experiencing since we arrived in this truly forsaken colonial fief.”

Matt half expected the man to ask for blacksmiths and stonemasons, not engineers. “You require engineering assistance.” It was a simple statement of fact, which Calvacanti nodded to. “I take it none of the local engineering or ship repair agents have been of assistance?” Thames Station was home to a vast array of civilian ship repair slips that had to have someone on staff who could have helped the Hysperians out.

“All of them inform us we are in the queue, as if the Viscount does not deserve their immediate and undevoted attention.” And that attitude, Matt decided, was likely why the Hysperians were ‘in the queue’ and likely near the back. “But Starfleet’s prowess with resolving arcane mysteries is well known and my liege has respect for such…technical competency.”

“Well, that’s certainly appreciated,” Matt replied. “I can have an engineering team beam over shortly to help out in whatever way they can.”

“Such sorcery is not permissible aboard the Hohenzollern.” Calvacanti actually looked offended at the idea of people beaming over. “We shall make the boat slip ready for one of your pinnaces to ferry your squires across.”

Boat slip. Pinnace. Squires. He was getting quicker on the wacky-to-sensible translation. Shuttlebay, shuttle, and junior officers. “Very well then. I’ll have a team underway shortly.”

“Very good, Knight Lake.” Calvacanti’s visage disappeared from the viewscreen almost instantly, plunging the bridge back into purely the 25^th century.

“What was that?” Trid asked after a moment.

“That was…something,” Matt answered. “Is anyone else still blinking pink spots from their vision?”

“Mind if I volunteer for shuttle duty?” Willow asked, the enthusiasm to do just about anything besides watching readouts at her station evident. “Even lend the engineers a hand.”

“Even if I ask Evan to lead the away team?” Evan Malcolm’s acerbic manner was now well known and established amongst the crew. Willow’s momentary hesitation gave way to an affirmative head shake. “Very well then. Just make sure someone else is at the conn before you leave the ship.”

Willow was out of her seat and gone before her relief arrived, but not like Matt or Trid couldn’t handle minor course changes if required.

“Seriously, that guy had a sword on his belt. I thought the Commander was the only one crazy enough to use swords in his day and age,” Trid said, filling the silent void. “If you want, oh Knight Lake, I could get a sword to wear about the bridge.”

“I’m not brave enough to touch the Commander’s sword if that’s what you’re getting at,” he said, returning to his station. “But by all means, Squire Jenu, go ahead and try it yourself.”

“I’ll pass. But, uh, did that guy say his boss’s name was Crashanburn? As in crash and burn?”

The flight from Republic to the Hysperian starcastle Hohenzollern was never going to be a difficult trip, but the final approach to the magnificent oddity was certainly unique. The ‘boat slip’ they had been directed to looked to be the only one, down towards the ship’s drive plate and built directly into the castle wall. Sconces on either side flickered to life with holographic flame as the door opened to grant them passage.

“A drawbridge?” Willow Beckman asked, wonder lacing her every word, as the shuttle Sicily sat in space before Hohenzollern as the large door swung downwards, chains on either side to complete the look. “An actual draw bridge?” she asked again.

“I see that,” Evan Malcolm said in response. He’d not bothered to take the second seat for the quick trip, opting to stand behind it instead and leave the dull duty of piloting a shuttle to someone more qualified for it. His engineering team, six in total, were seated in the shuttle’s rear with all of their gear. A variety of lightweight and portable diagnostic equipment between them all gave them the best chance to figuring what was wrong.

“This is actually kind of cool,” Willow said, nudging Sicily forward when they’d been given the all clear. On thrusters alone the gap was cleared quickly, concluded by the faint flicker of an atmospheric force field yielding to shuttle’s mass. “Oh look! Even their shuttles look like rowboats!”

“All of this technology and they use it to pretend they’re living in the dark ages,” Even grumbled, mostly for himself, before turning around to face his people. “Remember people, we’re here to find out what is wrong with this barge, fix it we’re able to, then leave. And yes, that does include playing nice with the locals.”

“That include you sir?” one engineer asked. No one laughed, the question coming across as serious sounding and the silence after it confirming it.

“Yes,” Evan answered with a grumble. Not at the man who asked the question, but aimed at the universe in general.

As the rear hatch of the shuttle descended, trumpets started playing to announce their presence, the sound filling the Hysperian shuttlebay, spilling into the shuttle and echoing around, filling everyone’s ears with the sharp, loud sound. “Announcing Knight Evan Malcolm and his squires!” a voice shouted, barely above the trumpets. A few final bursts of exuberant sound and the entire ensemble finally ended.

“I’m going to kill Lake when I see him next,” Malcolm muttered.

Willow stepped up next to Malcolm, the next ranking officer of the away team and with a smile enough for the both of them. “This is so stupid. Isn’t it great?”

“Great. Yes.” Malcolm at least stepped forward before rolling his eyes and bringing himself back under control before stepping onto the ramp, plastering a well-practised smile on his face he normally reserved for visiting officers and brass when he worked in ship construction.

“Knight Evan, welcome to Hohenzollern. I’m Knight Lorelei and responsible for overseeing the blacksmiths. Knight-Captain Filippo sends his regards, but is detained with courtly matters.” The woman wore what looked like serviceable clothing, save for the breastplate over the top, polished to a high standard that would have been impossible to maintain for an actual engineer.

“Responsible for?” Malcolm asked. “Not part of?”

“Oh, no,” Lorelei responded. “I merely serve to guide and be an example to the blacksmiths on what they might one day hope to be if they gain the Viscount’s favour.”

“Right.” Malcolm sighed, then looked to this team of engineers who had finished disembarking, kit included. “Perhaps you could introduce me to your chief blacksmith then?”

“Why would I insult you like that?” Lorelei asked in return. “No, you are a knight. Refreshments are in order. My squire will guide yours and they can commence with the work. We can check in on their progress once they have had a chance to speak with the blacksmiths about their folly and understand the problem they have caused.”

“I’d really rather just get on with fixing your ship than all this pageantry,” Malcolm said exhaustedly.

“Oh, Knight Evan, fear not.” Willow stepped up beside Malcolm, that same smile still on her face. “We’ll have an answer for you shortly. A short repast shouldn’t delay you long.”

The look he gave her should have caused a junior officer to shrivel and die there on the spot. Or explode into a violent spray. But she remained stubbornly corporeal and in one piece. And smiling as she sold him up the river.

“This squire has the right of it!” Lorelei exclaimed. “Squire Eric, see these people to the blacksmiths and inform Smith Olric I shall be along as soon as Knight Evan and I have had a chance to speak.”

“As you wish, Knight Lorelei,” a rather exhausted sounding and looking man said as she stepped forward from a spot by the wall. “This way, please.”

Malcolm watched as Willow and his team of engineers trudged off. “You know, he’s going to kill you too,” he heard one of them say to Willow.

She shrugged it off, pointing at a wall sconce as they walked away. “Real, or holographic?”

“Now, Knight Evan, shall we retreat to the main hall and some refreshments?” Lorelei asked.

It took nearly an hour before Malcolm had been able to politely excuse himself from Lorelei’s presence and rejoin the away team, a page guiding him through the halls and passageways of the starcastle to the ‘forge’ as the young woman claimed it to be. Where Lorelei had taken him up, the page had brought him back down through the massive floating structure, towards where his mental image had placed the engineering section. It didn’t resemble a ship as he’d have thought of it, but more like a space station some fool had slapped warp drives to and called it good enough.

Stepping into the domain of clearly the most intelligent people on the ship, but that being a rather low bar at the moment, Evan was glad enough for the page to excuse themselves and depart. Engineers and ‘blacksmiths’ were hunched over consoles and open access panels, quiet, if animated conversations taking place everywhere.

“Ah, Commander, good.” Willow Beckman bounded over to him, not tied to any specific task like the rest of the team. “There’s something not right here.”

“What, the dark lord has raised an army of goblins to besiege the great forge?” Malcolm said, not even attempting to disguise his irritation. “Or has some evil witch has lain a curse upon the mystic workings of the engines?”

“What? No.” Willow glared and Malcolm for a moment, then shook her head. “The engineers – sorry, blacksmiths – made changes to the engines in order to better shield them from external energy sources. They won’t say what, so it’s making it damned difficult to help. They’ve just told us what performance they’re looking for out of the engines and want us to help them get there.”

“I assume someone has scanned the shielding anyway, yes?”

“Of course,” Willow answered. “Hussein says it looks like the type of shielding you’d need for subspace radiation and exotic matter containment.”

“Which is it, subspace radiation or exotic matter containment?” Malcolm asked, seeking clarification.

“I just said ‘and’, didn’t I?” Willow countered; the normal sass Malcolm associated with the young woman returning. “And there’s something else not right here either. Call it a hunch.”

“A hunch?” Malcolm asked in response.

“An educated hunch?” Willow hesitated for a moment. “Like how I know when someone changes course and by exactly how much.”

“Oh geez,” he exclaimed, a hand rising to cover his eyes as he sought to retreat from existence for a heartbeat. “Save me from delusional idiots and junior officers.”

“Rude,” Willow responded instantly.

“You can’t know when someone changes the ship’s heading and by exactly how much,” Malcolm said irritatedly. “Now, point me at this so-called chief blacksmith. The sooner we get off this floating circus, the better.”

“Sorry, sorry, couldn’t find my field…” Captain MacIntyre’s sentence trailed off as he stepped through the door into the transporter room, coming to a stop just as his words had. “Did I miss a memo about not civilian attire?”

“Nope, not at all,” Sidda responded. She’d ditched her uniform for something a bit more fitting to her previous life, more fitting to what so many people at their intended destination would be expecting, if they hadn’t heard otherwise already. Gone was the uniform tunic, replaced with a dark purple shirt and leather jacket with more than a few scuff marks on it. Her old holster was strapped to her thigh, sans a weapon as per Kyban’s laws.

“Do we need to have that conversation about communication again, Commander?” MacIntyre asked, his head tilting slightly to one side.

“Don’t think so,” Sidda answered. “I used to visit Ardot’s a lot whenever we were at Kyban. Lots of interesting characters there. More than a few likely don’t know I’ve rejoined Starfleet, and I thought why advertise that fact just yet.”

“So you’re just going to walk in with a Starfleet captain instead?” MacIntyre’s tone conveyed his disbelief in this particular plan.

“Sure, why not.” Sidda smiled at Mac. That smile that said something was up. “But first, we need to change up the good Starfleet boy look.” And just then the door behind him hissed open. “Fantastic timing!” Sidda’s attention went right past him and he noticed the smile grow on her face. Which meant only one thing.

“Always,” Revin answered as she stepped up beside Mac, his field jacket in her hands and offered to him. “Your jacket, Captain MacIntyre.”

“Do I want to know how you got this, Crewman?” Mac asked.

“Do you want an answer to that question, sir?” Revin countered. But she only waited a heartbeat before continuing. “I merely asked an accomplice to get it for me.”

“You know, it’s traditional that the captain of a starship is actually the captain.” Mac accepted the jacket from Revin and examined it briefly, to see just what had been done. Gone was the pristine and new looking jacket, rarely worn thanks to his promotion and pesky regulations. This one looked like it had been through a ringer recently. The material looked worn, scuff marks on the elbows and shoulders. The rank pips even looked scratched slightly, enough to remove the lustre from them.

“See, now you don’t look like some glamourous captain, but more like a down on their luck officer who’s reaching out to less than scrupulous people.” Sidda chuckled slightly to herself. “Wouldn’t be the first time at Ardot’s.”

“What did you do to my jacket?” MacIntyre asked Revin.

“I found some willing volunteers to help stress it,” the young Romulan woman answered. “Some crawling through Jefferies tubes, an hour under a powerful UV lamp and even worn for an entire duty shift by a few engineers, possible with Commander Malcolm being away.” She looked positively pleased with herself for having arranged all of that, likely having enjoyed whatever favour trading had to be done.

MacIntyre checked his jacket some more, even sniffing it to make sure it didn’t smell, before shaking his head in defeat and donning it. “You could have just asked,” he said to Sidda.

“Would you have allowed us to stress your jacket?”

“Once explained, yes.” He shook his head again. “Communication.”

“Is key,” Sidda responded. “Shake out your hair, then let’s go.”

Soon the two of them were planetside at a transport hub not far from Ardot’s Café. Clear blue skies and a cool breeze made the morning pleasant enough as they walked. No one looked at them more than once as they proceeded, giving no thought to a Starfleet captain walking down the street with what was plain to see an Orion spacer.

“Seriously think people in your old circles won’t know you’re Starfleet now?” MacIntyre asked.

“Ardot said he wasn’t going to tell anyone anything. So, if people know, it’ll be because of either the New Maquis blabbing all the way across the Federation, or someone in Starfleet Intelligence leaking.”

“So, a non-zero chance, then.” MacIntyre caught Sidda’s shrug. “Right then, Captain Sidda, lead the way.”

Ardot’s Café wasn’t what Mac had built in his head. He’d imagined some small place, cramped, with shady customers discussing matters in close quarters, weary of new comers. Too many spy stories and holodeck adventures had likely spoiled him. What he got instead was a well-lit, open and welcoming establishment. Natural light poured in from skylights and expansive windows fronting the street, open to let the fresh breeze in and blending the outdoor and indoor seating together. Tables abounded and the place looked packed, even mid-morning as it was.

“Morning, morning!” a bubbly Andorian man declared as he greeted them just inside the door, a crisp white shirt with a name badge identifying him as Chven. “Table for two?”

“Chef’s table, if it’s free,” Sidda answered.

“Oh, um, one moment.” He looked over the interior of the café before giving an awkward smile. “Wait here.” And with that, he shot off, leaving Mac and Sidda amongst a crowd of people enjoying meals and good company.

“I was expecting a hive of scum and villainy,” Mac whispered.

“There’s a cantina by the starport with a tagline like that,” Sidda replied. “We can go there if you want, but we’d need to hit sickbay afterwards.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes?” Sidda answered, confused by Mac’s question. “Place is absolutely disgusting.”

“Right this way!” Chven announced upon his return, leading them through the café to a small table near the back, not far from the doors to the kitchen. “Ardot will be with you shortly. Can I get you anything to drink?”

Shortly turned out to be after Chven returned with their drinks, then some light pastries ‘curtesy of the chef’ and even a second round of coffee. Both officer’s patience was wearing thin before a large Bolian man, sauntering down the back slope of middle-age, barged out of the kitchen backwards, dragging a spare chair with one hand and holding a serving tray with another. He never turned around as he made his way over to Sidda and Mac, setting the tray down without a word, adjusting the chair and then sitting himself down with a smile that dared anyone to not smile in return.

“Sorry, sorry,” Ardot finally said. “But fresh spinach deserved my attention.” He waved at the try before them, freshly baked pastry puffs abound, savoury scents filling the air around them. “Of course, if someone had brought my favourite with them, I would have been out sooner.” He then leaned in towards Sidda. “Why didn’t you bring your lovely better half?”

“Because I’m on the job and you know I don’t bring Revin while I’m on the job,” Sidda whispered back at Ardot, forcing a grin.

“Captain Sidda doesn’t,” Ardot responded. “But what about Commander Sadovu?” He then turned to Mac. “Ardot, pleasure to meet you Captain MacIntyre.” A hand was extended over the table, a firm grip, but not crushing.

“You know who I am?” Mac asked, shaking the feeling back into his hand, from Ardot’s grip and his own responding in kind.

“I know everyone who is worth knowing, Captain. And you, Sidda’s captain, are worth knowing. Such a sterling, if until recently boring career. Then you escape your rut, make friends with some interesting people, fight with time itself, then get your own command. And a tasty one if I am to understand Republic properly.” Ardot’s smile firmly falls into the cheeky category as he sits back and collects a pastry for himself. “But you didn’t come here to talk about yourself, or modest little old me. So, what can Ardot do for one of his favourites?” And then he bit into the pastry and savoury cheese and spinach filled the air.

“The Last Pirate King,” Sidda said, eyeing Ardot intensely. “Rumour has it someone is running around using that title again.”

“Ah, so you want a trifecta, is it?” Ardot teased. “I’ve heard similar rumblings. But what I’ve heard also fills me with a little bit of concern, if you will.” He waved the bit of pastry in his hand like a wand. “This new pretender to the throne seems to have significantly less animosity with the Syndicate. May even be making some deals with them in the future.”

“What type of deals?” Mac asked, leaning forward, joining the conspiratorial whispering of his colleague.

“Weapons, plunder, starships, the usual things pirates trade for.” Ardot looked bored. “Nothing fancy or practical that could give rise to the romantic notions of ages that never were.” He smiled at Sidda. “Like stealing atmospheric processors and water reclaimers that would eventually find themselves to hard done by colonies. Or overthrowing corrupt colonial governments.”

“Okay, that last one I only did twice, and both times they were trying to kill me first.” Sidda shook her head, stopping herself from the rabbit hole and back on track. “What type of weapons and starships we talking about here? And where are these deals going down?”

“My dear, if I knew, you’d know.” Ardot sounded sincere. “I have nothing definitive, but I have heard the word Daystrom mentioned a few times. Which makes little sense to me, as aren’t they just a research organisation?” And then he winked with such exaggeration that there was no mistaking it. He knew about the depths of the Daystrom Institute’s research, or had a very good idea about it at least.

“We need to know who this new Pirate King is,” Mac said. “And where we might find him? Before something happens.”

“Oh, I couldn’t agree more,” Ardot said. “After all, who do you think let little tidbits fall into Starfleet’s hands? But someone somewhere had the foresight to then call in the best pirate king hunter in the galaxy. I honestly can’t say I was expecting that.”

“Ardot,” Sidda half-growled. “Information.”

“Stop being such a grump,” Ardot shot back. “I’ll ask around now I know someone is actually going to do something about it. So, sit, enjoy these pastries, take one to sweet Revin, then commence pacing and worrying and waiting until I get back to you.” Ardot rose slowly from his seat, not a small feat considering his size. “Captain MacIntyre, a pleasure. Perhaps next time you’ll bring some other company and I’ll ensure you have a lovely meal.”

“Pleasure was all mine, Mr Ardot,” Mac replied.

“No, no. Just Ardot,” Ardot corrected, then picked up another pastry before departing. “These are so good!” he exclaimed as he walked away.

“I honestly think I’d kill him if his cooking wasn’t so good,” Sidda said around a pastry she was now trying to devour while talking. “Oh goddess, this is good. Try one.”

“Best take one back for Blake as well then,” Mac said. If he was going to ruin his imposed diet, he best have justification for it.

He’d barely bitten into one himself when Ardot barged back out of the kitchen, headed straight for them and then leaned in. “A friend just gave me one word in regards to the Last Pirate King before telling me not to call them again until this is all resolved.”

“And that is?” Mac asked.

Ardot leaned in over the table, hands pressing down and shifting the table’s balance before whispering.

“Genesis.”

The Pynx aboard Republic served one primary purpose; a retreat for the senior staff to unwind in a limited social environment. Not quite the full-on crew interaction of the Agora, nor the complete privacy of personal quarters. Its atmosphere was designed for a cosy, relaxed space, with warm lighting, low comfy chairs and exposed wood furnishings. The bar with a variety of syntehol and real alcohol behind it didn’t hurt either.

“It’s not possible,” Evan Malcolm said, shaking his head as he set his pint down on the table between him and three others, the only people in the Pynx. “With the inertial dampeners we have on this ship, there is no way she can tell if the ship changed course without reading some instrumentation or looking out a window at the moment of the change.”

“Say it all you want,” Cat Saez responded with a shrug, “but Willow did. Three times. Either she can, or she’s got a cybernetic implant we don’t know about. Care to comment, Doc?”

“No comment,” Blake Pisani answered. “But I’ve seen her party trick myself and still don’t believe it.” She to set her drink down, something vaguely orange, fruity smelling and with a cute little umbrella that she’d found behind the bar while making everyone’s drinks earlier. Her hands came together with her index fingers pointing at Evan. “You’re right, it’s not possible. But she can do it anyway. So maybe, just maybe, don’t be so dismissive when junior officers tell you they can do something?”

“I wonder how she actually does it.” Matt Lake, the fourth member around the table, was the only one drinking something steaming, a mug cupped in his hands and held close. “Must be some sort of trick to it.”

“If there is, she ain’t telling,” Cat said. “One of the Witches asked her and all they got was ‘always been able to’ as an answer. And not much more, really. Girl’s got talent, but she really doesn’t like my team.”

“Oh, that’s easy.” Blake’s drink was back in her hand, a smile tossed to Evan, who was sulking in his chair at her gentle telling-off. “She’s a pilot, but you’re a fighter pilot. You got the fun job, and she’s stuck flying the ship.”

“Oh, it’s more than that,” Cat replied. “That’s just natural. Hell, you get that between small-ship and big-ship helmsfolk too. But whatever she’s got going on is a touch more than that.”

“Naturally,” Blake said, conceding the point. “I’ve got no idea how to fix that, sadly. Outside of some really bad ones informed by really bad movies from four hundred years ago.”

“Fine, being able to sense when a ship moves is something Beckman can do,” Evan said, re-entering the conversation. “That still doesn’t excuse an ‘educated hunch’ as to why something is wrong with that Hysperian junker.”

“Back to insulting the Hysperians?” Matt’s tone was chiding. “So what if they want to putz about in space-castles and pretend to live in some fantasy world if they aren’t harming anyone? You’re just annoyed I sent you over there.”

“Damn straight,” Evan answered. “Waste of an afternoon and we still haven’t fixed their problems.”

“What’s wrong with the Hohenzollern?” Cat asked.

“Their captain, commander, whatever, wants them to do their top speed of warp seven. But they made some engine modifications to protect the engines against subspace radiation and exotic matter and now can barely get six point five.” Even shook his head, his frown showing his disgust. “Those engines were operating at the edge of their design envelope to start with. You can’t make changes and expect them to work just fine.”

“Why would they need to protect their engines from subspace radiation and exotic matter?” Matt asked. “They planning on spending a month gallivanting around the heart of the Archanis Nebula? The pulsar at the heart is an absolute beast, but it’s nothing special and has been studied before.”

“Forsooth, a dragon most dangerous,” Cat said, talking to her drink, which she now held aloft. “We must sally forth to gather materials for our alchemists most wise.”

“Who knows,” Evan said. “For all I know, the Knight-Captain, or Viscount, or Grand Poobah, just saw the shielding material somewhere and decided they liked the colour and wanted it. But whatever the reasoning being, we made some improvements for them and Michelle is running some simulations right now to see if we can’t help them get a bit closer to their goal.”

“A wise and clever blacksmith is he,” Cat continued, “who arcaned the mysteries most foul and saved the kingdom from the purgatory of a snail’s pace.”

“You spend an afternoon dealing with people who believe they’re lordly knights or whatever and then tell me you aren’t being really, really annoying right now.” Evan’s glare was locked on Cat as he spoke. “Seriously Matt,” his attention shifted to the other man, “I owe you one.”

“Revenge will be convoluted, well thought out and unexpected?” Matt replied. “I look forward to it. Unlike you, Evan, I enjoy a challenge.”

“Then you lead the next engineering team that goes over.”

“Engineering team,” Matt replied. “Kind of implies an engineer.”

“They won’t expect you to actually do anything. That’s what your squires are for.” Evan’s disgust was apparent in his tone. “Elitest bullshit.”

“Well, if you really don’t want to do it, I’ll go.” Cat shrugged, then looked at Blake. “Oh Knight Blake, accompany me to the Hohenzollern when next we send our capable engineers to mend their ills?”

“I’m not talking like that, and I’m not wearing a dress,” Blake answered. “But sure, if we can get the bosses to sign off on it.”

“Sign off on what?” asked a voice from the door of the Pynx as it slid open. Captain MacIntyre quickly joined his officers at Blake’s side, handing her a small paperbag with a logo on the front proclaiming ‘Ardot’s Café, best food in the city’.

“Evan here doesn’t want to go back over to the Hohenzollern after yesterday. So Cat suggested she and I lead the follow-up engineering team when they finish coming up with a fix for their engine problems.” Blake inspected the contents of the bag, then looked up at Mac with a smile. “For me?”

“Spinach and cream cheese savoury,” Mac explained. “And no problems from me. Though Evan, why? Fancy starcastle like that, and you get to put on some airs and pretend to be a knight for a bit.”

“We had the Enlightenment for a reason,” Evan answered.

“You didn’t insult them and get challenged to a duel, did you?” Mac asked.

“No, sir.”

“Good. Let’s leave that to the Commander if she gets around to talking to them. In the meantime, Matt, I need you to dig up everything you can on Genesis and Daystrom that you can. And if you can’t, get me, and I’ll authorise any searches.”

“Genesis? As in Project Genesis?” Matt’s brow scrunched up in concern. “That crazy device responsible for the planet Locarno?”

Mac’s finger snap was as sudden as it was loud. “That has been bugging me since Ardot said the word Genesis.” He looked at Blake, then at the bag she held, then back at her. “Sidda’s information broker is a chef, and that pastry is to die for.”

“Of course it is,” Evan grumbled. “Sir, are we really going to-”

“Stop,” Mac said, cutting Evan off. “Honestly, Evan, I’m getting tired of your complaints about Commander Sadovu. I’ve heard you, it’s on record. But until she does something that breaks the regs, she’s this ship’s executive officer. And so far, she’s done nothing to break my trust. She’s the one with the contacts to help with the mission we’ve been assigned, so yes, if she says they are good for their word, then I’m going to accept that until I have a reason not to.”

The silence stretched before Evan Malcolm nodded his head once. “Understood, sir.”

“Good. Now, I’m off to relieve Selu on the bridge. We’ll have a staff meeting start of next shift so the Commander and I can bring everyone up to date with what we know and hopefully Matt you’ll have something to share as well.”

“Oh, right, yes,” Matt stammered out. “Genesis and Daystrom Institute.”

“Thank you,” Mac said. “As you were folks.” Then he gave Blake a wink before heading out the door.

“Locarno,” Cat said, dragging the word out. “Wasn’t that the whole Nova Fleet shit in the 80s in the Detrion system?”

“Oh yeah,” Matt answered. “So, it all started with…”

“This is a rather impressive list of accusations.”

Selu Levne’s summary of Starfleet Operations and Intelligence’s reporting on the activity of the most recent Last Pirate King was technically correct, if underselling it considerably. Gone was the low-level harassment, occasional larceny, protection rackets and rare spot of up-front piracy and in its place was straight-up piracy with all of its violence and a few incidents which looked a lot like terrorism. All of it looked, from Operations side at least, unconnected. But the addition of ‘recently acquired intelligence’ that the men and women of Kyban’s Rookery hadn’t yet vetted helped to draw a lot of lines between the sporadic episodes.

“Oh, I think we’re past accusations,” Sidda said as she lazily spun around in the chair at the head of the conference table.

The staff conference room made a decent working space when bringing together a few people to help. And it was more spacious than Sidda’s own personal office, which she’d come to despise and rarely use, save when handling personnel issues that needed privacy. And the view was better as well, as Republic and Hohenzollern had been moved into a similar orbit, the Hysperian starcastle hanging aft of the Starfleet ship by only a few dozen kilometers, visible as a bright spot in the near-distance.

“Oh boss, you’re not going to like this.” Jenu Trid’s tone hinted at the trouble on the padd she slid across the table.

Sidda didn’t stop her spin, collecting the padd and reading it as she went around. “Nausicaan pirates claiming for the Last Pirate King hit Ayer’s Rock, stealing three hundred head of cattle, destroying Landing’s water tower and subspace transceiver. Ten dead, thirty-eight injured.”

“Ayer’s Rock?” Selu asked from her seat opposite Trid, back to the windows. “I’m unfamiliar with that planet.”

“It’s an easy-to-forget little dustball that just wants to stay out of the way of things and go about their lives,” Trid answered. “Ranchers, farmers and folks that just want to disappear from the galaxy at large. They mostly eschew modern technology, but not out of fear or hate, more they just don’t see a need for it.”

“Simple living,” Selu summarised.

“It didn’t stop them from getting hurt,” Sidda said. She’d stopped her spin and pulled up to the conference table. “Looks like someone has already seen to helping them fix their transceiver and water situation. I need to talk to Naroq about getting TLSO to swing by and lend a hand.”

“Naroq?” Selu’s question was again directed to Trid.

“TLSO’s day-to-day Ferengi in charge. You’d like her.” Trid then looked at Sidda, working to get the XO’s attention. “That report already says TLSO has visited if you keep reading. I’m sure Naroq is on the case already. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Rose was sitting overhead waiting for a repeat visit.”

That brought a smile to Sidda’s face before she looked properly at Trid, then shrugged her shoulders. “You’re right, Naroq, Orelia and Gaeda can handle things just fine without me. And Naroq isn’t going to let some pirates hurt her bottom line.”

“Ferengi are not the most confrontational, physically at least, in my experience,” Selu said.

“No, they’d hire mercenaries and send them to do the skull-cracking. Save Naroq doesn’t need to hire mercenaries and Orelia and Gaeda aren’t averse to cracking raider skulls with abandon.” Sidda’s smile was predatory as she finished speaking.

“Then I wish your people well.” Selu didn’t sound entirely convinced in Sidda’s confidence in the crew of the Vondem Rose. “As long as they don’t break any Federation laws in defending Ayer’s Rock.”

“Well, none that anyone will report anyway,” Trid said. “They’re good folk. Well, most of them are good folk. Okay, fine, they’re okay folk. But they mean well. Mostly.”

“I see,” Selu said before returning to her own reading.

“All this data, all these raids and piracy acts, and not one damn clue as to where they might be basing themselves out of out here.” Sidda’s anger and disappointment at the intelligence before them was clear. “I hate clever pirates.”

“Nausicaans, a couple of Klingon ships, a Pakled raider, and reports of a handful of Orion raiders as well. These aren’t clever folks, boss. These are a pack of wolves that someone is keeping a close eye on.” Trid shuffled through the padds spread out before them. “Honestly, this feels more like the first Last Pirate King but hyper-aggressive, then say the second with the willy-nilly raiding.”

“Explain.”

“Right, well, there was the recent hit on the Avalon Prince. The Pakleds hit them, took nearly their entire cargo. Then left at high warp before dropping to a lower warp speed, so the Avalon Prince lost track of them. By the time a Starfleet ship responded, the lower warp speed trail had already dissipated.” Trid produced the padd she’d been looking for and offered it, surrendering it to Selu when the security officer reached for it and Sidda didn’t. “Honestly, anyone ever known Pakleds to do something so…simple?”

“We can’t rule out the Pakleds may have stumbled onto this tactic, but I have doubts.” Selu’s brow pulled together before she too was searching for a padd and produced it, handing it to Trid. “Look familiar?”

“Nausicaan pirates practising hit and fade tactics, slowing speed to disappear from freighter sensors and occasionally dipping into the Archanis Nebula to throw off pursuit.” The Bajoran woman huffed once. “Same tricks on multiple occasions. But…” She scrambled for another padd. “One of the Orion raiders also went for the nebula after their attack.”

“So the Archanis Nebula,” Sidda declared.

“Not necessarily,” Selu said. “There are multiple shipping lanes that run along the nebula. It makes for a convenient place to hide momentarily after an attack. But with recent tensions with the Klingons and some of the border houses being a bit more adventurous, the nebula would make a poor base of operations. After all, it wouldn’t do to have a Klingon raiding party find you hiding in there.”

“Ugh, fine.” Sidda sat back for a second, then immediately shot forward in her seat, a sharkish grin curling her lips.

“Oh no,” Trid said, looking to Selu. “She has an idea.”

“Are we going to like it?” the Orion-Vulcan asked.

“Depends on how much we’re going to get shot at I guess,” Trid answered. “Alright boss, what’s the plan?”

“Alright pirate-whisperer, what’s going on?” Blake Pisani’s out of the blue question was just as unexpected as her appearance in the Agora and her taking the seat opposite Jenu Trid.

The Agora wasn’t terribly busy at this hour, more of a mid-shift lunch break vibe filling the space than anything else. The limited windows looked forward from the mid-point on the ship’s saucer, giving an arc of the planet Kyban on one side and the whole face of one of Kyban’s two moons hundreds of thousands of kilometres away.

“Uh, what?” Trid asked in response, setting down her spoon in the nearly finished bowl of soup she’d been working through while reading a padd. She wasn’t the only one present working through a meal, or discussing something work related.

“You were Starfleet Intelligence, right?”

“No, I was Operations, just seconded out to Intelligence.”

“Semantics,” Blake countered, waving away the correction. “You were spying on the Commander before she came in from the cold and put a uniform back on.”

“Came in from the cold?” Trid asked, shaking her head. “What is this, some bad spy thriller?”

“You tell me.” Blake smiled, leaning back in her chair. “You had a meeting with Sidda and Selu. Then right after that she goes into a meeting with Mac. Now they’re both talking with Evan. So, what’s going on?”

“Planning obviously,” Trid answered. “Which I guess will be explained in the staff briefing later on. And no, I’m not holding out on you. The Commander didn’t say anything to Selu and I before she left.”

“All right then, best guess.”

Trid shook her head in exasperation. “I don’t know. Honestly, Commander Sadovu, most unorthodox commander I’ve worked with. Calm considered plans one moment, barging in head first, guns blazing, with no real plan to pull her ass out of the fire the next. You never know when she’s going to try to be diplomatic or just sucker punch someone. So, trying to figure out what’s going on in that head of hers is between her, a psychological team, her personal gods and maybe Revin.”

“Yeah, but Revin wasn’t in the meeting,” Blake responded. “You were.”

“And as I said, doesn’t help give me any more insight into her thinking.”

Blake shook her head. “Fine, fine. Guess I can wait till later. Or see if Mac will tell me beforehand.” She then looked around the Agora, did a quick study of everyone around, and then leaned in. “How did you ever work with someone like that for so long?”

“Orders.”

“Besides that. Why did her old crew follow her around?”

“Because she’s loyal to her people. Even the ones she wants to punt out an airlock.” Trid snorted at that, a shake of her head and a hand raised to hold off any questions. “She’s stubborn enough to see plans through. She’ll take the lead in a charge because she’d rather she gets hurt than anyone else and she takes slights against her people as slights against herself. I’d say she’s lucky as well, but she makes her own with no small amount of skill, effort, and determination.”

“You admire her,” Blake stated.

“Maybe,” Trid confirmed. “You’re sounding me out, aren’t you?”

“What? No, I just want to know why a bunch of miscreants like her old crew stuck around. Or why this crew should follow her when the going gets tough. I like Sidda, don’t get me wrong, but we really haven’t had a proper crisis to test her and the crew together.”

“So where do you fall on this, then?” Trid asked.

Blake took a moment to think before speaking. “I’m just wanting to make sure that Evan isn’t putting some sort of clique together to counter Sidda should something happen one day and Mac isn’t around to put his foot down in an emergency.”

“Oh, I don’t think you need to worry about that. Selu is a stickler for the rules and would back the Commander up unless Evan could produce irrefutable proof enough to remove the boss from any sort of temporary command situation.”

“Well, that’s a relief, then.” Blake sounded genuinely pleased. “Right then, second order of business.”

“Of?”

“Of two, so don’t panic. And besides, if this takes too long, I’ll write you a doctor’s note.” Blake looked around the Agora once more, looking over the most recent newcomers briefly. “You have any idea on what the problem is between Willow and the Night Witches?”

“It’s not the Night Witches, it’s just Cat.” Trid drew in a breath as she looked at her soup, then pushed the nearly finished bowl away from her slightly. “Willow’s the one in charge of the ship. She’s a JG running the ship’s flight operations. But then along comes the Night Witches and Cat, a full LT, in charge of her own wing. The line of who is responsible for small craft is blurred at first, until the Captain drew some lines, but that animosity, that concern for her job, it had settled in.”

“Wait, that’s it? She’s just holding a grudge from when they first came aboard and she was worried she was going to be replaced at the helm?” Blake couldn’t help the snort. “Oh geez, that’s so petty. Oh man.”

“I’ve tried telling Willow to drop it, to let it go, but she’s stubborn. And I think there’s another problem as well.”

“Oh, do tell,” Blake said. “Don’t leave me in anticipation.”

“Oh, yes please,” another voice asked. Revin had snuck up on both of them, bringing drinks for both women. “Water, splash of moba fruit,” she said to Trid. “And peppermint tea, two sugar,” to Blake. “Though I did just take a guess, so happy to get something else if you want.”

“Aren’t you just a dear,” Blake replied, lifting her teacup and experimentally sipping at it. “Still no?” she asked of Revin.

“Still no,” the Romulan woman answered with a smile. “You were saying?” Revin then asked Trid.

“You know that new recent transfer into Sciences, Jamie Sandhurst?”

“Bright red hair, tall, rather attractive,” Revin answered.

“As in red-red hair,” Blake clarified. “She’s been aboard ship for like a month, yeah?”

Trid nodded a few times. “That’s the one. Apparently, there was something between her and Willow in the past, but Jamie is basically ignoring her and every time I see her here,” she waved a hand to indicate the Agora, “she’s hanging around the Night Witches.”

“Seriously?” Blake spat out. “Save me from children and their crushes.”

“Aren’t they all grown individuals?” Revin asked.

“Children,” Blake answered. “This ship is full of children.” She shook her head as she looked for answers in her teacup. “Right, that’s it, we’re fixing this situation as soon as we can.”

“Oh no, I’m not getting involved,” Trid replied, waving a hand in protest. “You want someone else for this, not me.”

Revin however was grinning from ear to ear. “Oh, count me in.”

“With the ship’s charmer on my side, I’m sure we can’t fail,” Blake said with a wink to Revin.

“You’re kidding, right?” asked Willow Beckman as she sat amongst the senior staff of the USS Republic. “It can do that?”

Matt Lake was standing at one end of the conference table, the screen beside him on the wall looping through an animation he’d procured on the subject of the briefing he’d just given. The animation hadn’t been updated since its original and felt dated; which was fair given it was from the original Project Genesis team.

“Wish I was,” Matt answered. “Planetary terraforming in a matter of minutes with absolutely no regard for what was there beforehand.”

“The ploughshare beaten into a sword,” Mac mumbled from his seat. He’d only moved his seat away from the head of the table in order to let others watch Matt’s briefing unimpeded, and now he resumed his place after waving Matt back to his seat. “To work on such a device, to have such high hopes for rapid terraforming, for making ideal worlds, only to have it locked up and halted because the Klingons cried foul about the Federation making weapons of mass destruction.”

“In the wrong hands,” Matt said, with a shrug as he sat down, “it certainly is.”

“And we’re certain that this Genesis device has fallen into the hands of the Last Pirate King?” Selu Levne asked quietly, speaking up for the first time during the entire briefing.

“Not yet, but soon,” Sidda answered. “Recently acquired intelligence indicates that sometime in the next week the Last Pirate King is going to be meeting members of the Orion Syndicate somewhere in the Archanis Sector to conduct a trade, with the goal of acquiring a Genesis Device that the Syndicate has gained possession of after the security breaches at the Daystrom Institute.”

“How recent?” Mac asked.

“I got the information just before coming in here.”

“And still no idea on where this pirate king fellow is hiding?” Mac asked, both Sidda and Selu shaking their heads.

“Right, then we proceed with Mousetrap.” Mac turned his attention to Evan Malcolm, whose brow seemed permanently furrowed at the moment. “How are we looking in that regard?”

“I’ve spoken with the local dock authorities and they’ve found us an old automated freighter that might just do the trick.” Evan drew in a deep breath, then exhaled through his nose as he shook his head. “It’s still not a good idea. These freighters are meant for nice safe routes, not for baiting pirates.”

“As I said when we met earlier, if you can come up with a better idea, Evan, I’m willing to hear it. Until then, make it work.” Mac turned to Cat, who was seated opposite Willow at the table, both women doing a passable impression of not acknowledging each other at the moment. “Congratulations Lieutenant, the Night Witches are going pirate hunting. Your people are going to want to work with Commander Malcolm’s to get Mousetrap working.”

“Uh, what’s Mousetrap?” Cat asked.

“We’re gutting a freighter, fitting it with blowout panels, shoving your fighters into it and then goading pirates into attacking it so you can shoot at them and hopefully leave some alive to interrogate,” Evan answered.

“Sweet,” Cat answered enthusiastically. “A Q-ship. And if it leaks afterwards, maybe get some short-term advantage of pirates thinking twice before going after local shipping.”

“Told you she’d like it,” Sidda said to Mac. “We’ll also have the Paralus in case we need to abandon ship.”

“We, ma’am?”

“Only fair if I come up with the dangerous, crazy scheme, I should see it through.” Sidda’s grin wasn’t aimed at Cat for reassurance but at Evan, who sighed in response. “I’ll fill out the rest of the away team once we know how many we can bring with us on the freighter, but your pilots will probably have to operate without your support people.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Cat answered. “Should be fun.”

“You’ll want a medic with you,” Blake said from her seat. “If not a doctor. Want some company?”

Mac cleared his throat. “I’m not sending my XO, chief engineer and chief medical officers away on the same pirate hunting expedition.”

“Excuse me?” Evan asked immediately.

“You heard me,” Mac answered. “By the time you finish modifying the freighter, you’ll be the most familiar engineer. You can accompany Commander Sadovu on her fishing trip, or you can personally oversee the modifications to the Hysperian ship that were promised.” Mac stared down Evan, then smiled as the engineer nodded in understanding and surrendered his point. “Excellent. So, yes, sorry Doctor, but I think I don’t want to risk sending along a large chunk of my senior staff on a single mission.”

Blake didn’t seem phased by Mac’s decision, rolling her head to one side and gently shrugging. “I’ll find a corpsman to go with you then, Sidda.”

“Appreciated,” Sidda responded.

There was a chime from the door that led to the bridge, followed by the door hissing open and a flustered ensign stepping in. “Pardon, Captain, but there’s a bit of a developing situation.”

“What is it, Ensign Parks?”

“Uh, well, sir, the Hysperians are sending a shuttle over.”

“I didn’t invite them over,” Mac said, looking to his senior staff, who all shook their heads at the unspoken question.

“Well, sir, they sort of invited themselves,” Ensign Parks answered. “I tried to dissuade them, but the officer I was speaking to wouldn’t listen, just told me the Viscount was on his way over, then cut communications. And they won’t answer hails either.”

“Invited themselves,” Mac repeated. “Of course they did.”

“Oh, this I have to see,” Sidda said. “Thank you, Ensign Parks. I doubt even we could have stopped them. Send landing vectors to their shuttle, if they’ll listen, and have the bay crews prepare for…a circus.”

“A circus ma’am?”

“Tell them to prepare for an admiral’s visit,” Mac said. “Right, I better head down to the main shuttle bay and receive visitors. Commander, you’re with me, the rest of you are dismissed.”

“At least the Tholians had the decency to call before visiting,” Mac muttered under his breath, a touch louder than he really should have for an officer of his rank.

The aft shuttlebay had been cleared of ancillary staff, all finding places to observe unobtrusively or some other task around the ship to occupy their time. While one shuttle was undergoing some major maintenance and was therefore in a bit of a state, there just wasn’t much the techs had been able to do, aside from tidying up their tools. Aside from that, the shuttlebay was now empty save for Mac, Sidda and two security guards standing on either side of the main hatch into the ship proper.

They were now ready to receive visitors.

“Atlantis, right?” Sidda asked. “Always wanted to meet a Tholian, but they don’t tend to circulate in the semi-legal transport circles. Sticklers for rules and laws and the such.”

“You should read the entire Tholian cultural index,” Mac said. “Direct, to the point. And still able to find ways to be complicated. Have a weird relationship with time and space.”

“Send gifts to those they like,” Sidda followed up. “Blake told me about the sheets. Jealous.”

Mac couldn’t help the slight smile that crept up on him. “They are nice sheets.”

The craft that glided through the atmospheric shield at the far end of the shuttle bay was much as had been described to Mac. It looked like a large rowboat with an enclosed cabin atop it, like some kid had drawn a boat and then decided it needed to go into space. Concessions to the impulse engines were granted in the design, with moulding around the vents to resemble dragon heads, while a pair of totally ridiculous looking and out-of-place oars protruded from either side, going through the motions as if the craft was on a body of water.

“We’re drinking after this, right?” Sidda asked as the Hysperian craft extended landing legs and settled onto the deck plating.

“Yes,” Mac found himself answering straight away.

The landing legs were another concession, practicality winning out over style. The Hysperian ‘boat slip’ had been described as having cradles in the report Mac had read, but someone had, at least during this craft’s design, asked ‘what about ship’s without cradles?’ and been listened to. And the rest of the display that unfolded was right in line with what he’d read about Hysperians.

A door on the cabin opened and out stepped two footmen, carrying a pair of stairs that were set over the side, fixed in place and checked before they stepped aside. Then another two, this time armed, stepped out, carrying banners, as they climbed up a stair, over the side, then down to Republic’s deck, flanking the stairs. One banner bore the emblem of the Kingdom of Hysperia, while the other bore the seal of the Viscount Crashanburn.

“I have received Betazoid matriarchs with less pomp and ceremony,” Mac grumbled. Then he straightened his back, put on a diplomatic smile that hid his thoughts on the matter and stepped towards the ‘boat’ in preparation for their visitor.

The man who emerged finally was certainly colourful. He couldn’t have been much taller or heavier built than Mac, but by his style of dress, he was clearly centuries, if not millennia, out of time. A long light blue tunic gave way to cream leggings, and a belt of golden discs hung around his waist and were obviously of purely decorative function. He wore a shockingly white fur cloak, but with an inner lining that was dark red. The wide-brimmed hat on his head was black on black on black; black body, black band, black feather. The last time Mac had seen such a stupid hat was his last foray through the Musketeer holo programs.

And to cap it all off, the man’s long blonde hair looked immaculate and was matched with a short, pointed beard and moustache that had to have more structural integrity holding it to its ridiculous length and curls than Republic had holding it in one piece.

“His Lordship, the Viscount Otto Birmingham Elroy Biscotti Crashanburn III,” the footman bearing the Crashanburn banner shouted for all to hear. He’d timed it perfectly such that Crashanburn’s feet had just settled on the decking as he’d finished the introduction.

Crashanburn took a moment, looking curiously around the shuttlebay as if he had just entered some mysterious realm, before settling his attention on the two Starfleet officers approaching him. He looked bored, gave a sigh, then continued walking towards them in his dark blue slippers, the sound of the cloak brushing across the floor the only noise he made.

“Captain Charles MacIntyre,” Mac introduced himself. “And this is Commander Sidda Sadovu. Welcome aboard Republic, Viscount. I have to apologise; we weren’t expecting you to visit.”

It was the most diplomatic way he could think to ask ‘why are you here?’.

“Uh, such drab and depressing uniforms,” Crashanburn said, dismissal dripping from every word. The affectation he spoke with couldn’t have been selected willingly, but a product of upbringing. It was somewhat nasally, slightly high-pitched in weird ways, like someone practised specifically to be as annoying as possible with just their spoken words.

Or who carried such power with those words that no one dared say anything against them.

“But Starfleet’s poor fashion aside,” Crashanburn said with a wave of his hand, the matter made irrelevant because he merely wished it so, “If I am trusting your blacksmiths to assist mine in completing their most basic of tasks aboard the Hohenzollern, then I must insist on inspecting the work of your engineers.”

“I see,” Mac replied. “Then perhaps we-”

“I knew such a man who obviously could rise to a position of responsibility within Starfleet could see reason,” Crashanburn interrupted, not a care in the world of having interrupted someone who was speaking. Crashanburn took one look towards the door with the two security officers flanking it and waved them away. “Send word, the Viscount Crashanburn shall grace the halls of the good ship…Republic. At once!” The ship’s name seemed stuck in his throat as he said it, disdain for the concept evident.

Both officers looked at Mac, only moving once he had nodded in assent.

And as they opened the door to the rest of the ship, one of them tapping at their commbadge to warn everyone of what was to come, Crashanburn took at as the invitation he had made for himself, striding forward, one hand raised level with his shoulder as he went and the banner wielding footman racing to fall into step behind their liege.

“Come, Captain MacIntyre, I wish to see your ship,” the Viscount ordered.

“Can we have the Betazoids back?” Mac asked Sidda under his breath as they both walked to catch up with their uninvited visitor.

“I’d settle for a Klingon invasion,” Sidda replied. “The Jem’Hadar. Pakleds even.”

“Only if we’re lucky,” Mac got out just before they got too close to whisper. “Viscount, this way please, we can start with main engineering.”

“Is there anything I can get for you, Viscount?” Mac asked as he led the Hysperian noble, Viscount Otto Birmingham Elroy Biscotti Crashanburn III, into his ready room after a lengthy tour of the Republic.

Sidda had claimed ‘a need to oversee other operations’ after only a quarter hour of the two of them escorting the uninvited visitor through the ship. An excuse he himself would have tried if he could, but alas, he was the master and commander of the ship. And she did have the benefit of work that would likely benefit from either oversight or from her being familiar with the work done. And combined with the Viscount basically ignoring she even existed, her departure barely had any impact.

“Something red would be delightful,” Crashanburn answered back, still looking as bored as he had throughout most of the tour.

They’d started in engineering, the inspection of Republic’s engineer’s work being the chief reason for the Hysperian’s visit, but he’d barely shown any interest at all in the work. Just as he’d barely shown interest in answers to questions he asked of Matt Lake when they toured the science labs. Ask a question, then be bored as soon as a sensible and no doubt much-reduced answer was given.

There was marginally more interest in the Valkyrie starfighters, but again, as soon as detailed answers were presented, Crashanburn turned off, eyes unfocusing and giving off the air of boredom. The only person who hadn’t seemed to bore him immediately was a quick stop in the Pnyx, to see if something less technical could hold the Viscount’s attention, and Revin had actually gotten the man’s attention through the classical medium of food.

With no real libations at hand, Mac winced as he resorted to the replicator, knowing the disdain he was likely to receive from the Viscount. Sensitive palettes and ‘can taste the replicated wine’ being the bullshit that they were that snobs the universe over would always fall back on. But as he returned from the small side alcove, a glass of red wine for the Viscount, white and synthehol for himself, the Viscount’s acceptance pleasantly surprised him.

“I had been hoping to experience the newest generation of alchemators,” Crashanburn said after a sip, using another one of the Hysperian’s silly replacement names for what was Federation-wide a household appliance. “If this doppleganger of a wine is this good, then I must simply know what it is based on so I can procure the original as well.”

“It’s a 2395 merlot from New Terra, the Gordon Winery. I’m sure they would be more than happy to do business with a Hysperian noble.”

Mac’s own taste was performative, to set his guest at ease, before they both claimed seats, not around his desk, but the more at ease social space. He knew he had to play the nice diplomatic game for a bit longer before he could feign a reason to suggest the Viscount leave. Only training and social expectations beat out his brain, saying something he knew he would regret as soon as he said it.

“If time permits, Viscount, I wouldn’t mind a tour of the Hohenzollern.”

“If time permits,” Viscount Crashanburn agreed, inspecting his glass of wine before another ship. “Which I should qualify depends on your blacksmiths, sorry, engineers. As soon as the Hohenzollern’s motive difficulties are remedied, we are likely to be departing in short order.”

An out had just been presented. Now all Mac had to do was convince Engineering to hurry up on coming up with a solution the Hysperians could accept and go about implementing it for them.

“Oh? I understand your people were attempting to protect your engines from subspace radiation and potentially exotic matter interactions.” He couldn’t think of any fantastical ways of describing anything for the Hysperian frame of reference and so went with the option of not bothering.

Crashanburn blinked at him a few times, processing what he’d said, then smiled. “Knight-Captain Filippo said you Starfleet chaps were clever people. I’m pleased to see his judgement and estimation are correct.” He took another ship, bidding his time. “But yes, I tasked my court wizard and blacksmith with devising a method for protecting our engines as we prepare for a grand hunt.”

“Must be some dangerous game,” Mac answered. “You’re preparing to sail into dangerous waters from the sounds of it.”

“The most dangerous!” Crashanburn exclaimed, showing the most emotion he had all day. “The closer you are to the pursuit, the more dangerous it is. And I am ashamed to say I know my target all too well.” He paused, stroking his beard a few times before continuing. “Tell me, Captain, have you ever heard of the legend of the Last Pirate King? I have to assume you have, knowing the company you keep.”

“I have,” Mac answered. He considered Crashanburn a moment, then set his glass of wine down. “Commander Sadovu has told me plenty.”

“I suppose she has.” Crashanburn sounded suspicious, though his nasally accent didn’t help any, most of what he said could be interpreted as him being suspicious of something. “In certain circles, that woman, that creature you keep at your side,” and now he sounded downright mean, “is known as Kingslayer.”

“You will speak of Commander Sadovu with respect while aboard my ship,” Mac said coldly, staring down Crashanburn as the noble was at first aghast at someone speaking to him in such a manner, then evolving through a series of other emotions before settling on smouldering anger.

“If she’s heard of someone resurrecting the throne of the Last Pirate King, she won’t be able to help herself. She will kill them, and I will be forced to kill her if she does.”

“Are you threatening a Starfleet officer?” Mac asked.

“This new pirate king, this pretender to an illegitimate throne, is none other than my own twin brother. And last I spoke with him, he was seeking a weapon to threaten the throne of Hysperia itself. I will not have my brother defame the mighty House of Crashanburn but I will equally not let some Orion barbarian kill him in bloodlust. If anyone is to stop my brother, it will be me.”

“Twin brother?” Mac asked, to which Crashanburn nodded. “Actual twin brother?”

“Dragon’s blood, yes!” Crashanburn cursed. “He is to be making a trade with those despicable and dishonourable Orion pirates that dare call themselves a syndicate in the near future. I know he’s seeking something exotic and strange, to either bewitch Hysperia, or cause the downfall of the House of Billups, hence why I am taking all precautions I can with the Hohenzollern so that I can stop him.”

“Does the Royal Hysperian Navy know of this threat?”

“And advertise my family’s shame?” Crashanburn seemed more offended by that than by Mac’s demand of respect for his absent XO. “No! This will be a family matter. And before you ask, no, I do not require, or want, Starfleet’s assistance beyond what we have asked for. If I am to succeed, then it is a quiet shame we can hide. And if we fail, well, there won’t be a family left to worry about such matters as shame.”

Mac’s first thought was ‘how dramatic’, his second was ‘how irresponsible’. “We, too, are looking to prevent a trade between the Last Pirate King and the Orion Syndicate. Perhaps instead of working together, we’re merely working alongside each other?”

“Coincidentally perhaps?” Crashanburn asked, sounding out the idea. “And I suppose then, perhaps, over a small meal, two gentlemen such as ourselves could mention what we know as part of polite conversation.”

Mac sighed. He’d been trying to give Crashanburn a way to rationalise working together, but the nobleman had just found a way to invite himself to dinner. The two of them were playing by different rules of polite society and Mac was finding himself out played. But he just smiled as he gathered himself. “That sounds like an excellent idea. However, I do have a few matters I must attend to and I’m sure my chef would appreciate some time to prepare a meal. You could return to the Hohenzollern if you wish and return later, or I could have some guest quarters opened for you to relax in until dinner?”

“Do these guest chambers have an alchemator present?” Crashanburn asked, waving the half-drunk glass of wine as an indicator of what he was thinking.

“Of course,” Mac answered.

“In that case Knight-Captain Charles MacIntyre, I would be delighted to remain aboard your ship.”

“This has got to be the most jank solution to a problem I have ever seen,” announced Moana Tipene, Flop, after her ever so brief survey of the work being done on the automated freighter AB1726. “This is going to work?”

“Eh, I’ve seen worse,” said Sonhi Nagnax, known to her wing mates as Crash. “During the Dominion War there were a lot worse hack jobs done all over the fleet to either keep things working, or mash problems together hoping for a solution.”

Moana shook her head as she wrapped an arm around the smaller woman’s shoulders and pulled her into a sideways clasp. “You, Crash, didn’t serve in the war. They did,” she said, a finger pointing at Crash’s abdomen.

AB1726 was a Fluyt-class freight that someone, somewhere, had agreed to lend to the Republic’s officers to help flush out local pirates. None of the Night Witches were aware of whatever deals had been made to secure the ship, just that it had been, and they were being turned into the ship’s offensive armament in an attempt to nab some pirates.

Engineers had been scrambling over it for a day now, fitting the external doors with charges to blow them out in a hurry, allowing the Valkyrie-starfighters to launch in a hurry. Duranium plating, all of which looked like spares from maintenance stores, had been slapped around the internal cargo bay, providing cheap and likely effective shielding against most sensor systems. And in just the last hour the Night Witches themselves had arrived, fighters included, to turn AB1726 into a pirate-hunting Q-ship.

Aside from the runabout Paralus, parked down near the crew section of the ship, the cargo bay was otherwise empty. Harsh white overhead lights beat down on everyone and everything. No doubt perfectly serviceable when loading and unloading and chosen for being reliable and maintenance-free lighting fixtures.

“Flop,” Crash whined as she slipped out of Crash’s grasp. “Please. Me, Nagnax, one and the same, but different. Yeah, Nagnax’s had a host during the war, but I feel those memories are like part of me. So just…let it be, okay?”

“Sorry, sorry,” Flop replied.

“Everything secure?” another voice asked as it rounded the fighter next to the two women. Catalina ‘Cat’ Saez, squadron leader, wasn’t much older than those under her command at all. She only was in command by seniority in rank after all. “XO just went back to Republic to grab something, then we’re off.”

“Grab something, or someone?” Flop asked, her tone indicating her direction of thought. Everyone knew of the commander’s affection towards her wife and it was a talking point amongst some of the crew after all.

“Something,” Cat answered. “Said ‘if I’m going pirate hunting, I need to look the part’ before she left.”

“Bet she’s getting Endeavour then,” Crash said. “Endeavour,” she repeated at Flop’s quizzical look. “That sword hanging over the bar in the agora. The one that Revin put up.”

“You know, I heard that sword was actually made from hull plating of the previous USS Endeavour.” Cat shrugged at her own statement, judging it as a matter not worth continuing on for now. “Back to what I asked, is everything secure?”

“All craft secured by magnetic clamps, weapon loadouts confirmed and fuel topped up. Crash and I just finished hooking them all up ship power so we can keep the computers all spun up for rapid launch.” Flop had even straightened her back for the brief report. “Hop in, disconnect the clamps via a command that’s already on the screens, wait for the doors to get out of the way and away you go.”

Cat looked around the empty expanse, the six fighters all parked and ready to launch from the freighter’s insides like a swarm of angry hornets. Then she looked over the space again and again before turning back to her two pilots. “Get a couple of couches and a table, plop them down over there,” she pointed at a spot roughly in the middle of the fighters. “We need to be nearby.”

“On in,” Crash answered.

“Well?” asked Dirk ‘Knives’ Mattis as Cat returned to the Paralus, the two of them having taken on the task of preparing the luxurious escape pod for the crew that would be flying the AB1726 in case something went terribly wrong.

“Flop just being a pain to Crash,” Cat answered. “Didn’t seem intentional, just insensitive.”

“Never is with her,” Knives answered. “She does get better with exposure though. Crash just needs to sit her down and explain what’s going on.”

“Does Crash know what’s going on?”

“Fair point,” Knives answered. “Right, this bucket of bolts is ready to fly. Even if the XO decides to take the helm.” He, like Cat, knew just how bad the XO was at the helm. ‘Perfectly serviceable’ was the phrase that was bandied about. Given any form of disruption though and things would get hairy.

“Let’s just hope that Chief Malcolm insists on flying then,” Cat said. “You know, I was looking forward to going over to the Hysperian ship, but guess this takes priority.”

“You really wanted to go over to that floating palace?” Knives asked. “I couldn’t think of a better waste of time, honestly.”

“Exactly!” Cat said with a grin. “Stuffy nobles, people pretending to live in a fantasy world, wacky ways of referring to everything. Oh, the hilarity of it all. I even heard there was a dragon aboard ship, too.”

“And instead you’ve been co-opted into another of the Commander’s wacky plans to go pirate hunting in order to get intel.” Knives looked at Cat seriously. “This is wacky. You know that, right?”

“Murphy’s Law my man,” Cat answered. “If it’s stupid, but it works…”

“I ain’t stupid,” Knives said, finishing the statement.

“And besides, this isn’t that stupid. The wacky bit is just Engineering was given a day to sort things out. Though these Fluyt beasties are pretty adaptable.”

Knives shrugged, then looked down at the console before him as it beeped. “The commander and a security team just beamed aboard. Looks like with the engineers we already have, we’re good to go.”

“I’ll go stop the departure until we get some couches for the flight deck,” Cat said. Knives didn’t even look confused, just nodded in acceptance before rising to follow her out of the runabout.

Stepping into the limited command deck of the AB1726, Cat felt like she was stepping into a play set. There were only three stations in the limited space – helm and navigation at the front, engineering set to the right and defensive and operational systems to the left. Defensive, not tactical. This was, after all, an unarmed freighter.

Aside from the flight of fighters in its belly all shielded and pretending to just duranium cargo pallets and containers, that is.

But in the middle of all this nothing, only two people were present aside from Cat herself; Commander Sidda Sadovu and a young ensign she was overseeing as they prepared the flight systems for the freighter for departure.

The Commander had opted for her field jacket versus her uniform tunic. She’d procured a black Stetson hat from somewhere, perched at a crooked angle on her head. The disruptor holster that Cat had seen a couple of times was present again, and field with a nasty-looking Klingon weapon, accompanied by a standard phaser as well on Sidda’s opposite hip.

And then, to round off the entire ensemble, was a scabbard hanging from a sword belt. The sword present wasn’t that long, but the hilt bore a Starfleet delta in it, though the hilt itself wasn’t that wide at all.

“Ah, so you did get the sword,” Cat said.

“I did,” Sidda said, turning to face Cat, a grin a mile wide. “If we’re going pirate hunting, I have to look the part.”

Roasted potatoes, minted peas, buttered asparagus and glazed yams sat on serving plates or bowls as required, all in service and arrayed around the platter with stacks of roast pork and crackling, or chicken. The heady aromas filled the expansive and truly ridiculous grand hall aboard the Hohenzollern. While the olfactory senses were satisfied, a trio of bards in a corner played gently to soothe the auditory.

Stained glass panels gave the illusion of windows, despite the grand hall being nestled firmly within one of the larger towers, nearly halfway from the base. They cast the room in gentle colours, each panel depicting a scene in the great history of the House of Crashanburn. And between each faux window were statues, armour stands, plinths with artefacts of some sort on them, or merely full-sized paintings of people all bearing some resemblance to the Viscount Crashanburn.

“I think I see where they got the family name,” Willow Beckman whispered as she leaned closer to Blake Pisani, pointing at one of the panels that had gotten her attention. It depicted a stylised rendition of a centuries-old colony ship, made even worse through the filter of medieval technological transformations. But this most pressing part of the whole panel was the ship plunging towards the ground, flames surrounding it as a heroic individual stuck out of the top of the vessel, stern-faced and moustachioed, hands on the reins of wild horses pulling the ship downwards. The half-dozen passengers, all equally improbably sticking out of the top, were panicking, hands waving in the air.

“Piloting lesson says the captain was actually the most panicked person on that ship,” Blake replied, a smile then a wink before she shook her head to tell Willow to sit back.

The Viscount’s meeting with Mac aboard Republic had been the day before. Mousetrap had departed, making a day’s journey towards the direction of the Archanis Nebula. It had so far only sent out standard automated messages, proudly announcing its cargo of colonial goods bound for Ayer’s Rock. But during the night the engineers of Republic, with a little assistance from a few other Starfleet Engineers aboard Thames Station, had devised a potential fix for Hohenzollern’s engine issue.

And that meant that Blake was getting to lead an engineering team aboard the Hysperian ship. And would just have to rub all of this in Cat’s face when they were all reunited. But she’d brought Willow along instead, to test further the young woman’s ‘spooky sense’. And maybe make use of it as well. There were, after all, plenty of things out there in the universe that modern science still hadn’t gotten around to proving is fake or explaining in a rational manner.

And as Evan had warned Blake, they’d been whisked away, to while away time while the ‘squires’ did all the work. And the Viscount hadn’t been stingy on this occasion, deigning to join the visiting ‘knights’ for a ‘lite lunch’ as he’d called it when a veritable army of servers had brought out the many serving plates, the carafes of wine and one of them had offered a choice of deserts to the visitors for later, before simply asking the Viscount what he wanted and commenting “Wise choice m’lord” when he finally gave an answer.

A handful of other members of the Viscount’s court had joined them. Knight Lorelei had been there to meet them when they arrived. Knight-Captain Filippo had greeted them in the grand hall before the Viscount himself had arrived, and insisted on correcting Blake’s addressing of him, his family name used ‘only formally and by those I don’t like’ he said, laying on the charm as thick as he could.

A parade of other names and faces had washed over both Starfleet officers, continuing as they had sat for lunch. Conversations had broken out on a matter of subjects, and people were joining and leaving nearby discussions as they pleased with the ebb and flow of discussions.

“Excuse me, young lady, are you perchance the helmsman for the Starfleet vessel?” The young man who asked the question, directed to Willow, was perhaps a few years her senior at most. He sat opposite them, having kept quiet for most of the meal so far. Unlike so many of the other men present, he was clean-shaven. Dark hair was pulled back into a loose ponytail.

“I am,” Willow answered, hesitantly at first. “Willow Beckman, chief helmsman, USS Republic.”

“Yes, Republic, quiet,” the man said, disdain like so many others at the ship’s name. “Tell me, is it true your ships use fish for navigation?”

“Fish?” The question in response was immediate from Willow. “No, not fish. Some ships in the fleet have cetaceans aboard in a specialist capacity as navigators, but not all ships. Republic doesn’t, for example, but one ship in the squadron, Perseus, has these amazingly gigantic tanks for Cetacean Ops.”

“Cetaceans?” the man asked, looking at his fellow Hysperians. Those paying attention merely shrugged or shook their heads in response.

“Whales and dolphins,” Blake answered. “Starfleet officers specialised in navigational challenges.”

“Merfolk?” The man sounded genuinely perplexed. “That must be a sight to see. Please, would you indulge me in another question?”

“Besides that one just now?” Blake asked cheekily.

“I – ” the man started, before being cut off.

“Sure thing,” Willow said.

“Without said specialists, if your ship was plunged into an astral miasma that dulled your scrying, how would you handle the task of finding your way?”

Willow took a moment, blinking, then looked at Blake, blinked twice more, then shook her head before looking at the man again. “A sensor blocking nebula?” The man took his time translating before nodding in agreement. They were both speaking the same language and the words were understandable, just the comprehension was missing, unless thought about.

“Make sure your inertial guidance system is fully calibrated, ensure all the backups are running and in agreement, then pick a direction and go. Keep slow, check what you can on sensors, then just keep on going till you find something a chart recognises or you leave the nebula.”

“I see,” the young Hysperian answered. “And if approaching from outside?”

“Is this theoretical or practical?” Blake asked, interrupting Willow before she could talk.

“You must excuse Enrico,” Knight-Captain Filippo declared as he approached from behind Willow and Blake. He’d been doing the rounds of the table, checking in on collected groups here and there. If this was the equivalent of a staff meeting aboard the Hohenzollern, then the ship had a truly impressive crew. Given its size, it had to. “He has always been a curious sort and likes to quiz visitors, to see if they can teach him anything.”

“I don’t mind,” Willow said. “He’s just asking about first year navigational classes, really. I’d expect anyone who has passed their basic flight qualifications to know this.” Her eyes went to Blake, a knowing squint following. “Right, Doctor?”

“I have never gotten lost in a nebula,” Blake snapped back. “Delayed perhaps, never lost.”

“In that case, m’ladies, please entertain Enrico to your heart’s content. Enrico,” Filippo looked to the young man, a fatherly smile on his face, “Do be mindful and not bore our guests. And perhaps give them a tour after lunch before seeing them to their squires?”

“Yes sir,” Enrico answered. He waited for the Knight-Captain to leave before continuing. “Where were we?”

Hours later, after a report from the engineers that matters were proceeding well, a tour given and more questions from Enrico and Blake and Willow found themselves with a spot out of the way in the main engine room aboard Hohenzollern. The general gist of a Federation engine room could be seen, with a heavy veneer of faux-medievalism over the top. “Something still isn’t right here,” Willow whispered. “I can’t…” she trailed off as her eyes scanned the vast expanse of the room.

“Can’t what?” Blake asked. She’d made sure a corpsman had been with the engineers the whole time and had packed them a second tricorder, claiming it when they had arrived after lunch. Now it was in her hand, pointed at the young woman beside her.

“I can’t tell where I am,” Willow answered, sounding far away. She’d taken a few steps, spinning around as she did so like someone trying to get their bearings. “I mean, I know the bow is that way,” she pointed at one of the walls, roughly in the direction of the Hohenzollern’s bow. “We’re in engineering, sorry, the forge, but where exactly is that?”

“Aboard the Hohenzollern?” Blake asked. Her attention drifted to her tricorder once more. “Oh, wow, this is interesting.”

That had broken Willow’s semi-trance, the young woman snapping back to the here and now. Seeing the tricorder, her face scrunched up slightly before she shook it off, then stepped up beside Blake to examine the results. “A neurological scan?”

“You, my dear, are something else,” Blake announced with a smile. “Your neurological activity is spiking in lovely weird ways.”

“Is that a good thing? Bad thing?”

“It’s a weird thing.” Blake waved the tricorder over Willow, consulted it briefly, and then smiled. “Otherwise you look fine. Feeling okay?”

“Lost.”

“When did it start?”

Willow thought for a moment. “Ever since we got here,” she answered, pointing to the floor with both hands. “Actually, I think I started feeling confused before, but like, not by much.”

“Hmm.” Blake looked around herself now, looking for something that just screamed ‘suspicious’ but not finding it amongst the flaming torches, two-meter oil paintings of Viscount Crashanburn, or the grotesques high up on the walls. “Ever feel like this in Engineering?”

“On the Republic? No, never.”

“You know, Lieutenant,” Blake said after mulling what evidence she had for a moment, “I think you’re right. Something isn’t right here.”

“Doc, we’re done here.” Lieutenant Michelle Jamieson was the one really running the away team here to implement the engine fix. As she approached, she was busy wiping her hands clean on a rag, the effort not so much cleaning the woman’s hands as just evenly distributing what mess was there. “And thank you so, so much for keeping those busybody knights off my team. Us and blacksmiths got the work done quicker without them.”

“A filling lunch, wine in the middle of the day and a pleasant conversation are all slings and arrows I’ll take for engineers any day of the week,” Blake said, a slight chuckle from Jamieson in response. “Anything weird or interesting you noticed?”

“I did want to check a few compartments, but the Hysperians got awfully defensive about them.” Jamieson pointed at a door on the far side of the Forge from the three women. “Apparently it’s a personal project space for the chief blacksmith and he didn’t want to show me. ‘Not until it’s ready’ or something like that.”

“Curious.” Blake considered the door for a moment, then saw the exhausted faces of the engineers as they were packing their tools up. “Right, shall we take these weary souls home?” she asked Willow. “Back to the 25^th century!”

“I know we’re just sitting in orbit, waiting, but where is my helmsman?” Captain Charles MacIntyre asked after stepping out of his ready room, surveying the bridge and finding one of the key stations vacant.

Jenu Trid, Republic’s Chief Operations Officer, pointed at the empty seat from her station beside it. “Doctor Pisani left you a message when she came up and took Willow away with her.”

“Okay,” Mac said dubiously. A few steps, an examination and he had a padd in hand, the display already lit up with a brief message. “Doctor’s note. That’s all it says.”

“Wait, like an actual note?” Trid asked.

“No, as in it just says ‘doctor’s note’.” Mac handed the padd over to Trid to look at, who chuckled briefly at it. “Likely has something to do with their visit to the Hysperian ship yesterday. Speaking of, I know they left early this morning. Where are they right now?”

“Let me check,” Trid said, handing the padd back before checking her console. Chirps, clicks and pops as keys were pressed, functions ran and then finished. “Weird. They aren’t on sensors at all.”

“Long range scan?”

“That’s what I did.” Trid sounded confused at the scan results herself, immediately rerunning them as she spoke. “They couldn’t have gone far enough to leave long-range sensors. They were only doing warp six point eight.”

“When did we last have them?” Mac asked, walking to stand behind Trid and look at her console over the young woman’s shoulder.

Trid’s fingers flew over her console as she scrubbed over the sensor logs, finding her prey. “Medium range sensors as they were leaving the system. They slipped out of our sensor range, showed up on the quarter-hour long-range scan, then…nothing.” She turned enough to look up at him. “Ship that big doesn’t just disappear.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Mac straightened up as he thought, pacing towards the viewscreen. The hologram that comprised the viewscreen was flawless. Almost distractingly so, as he looked out at the flying spider web that was Thames Station. “Contact Thames Station, see if they’ll share their sensors logs. They should be running long-range scans continuously. In the meantime, let’s go active with our scans.”

Mac’s attention immediately shifted away from Trid as the starboard turbolift hissed open, Matt Lake spilling forth with a padd raised high and looking like a man catching his breath. Unable to speak, Matt didn’t hesitate, giving the padd a gentle toss once he saw his captain had seen him, then bracing himself on a railing.

A two-handed catch, a brief quizzical look to Matt, who waved his eyes down and Mac was reading the new padd. “Hysperian Royal Intelligence?” he asked after reading just the header on the document before him. “Query into the Crashanburn family…no record of any siblings for Sir Otto Crashanburn.”

“Just got that,” Matt said, breathing heavily with each word. “Thought I’d query the Hysperians about their wayward ship and the Viscount. Keep reading.”

“An Orion visitor from foreign lands yestermonth, suspected to be a liaison from a criminal syndicate originating from the world of their birth. Royal Intelligence suspects the Viscount procured an obfuscator from this visitor.” Mac felt his own fingers clenching around the padd tightly. “God dammit,” he muttered. “Suspected to be Starfleet wizardry.”

“We don’t have cloaking devices,” Trid said from his side. “Do we?”

“We’re not supposed to,” Mac answered. “But we also don’t let pirates into the service, now do we?”

“Channelling the commander, sir, I believe she’d like me to say she thought of herself as a preemptive nautical salvage merchant.”

“Piracy with extra steps,” Mac answered. “Though who’s counting, right? From what I’ve read, I’d call her work…proactive vigilantism.”

“It gets worse,” Matt said, having finally caught his breath and descended to the helm and ops stations. “I was speaking with a colleague last night. One who worked at the Daystrom Institute a few years back. They confirmed that a Genesis device is missing from inventory. So, there is one potentially in play, not just rumours.”

“Let’s consider any rumours we hear to be worthy of consideration.” Mac paced for a moment. “So, he fed me a lie about a missing brother turned pirate, then we hear the Viscount had Orions visiting and might have bought a cloaking device and now we can’t find the Hohenzollern. Conclusions?”

“Viscount Crashanburn is the Last Pirate King?” Trid asked. “And he’s off to go meet the Orion Syndicate to finalise purchasing a Genesis Device.”

Mac snapped his fingers as he pointed to Trid, a smile on his face. “Fits the bill.”

“All right, so what do we do?” Matt asked. “Warn Commander Sadovu?”

“No,” Mac said. “No, we wait. If they’re monitoring, they might notice comms. And raiders might have a way of contacting their boss, so hopefully she gets something useful out of them. But…we shouldn’t be so far out of position. Which way was the Hohenzollern going last we saw her?”

“Straight for the Archanis Nebula,” Trid answered. “Straight and true.”

“Could be a deception,” Matt chimed in.

“Could be. But my gut says it isn’t. Trid, find us a merchant going roughly in the right direction. We’ll tag along as an escort until either the Hohenzollern shows up or Sidda hails us.”

“Shouldn’t we follow the Hohenzollern directly?” Matt asked, indicating the padd in Mac’s hand. “They’re after a Genesis device. We have to stop them.”

“So far, supposition on that front. Strong supposition, though. And besides, we’ve lost them. Add in that I told Crashanburn a lot about how we’d go about searching for his fake brother.” Mac’s fingers once more clenched around the padd. “Nothing technical, just broad strokes. But if we go charging after them, even Crashanburn will put two and two together and realise something is up. No, we want him as off guard as we can.”

“And right now he thinks he pulled one over on you, so is less on guard and feeling confident.” Matt said, which Mac nodded in agreement to.

“Right, you two go over everything there is in the records about searching for cloaked vessels. I’ll go make a few calls and see if I can’t find anything about this potential Daystrom cloaking device. Trid, get us underway once you’ve found us a freighter to follow. I want to be as close by as we can when Sidda calls. Once she has anything we can act on, we’ll commence searching for the Hohenzollern.”

“Yes sir,” Trid answered.

“And in the meantime, I’m going to go find out why my chief medical officer has stolen my chief helmsman.” Mac handed the padd with Hysperian communiques on it back to Matt. “Call me if anything happens.” And with that, he was headed for the turbolift, leaving his officers to their tasks.

Engineering aboard the freighter AB1726 was just a closet with ambitions that had ready access to the ship’s warp core, which had been built to be so reliable and sturdy that it literally fulfilled the design requirement of ‘a chimpanzee and two trainees could run her’. Assuming, of course, that the chimpanzee was the one in charge.

It also meant the space wasn’t particularly large either. A couple of consoles, a chair at each for potentially long shifts. An equipment locker dominated the port wall while the starboard was lit up with an exploded map of the freighter’s sub-systems, showing how they connected and the flows between systems.

And over the last day and a half it had been the personal domain of Lieutenant Commander Evan Malcolm. He had bounced between the bunk room he was sharing with the junior engineer he’d brought along, the incredibly cramped mess and the charitably labelled ‘main engineering’, with little to no interaction with the others brought along on this mission.

So when the door hissed open behind him, he’d just assumed it was the other engineer arriving.

“You’re early, Ensign,” Evan said without even turning to address his new arrival.

“I am?” Sidda answered, taking a small amount of pleasure in Evan’s sudden bolting upright in his seat, the rapid spin of his chair and the glare intended to try and evaporate her. Just a shame she’d endured more powerful disapproving glares in her life than this one human engineer could muster.

He opened his mouth to say something, then stopped, closing his mouth with a snap.

“Career limiting statement?” Sidda asked, causing Evan’s glare to ratchet a notch or two. “I’m teasing. How we looking?”

“Ridiculous,” he answered, giving her a look over.

The sword she’d left in the small captain’s quarters. While it wasn’t a terribly long blade, the scabbard was something she wasn’t used to and the confines aboard AB1726 weren’t conducive to its constant presence. But she’d kept both the disruptor and phaser on her being at all times. It was comforting to have the disruptor holster on her thigh again. And the phaser on a cross draw on the other side wasn’t unfamiliar.

And anyway, they could be suddenly attacked at any moment.

So she kept reminding even herself.

“I meant the ship,” she finally said after a few seconds, letting Evan’s comment slide. “How’s the ship looking?”

“Like I could have, should have, assigned a couple of junior engineers to manage it. I honestly think I’d have to try hard just to get this thing to explode.”

“That many safeties?” Sidda asked.

“Yes,” Evan replied. He turned back to his console, a signal she’d gotten used to that he was done with the conversation.

“Well, guess if it’s gonna be automated most of the time, that’s a good thing.” She stepped up just close enough to reach past Evan and place a padd on his console within an easy enough reach for him. “Have a read when you get a chance. Let me know what you think.”

“Uh-huh,” he replied half-heartedly.

She’d barely gotten ten metres down the door after leaving Engineering before the door whisked open and Evan shouted at her. “What the hell is this?” He was brandishing the padd, indignation on his face.

“It’s your latest performance review that I intend to give to the captain when we get back to Republic,” she answered, much quieter and calmer than Evan had addressed her, and only after turning to face him.

Evan held the padd so he could read it, ensuring he got the quote right. “An exemplary mentor to his junior officers. A highly capable engineer who has kept Republic in peak condition post-launch.” Then he waved the device at her once more. “What is this?”

“An honest assessment.” She watched the confusion flow over his face. “Evan, you’re the one with the problem, not me. What, did you think I’d take some sort of retaliatory strike against you?”

“Yes.”

“Well tough, I didn’t.” She waited as the steam escaped him. “You’re an excellent engineer and a good officer. You’re an absolute bastard to me for reasons I’m sure make sense to you, and a cranky jerk in Engineering. But everyone I’ve spoken to who says you’re a jerk also says you’re damn good at explaining solutions and walking less experienced individuals through where they went wrong and seeing them right.”

He took a moment, processing what she’d said, before his eyes squinted again. “What are you playing at?”

“Oh, give it a rest!” she shouted at him. “I’m not trying to derail you, go after you, or hurt you. You switched to fleet duty to qualify for a promotion back at the shipyard. I’m writing glowing reports because you’re a good officer and I want to help you get where you want to be.”

“I don’t know what you’re playing at-”

“Take the damn compliment. I’m filing that assessment, word for word, with the captain when we return. If you want to protest it, you can. But hey, I’m just trying to help your career along, so what do I know, right?” She threw up her hands, spun on her heel and marched off, leaving the engineer to stew in his delusions.

Again, she’d barely gotten five steps in before the ambient lighting in the corridor shifted, immediately taking on a dull red hue as a klaxon started warbling. “Captain to the bridge,” came the nervous sounding announcement filling every cabin of the ship.

She’d heard her own booted feet on the bare deck plating, followed by another. Both senior officers barreled into the cramped bridge at nearly the same time.

“Nausicaan raiders, three of them,” Ensign Scalzi said as soon as they arrived. “Coming in fast. We’ve turned to flee like the automatics would, but they’ll be on us in fifteen minutes.”

“How?” Evan blurted out.

“They’re redlining their engines, likely past the warnings, for as much speed as they can. Get enough loot and you can pay for an overhaul later. And we’re listed as carrying some expensive loot.” Sidda smiled as she turned to Evan. “Even Nausicaans can read the public shipping manifests.”

“You made us so tempting they would jump us. You’re mad.” Then Evan stopped and looked at her, scrutinising her for a moment. “How many layers are there to this trap?”

“Just enough,” she answered. “Always remember this one rule about pirates; smarter than you think, but greed overrules everything.”

“And when it doesn’t?” Evan asked in reply.

“Then you’re getting into syndicate territory and let’s not worry about that right now.” She watched him roll his eyes, shaking her head in response. “Get to engineering. If anything goes sideways, shout out and make for the Paralus. We’re not sticking aboard this crate a moment longer than we have to.”

“Right,” Evan answered, forgetting his animosity for a moment and leaving without another smart comment in his wake.

“Now,” Sidda said, as she jabbed at a button on the console Ensign Scalzi sat at. “Night Witches, fifteen minutes. Get ready.”

The first Nausicaan shots had rippled through the warp field of the Fluyt-class freighter AB1726, tripping safeties and causing the craft to decelerate automatically. The second series of shots had been in panic as side panels on the freighter blew outwards on explosive bolts and small rockets, giving way to the eruption of six Valkyrie-class starfighters.

A carefully choreographed operation, likely done a few times in the last few months, if not weeks, had suddenly developed into a confusing melee for the Nausicaans. Confident they were hunting an automated freighter, the Nausicaans hadn’t even raised shields, which they would soon regret. Before the mistake could be rectified micro-torpedoes had whisked forward from a number of the fighters, slamming into the hull of each ship.

A precision attack, enacted with practice, speed and lax attitudes on behalf of the Nausicaans resulted in a quick disabling of each raider’s shields.

The fight was far from over, but was certainly a lot more level now. The raiders were bigger, could take punishment, and hit harder, but they were a lot slower and might as well be bumbling around compared to the swift movements of the starfighters. But they lacked the overall coverage of firepower that a much larger ship would have to ward off such swarming attacks.

These were raiders, not pickets or capital ships. They were meant for raiding freighters, not fighters, and it showed as the Night Witches dove on their targets like angry hornets, stinging with phasers, the odd torpedo, then whipping away as quick as they could, using the other raiders for cover from the target as it tried to swot at them.

The plan they’d worked out wasn’t that complex. Three raiders, six fighters, two each. Cat and Crash, Knives and Flop, Blunt and Red. Shields, engines, weapons.

“Raider 1’s weapons are out.”

“Raider 2 is venting drive plasma.”

“I’m hit! I’m hit!” came the cry over the comms and Cat’s attention went from her own run to who had spoken. The other pilots had become like extensions of herself she was vaguely aware of, processing their reports, giving her own. Now, though, one of those extremities had informed her of pain, stabbing through her trance-like state.

“How bad is it, Flop?” she asked, a quick glance at a display showing the status of her fellows helping her identify who had cried out.

“Shields out. Think the mains regulator has taken a hit. Port phaser is listed as gone, but it still fires.”

“Flop, pull back,” came an intruding voice. It was still Commander Sadovu’s mission, but the fighters were Cat’s to command. But she was right, Flop needed to pull back.

“You heard the XO.” Cat’s response was immediate. She kept the desire to chastise Sidda to herself for now. Discipline was more important right now than a pissing contest over where the lines of authority sat.

“I can still fly her,” Flop protested.

“You’ve got a plasma leak, starboard engine.” It was Knives’ turn to speak. “Raider 3 is bugging out.” The flash of light as one of the raiders managed to accelerate away at warp speeds served to drive home Knives’ next statement. “I’ll cover Flop back to the barn.”

“Witches, focus on Raider 2,” Sidda ordered over the channel as Knives and Flop turned away. “Raider 1 is mine.”

“Ours?” Cat asked, confused. She spun her head to look in the direction of the Fluyt-class freighter, which was still just hanging in space. Its shields flared from time to time as stray shots went out, intersecting coincidentally with it. AB1726 had been forgotten by the Nausicaans as they struggled to deal with the nimble fighters. “Commander Sadovu, what’s going on?”

There was no response.

“Witches, focus on Raider 2. Warp engines first.”

A series of affirmations followed as Cat rolled her fighter into another attack run, using the A/R variant’s superior sensors to find something, anything, important to the warp engines along the ship’s outer hull. The limited computer board highlighted a couple of targets and she trained her phasers on them, small bursts of light lancing out, gouging into the hull as she sped past, plumes of sparks erupting in front of and around her.

Two more runs followed, which with all the Witches picking on a single ship felt like bullying. Plasma vented from ruptured warp coils; atmosphere escaped from multiple hull breaches that didn’t have orange force fields flaring around. Electrical arcs occasionally danced across the hull as systems shorted, finding ground elsewhere on the ship and lighting the hull up on fractal patterns as it did so.

And then the universal sign of surrender went out as the Nausicaan impulse engines ceased, the ship’s transponder flashing to indicate their surrender. They might be pirates, but they obviously wanted to live as much as the next person. And Starfleet took prisoners, unlike others, which meant they had that option to them.

“Cat to Sadovu, what’s going on with Raider 1?”

Raider 1, which she didn’t know how they had been designated and didn’t need to know really, had stopped any form of evasive action. It was simply flying away from them in a straight line, trailing plasma in its wave from fires on the hull where the shield generators had been and where one of the Witches had torn open the small ship’s starboard warp nacelle.

“Commander Sadovu, come in-”

“She’s busy right now.” Cat didn’t need to recognise the voice to recognise the tone. Evan Malcolm was displeased with something Sidda Sadovu, no doubt relying on her infinite luck, had launched herself into, leaving him behind to nurse the freighter. “She boarded the lead Nausicaan ship.”

“She what?” Cat asked, staring at Raider 1, still pulling away. “Flop, Knives, watch Raider 2. Everyone else, pursue Raider 1.”

Acceleration pinned her to her seat as she spun her fighter on its axis and went to full power, the inertial compensator struggling with such aggressive actions. Raider 1 wasn’t quite at full impulse power but it had a lead the Starfleet fighters. Her people were now running their engines at full, trying to catch the wayward ship.

“I’ve got a lock on their impulse engines,” Red announced. Cat could just see the Andorian pilot, a mere twenty metres from her, concentrating on his displays. “I can slow them down.”

“Yaaaarrrrrr!” The shout over their comms was unmissable. The voice was hard to make out from a combination of bad communications equipment on one end and an affectation being put on. “I’d appreciate it kindly if you didn’t put holes in my new ship,” Sidda said, this time clear and concise.

And then Raider 1’s engines came to a halt, the lights fading and the ship slowing down, eventually coming to a halt.

“Did the Commander seriously board a Nausicaan pirate ship?” Crash asked.

“It would appear so,” Blunt replied. “And succeeded.”

“So it would seem,” Cat said. “Right Witches, let’s escort them back to the freighter. I’ll fire up the comms and call Republic.”

“Raider 1 is mine.”

With those words, Sidda took stock one last time of the five security officers with her, nodded at the grim visage they all wore, then nodded to the poor ensign she’d roped into operating the transporter aboard AB1726. To the young man’s credit, he didn’t look worried or concerned about sending Republic’s executive officer off on a crazy mission.

If anything, he looked bored.

She’d change that by bringing him on her next away mission.

The freighter’s transporter alcove, a small divot in the main corridor with the controls built into the wall, smelled faintly of disinfectant and cleaning products. It was well lit, clearly labelled and as safe as one could get without covering everything in some form of padding to prevent even accidental bruising. But then all that safety and well thought out design work was snatched up in a brilliant swirl of blue light and humming, before it faded and everything was the antithesis of the hallways of AB1726.

The lighting on the Nausicaan ship was darker, but not absent. Dull yellows and greens illuminated just enough to let people work, but not so much as to show the grime of which they lived in. The tang of iron hung in the air; a sweet but wholly unpleasant smell accompanied it. There was a strong chemical smell mixed in as well, which Sidda always associated with lubricants, especially in the engineering spaces of the Vondem Rose and Vondem Thorn. Not the rather weaker, likely much safer smells she had noticed aboard Republic.

The iron smell extended to taste as soon as she breathed in. It wasn’t strong, but enough to tell her the ship’s life support system needed an overhaul badly. And someone had recently slaughtered something nearby, likely for a meal.

She barely had a chance to turn around and face her team before the harsh, screeching klaxon sounded, like a wailing banshee up and down the hall. “Intruder alert!” a voice then bellowed, low and raspy, with a metallic bite to each syllable.

“Hernandez, Smith, with me.” She pointed at the two of them, then flicked a thumb over her shoulder to tell them which way to start moving. She knew where they were beaming in on the Nausicaan raider, which way they’d be facing and hence which way to the bridge. “T’Kim, Ruu, get Fruit Basket to Engineering.”

“Won’t let you down, Commander,” the little exocomp announced loudly in its perpetually enthusiastic voice as the other two fell into guard around it. “Onwards!” it then declared as it started to hover down the hallway at a decent pace. “I have a date with destiny!”

“And I thought I was the dramatic one,” Sidda muttered, before turning back to her two security officers. “Ready?”

“As we’ll ever be,” Hernandez answered. “You, ma’am?”

She smiled, knowing it was growing wicked as she drew her sword out of its scabbard. It really was a fine blade, crafted out of stolen and recycled Starfleet hull plating. The blade was a dull grey-white colour hidden by the sickly lighting. But the glint was obvious as it caught the lights. Admiration was quick though as she had things to do. The sword was passed to her offhand while she reached for her disruptor, then stopped herself from drawing the weapon, merely undoing the strap that kept it in place. The phaser on her other side was then drawn, checked, then lowered to rest, confident it was on the right setting.

Shoot first, ask questions later; a clever saying and with stun settings on weapons, one that could be indulged in.

And if the Nausicaans didn’t play nice, she’d be doing just that.

“Ready,” she answered finally, then pushed past Hernandez and Smith toward the raider’s bridge.

The bridge and engineering were all they needed to take on this pathetic little ship to take control. Ten Nausicaan life signs in total had been detected, and they probably didn’t have ‘getting boarded’ on their list of activities for today, so surprise was playing on the boarding party’s side. And engineering had only shown four, so she’d taken the lion’s share of the trouble by heading for the bridge.

Like always.

A shot rang out suddenly. The whine of a discharging phaser ringing down a side corridor followed by the dull thud of a body hitting the deck. Spinning, weapon raised, Smith was slightly crouched, his own weapon before him, staring at the Nausicaan he’d just stunned.

Six on the bridge just became five.

“Nice shooting, Tex,” Hernandez said, looking over the sprawled out Nausicaan who had a small puddle of blood forming around their broken nose. “Think you might have killed him.”

A boorish snore erupted from the Nausicaan, a sound more associated with large animals or malfunctioning combustion engines. And then it was followed by another and another.

“Or not,” Hernandez corrected himself. “Still, nice shot.”

“Thanks,” Smith said.

“Come on, let’s keep going,” she said and the two men were in step behind her without another word.

The door to the bridge of the small ship was ominous as they approached. It promised them control of the ship. It promised them access to all of the ship’s secrets.

It promised them a fight.

And it was suspiciously quiet as well.

No yelling, no barking of orders. No shouted updates on what was happening. Just silence.

“Fuck,” she muttered.

“Ma’am?”

“They’re dug in. Waiting for us. They’ll have cover, we won’t. This is going to suck.”

“Least they don’t seem to be flying their ship,” Smith said, finding the silver lining to the situation.

“True,” she had to agree. “Right, either side of the door, you two. I’ll open it, dive right and hope I get some cover nice and quick.”

“Or maybe just open it and help us, ma’am?” Hernandez asked. “I just don’t want to do the paperwork if you get shot.”

“Oh, trust me, you won’t be.” She checked her phaser once more. “It’ll all be on me.”

There was no more time for arguments, no more time for thoughtful lieutenants to propose sensible and sound plans. The door button was jabbed with the end of the phaser, the metal sheets swishing away into their wall cavities and giving way to a hail of a rainbow of fire. A dark red beam slashed through the open door. A bolt of green punched through Sidda’s jacket as she dove for cover. An orange beam went wide, then up into the ceiling wildly.

She hit the floor, pain lancing through her shoulder as she scrambled to pull her feet under her, to get back on them and ready to move once more. Shrills, barks, screams and cries of weapons fire passed back and forth over her head.

The controlled fire of Hernandez and Smith clashed with the wild and chaotic fire of the Nausicaans. Some of the fire was aggressive, pouring as much at the Starfleet officers as they could, others were more controlled and somewhere just firing to make noise, as evidenced by the shower and spray of a couple of light fittings as purple energy racked across the ceiling and nowhere near anyone, Starfleet or Nausicaan alike.

“Starfleet scum!” a cry came out. Sidda looked up just in time to see a large, brutish Nausicaan looming over her, a club in both hands. “Imma kill you!” the woman yelled before the club came crashing down.

Another rapid dive to the side barely saved her from having her head caved in. Followed by another dive and some more scrabbling before she got up on her feet in a hurry, brandishing her sword and phaser against a club that looked like it came from a small ship’s landing gear.

She shrugged, raised her phaser and fired. The orange beam leaped across the distance between them, then scatted, skipped and diffused across the woman’s armoured chest.

And the Nausicaan roared defiantly, the stun blast having no effect.

“Oh shit,” Sidda muttered. In a moment of terror as the Nausicaan stormed at her, Sidda threw her phaser at them, bouncing off that same armour plate that had eaten her shot. It wasn’t any more effective. And then she was leaping to the side as the club came down again.

“Little help!” she barked.

“Busy!” Smith shouted back. Fair, but unwanted news.

“Maybe I won’t kill you,” the Nausicaan growled. “Orions sell decently well in the Empire.”

Somehow this woman’s crew had left them alone to their melee, shooting around them, or getting out of the way, not that they’d gone far. They’d just become the odd blur or indistinct shape as Sidda kept finding herself dodging and weaving. She hadn’t even tried to use the sword in her other hand. She wanted prisoners, after all, not a bunch of carved up dead raiders.

And taking prisoners was what she was supposed to do as a Starfleet officer anyway.

But then this woman had hinted at slavery. This Nausicaan had just threatened to sell her.

Blood boiled; anger swelled.

Panic evaporated.

She stopped dodging. Her right hand went to her thigh, finding her holster and what to her felt like an eternity she drew her disruptor, levelled it at the Nausicaan before her, whose words had demoted her from woman to creature, and depressed the firing stud just enough to start the weapon cycling.

“Say it again,” she growled, holding her ground as the Nausicaan took another step towards her.

“Oh fuck,” she heard someone nearby mutter. Was it right next to her, or out in the hall? She couldn’t tell over the thumping in her ears. “We’re so fucked,” it continued.

The Nausicaan woman stopped, eyes flickering from Sidda to the disruptor and back again a few times. And then she was a blur of motion, unreasonable in person so far. The club at Sidda from her left, it too a blur that seemed to drag on, much like when she had drawn her weapon. She had time to think and yet no time at all.

Before she knew what she was doing, she took a step back, raising her sword in a parry. Save she misjudged, intercepting the club her forearm instead, having not stepped back enough. The crack of bone, a scream of pain, and the clatter of her sword hitting the deck. It all seemed like it was happening to someone else.

And then she sucked in a breath, raised the disruptor one more time and fired.

The report was loud, filling the bridge, the hallway, the entire ship, or so it seemed.

It hit that armoured plate the Nausicaan woman was wearing and sent her reeling backwards into the throne-like chair in the middle of the bridge, breaking it off its post as both raider captain and chair continued on their way. Sprawling, thumping, they collected one of the other Nausicaans, only stopping when the mass of flesh and furniture slammed into a wall.

“We surrender!” came an immediate cry. Weapons clattered to the floor as two pairs of hands stuck up from behind consoles. “We surrender! Please don’t kill us!”

Nausicaans didn’t make the best of pleaders and clearly something had to have spooked them for them to reach that conclusion. And as Hernandez and Smith flowed in, checking the one they had stunned and kicking weapons away from the two still conscious, the Nausicaans kept pleading with them. “You’ll protect us from the Kingslayer, right? You’re Starfleet, you have to right?” one of them begged.

“Oh fuck you,” Sidda found herself snapping at the snivelling man. “What, this uniform is just for show?”

“They’re not dead,” Hernandez declared, standing over the large Nausicaan woman and the man she’d collected in her involuntary flight. “But they’ll wish they were after that trip.” He whistled, admiring the scorch mark on the armour plate. “Right in the centre of the plate. Nice.”

“I was aiming for her head,” Sidda growled. It was a lie, but you were always supposed to say that, right? At least all the bad holonovels told her she was.

A console on the bridge then started blurting at them, a sickening little sound that would drive a person to despair rather quickly.

“Uh, that means someone is locking weapons on us,” one of the two still standing Nausicaans said. They’d both been corralled into a corner by Smith and didn’t seem to want to try their luck.

“External comms?”

“Blue button,” the talkative one said, pointing at a console in a slow, exaggerated motion, so as not to irritate Smith.

Two steps, one more over a stunned man who was drooling into the seat of the chair he’d used as cover, and Sidda pushed the button after a brief search for it.

“Yaaaarrrrrr!” she said, dragging out the word and not able to help the smile that came with it. “I’d appreciate it kindly if you didn’t put holes in my new ship.”

And she turned to face the two Nausicaans, who looked appropriately cowed now. “Right, gentleman?”

“Right, Captain Sidda,” they both said. “Your ship.”

“So, how’d it go?” Mac asked as he stepped up to the foot of the biobed that this executive officer was currently laying on.

Sidda’s head was propped up by pillows while her left arm was encased in a machine, bathing her arm in a gentle sky-blue light that actually hurt to look at. Her field jacket had been ditched over the back of a chair and boots were on the floor beside her. And from his experience, the way the jacket was folded, and the boots tucked together, Revin had already visited.

She’d been staring at the ceiling, her free arm tucked behind her head. Attention slowly shifted to him, then snapped suddenly, eyes focusing as she returned from whatever far away place she’d drifted off to. “Oh, well enough,” she answered. “Raider 2 managed to wipe their computer, but we gambled on Raider 1 and it paid off.”

And the smirk was once more on her face as she portrayed happiness at the result.

Trust me, she had said. Trust her, he did.

And the results did speak for themselves.

“And the little stunt you pulled when storming the bridge?” he asked. Crossing his arms and with a slight inward curl of his shoulders, he had to have more than enough body language to convey his mood.

“Oh, that.” She sounded contrite, but the smile continued, dispelling the illusion.

“That.”

“It worked out,” she said. “And the giantess only has two broken ribs.” Sidda’s eyes went to the scarily large Nausicaan woman only a few beds down, the shimmer of a forcefield around her bed evident. The forcefield didn’t seem to be comforting to the armed security present, both of them watching her like hawks.

“You shot her with a disruptor. A disruptor I happen to know has no stun settings at all.”

Sidda winced at the disappointment in his voice. He could see the tension in her bare shoulders. “She threatened to sell me to slavers.”

“You’re a Starfleet officer,” he said, as neutrally as he could.

“I hate slavers,” she said, continuing a crumbling defence.

“So do I.” She finally locked eyes with him at that. “I wish I could go back to much older rules about slavers where I have a quick trial and then send them for a long walk out the airlock. But we have rules and regulations about these things. We don’t go about shooting people with lethal intent unless we can help it.”

“It was a heat of the moment –”

“Which wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t gone charging into that bridge on some bravado powered stunt.” They both stopped while he took in a breath, collected himself, and continued. “You’re a damn good officer, Sidda. I don’t want you doing something stupid and…”

“Getting myself killed?” she proposed as he trailed off. “Captured? Badly injured?” She snorted in laughter briefly. “You know, I had kinda the same talk with Evan only a few hours ago.”

“Don’t change the subject.”

She continued anyway. “Good officer, want to help. So on and so forth.” She shrugged as best she could. “That about it?”

He sighed and shook his head. “Can you be serious for five minutes?” He waited a few seconds before the grin slid away from her face. “You could have gotten yourself killed today.”

“I know.”

“And?”

“And what? I didn’t. I stopped the Nausicaans from wiping their computers. We took the ship. And once Trid has worked her magic, we’ll know where Crashanburn’s brother is hiding out. Or at least where he meets up with this pack of idiots.” She flicked her head at the Nausicaan.

“We’re going to talk about this later. I don’t like my officers risking their lives with little to no thought.”

“I –”

“Didn’t think. You acted.” He stopped, sucking in a breath. “Which is why we make a good team.” Her confusion was evident. “I over think, make sure I’m doing the right thing, then act. You just act, taking the course of action that you just know is the right one and damn the consequences.”

She said nothing, just nodded once, not in agreement, but the say she’d heard him.

“You speed me up, I slow you down.”

“I guess so,” she finally said. “Damn. Guess those psychological profiles do have a use.”

“Next chance we get, I want you to spend a bit of time with the Fleet Captain. Honestly, now I think about, she’s much like you. Just that she’s always been in uniform and so…tempered?” He thought for a second, then nodded. “Tempered.”

“Like a better temperament?”

“No, like metal. Shaped, honed, refined. Wicked smart, thinks fast, acts just as quick. Eyes set on a centre seat since day one.” He shook his head as a thought occurred to him. “Like both of our best traits in one scary little package.”

“Are you sure you want me being a bad influence on a fleet captain?” Sidda asked, grinning once more.

“I’m hoping she’d be a good influence on you.”

“We’ll see.”

He snorted, a shake of his head putting to rest that conversational point. “Selu is locking your disruptor in the security vault.” He held up a hand to stop Sidda’s protest. “If you do anything undercover, you can have it back. But while you are in that uniform, you use a phaser. On stun.”

“Yes, sir,” she answered. The smile that followed was mischievous.

“The sword is going back above the bar in the Pnyx and if you ever want it, you’ll have to go through your wife.”

“Who has read me the riot act already,” Sidda admitted. “Honestly, she never fretted when I was…privateering. But now…”

“She’s your wife, the woman you love, who loves you back and wants you to be around?” he asked, waiting for Sidda to concede the point. “So her and I both told you to slow down, huh?”

“Whispered threats of physical violence were her weapons of choice. Honestly, bit of a turn on.”

He held up his hands, warding off any further information. “Ah! Don’t need to know, thank you.”

“And Blake just threatened to let me suffer next time.” Sidda waved at the bone regenerator her arm was firmly held in. “Gonna be another six hours or so before she’ll let me loose.”

“Plenty of time for Trid to do her thing. We’ll be getting underway as soon as Evan finishes securing the blowout panels to the freighter and sends it back to Kyban. We’ll chase the raider that got away until Trid gives me a better direction.”

“Oh, do me a favour, since I’m stuck here?”

“What?” he asked, head tilting slightly.

“Make a big show of treating the Night Witches to drinks in the Agora? They deserve the recognition for their work.”

He nodded a few times. “Deal.” He turned to head for the door out of sickbay, stopping after a few steps. “Oh, thought you’d like to know Crashanburn doesn’t have a twin brother. Hysperian Royal Intelligence thinks he’s the one directly contacting the Syndicate. Might even have a cloaking device for that floating castle of his.”

Sidda shot up, twisting and wincing in pain as her left arm refused to move and then regenerator’s casing bit into the upper arm painfully. “What?”

“He’s Hysperian,” he said. “He’s playing a trope. Honestly, I’m expecting moustache twirls and evil laughter with his monologue when he gloats at fooling us when we catch up to him.”

“He duped us?”

“Yup.”

“Mother-”

“You look lost.”

Those soft, melodious words penetrated through Willow’s skull, grabbed her attention and just gently tugged at it. How long had she been sitting there at the bar in the Agora, staring at her drink? She’d thanked the server who had brought it to her, taken a sip, then set it down to think. But what about, or for how long, evaporated from her memory as she looked up at the speaker.

“Hmm?”

“You look lost,” Revin repeated with a sly smile. “Would you like a new one?” The Romulan woman pointed at her drink. “Or something else?”

Whatever it was she had ordered was orange, with a gradient towards red at the bottom. But any number of cocktails could start like that, or end like that if ignored. She couldn’t recall, so just shrugged. “Actually, could I just get a coffee?”

“Of course,” Revin answered, taking her order and returned with it momentarily.

Her cup arrived with a saucer and two biscuits to one side, dark red and smelling faintly of roses. The foam was even decorated with a Starfleet delta, though not in cinnamon or cocoa, but something the same dark red as the biscuits.

“Just try them,” Revin insisted.

Whatever she’d been served was delicious. Spicy and sweet with a panoply of flavours underneath. She took her time, chewing on the biscuit, trying to place the flavours while Revin watched her.

“Rakal biscuits. Hard to get proper ingredients, but I was able to get some rakal flour while we were over Kyban.” Revin’s smile was a contented little thing before she leaned forward slightly, lowering her voice a notch more. “Now, do you want to talk to a counsellor, or your barkeep, about what is on your mind?”

“Who said anything was on my mind?” The defensive retort was automatic and she winced as soon as she finished.

Revin didn’t seem to mind though, merely kept on smiling. “Fifteen minutes of staring into the middle distance says otherwise.”

“Fifteen minutes?”

“Closer to twenty.”

Revin’s confirmation of how much time had passed hadn’t helped at all. Drawing in a breath, she calmed herself, tried to grapple a few thoughts together and then just decided to see what would spill out of her first.

“Ever had a doctor run a bunch of tests on you, keep muttering the word ‘interesting’ at every turn and then refuse to elaborate while they ‘run some analysis’?”

“When I was a kid,” Revin answered. “When I started to complain about my vision being blurry, so my father called in a physician. They ran a series of scans and then left. That was the start of the loss of my eyesight.”

“Wait, loss of your eyesight?” she asked.

“Oh yes. Spent years and years blind, hidden away before being sent off to live in a monastery. Senatorial families can’t be seen to be weak.” The smile on Revin’s face was an excellent mask. “Developed a fantastic sense of hearing, I might add. But you’re changing the subject. So yes, I have had a doctor say ‘interesting’ to me a fair amount and only elaborate much later.”

“I don’t like it. I want to know what she found.”

“Do you like puzzles?” Revin asked as she started to walk around the bar, eventually settling herself on the stool next to her.

“Hate them,” she admitted.

“Ah.” Revin paused for a second. “I think, though, to be a good doctor, Doctor Pisani must like puzzles.” Revin turned on her stool, her back to the bar, elbows propped on it as she watched the entire Agora. “Biology is a puzzle. The good doctor took her scans and is now trying to figure out what they are telling her. I think you’re just going to have to wait unfortunately, because you, Lieutenant Beckman, are a puzzle.”

“Am I just?” she asked, turning to face Revin.

“Hmm. Everyone here is. Everyone, everything, every situation. All puzzles.” Revin tilted her head and rolled it back to look at her. “Look at a puzzle long enough and you start to see things. Then you just need to figure out how they all fit together.”

“Is this the part where you give some sort of insight that I’ve missed about myself and shatter my world view?” She couldn’t help the snark. “Because I don’t think I need that today.”

“Only if you want it,” Revin answered with a shrug. “I will say, though, that you have a couple of admirers. Are you purposefully ignoring them, or just unaware?” Revin sat up straight with a smile. “Oh, there is something else on your mind!”

“No,” she blurted out. “Look, I don’t want to talk about it.” She could feel the blush warming her cheeks as the image of Jamie Sandhurst popped into her mind. “Don’t you have someone else to go bother?”

“Hmm, I should do rounds, shouldn’t I?” Revin hopped to her feet, cast her gaze over the Agora and picked a table as her first destination. “Oh, if you want to avoid a certain someone,” Revin’s tone told her that the Romulan already knew specifically who, “I’d finish that coffee quickly before they arrive for their usual.”

Revin’s warning had been a trap. She should have just sat there, brooding over her drink. Enjoying those biscuits. Or she should have gotten up and left there and then. But she hadn’t. She’d sat there drinking her coffee just quick enough to actually enjoy it before she left. And as the door out of the Agora gave way to her, to let her disappear into the bowels of the Republic and away from any awkward social situations, the trap had sprung shut around her.

“Well, well, well, what do we have here?” Jamie Sandhurst was just as tall as she remembered, if not more so. That bright, silky ruby red hair, the sun-kissed complexion, the face to make a woman weep. “Hello Willow.”

“Hi,” was all she managed to get out.

She’d been the one to hit on Jamie nearly two years ago. Recently graduated, a short break before her first assignment, she’d thrown caution to the wind and hit on the prettiest woman in the club that night. It was just meant to be a bit of fun. Then they’d had a chance encounter not long after that and she’d found herself half-frozen. Who could blame her? Jamie was stunning, radiated confidence in all things and carried herself like she knew everyone was looking at her.

But a repeat encounter had never been her intention. It shouldn’t have happened, but it had.

And then Jamie had shown up on Republic and she’d found herself once again freezing.

Three times was beyond coincidence.

“Care to join me for a drink?” Jamie asked.

“I was just…I mean…I’ve got…” Jamie’s slight head tilt and smile stopped her dead. Then she sucked in a breath. “Sure, I’d like that.”

“Excellent. Find us a table. I’ll get us something to drink.”

She watched Jamie walk past her, admiring the woman. And then in a blink she was at a table, still watching Jamie as she was at the bar. A presence appeared at her side, the same soft voice that had broken her brooding earlier spoke.

“That is one of your admirers,” Revin said.

Ready to ask who the other was, she looked up at Revin, who was looking at her, brow furrowed. No, she was looking at the top of her head, moving to look all around her.

“What?”

“I could have sworn I saw a glow about you.” Revin sounded serious, like she had actually seen something. Then she shook it off. “Maybe later, though, yes?”

And before she could demand more answers from the Romulan woman, she was walking away, a polite word to Jamie as the two passed in amongst the tables and patrons of the Agora. And then Jamie was there, sitting down opposite her and all thought of what Revin had said disappeared.

“Chief Helm Officer,” Jamie purred as she sat down. “I have so many questions. Where do I begin?”

“Trid, you wouldn’t happen to know why a few of my teams are telling me computers seem to be running slow across the ship, would you?”

A slow in draw of breath as she turned around let Trid disengage from her work briefly. Matt Lake was standing there, a step down, arms folded over the railing that led down to the helm and her usual ops station. No one was at Engineering and she wanted the extra screens to help with her task, so she’d simply moved to the better station.

She blinked a few times, replaying Matt’s question, then smiled. “Oh yeah, that’s me.”

“Okay,” the science officer asked, putting on his friendly smile. “Couldn’t free up some resources to stop complaints, could you?”

Ever since she’d come aboard Republic she’d never had an unpleasant conversation with the chief science officer. She couldn’t even recall a time she’d ever heard him raise his voice. Or swear. A positive, happy individual who seemed content to smile at all the universe threw at him and just keep ongoing.

It was an infuriatingly infectious positive outlook she’d seen him artfully deploy a few times to resolve crew tensions. Or a shield he wielded when he dove on a diplomatic landmine a few weeks back for the captain by engaging a Betazoid merchant in conversation, dragging the man’s attention away with seemingly genuine interest in ‘exploratory trade missions’.

And it also made it difficult to deny him when he made such polite and friendly requests.

“Got any experts on Nausicaan encryption protocols in the Science department?” The question was rhetorical; they both knew the answer. “I’m trying to brute force the copy of raider’s nav and comm records we took and I can either take my time or just make a bunch of people annoyed at slow processes.”

“And the captain did say ‘anything and anyone you need, make it happen’,” Matt said, echoing Captain MacIntyre’s words. “I’ll let you get on it with it then.”

“Thanks.”

They’d both turned away from each other, but she’d barely had a chance to look over the array of decryption attempts before her when Matt returned. “You’re running this on the main computer, right?”

“Both cores,” she answered. “Parallel processes. I do know how to throw all the processing power I can at a problem.”

“Just a thought,” he said, which was enough to get her to spin around and face him again. “What about the engineering computer core?”

“We’re kind of at warp right now,” she answered, a jutting out of chin at the viewscreen showing the swirling stream of starlight and matter as it interacted with the superluminal warp bubble.

“Yeah, but they have a lot of spare processing power, just like we normally do.”

She studied Matt for a second, not getting what he was driving at. She was to deep into her current problem she couldn’t quiet see what he was getting at.

And he finally understood that himself. “Would it all go faster if you could convince Commander Malcolm to give you access and some processing allocation?”

“It’ll always go faster with more processing power,” she answered. Then felt the circuit switch in her head as her own brain caught up. “Prophets! I’m an idiot.”

“No, you’ve just gotten used to thinking of Engineering as its own little fiefdom. But you’re the chief operations officer. You can just allocate the processing power. I would suggest you ask first, before brow beating Evan.”

“Easier to build a bridge versus starting a fight?”

“Maybe not easier, but it’s polite. And shows the captain you made an attempt at least.”

She’d spent only a few minutes contemplating between the two options before she’d left the bridge, heading straight for Engineering. If she was going to be polite, she might as well do it in person as well then versus over a comm channel.

“What?” Lieutenant Commander Evan Malcolm’s reputation for bluntness was well deserved. He hadn’t even looked up from his computer, ensconced in his office as he was when she’d walked in.

“I need to reallocate processing power from the engineering computer core.” If he could be blunt, so could she. She could just sound nicer while doing it. Less irritated for sure. “To speed up the decryption of the Nausicaan data that you recovered.”

“I recovered?” he asked, looking up from his computer. Then he sat back in his chair, crossing his arms as he recognised who he was talking to. “Don’t you mean Commander Sadovu?”

“As I understand it, she just seized the ship. You recovered the encrypted logs, so credit is due where credit is due.”

“So, you read my report then?” he asked.

“No, I spoke with the Commander a few hours ago and she said you recovered the data.”

Evan’s irritation flickered briefly. “She did, did she? What’s her game?” he asked quickly.

“Her game?”

“Yeah, her game. What is the so-called former pirate actually trying to do here?”

“Umm, she’s always been Starfleet,” Trid found herself parroting the lie Starfleet had given her as the story to give to those who didn’t need to know the actual story.

“Uh huh.”

“Look, Commander, I don’t want to get involved in your personal conspiracy theory against Commander Sadovu. I want to crack open the Nausicaan data you recovered so we can go where we need to go and not have to conduct a full sweep of the Archanis Nebula and miss our quarry most likely. I need all the computer power I can get, so can I please reallocate processing power from the engineering core?”

He snorted. “If I say no, you’ll just do it anyway. So sure, go ahead.” He snorted again. “Thanks for asking first, I guess.”

She watched him return to his work, putting her out of his mind immediately. She couldn’t help but shake her head at him before she left.

“Don’t take it to personal,” Michelle Jamieson, the assistant chief engineer, said after the door to Malcolm’s office closed. “He’s angry because his primary reason for being angry is singing his praises right now.”

She blinked at Michelle a few times. “He’s angry because the Commander is crediting him for work he actually did?”

“And apparently writing a glowing crew report she’s going to file with the captain soon.” Michelle shrugged with a smile. “Matt called while you were in there, said something about needing engineering compute power.”

“That’s the one.”

“Want a hand making sure we’ve got what we need and some proper safety margins?” Michelle asked.

“Couldn’t hurt to have an expert’s opinion. Let’s do this.”

“I take it you’ve got something, Lieutenant?” Mac asked as Jenu Trid stepped into his office, a padd in hand and a look he would be pressed to call concerned.

“Just in time too,” the young Bajoran woman answered as she set the padd down and pushed it across his desk. “Nausicaans had what we were looking for and more. Coordinates for a depot in the Archanis Nebula, off the beaten paths where they’ve encountered the Hohenzollern multiple times. But better yet, they had coordinates listed for where they’ve escorted the Hohenzollern twice to meet with Orion Syndicate ships. About as far away from their home base as you can get without slipping out of the nebula and being seen by Starfleet or Klingon sensor nets. And I found a communique telling them to be ready to ship out there in a days’ time.”

“And we can assume the home base is likely on alert since that raider got away,” he said, inspecting the padd and its contents.

“We lost track of it an hour ago,” Trid admitted. “Slowed to warp four as it entered the nebula’s outer reaches. Likely the best speed that can do through the whole thing.”

“And ours?”

“Commander Malcolm is confident we can handle warp six,” she answered. “Better engines, better deflectors, engineers that know what they’re actually doing.”

He nodded in agreement as he pulled up the coordinates on his own computer, swiping away a series of reports he was doing a fantastic job of ignoring so far. “I can see why Crashanburn chose this spot. It’s such a lovely locale.”

A few summons issued and a couple of minutes later his ready room was starting to get a bit crowded. Both seats across from him were taken and standing room was all that was left for the last to arrive all the way from Engineering.

“Well, this is just perfect,” Evan Malcolm grumbled after Trid delivered a quick briefing to bring Sidda, Matt, Evan, and Blake all up to speed. “Shields will be useless.”

“Sensors too,” Matt added. “Well, mostly useless.”

“Without the shields, radiation exposure is going to be an issue.” Blake sat up on the couch off to the side she’d been lounging since her arrival.

“If I can get some more power to the deflector, we should be good.” Trid shrugged as she looked at Evan. “Another twenty percent?”

“Hell, you can have all the warp power,” the engineer answered. “Meeting inside a proto-planetary disc is an idiotic decision. We’re not going to be going to warp while we’re in it. Actually, why are we going in it? Why not just wait till the Hysperians come out and jump them before they can get their shields up?”

“Because they’ll be cloaked.” Matt weathered the glare from Evan with aplomb. “It’s not a normal cloaking device. They’ll still be able to use it in there. But they have to turn it off for their meeting. It’s our window of opportunity.”

“Who the hell makes a cloaking device that’ll work in a mess like that?”

“Starfleet.” Matt’s answer didn’t do anything positive for Evan’s mood. “It was in the same vaults as the Genesis Device.”

“And I’ve had communiques from people with enough brass to bury all of us to get both this unique cloak and the Genesis Device back, or ensure they are destroyed.” Sidda’s interruption got everyone’s attention. “Recovered is the preference, of course.”

“Of course,” Mac said. “We’ll deal with that when we get to it.”

“So, that begs the question boss,” Sidda started, “how are we going to do this? That starcastle was bristling with guns. The Syndicate ship will be as well. And a slugging match in a soup without shields isn’t going to end pretty for any of us.”

“What, no clever pirate plan?” Evan asked, though the jibe didn’t carry the useless sharpness to it. It almost sounded like he was asking a genuine question.

“I do, but I’ll need six Pakleds, a mariachi band and a Klingon in tights.”

He struggled to restrain a laugh and keep a straight face. Even managed to pull off a look that said ‘really?’ in his own judgement. Evan looked dreadfully confused, then started casting his gaze around the room to see if anyone else knew what Sidda was talking about. Blake surrendered to a short laugh while Matt had an eyebrow raised to rival the Vulcan masters.

Trid just looked at Sidda, shook her head and said, “No.”

“It’ll be fun,” Sidda said. It was an in joke and everyone else was not in on it. “Seriously though, Evan, not any good plans.”

But now it was his turn to shine. He leaned back, smiling as he crossed his arms. “There are two things I’ve learned in the last few days,” he said, stealing everyone’s attention with his pace and calm. “Hysperians are a joke that has gone too far and taken on a life of its own. And the only people not in on the joke are the Hysperians themselves.”

“Sir?” Matt asked.

“Just like any other people in the universe, they have a cultural code of conduct. The expected do’s and don’ts. And during the middle ages in Europe on Earth, the nobility all lived by…” he dragged it out, hoping someone would arrive at the same conclusion.

“Chivalry?” Blake asked. “Chuck, you want to do what, call him out? Challenge him to a duel?”

“I like the idea,” Sidda quickly said. “But the man has established himself as the Last Pirate King and told you what he wants to do to Hysperia in the guise of that fake brother story he fed you. He’ll only abide by a code of conduct up until it suits him. Then, well, he’s just going to shoot you.”

“Speaking from experience?” Evan asked.

“You know it,” Sidda answered, smiling at the engineer, who just rolled his eyes. But just as quickly, Sidda snapped to him, eyes glinting as she grinned widely. “You want to beat him to the punch.”

“Damn right I do,” he said, grinning. “When I stick my head into this trap, it’ll be the last part of our own trap around the Viscount.”

“Where do we start?” Sidda asked.

“The Nausicaan database had a planned trip to the rendezvous for tomorrow. Viscount Crashanburn is expecting to meet with the Orion Syndicate. That is how we’re going to have people in the room when I walk in.”

There were a series of blank expressions before him. A grin on Sidda’s face. Blake was glaring at him. But he had their attention. “Here’s my plan,” he said as he started to outline the plan he’d come up. “First, we need to intercept the Syndicate ship…”