Sand slid out from underfoot, and for a moment she had to scrabble. Only by sliding back a foot to steady herself on the mag-sled did she stay upright, and with a scowl, Commander Valance stopped. ‘This would be over by now with a transporter.’

Somehow, Cortez was more sure-footed than her. Probably because she didn’t have to tow the mag-sled. She’d perched on a rocky outcropping on the rise ahead, posing with hands on her hips as she surveyed the path before them, and still Valance couldn’t summon too much indignation at the sunny smile turned back on her.

‘Sure,’ said Cortez, and waved a hand behind Valance. ‘But look at the view.’

Locking the mag-sled so it wouldn’t slide, Valance turned. The dirt track they’d followed snaked down the sprawling hillside, a slash of dark through bright dust and sand under the shining sun leading back to the shanty-town of Teros IV’s Sanctuary District A, a blip of bronze and battered iron in the gleaming. From here she could see Endeavour’s relief station, erected at the southern periphery like a sparkling speck of starlight in polished titanium.

Or, it was too bright and yet without a clear enough sky to be pleasant, and all she could see was dusty scrub land and the desperate shelters of the needy. ‘Not sure the view is enough to drive policy and make us walk.’

Cortez shrugged. ‘It’s not. But you read Thawn’s orders. All possible measures must be taken to preserve power and material usage so we can provide as much as we can to Teros’s stocks. So if you and me can lug this gear to the worksite ourselves, the power burned on water and food to resupply us is less than a site-to-site transport there and back.’

It was a minute difference, Valance thought. But that minute difference might feed a family for a day. With a grunt, she unlocked he mag-sled and kicked it back into gear to trundle behind her. ‘You can take this on the way back, then.’

‘Unloaded? Downhill? You spoil me, darling.’

Once, Valance might have admonished her, or at least had a pointed expression, for a term of endearment deployed on-duty. But even she had to admit that they were alone and in the middle of nowhere; it would be hard to suggest Cortez’s irreverence was undermining discipline. She still wasn’t sure if she liked it or not. Nevertheless, she was being soft to give Cortez the easy job.

This was Endeavour’s second week at Teros IV, formerly of the Neutral Zone transformed fifteen years ago into a temporary holding point for refugees from Romulus. But then the Federation had pulled out of the evacuation and the thousands of displaced people had been left here, stranded in the rift between powers old and new, abandoned and left to fend for themselves. Compassion had not brought Endeavour here but necessity, a mission to rescue a Daystrom Institute archaeologist named T’Sann from abduction by the Romulan Rebirth Movement nestled into Teros IV’s community. But then Captain Rourke had taken the opportunity to drag his feet as they awaited further orders, and to in the meantime do what they could for the people of Teros, render them more self-sufficient and less at the mercy of whatever parasite came along next to exploit them. It had, it seemed, sent the Rebirth packing. For now.

Valance had not argued with the captain’s decision. But as a week stretched into ten days, she had to wonder how long this would last. Transforming Teros into a fitting place to live was not a task she thought Endeavour alone could ever complete. Without securing further Starfleet assistance or an outright evacuation to a better colony site, eventually Endeavour would have to move on, knowing they were leaving behind people they could help.

They made it to their destination an hour later, arriving at the work site where Cortez had a team of her people repairing, replacing, and expanding the solar panel energy network that Starfleet had installed a decade and a half ago as an interim measure. The moment she’d received the go-ahead on this, Cortez had press-ganged anyone and everyone with time, training, and hands, pointing out that a reliable source of energy was the only way to make Teros self-sufficient. Valance thought they’d be lucky to build a system that extensive.

Still, Cortez seemed a boundless well of energy, even after the hike diving into the installation of the components they’d brought. Ensign Forrester was Endeavour’s Damage Control Specialist, but she’d been press-ganged into a surface construction project she plainly thought beneath her, a fact about which Commander Cortez plainly didn’t care.

Valance, for her part, found somewhere out of the sun with a flask of water and tried to not die before she could rehydrate.

‘And that’s that!’ Cortez proclaimed proudly as she began to drag the mag-sled back along the dirt path on the return journey three hours later. ‘All in a day’s work, huh?’

‘I thought you said you needed me on this?’

‘Did I? I thought you assigned yourself.’

Valance frowned as they left the work site far behind. ‘You gave me this pointed look with big eyes and made it clear you couldn’t easily justify bringing the XO, but that I really should be here.’

‘That doesn’t sound like me.’

‘Isa -’

‘The whole op is running smoothly. Captain’s being pretty hands-on. I think Betazoid Christmas came early for Rosara now she gets to tell a whole world how to live their life. I don’t want to say you’re redundant right now, but you’re pretty non-essential.’

‘Thanks.’

‘And you’ve been sulking for the whole damn thing in your office so I thought you could use some fresh air. Or to see the good we’re doing so this work isn’t just numbers and requisitions.’ Cortez glanced up at her, smile softening. ‘I gave you time to brood. Now’s the time I coax you out of your hole. You’ve still got a bit before I poke you with a stick until I get answers.’ She hesitated. ‘You’re not trying to stay out of sight of Romulans?’

‘What? No. No, if they have a problem with a half-Klingon officer trying to fix their world, that’s for them to deal with.’ Valance sighed, and focused for a moment on her footing as they worked down an unsteady bit of path. She hadn’t realised her mood had been so obviously black, and she had no reason to hide it. Not to Cortez, at least. ‘Dav’s getting transferred.’

‘What?’ Cortez almost drove the mag-sled into a rock. ‘That’s crazy, he’s been on Endeavour forever. Surely the captain can see off whatever nerd ship is trying to poach him. Is that why he’s been sulky, too?’

Valance remembered Airex shaking as he slumped in a corner of his quarters, and hesitated again. ‘He asked for the transfer.’

Now Cortez stopped the sled. ‘Why?’

‘I don’t know -’

‘Come on, it’s you and me, I’m not going to tattle private -’

‘I don’t know.’ Valance’s throat pinched, and she turned to her. ‘Something happened on the rescue mission, and I don’t understand it. I don’t know what Kharth did.’

Cortez straightened. ‘What does this have to do with Sae?’

‘Come on, Isa, he was perfectly normal until she came aboard.’

‘I never knew him before! I know they’re, like, the galaxy’s most awkward exes, but they’ve worked together for six months without issue. Without real issue.’

‘Maybe he’s had enough of it,’ Valance grumbled.

‘But he didn’t say that. He didn’t tell you that.’ Cortez read enough into her silence, and scrubbed her face with a hand. ‘Obviously Sae’s been like a cat on a hot tin roof the last while, but I just figured it was all this.’ She waved a vague hand around Teros IV, the refugee world that had once been the home of Lieutenant Saeihr Kharth. That wasn’t enormously public knowledge; Valance only knew because she’d stuck her nose into every record she could find after the away mission that had seemingly broken her best friend, and Cortez was the closest thing to a best friend Kharth had aboard Endeavour.

‘She’s not said much to you?’ Valance asked.

Cortez shrugged. ‘I didn’t press. She knows where I am and where I keep the tequila. She’ll talk when she’s ready. You were higher on my priority list for dragging to the middle of nowhere and manipulating with guilt into confessing what was on your mind. Also, there’s, like, real trauma for her here. I’m not going to treat that lightly.’

Valance put her hands on her hips and stared down at the dusty ground. ‘I know he cares about her. A lot. I don’t know what happened between them, years ago or last week. I’ve never seen him like this. This isn’t “I can’t work with my ex,” this is something… deep. This is something that’s breaking him. And he won’t talk to me.’

Cortez locked the mag-sled and glided over the sand to squeeze her arm. ‘I know this is extreme,’ she said in a gentle voice. ‘But have you considered telling the goddamn counsellor?’

Valance gave a tight, wry smile. ‘He asked me not to.’

‘Oh, for -’ Cortez muttered something in Spanish, angry and affectionate all at once. ‘Okay. Fine. I’ll talk to Sae, I’ll tighten the thumbscrews, I’ll find out what the hell happened a week ago. Or years ago. And maybe I’ll talk to Airex, too, because you two’ve got this code where you don’t actually speak about things and that’s why you’re such good friends. You’re like two house cats who get on because you have brief moments of genuine affection and otherwise just spend time completely alone in each other’s company. And if that doesn’t work, it’s time for the big guns.’

Valance wrinkled her nose. ‘Rourke?’ She suspected Airex would budge for Carraway before he budged for Rourke.

‘Oh, hell no. No, I figured I’d just sprain my wrist and oh-so-innocently mention this might be going on in earshot of Sadek.’

Doctor Sadek had a nose for gossip like a particularly personally-invested bloodhound. Valance grimaced. ‘I think that might be against the Treaty of Algeron.’

Cortez squeezed her arm again. ‘Have you considered… Endeavour is more and more a combat assignment under Rourke. It’s not his fault, he’s good in a pinch and has pinchy bosses who like sending him into narrow spaces. Is it possible Airex just wants an assignment that better suits her interests?’

If Valance hadn’t barged into his quarters after the rescue mission, if she’d learnt of his transfer request by PADD, she might have believed that. But she’d seen a fear and pain she didn’t know was in him in that moment, like Endeavour had become salt in a wound she’d never known festered. She swallowed. ‘This isn’t that.’

‘Then I’ll do what I can,’ said Cortez. ‘But you, darling, should consider the possibility that if you let him keep his distance, if you remain the house cat lounging next to another house cat in companionable silence, he might slip away. Asking him to stay is scary because he might say no. But you might be the only person he’ll say yes to.’

‘I don’t need him to stay,’ Valance said, and both of them knew it was a total lie. ‘I need to understand why, so I know how much I have to kill Kharth.’

Cortez did her the courtesy of not jumping to her friend’s defence, a veteran by now of walking the tightrope between both women. But they had a plan of action, or at least the germ of one, even if for Valance it meant more long days in her office, brooding and validating Thawn’s requisitions as she tried to organise a refugee shelter into a community. And while it was what she wanted, she did have to concede during the rest of the walk back that Cortez had been right. It was good to get out for a bit, even if it was under the anaemic skies of Teros IV.

* *

The best thing about Endeavour taking over a week to help the people of Teros IV was – well, of course it was the humanitarian mission. The second best thing about it, in Elsa Lindgren’s opinion, was the ample opportunity for her to clock more hours of bridge command. With most of the senior staff focused on planetside work and the ship doing nothing more taxing than orbiting, it was a solid opportunity for a junior officer like her to sit in the command chair.

And, in practice, do very little. But it looked splendid on her personnel record. And Elsa Lindgren was keen to make up for lost time. Loyalty to Captain MacCallister had granted her opportunities far beyond her experience as Chief Comms Officer on a ship as mighty as Endeavour, but it had also positioned her in opposition to the many political forces who would have much preferred Leonidas MacCallister to retire, go away, and stop badgering Starfleet to remember it existed for exploration and diplomacy.

But now MacCallister was gone, and if there was one strength Rourke had over him, it was a better head for politics. Or, at least, a more hard-nosed acceptance of the reality of politics. Which was why he had political capital to spend on the relief mission on Teros.

Also, he had a harder time saying no to her, which was why she’d been allowed to oversee the recalibration of the long-range sensors. They’d positioned the King Arthur at the periphery of the system for the duration, the runabout keeping a weather eye on all horizons as Endeavour lost the capacity to see much beyond her own nose, but it was a simple procedure.

‘Run scanning protocol Gamma-7,’ she instructed Science, and stopped herself from leaving the command chair to lurk at the shoulder of Ensign Beckett. It wasn’t that she doubted his competence, but she was still wrestling with the experience of giving orders on the bridge and letting action fall out of her hands, not even monitoring as she waited for results.

‘Yes, Lieutenant; running protocol Gamma-7.’

‘King Arthur confirms that freighter’s still inbound, ETA four hours. We’ll challenge them for an ID if they’re an hour out and we haven’t picked up their transponder,’ said Chief Kowalski, cool at Tactical. Valance had a habit of putting Kowalski on the bridge when Lindgren took a shift, and she suspected it was so she had a seasoned pair of hands she could rely on without surrendering authority. Kowalski, big and reassuring and level-headed, would shoot himself in the hand before riding roughshod over a junior officer, so long as they had a lick of sense and a willingness to learn. She’d seen what it was like if a junior officer thought their lonely pips meant they knew better when they didn’t. She didn’t need to be at the receiving end of that.

‘Transport cycle complete,’ Athaka said at Ops briskly. ‘Commander Valance is back aboard.’ They didn’t need notifying, but confirmation the recalibration hadn’t affected the transporter systems at least reassured Lindgren she hadn’t been complicit in scattering the first officer’s atoms across orbit.

‘Alright,’ said Beckett with satisfaction. ‘That’s Gamma-7 done, and we – huh.’

Heads turned slowly. This was a routine recalibration. Huh, did not feature in the standard array of results. Lindgren sighed. ‘I’m going to need more than that, Ensign.’

‘I’m getting – hey, look, I really don’t know what this is…’

He sounded defensive, but despite herself she stood and turned to the Science console. ‘The results of the recalibration,’ she said, trying to stay kind, because nobody needed her to channel Lieutenant Thawn and act as if she’d been personally wronged by a crew or computer error. That focus as she moved to Beckett’s side meant that for a heartbeat she didn’t notice the murmur that ran through the bridge crew, a murmur that had nothing to do with her being pinchy.

‘Fine,’ said Beckett, hands up. ‘Look for yourself.’

Lindgren couldn’t stop a gentle huff of exasperation as she reached Science. Then she stopped and squinted. ‘Huh.’

‘See?’

‘Lieutenant.’ That was Kowalski, confused and taut. ‘This is on every station now. I’m locked out. I think we’re all locked out.’

Lindgren dragged her gaze from the Science console to see the display of the big blue omega symbol was, indeed, on every screen. ‘What…’

‘I didn’t do anything,’ Beckett said in a rush, folding his arms across his chest. ‘Gamma-7. That’s what you said. I didn’t break the ship.’

It was insane, of course, to think he had, but a similar dose of panic threaded through Lindgren’s gut as she hurried back to the command chair. Of course the sensor recalibration hadn’t caused this. Of course her bridge commands hadn’t locked down the ship. But she had no earthly idea what it was.

‘My codes aren’t unlocking this,’ she said after she’d punched in her commands. Despite her rank she was, after all, bridge-rated senior staff. A frantic look was thrown to Helm. ‘Are we still maintaining orbit?’

Ensign Harkon shrugged. ‘We might be on the moon for all I can tell.’

Just as Lindgren was wondering how embarrassing it would be to summon Rourke, the turbolift doors slid open for the captain to barrel out, back ramrod straight, shoulders squared. She jumped up with a guilty air. ‘Sir, something’s just – we finished a section of the sensor recalibration and -’

‘Out of my way.’ He barely waited for her to step to one side before he’d reached the command chair and thudded his codes into the console with angry, determined jabs. She slunk back a step, as if his aura of tension had created a physical barrier to push her. A moment later, the odd display vanished from the screens, and Rourke straightened. ‘Nate, send those sensor readings to my ready room.’ His voice was low, gravelly as his gaze swept the bridge. ‘Recall the King Arthur and suspend the recalibration. And discuss none of this with anyone else, not even members of the senior staff. Am I understood?’

A low rumble of assent filled the bridge, and Rourke gave a stiff nod before heading for his ready room. As the doors slid shut behind him, Beckett finished transferring the sensor readings off, before he straightened and looked over at Lindgren. ‘Well.’

She sighed. ‘Well.’

Nate Beckett gave a slow, thoughtful nod. ‘I reckon that’s more your fault than mine.’

‘You look tired, Captain.’

Rourke’s head was in his hands as he waited, so he hadn’t noticed his ready room desk screen change from the static logo of Fourth Fleet Command to the wry gaze of Admiral Beckett. He straightened, blinking muggily. ‘Sir. I didn’t expect you.’

‘You stumble across Omega molecules in the middle of the old Neutral Zone and expect this to not go straight to the top?’ Despite Admiral Beckett’s dry tones, he was in no position to comment on fatigue. The bags under his eyes were heavy. ‘How bad is it?’

‘Enough to destroy subspace across four systems. The specialists will have to bring a lot of equipment.’

‘Ah.’ Beckett had to be exhausted, because he looked faintly abashed. ‘There will be no specialists, Captain. The Endeavour will have to deal with this.’

Rourke sat up, suddenly wide awake. ‘What?’

‘You’re not alone in detecting Omega. Dozens of ships have flagged detections over the past seventy-two hours, and our specialists have higher priorities.’

‘You mean they need to be in places where Omega threatens certain loud and unhappy Federation member worlds.’ But Rourke’s resentment was quiet and cold. ‘If Omega destabilises here, these refugees will starve and die without support.’

‘The specialists need to be in places where billions of Federation citizens reside, but by all means wax lyrical about the plight of a few hundred thousand. I suggest you instead succeed in saving them.’ Admiral Beckett grimaced. ‘Don’t play indignant champion of the downtrodden with me, Matt. You’re not one of them, so it just shows your guilt.’

On an intellectual level, Rourke knew multiple manifestations of Omega was nothing short of a galactic crisis. His understated reaction was, he also knew, a sign that he had yet to properly grasp the magnitude of the situation. But that magnitude was rendered a lot clearer by Beckett’s unvarnished words – not for their meaning, but for the admiral’s abandonment of restraint. Rourke squared his shoulders. ‘I’m no expert. But I think we have too much Omega here to be destroyed by one torpedo. I could modify that myself, have Endeavour fire it under the guise of a training exercise, clamp down on access to information. But I don’t think it’s enough.’

Beckett’s eyes drifted to the side, reading something out of Rourke’s sight. ‘No,’ he accepted after a heartbeat. ‘You’ll need more extensive equipment. I’m transmitting you the Omega specialists’ protocols for the construction and deployment of a harmonic resonance chamber.’

The file flicked up on secondary display, and Rourke’s chest tightened. ‘This will take an engineering team to build, officers to manage it. We’ll have to beam the Omega aboard.’ His gaze snapped back to Beckett. ‘How am I supposed to have my staff work on this without explaining it to them?’

Beckett shrugged. ‘I can’t tell you how to manage your people. You always seem so possessive of them, after all. But you say Starfleet needs to care more about the plight of the desperate, like Teros – here’s your chance to save them all. Nobody said that would be easy.’ His chin tilted up an inch. ‘You’re one of the biggest Starfleet ships in the Neutral Zone, Captain, and I can’t lie: the Romulan Star Empire is obviously unsettled by your presence. But more ships will be arriving in the region in the coming days. We’re monitoring the Star Empire’s activities and responses, but don’t be surprised if you earn a visit.’

Rourke didn’t know what the Romulans even knew about Omega, but was sure he didn’t have the clearance for that question to be answered. ‘I understand the Omega Directive, sir. I know our mission priority.’

‘Indeed. But it’d be awfully good if we didn’t trigger interstellar war while saving the galaxy.’

For just a heartbeat, Rourke wondered at the strategic benefits of Omega destabilising in the old Neutral Zone, effectively restoring the old border. But times had changed, and these weren’t uninhabited worlds caught in the middle any more. He nodded. ‘As you say.’

Beckett sighed, rubbing his temple. ‘On a briefer note, I assume my son has been adequate?’

For a moment back there, Beckett had seemed human to Rourke. Tired and cranky, but human. The tone of dismissal as he spoke of his son, however, was a bucket of cold water reminding him just how much of a son of a bitch Alexander Beckett was. Rourke straightened. ‘Ensign Beckett has performed exceptionally well so far,’ he said tightly. ‘He was instrumental in the rescue mission of Doctor T’Sann on Teros.’

‘I see,’ said Admiral Beckett without a hint of apology. ‘You found something that interested him.’

Rourke shifted his weight. ‘If that’s all, sir, I have to get to work.’ And lie to my people.

Beckett gave his disinterested grunt, then hesitated. ‘You’re right to observe not many people care about these systems. Be indignant all you like, but it means you’re on your own out there. You’ll be lucky to get reinforcements. I don’t warn you so you can be bitter. I warn you so you understand the stakes. You want the face of Starfleet to change? Be it.’ As if aware he was inviting a sardonic comment, he pressed on after barely a heartbeat. ‘And Matt? Be as possessive of your staff as you wish. Tell them of Omega and I will have your uniform.’

And the admiral hung up.

For a long time, Rourke didn’t move from his desk. Reading the full briefing from Beckett took plenty of time, of course, especially as comprehension of the resonance chamber and the science behind it did not come easily to him. But long minutes more were spent staring at the bulkhead, at the painting on the wall MacCallister had left, the Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog.

Eventually, and after some deliberation as he assembled his list, he summoned four members of his senior staff. Valance, Airex, Cortez, and Kharth were in his ready room not long after, but still he was silent for long moments, still he scowled at the bulkhead.

‘Endeavour has been assigned a classified mission,’ he blurted out at last, and turned to them. Until the words escaped his lips, he hadn’t been sure what he was going to say. He’d considered pretending this was a drill, or keeping them even further in the dark. Ultimately, he had to opt for as much truth as he could manage. ‘It’s above your clearance. So I’m going to issue orders, and you’re going to have to accept there are answers I can’t give you.’

For a moment he watched their expressions. Valance’s frown was serious, Cortez’s eyebrows were in her hairline, Kharth’s expression of suspicion hadn’t changed since her arrival, and Airex was as impassive as he’d expected. He picked up his PADD and with a flick sent them their separate briefing packages. ‘Commander Cortez, I’m sending you modifications to make to our shielding and warp core. There are also schematics for a piece of equipment you need to build. You’ll have Cargo Bay 2 given over solely to this project, and access restricted to authorised personnel only. I want you to use as few officers as possible to build this as quickly as you can. Compartmentalise construction work and planning as much as possible. Nobody but yourself or Commander Airex is to see the complete design schematics.’

Cortez squinted at her PADD. ‘I’ll need a bit to figure out how to, uh, do that efficiently. If time’s of the essence, I mean.’

‘I want construction to begin within two hours. This is the current top priority for all ship systems, operations, and resources.’

Kharth straightened an inch. ‘But the relief station -’

‘Can wait.’ Rourke’s jaw was tight, and he didn’t look at her, gaze still on Cortez. ‘When the device is constructed, you will assist Commander Airex in its utilisation, prioritising the device’s stability. We’ll go over that in detail closer to the time.’ His eyes moved on to Airex. ‘Commander, you are to assist Cortez in the construction where you can, and will take point when we utilise it. You have your briefing package there.’

Airex’s eyes flickered to his PADD, and Rourke braced himself for the indignation of his Chief Science Officer at being expected to do his job without explanation. But he nodded, gaze level. ‘Yes, Captain.’

‘Lieutenant Kharth.’ Rourke tried to not tie himself too tight as he looked at his Chief of Security. He had to be firm enough to keep her in hand but not so implacable he broke her. ‘You have before you directions to modify four torpedoes to carry a gravimetric charge. I want you to do this yourself. You are also to liaise with Lieutenant Dathan and monitor movements of any Romulan Star Empire or Free State ships in the region. Be on alert for any indication they’re heading our way. Do not inform Lieutenant Dathan of anything else of this meeting; all she needs to know is that we need early warning if trouble’s inbound.’

A firm hand didn’t seem to have brought Kharth under control – but confusion had. Her indignation might come in a moment, Rourke thought, as he turned to Valance. ‘Commander, your briefing includes details on traffic restrictions to be enforced in the region. No ships are to enter the designated Red Area. Any vessel that attempts to do so must be stopped at all costs, and that includes its destruction. Only the five of us are to take bridge shifts until further notice, which means in-practice that you and I will be clocking twelve-hour days up here until further notice.’

Valance’s eyes narrowed. ‘Even combat readiness protocols limit -’

‘No protocol you quote me will apply in this situation,’ Rourke said briskly. ‘We are also to drop several warning buoys at the periphery of the system, encouraging ships to turn away. It’s up to them if they listen.’ His briefing packages suggested keeping anyone and everyone out of a possible fallout zone by any means necessary, but this was the old Neutral Zone. Starfleet had no legal and even less moral authority in the region. If he started forcing every ship to give the Teros System half a sector’s distance, he’d have his hands too full in moments to do anything about Omega. The Red Area was where the molecules themselves had been detected, and he had no qualms about using force to stop a ship from entering the region and risking their destabilisation.

But now came the hard part. He drew a tense breath. ‘Operations in the relief centre are to be scaled down to emergency aid only. We’re back to the support we gave at the start, and I’m cancelling Lieutenant Thawn’s resource reallocation procedures. Endeavour’s new mission takes precedence.’

Now Kharth tensed. ‘Sir, we’re close to finishing the new power network and getting enough supplies to keep the replicator running for another decade -’

‘And we’ll see where we are when this is over, Lieutenant. My orders stand. We’re scaling it back.’ He looked at Valance. ‘Manage Lieutenant Thawn through that.’ She nodded, and his gaze swept over them all. ‘Once the torpedoes are modified and Commander Cortez’s construction is complete, we’ll have another meeting. In the meantime, you have your orders. Get to work at once.’

The rumbles of assent were cautious or suspicious, but Valance, Cortez, and Kharth left without further process. Rourke sighed as he saw Airex had not moved. ‘Commander, I made it clear your transfer couldn’t go through right away, and you’re definitely going to have to stay in your position until this situation is resolved -’

‘That’s not what I want to talk about.’ Uninvited, Airex took a seat and leaned forward. ‘I understand entirely that I must stay in my post until further notice. Captain, I heard what happened on the bridge.’

Of course he had. Rourke’s lips thinned as he contemplated the power of Endeavour’s gossip network, and wondered if he could get Sadek to safely sit on it for a few days. ‘As I said, there are answers I can’t give you -’

‘Tabain Airex, my second host, was captain of the USS Valiant until 2286. Sir, this is an unusual situation, but I know what the Omega Directive is.’

Rourke squinted at him. Then he turned in his chair to bring up both Davir Airex and Tabain Airex’s personnel records on his desk console, not disguising his confusion or suspicion.

‘A Trill whose prior host had access to privileged information is still bound by all the same laws and restrictions,’ Airex pressed on carefully. ‘It is also considered good practice that we not… go out of our way to make it known we retain that knowledge. By now, almost every piece of classified data I recall from Tabain’s life is either in the public domain or so dated as to be useless. And of course, I was never briefed in my day on this… resonance chamber.’ He tapped his PADD, and looked Rourke in the eye. ‘But I know what Omega is. So there’s no reason to keep me in the dark, Captain.’

All a desperate key-tapping had done was confirm that Airex was correct, in that his past host had indeed been a starship captain since the institution of the Omega Directive. Rourke hesitated. ‘It’d be best we have this conversation later…’

‘After you’ve spoken with Command? If you wish, sir, but if we’re dealing with Omega ourselves instead of awaiting a specialist team, something’s gone terribly wrong, hasn’t it?’ Airex cocked his head. ‘Sir, I am a highly-qualified astrophysicist and a decorated Starfleet science officer. By the time I’m done helping Cortez construct the resonance chamber, I’ll understand more of how it works than you do. I’m not asking for more secrets. I defer to you in this matter, but especially in keeping the local area safe and stable, and certainly making sure the Empire or Free State don’t come to make this situation more complex than it already is. What I’m saying, sir, is that you can trust me to take point in the destruction of Omega.’

Rourke was galled to realise he couldn’t easily argue with this. The moment Airex knew of Omega’s existence, he was ten times more qualified to deal with it. With four systems and all their inhabitants at stake, it was no time for him to dwell on how his Chief Science Officer made him feel like a lumbering brute. He drew a tense breath. ‘It’s been made clear to me that we’re unlikely to get reinforcements. The integrity of subspace in the old Neutral Zone is not Starfleet’s top priority. I don’t know who’d be responding to this pocket of Omega, if Starfleet even detected it, if we weren’t here. For Teros and anyone else within half a sector, it’s just us, Commander, so we have to get it done.’

‘I understand; if warp travel in the region becomes impossible, there’s no rescue party. They’ll all die down there within a decade, maybe two,’ said Airex bluntly. ‘Let me be the reinforcements.’

Rourke watched him, hands flat on the desk. ‘Your depth of compassion for the people of Teros, last week and today, speaks well of you, Commander.’

Airex shrugged. ‘We’re here and we can help. That makes it a moral imperative.’

‘A moral imperative.’ The two men stared at each other, and Rourke dared fancy he saw Airex’s mask begin to shift in discomfort. But it was no time to challenge the other man, dig under his skin and find out what made this most tightly-wound of officers tick. Even though whatever it was had made him put in for a transfer.

Rourke grunted at last. ‘Alright. Take point on the resonance chamber’s construction and deployment. We get one chance at this.’

Airex stood. ‘As you say, Captain. We have to get it done.’

‘You can say “Captain’s orders,” all you like, Commander.’ Sadek moved to the other side of the biobed as she continued scanning Airex. ‘But if I have to be on standby to give you this high a dosage of arithrazine and nobody will tell me why, I’m going to give you a full medical check beforehand so I can be ready for side-effects.’

‘Trust me, Doc.’ Cortez, sat on the next biobed, sighed. ‘If we could explain it, we would.’

‘Quite,’ said Airex, ‘but our mission must come first, so I’d appreciate you making this quick.’

‘But, you know, thorough.’ Cortez squinted. ‘I’m not about to skip safety precautions without a good reason. We don’t have any reason. Cargo Bay 2 is -’

‘Not the topic of this discussion,’ Airex interrupted. ‘And I’d remind you to consider your words.’

Cortez tried to not roll her eyes. ‘Oh, damn. Doctor Sadek might realise that we’re spending all our time in the cargo bay, which is like, the second worst-kept secret on the ship.’ She gave him a pointed look, deliberately leaving vague what the worst-kept secret was. Then she glanced at Sadek. ‘Fine, fine. Hey, Doc, you got the commander’s transfer paperwork all ready?’ If she wasn’t allowed to talk about their secret mission, she could move onto a new priority.

‘Sure,’ said Sadek, stepping back to check her readings. ‘I’ll tell you all about that, and all about Commander Airex’s private medical history. Just more illicit chit-chat during your appointment.’ But when she looked up at Airex, Cortez saw the glint in her eye and knew she’d taken the bait. ‘But it is a curious choice of yours, Commander.’

‘To leave?’ He’d stiffened, and his shrug was unconvincing. ‘There are assignments out there more suited to my career and interest.’

‘Oh,’ said Sadek innocently as she moved on to scan Cortez. ‘So you think Endeavour’s beneath you now?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘But you were happy here for three years with Captain MacCallister. Got a promotion out of this post. Now you’re chasing a more scientifically-focused ship because this has become too much of a gunboat for you?’

‘Endeavour’s missions have shifted in focus since Captain Rourke took command, yes. I’m a xenoanthropologist.’

‘Davir is,’ said Sadek in a light voice, and caught Cortez with a cheeky wink. The doctor knew full-well she was provoking him. ‘I thought Isady was an astrophysicist?’

Airex huffed. ‘She was, yes -’

‘And Lerin was -’

Airex shot to his feet, shoulders square. ‘Are we done here, Doctor?’

Sadek clicked her tricorder shut. ‘I need to finish up on Cortez, but you can go. It’s your easy patience I’ll miss most, Commander.’ She watched him leave, then raised her eyebrows at Cortez. ‘Something about being a Joined Trill’s crawled up his ass, then.’

Cortez cocked her head. ‘You think?’

‘I was gearing up to point out he’s so multi-disciplined he can do any job Endeavour needs, and our mission profile means we have very varied needs. That was an odd reaction.’ Sadek looked her up and down. ‘You’re alright with all this cloak and dagger stuff?’

‘I think you and me have slightly more shared experiences than you expect. Where bridge officers and team leaders have very important things going on, and expect the likes of us, engineers and doctors, to make it all happen – or make sure nobody dies – on little information and less context.’ Cortez shrugged. ‘It’ll work out in the end, Doc. I trust the captain.’

‘Ever since you tore him a new one over Archanis?’

Cortez shifted bashfully. ‘He told you about that, huh?’

‘Don’t worry. He knows you were right. You’re not intimidated by him and you understand basic human emotions. That makes you a direct threat to his crap. I can’t always call him on it.’

‘He’s not gone… squidgy… like he did in Archanis. And last time, Karana was way too much inside her own head and Airex was stuck in here. There’s a whole mess of backstops before it falls to me.’ Cortez shrugged. ‘I’m just the engineer. Give me a project, and I’ll do it.’

It wasn’t the whole truth, but Sadek seemed to accept it as she finished the medical. Cortez was an engineer accustomed to superiors who expected her to fart gold dust and warp factors on demand, but constructing this resonance chamber had required studying it in-depth so she could best separate the tasks and compartmentalise information among her department. While this meant they were very efficiently in the dark, incapable of identifying the purpose for any one component they were building, it meant her grasp of a larger picture was detailed and colorised.

Several of those component sections had been finished and delivered to Cargo Bay 2 when she rejoined Airex down there, finding him running tests on the half-assembled containment core.

He did not look up from his tricorder. ‘Is the doctor done with her comedy routine?’

‘I think she’ll die first. But she got her scans.’ Cortez looked at the incomplete shell. ‘Give me four hours and you can test the core.’

He stepped away and closed his tricorder. ‘I was double-checking the components.’

‘And you’re satisfied?’ It was hard to not be testy. ‘I do appreciate the help here, Commander, but until this thing is functioning I’d rather just have you as a pair of hands. Not getting underfoot.’

‘This has to be right -’

‘I know. And you’ve never questioned my work before.’ She looked him up and down. ‘You know what this is for, don’t you?’ Airex hesitated with the delay of a man considering which lie to tell, so she pressed on. ‘This is clearly designed to contain molecules and then adjust their harmonic frequency. And I assume whatever goes in there is incredibly volatile, based on the design and how terrified you are about the containment. So we’re… agitating certain molecules, but not too much?’

He shook his head. ‘I can’t explain anything more than you already know, Commander. You seem to have an able grasp of the device and its construction.’

‘It’d be easier if I knew what the emitted frequency is supposed to do,’ Cortez sighed. ‘And I can’t even begin to guess what’s so important we have to drop everything and deal with it. I’m not really expecting you to spill the beans, Commander, it’s just that I’ve never seen you so…’ She gestured vaguely. ‘Scrunched up.’

Airex squinted. ‘Scrunched up.’

‘Come on, you were coiled tight as hell since we got to Teros, and Karana told me about the transfer. But now? This is a whole other thing.’

He sighed. ‘Of course you spoke to Karana.’

‘Weird thing for me to do with my partner, I know. Don’t you start blaming her.’ Cortez put her hands on her hips. ‘I had to drag it out of her and she’s worried about you. I said I’d help.’

‘Now?’

‘No, now I think you’re wound so tight that I’m worried my direct superior and teammate on this bit of the project, who knows more about the project than me, is going to snap. Why does everyone on this ship forget that’s what happens if you repress too hard?’

‘I’m fine, Commander. I’ll do this job.’

There was something more to his tone of voice than dismissal, a layer of steel she’d not noticed in Davir Airex before. Cortez cocked her head. ‘Okay. Just tell me this: how high are these stakes?’

Airex hesitated, somewhat to her surprise. She’d expected a quick, simple, ‘Very’ or the like. At length, he drew a deep breath. ‘If we fail,’ he said slowly, ‘we’re condemning everyone on Teros IV to death. And probably the ship, too.’

‘Oh.’ While Cortez wasn’t surprised, it was still something to hear him say that. ‘Guess I’m just gonna join you in being tightly wound, huh?’

* *

Kharth swore in Romulan as the phase modulator clipped the casing and was knocked from her hand to rattle to the deck. It rolled, forcing her to get down on her hands and knees to fish it out from under the maintenance trolley the photon torpedo sat on. When she rose again it was to see Valance stood in the door to the weapons control section.

The first officer looked like she was at least pretending to not notice the gaffe. ‘How’s it progressing?’

Jaw tensing, Kharth leaned back over her work. ‘This is only the second torpedo. It would be progressing faster if I had Chief Kowalski’s assistance.’

‘You know that’s not possible.’ But Valance hesitated, before crossing over and reaching for the tool kit. ‘But we can work and talk.’

Kharth merely grunted, gesturing to the warhead housing she was reconfiguring to take a gravimetric charge. This was the long and boring stage, not the delicate stage. ‘If you have time to talk, then you’re not just here for an update.’

She could almost hear Valance purse her lips, steel herself before she answered. ‘I came to see if you needed assistance. I see that you do. I’m assisting.’

‘Really?’ Kharth tilted her head to better see her work. ‘Or are you checking up on me?’

‘Lieutenant -’

‘I don’t mean for my wellbeing. I’ll save us both the embarrassment of pretending you care about that. I mean for my professionalism.’

Valance was silent for a long moment. ‘Should I be worried about your professionalism?’

Kharth waited another beat, contemplating her words. She did not trust Airex to not have discussed what happened on Teros with Valance, even informally; he had been so plainly frustrated in the immediate aftermath and cold in all the days since, and not only with her. But it wouldn’t do to over-play her hand. ‘Captain Rourke is obviously focused on whatever this “omega” thing is. Assuming the sudden lockdown of the bridge and our mysterious classified orders are linked. But whatever’s going on, it’s happening next to the closest thing I have for a homeworld.’ She shrugged. ‘If I were managing me, I’d check in.’

Another silence. Valance was slower at work than Kharth, which she supposed was expected for a former pilot turned command officer, but at length the first officer said, ‘If you were managing you, then, what would you suggest?’

It was, Kharth had to admit, a very good counter-attack. She straightened and put down the phase modulator. ‘You can’t send me to Carraway. Not if you want to keep information contained to the four ranking members of the senior staff. Isa is clearly shouldering most of the work on whatever’s being constructed in Cargo Bay 2, so you can’t send her to try to help me. Which means you need to figure out for yourself if I’m going to choke, following mysterious orders to deal with obviously high but vastly unknown stakes. In a situation befalling my old home, when we also had to abort a relief operation to improve its standard of living.’

It was Valance’s turn to not look up, her voice low and level. ‘That sounds like a fair reason to choke, Lieutenant. But what would that look like?’

Kharth was glad no eyes were on her as she swallowed. Choking looks like me selling out my home on a long shot for vengeance against a dead man. ‘I’ll get short-tempered and isolated. I’ll become convinced I have to shoulder the fate of my homeworld more or less alone. And that’ll make me open to making mistakes.’ This self-reflection, let alone speaking it to Valance, would have been impossible a fortnight ago. Guilt, and the first officer’s unaccusing approach, made the words come more freely than she might have expected.

‘This is not a ship accustomed to failure, Lieutenant,’ said Valance, still in that low and steady voice. ‘And whatever is going on, even if you’re in the dark, can you place trust in the others? The captain, Isa… Airex?’ Her hesitation was almost imperceptible, accompanied by the slightest flickering up of her gaze.

‘I trust everyone to do their duty,’ Kharth said without missing a beat. ‘But I don’t expect them to have my investment. None of us knows what we’re fighting against, but they – you – don’t know what you’re fighting for.’

Valance gave a slow nod, and straightened up. ‘Maybe not. So it’s no bad thing for you to remind us. And in the meantime, I can give you an extra pair of hands with these modifications.’

It was an effort to not look suspicious as they got to work. She’d been in danger of lagging behind schedule, but with Valance quietly and efficiently following instructions and putting her head down, within a few hours they’d made the deadline for finishing modifications to the second torpedo. It was not work where one could afford to be clumsy, so despite this mysterious urgency, they took a break.

Ostensibly it was to sleep, but Kharth suspected Valance would head directly to the bridge or return to Rourke’s right hand. She could hardly comment, as own path did not lead to her quarters or a mess hall, but instead to the twinkling lights of the beating heart of Endeavour’s information network, the CIC.

Lieutenant Dathan stood before the map of this sector of the old Neutral Zone, and raised an eyebrow as she arrived. ‘You look… tired.’

‘You can say “like shit,” Lieutenant,’ Kharth commented. ‘I have better things to worry about than being offended.’

‘That may be what passes either for professionalism or personal concern on this ship,’ Dathan observed wryly. ‘I expect you’re here for the strategic analysis.’

Kharth had been grossly unhappy about Dathan’s assignment several months ago. She’d grown to appreciate another sarcastic voice in Endeavour’s senior staff. ‘What do we have?’

A flick of the hand brought the gleaming dots of the sector’s ship movements to the map. ‘Bright dots are confirmed readings from our sensors. The slow blinking dots are from reports we can’t confirm for ourselves.’ These included distant Starfleet ships, whose movements would come from the briefings to which Dathan was privy but Endeavour still could not detect.

It was to those Kharth looked first, squinting. ‘That’s a significant mobilisation along the border. What are we doing?’

‘I swear to the Prophets: combat readiness drills.’ Dathan gave her a sidelong look that spoke of her suspicion. ‘Coinciding with a task group under the USS Roeburn beginning what’s reported to be the complete evacuation of Starangar II.’ She gestured to the white dot of a star system a sneeze inside the Federation border.

Kharth’s gaze lingered on it. She knew Starangar, one of the former worlds of the Neutral Zone turned refugee hub for Romulans fleeing their star’s destruction. But as the borders had resettled, Starangar had become Federation territory. Starfleet was still expected to take care of them.

‘Does this,’ Dathan said carefully, ‘have anything to do with Endeavour’s operations in Cargo Bay 2 and why we’ve downscaled our relief effort?’

There were some advantages to being kept in the dark. ‘I have no idea what’s motivated any of this,’ Kharth said truthfully, nodding at the display. ‘Your contacts are better than mine. The Romulans?’

Dathan sighed at the evasion. ‘Our information is, unsurprisingly, patchier. The nearest border is with the Star Empire, and certainly the Navy has been on the move. But it’s impossible to tell if they have some agenda of their own, or if they’re responding to Starfleet’s mobilisation.’

Kharth watched that segment of the map, frown deeper. ‘But none appear headed for this sector or system.’

‘That we can see,’ Dathan reminded her. ‘If I were headed for a world with a Manticore in orbit and I had a cloak, I’d use it.’

‘Then see if there are any ships with a profile for entering the Neutral Zone that we’ve lost track of in the last forty-eight hours, or that drop off the grid from now.’

Dathan looked almost offended. ‘What’s that human saying? Something about radios.’

Kharth squinted her. ‘Why are you asking me? And what are you trying to say?’

‘I’ve done this lots of time before. It’s not my first radio.’

‘Oh. Rodeo. It’s not your first rodeo.’

‘Right.’ Dathan hesitated. ‘What the hell is a rodeo?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Kharth admitted. ‘But this isn’t all I wanted to ask.’

Dathan sighed and killed the strategic map display. She moved to another console. ‘The briefing paper.’

‘I get you’ve had more on your hands than you did when we started.’

‘So no, I don’t really have anything new. I can confirm for you reports from law enforcement offices along the Romulan and Klingon border over the past fifteen to twenty years which mention a narcotics developer and dealer going by the name of the Myriad. These all dried up three or four years ago.’ When Dathan brought up the next holo-display, it didn’t look very different to what Kharth had been shown a few days ago. ‘I’m not prepared, at present, to make more bold statements. I’m confident this person exists or existed, but by being reclusive and operating through proxies, they made something of a reputation for themselves as a bogey-man. Identifying for sure what they have or have not done, rather than what was merely ascribed to them, is difficult.’

Two weeks ago, Kharth had told Dathan to make this a priority. Now she looked at the developing briefing paper and swallowed. ‘This can wait,’ she said at length. ‘If the Myriad dropped off the grid years ago, they’re not going anywhere now. Watch the Romulans.’

She did not miss the sideways flicker of Dathan’s gaze at that. ‘Don’t worry, Lieutenant,’ she said. ‘I will.’

‘I understand, Lieutenant.’ The tension in Valance’s voice was audible to Rourke as he emerged from the turbolift onto the bridge. ‘Notify us if you require extra security, but I don’t want that to be necessary.’

Endeavour only had an audio feed from the surface, and Thawn sounded about as irritable as Rourke had ever heard her with a superior officer. ‘Yes, Commander. I’ll try to stop it from getting ugly. But people are… upset.’

Valance glanced at Rourke as he padded around the consoles to the command chair, eyebrows raising with a hint of frustration before she answered Thawn. ‘This should only be temporary. We’ll keep doing what we can for them. Endeavour out.’

Rourke cocked his head. ‘Trouble on the surface?’

‘Scaling back our relief operations while we’re still in the system has not been popular,’ Valance sighed. ‘A group of locals came to the replicator facility and Ensign Forrester had to talk them down before they got too agitated. Nothing’s happened yet, but they’re not happy we’re back down to basic repair of the industrial replicator and emergency needs.’

He glanced at the viewscreen and the tumbling brown rock of Teros IV below. ‘Another day, another Starfleet betrayal,’ he sighed.

‘I’ll manage it,’ Valance said firmly. ‘There’s no reason to assume this will escalate, and if necessary I’ll go down there myself. Thawn’s just tense because…’ She hesitated, then dropped her voice. ‘Because she doesn’t understand why.’ It was a comment without accusation, a simple statement of the truth, and she pressed on quickly. ‘Commander Airex is in your ready room.’

Rourke nodded, but lingered a moment. ‘Any other discontent?’

‘From the crew? Nothing you need to worry about, sir,’ said Valance in that same firm voice. ‘Everyone’s doing their duty.’

Everyone had given him at least a raised eyebrow, a funny look, made a pointed comment, or just been obviously grumpy about Endeavour’s odd activities without explanation. Even Lindgren had been unsettled, and even Lieutenant Rhade had asked polite but firm questions he’d had to shoot down. The sole exception was Karana Valance, now making it plain she was keeping his desk clear of even the slightest rumble in staff management. Still, he looked at her and remembered the final moments of the Wild Hunt operation, and how she’d risked the ship and crew to save his life against his explicit orders.

Airex had waited patiently in the ready room, and was stood before that damned painting of MacCallister’s when Rourke walked in. He turned, hands still clasped behind his back. ‘Captain. I can confirm the harmonic resonance chamber is will be completed in three hours, as soon as Commander Cortez finishes double-checking the containment field. I’ll then conduct my own final calibrations, which I don’t anticipate to take longer than two hours.’

Rourke nodded, scowling as he took his seat. ‘Torpedo modifications will need another few hours, as well as warp core shielding. Take all that time to double-check the chamber.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Airex hesitated, and Rourke assumed an explanation for this report being given in person was forthcoming. ‘I noticed you hadn’t begun modifications to a shuttle or the King Arthur. So I assume we’ll be destroying Omega from Endeavour.’

With some effort, Rourke managed to not snap at the observation lacking a question. ‘Endeavour has the more robust safety features, the more powerful transporters, multiple torpedo launchers. I believe this operation has a higher chance of success if we base it on board.’

‘With a higher risk for the crew. If Omega destabilises, the shockwave will destroy the ship.’

‘If Omega destabilises, we’re all screwed, Commander,’ Rourke said impatiently. ‘No matter what I do, I’m gambling with the lives of everyone aboard – everyone within a five light-year radius. So I will maximise our chances of success.’

Airex hesitated at Rourke’s tone. ‘This isn’t an accusation, Captain. I understand that reasoning.’ Rourke did not answer, staring at him and able to convey the pointed ‘but,’ with only his eyes, and Airex sighed. ‘Yes, I disagree. I think the harmonic resonance chamber should be placed aboard a smallcraft, and Endeavour should be instructed to stay out of the blast radius.’

Rourke grimaced. ‘None of the calculations speak positively of the odds of success of going to warp ahead of a subspace-ripping shockwave.’

‘I don’t mean to escape at warp. I mean we should plan that even if we fail and Omega destabilises, Endeavour is in one piece in the Teros system.’ Airex advanced at Rourke’s expression, and pulled out a PADD. ‘I’ve been doing some further calculations since our last meeting regarding the ship’s resources. If we fail and the system is cut off from warp travel for five light-years, at present I anticipate Teros IV will succumb to starvation in three years, six months.’ He set the PADD down and was speaking very fast now, his voice a little higher pitched, a little softer in his agitation. It was not a lack of comportment Rourke was accustomed to from him. ‘That’s too soon for any relief effort to get here, even if Starfleet somehow managed to send a rescue mission immediately. But with Endeavour’s resources focused on sustaining the populace? Teros IV has maybe… fifteen years?’

Rourke watched him, keeping his gaze neutral. ‘You’re suggesting that if we fail, Endeavour should commit itself to keeping everyone on Teros IV alive for as long as possible.’

Airex gave sad shake of the head. ‘We have to try, sir. Get Cortez to reinforce the shielding on the King Arthur. She can get that done by 0900 tomorrow. Then you and I take the runabout out with the harmonic resonance chamber and two torpedoes while Valance gets Endeavour to a safe distance. Teros IV doesn’t have to die if we fail.’

It was in Rourke’s nature to stick to his original plan. Not because he was inflexible, but he preferred the winner-takes-all approach of risking his ship for the best chance of success. But Airex had a not insignificant argument that this was about more than just his ship. He leaned back and scrubbed his face in his hands before sighing. ‘You’ve made your point, Commander. I’ll direct Cortez to prepare the King Arthur. You can manage the resonance chamber, and I’ll fly and handle transporters and, if necessary, torpedoes.’

Airex sagged with visible relief. ‘If I can be clear, sir, I don’t consider failure acceptable. But I find not making contingencies in this scenario intolerable. For most worlds, losing warp travel would have an unfathomable impact upon society and economy, but it wouldn’t be a death sentence. Not so for Teros, and – sir, we put these people here.’

Rourke lifted a calming hand. ‘You’ve convinced me, Commander. It’s alright.’ He hesitated. ‘We can ensure Endeavour retains a transporter lock on you, makes all possible efforts to rescue you if Omega destabilises.’

‘Sir?’

‘I, for – for Airex.’ Rourke gestured awkwardly. ‘I understand it’s normal for extreme measures to be taken to recover a body as quickly as possible to try to preserve the symbiont -’

‘I want no special measures taken that might endanger the ship or this mission,’ Airex blurted with unexpected venom. ‘Sir, if I go out on that shuttle, either Omega will be destroyed or I – we, Davir and Airex – will be dead.’

Rourke sat back on his chair and took a deep, thoughtful breath. ‘Alright, Commander. I’d normally be sending you to Carraway before this mission. But that’s not possible. What’s going on?’

Airex frowned. ‘I think the stakes speak for themselves -’

‘You have a personal investment in this mission. I don’t know you very well, but I know people, Airex.’ Rourke kept his gaze level. ‘Is this the time for me to ask you what really happened on the rescue operation?’

‘Sir, I’ve given you the report -’

‘And why it was immediately followed by your transfer request?’

‘Which I understand and accept cannot be fulfilled until this crisis is resolved -’

‘Airex, you’ve argued for you and me strapping ourselves into a small metal can to go destroy Omega single-handedly; the fate of five light-years will be in our hands,’ Rourke barrelled on, not letting himself be waylaid by any of these excuses. ‘I need to know, pretty frankly, that you’ve got this.’ Airex looked like he was going to argue some more, so Rourke cocked his head. ‘Or do I start guessing?’

Airex did flinch at that, obviously apprehensive of whatever his captain had read into his manner. He looked down and shifted his weight. ‘A lot of this is private, sir -’

‘God’s sake, man. You came to me weeks ago to make damned sure I took care of Saeihr Kharth’s feelings before we came to this system. Since the mission, you two have been more awkward than ever before. And now you’re committing to saving her home world come hell or high water. Now, I do not care about your personal life,’ Rourke said, lying a little, because he cared so far as he wanted to be left alone by it. ‘But I need your head in this game.’

Airex’s expression had been closing down as he’d spoken, returning to the taut control he so usually expected from his Chief Science Officer. ‘Then let me be frank in response, sir: I am not sad about my ex-girlfriend,’ he said with rather chilly offence. ‘I’d thank you to not imply as much when it comes to my motivations or feelings. But my head has never been more “in a game” than this.’

Rourke slumped, frustration boiling off him, and he sighed. ‘I’m sorry, Commander. I meant what I said, but it wasn’t my intention to imply there was anything petty or juvenile about your feelings.’ He ran a hand through his hair, suddenly exhausted. ‘I’ll direct Cortez to the additional work, and prepare orders for our contingency plan for Commander Valance. 0900 tomorrow, we finish this.’

Airex inclined his head, all business once more. ‘Very good, sir. I’ll confirm final calibrations on the chamber and make sure I’m well-rested.’

‘Commander.’ Rourke hesitated as Airex was halfway to the door. ‘You probably don’t need me lecturing you about regret ahead of big missions.’

Airex did not turn. ‘No, sir,’ he said at length, voice still cool. ‘I assure you, I need no fresh illuminations on the matter.’

* *

Cortez let out a string of oaths in Spanish and barely waited to be done before she tapped the comms in the King Arthur’s cockpit. ‘No go, Koya. We need at least -’

‘12,000 kelvins, I heard you,’ came the aggravated voice of Deck Boss Koya. ‘Easy to say, not as easy to -’

‘Don’t talk to me like I’m a redshirt, Koya. I know how hard this is. Still needs doing.’ Cortez flopped down, out of sight, to press her forehead against an inactive panel. ‘Let’s put some two hundred-fifty millimetre plasma conduits in section 4-F instead of the two hundred millimetre and redouble safety shielding. Get the power up.’

‘That’s -’

‘Another hour? Yup. Let’s do it.’

Thirty minutes in, when Cortez was stuck sideways in a panel with a magna-spanner between her teeth to keep her hands free, the next engineering crisis announced itself by her combadge.

‘Adupon to Cortez; we’ve had another setback with the multiphasic warp core shielding.’

In the bowels of the runabout, Cortez swore to herself again, a muffled sound around the tool. She grabbed it and tapped the combadge, shifting her weight on her elbow so she could think better. ‘I need you to think real long and hard about what you say next, Addie,’ she groaned. ‘Because your choice is to explain that this setback is something you can’t possibly deal with yourself, or to say, “and I’ll figure it out and leave you alone, Commander.”’

‘…I’ll get back to you, Commander.’

‘Attaboy,’ Cortez muttered, and got back to work.

It was 0200 hours before their test hit 12,300 kelvins without the simulation suggesting the crew of the King Arthur would cook inside the hull. She took pity on Koya and dismissed her, spending the next thirty minutes alone to double-check the runabout’s systems for herself. Then she headed for Valance’s quarters.

Long weeks of a holiday together had made subtle progress for their relationship. After sharing a bed every night while away, neither of them had thought very hard about exchanging key-codes to each other’s quarters once they were back on Endeavour. Time together had once been arranged and planned, permission and boundaries carefully negotiated. Now, not letting themselves into the other’s rooms of an evening was an exception – one or both of them giving notice of prior commitments or that work demanded solitude. This had been the case since Rourke’s array of mysterious orders, but tonight Cortez let herself fumble through dark rooms and crawl into Valance’s warm bed beside her.

‘Sorry,’ she mumbled as Valance stirred. ‘Just spent the night yelling at my engineers to suck it up and get it done, and they hated it. D’you think one of these days we’ll get a crisis where engineers are allowed to sleep?’

Valance did roll over at that, a sleepy arm thrown over her. ‘M’sorry,’ came her slightly incoherent response. ‘My day’s been handling Thawn and the relief team upset we’re scaling back support.’

‘That does suck more than engineers.’

Valance gave a sleepy sound of protest. ‘I meant that I understand, not that I had it worse.’

‘Been trying to lean on Airex, too. He’s going all stoic. I’ll figure him out. Got you to talk, after all.’

‘Hope you use different methods.’

‘All comes down to my winning charm. Hear you’ve also been pulling shifts in weapons control, too. Keeping tabs on Sae?’

‘She needs managing right now,’ Valance murmured, voice too soft to hear tone, expression invisible in the dark.

Exhausted herself, Cortez didn’t question this, merely nestled closer to make herself as comfortable as possible so she could pass out in peace. Valance enjoyed her space for sleeping, but would probably not get her wish tonight. ‘Good of you,’ Cortez mumbled. ‘Sae’s going through a lot. You’re good to check in.’

Had she been more awake, she might have read more into the noncommittal noise she got in response. But by then, Cortez was barely conscious enough to hear it, let alone conscious enough to think much about it.

‘Mind if I join you?’ Carraway gave a polite smile as he was ushered in to pull up a chair at Dathan and Rhade’s table in Endeavour’s officers’ mess, and sat down with his cup of tea. ‘Hope you don’t mind me saying, you both look pretty tired.’

Dathan raised an eyebrow. ‘Thanks, Counsellor.’

But Rhade returned the smile. ‘It’s long hours all around. It seems we’re faring a little better than the command team.’

‘Oh, there it is.’ Carraway chuckled. ‘How many times do I have to tell people that someone else’s hardship doesn’t negate or diminish their own?’

Dathan cocked her head. ‘Do you do a quiet cup of tea, Counsellor, or is a break just a chance for an impromptu session for you?’ she asked, though he noted she lacked the acidity he might have expected for such an observation.

‘Hey, I’m just here to keep everyone in touch with their feelings. It’s not my fault so many of you treat that like work.’

‘Arguably it is, if it’s your job to teach and we’re such slow learners.’

She was smirking, but Carraway was a counsellor even when off-duty and knew evasion when he was looking at it. She’d noticed he responded better to gentle humour and started to deploy it to keep him at bay, he suspected, while the tension in Rhade’s shoulders and the distance in his gaze spoke of a trouble he was trying to swallow. Carraway knew that tension well, had seen it all over the ship the past few days; could see it all over the mess hall, as near as two tables away where a tired-looking Thawn and Lindgren sat over steaming mugs. He shifted tack and returned his gaze to Rhade. ‘I hear you’ve been largely benched from bridge duties, Lieutenant.’

Rhade shook his head. ‘Obviously I don’t like not knowing why we’ve changed our mission, and I feel like I’m not contributing as much as I might. But that’s how it works in Starfleet sometimes.’

‘But something’s frustrating you.’

Rhade hesitated, honest brow furrowing. ‘Our new mission, which we haven’t had explained to us, seems to be employing specific resources and engaging the time of only a select few officers. And yet, we’ve had to pull back our entire relief operation on the surface? That doesn’t make sense to me.’

Carraway lifted a hand. ‘Hold that thought.’ He leaned back and waved towards Thawn and Lindgren. ‘Lieutenants! Join us?’

‘Oh,’ groaned Dathan. ‘He’s making a group session.’

‘I’m making this,’ said Carraway as he happily gathered more chairs, ‘a chance for us to all realise we’re not alone, in a space where we’re equals and don’t have to worry about setting a bad example for anyone.’

‘We’re in the middle of the mess hall,’ Dathan pointed out.

‘The officers’ mess, and just don’t shout about how mad you are. Should be easy for you, Lieutenant.’ He smiled and sat back down as the other two joined them, their own gazes apprehensive, and Carraway looked at Thawn. ‘So, Rosara, I know you were troubled about how it’s going on the surface.’

Thawn worked her jaw a moment, gaze sweeping across the other three. Dathan shrugged, but at Rhade’s small nod, she sighed. ‘I was just saying that I had to tell this poor old man today that we couldn’t do the repairs on his home we’d said we would. I’d scheduled him in for today, and because he can’t get out and about much, he didn’t know we’d cancelled until we didn’t show up and he came down to ask.’

‘That’s my point,’ said Rhade, nostrils flaring. ‘I appreciate Commander Cortez is busy and has engaged several of her team in this mission. But the Engineering Department is Endeavour’s biggest; she has sixty staff and almost all of them have been pulled back aboard. Yet they’re still not working at capacity.’

‘I don’t – I assume there’s a good reason,’ said Thawn awkwardly. ‘But it doesn’t make it any less unpleasant to disappoint all those people.’

‘It would help,’ Lindgren agreed, ‘if we had a bit more understanding why this is going on. It makes explanations and apologies all a bit empty when the best we can say is that we’re following orders.’

Carraway leaned forward and nodded. ‘You can’t provide the service and respect you’re used to giving people you meet as Starfleet officers. You have to follow orders and you can’t get a better explanation than you’ve got from your superiors, but it’s okay to struggle with this. You feel like it’s undermining your pride and dignity as officers. We’re at our best when we believe in what we do.’

‘I trust the captain,’ Lindgren said. ‘Just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean I won’t do it.’

‘And you don’t have to pretend you like it. Certainly not here, among friends and equals,’ said Carraway.

Thawn sighed. ‘I wish I could do more for Teros, or maybe had some inkling why I can’t. But at least they’re not yelling at me.’

At her glance, Lindgren sighed. ‘Don’t look at me like that, I was only yelled at once.’ She shrugged. ‘We’re encouraging all ships to give the Teros system a wide berth. I’ve been listened to and I’ve been ignored. This morning I had a trader say he’d heard all about how Starfleet had opened fire on civilians at Starangar and very explicitly told me what he thought about that.’

Rhade sighed. ‘That’s ridiculous. I understand people in the region have good reason to not trust Starfleet, but taking out a rumour on you…’ But he stopped at Dathan’s careful shifting weight.

Dathan winced as eyes fell on her. ‘That did actually happen,’ she admitted. ‘The Starangar evacuation includes traffic restrictions. A civilian transport attempted to break them and the Roebuck opened fire. Only a warning shot.’

‘In Federation territory.’ Rhade’s gaze was thunderous. ‘A Starfleet vessel employed force to restrict free movement within our borders.’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know what the policy is, but these orders are coming from on-high. This is legal.’

‘That’s a thousand light-years away from making it right.’

Dathan frowned at him. ‘You’re a soldier. You fight and you kill for Starfleet. You put your trust in your superiors and the organisation when you do that.’

‘I put my trust in the principles of Starfleet and of the Federation,’ Rhade replied. Anyone else might have raised their voice, but his softness still held steel. ‘That’s what this uniform represents, and that’s what I obey when I obey an order from a superior. Actions on this scale being taken with no explanation is…’ He hesitated, working his jaw, then shifted. ‘Our service is based on shared commitment to an ideal. Individuals and institutions can be flawed. Ideologies and principles can be perverted. That is why transparency is essential. Otherwise we’re following a Cardassian sense of duty, committed to a state and a symbol and not a belief that makes lives better.’

Carraway watched as Thawn stared at her drink and Lindgren kept her gaze polite, but Dathan’s frown deepened. ‘That’s a very dramatic reaction to a few days of operational secrecy from Fleet Command,’ she said.

She sounded a little sardonic, and Rhade did subside at that. ‘I’m not saying all of this is some collapse of Starfleet,’ he admitted. ‘I just don’t like it. I’ll do my job. I might not know the captain as well as many of you, but I’ve no reason to assume he, his superiors, or the whole of Fleet Command have taken leave of their senses.’

Dathan shrugged. ‘I just find it damned annoying I have to provide analysis without context. It makes me less good at my job.’

Carraway leaned in. ‘I think it’s good to vent like this,’ he said softly. ‘None of you doubt the professionalism of each other; you all know you’ll do your duty when the time comes, even under pressure. But you shouldn’t have to doubt yourselves just because you find this difficult. You’re all finding your way through this, like navigating without a compass. It’s okay to voice it.’

Thawn sighed. ‘I knew we’d eventually have to stop helping Teros. Unless we spent several years rebuilding the district, there’ll always be more we can do. Eventually we’d have to withdraw, and someone was always going to be next in line and denied our help. It came sooner than I expected, that’s all.’

‘And I’ve been called worse,’ Lindgren said wryly.

Rhade rolled a shoulder. ‘Trust is difficult. If it were easy, it would be knowledge. When I find these missions hard, I have to remind myself I don’t just trust my superiors, but I trust that they respect me. That’s how I know they won’t ask me to do something that would make me compromise myself.’

‘See?’ said Carraway kindly. ‘And you can find a way through together.’

Dathan drained her mug. ‘I appreciate you turning a tea break into group therapy, Counsellor,’ she said with wry gratitude. ‘But the Neutral Zone won’t monitor itself for more borderline-illegal Starfleet actions.’

‘Sarcasm,’ he said lightly, ‘is another way for you to keep your discomfort at arm’s length.’

‘Then we’ll talk about that once this is over.’

The others drifted away, leaving Rhade last, his tea unfinished. He looked at Carraway with raised eyebrows. ‘I notice,’ the burly Betazoid said, ‘that you didn’t discuss your own feelings.’

‘Funny,’ said Carraway. ‘You’re the first person to hit me with that in a while.’ He sighed and shook his head. ‘I worry about everyone. I worry about the command staff, who have burdens they can’t share. I worry about you all. And without more information, I’m as powerless as the rest of you. It might sound like an evasion if I say that it helps me to help you, like I’m worrying about your troubles more than mine. But I mean it. Makes me feel a little bit less helpless.’

‘I have to check,’ Rhade said with, at last, a return of his smile. ‘Forget “who watches the watchmen?” Who worries about the worrier?’

* *

0600 was hardly an unusual start to her day, but Kharth had pulled a late night finishing the torpedo modifications, and so slumped into the main lounge rather dull-eyed. She tended to take breakfast alone in her quarters, but the buzz of people and activity sometimes helped at the start of a tired day. Whatever was coming in the next few hours, mysterious though their mission was, she knew she’d need to be sharp.

But her gaze brightened at the sight of Doctor T’Sann digging into breakfast and coffee at a table by the window, and she headed over with plate and steaming mug. ‘Early start. Mind if I join you?’

He smiled as he spotted her, and pushed the opposite chair out with a foot. ‘Please. And you act like I don’t have plenty to get on with, even if it seems my work’s going to be delayed again.’

Kharth winced. ‘I can’t make any guesses when or if we can look to the transponder and the Koderex, I’m afraid, Karlan. I honestly don’t know.’

He waved a airy hand. ‘Starfleet. Always something desperately important to chase up. I’ll trust the Daystrom Institute to warn me if your superiors are just dragging their feet.’ T’Sann sipped his coffee. ‘Though I hear the work planetside’s being scaled back?’

It was hard enough navigating disgruntled officers in all this secrecy. Curious civilians were something different. ‘Unfortunately so. I hope we can restore that, soon, too.’

The corners of T’Sann’s eyes crinkled as he watched her. ‘I’m sorry. That must be very difficult for you. I know what you sacrificed so the people of Teros could be helped.’

‘They have been helped,’ she said awkwardly. ‘Ten days of full-scale relief, and even our more emergency measures now, are better than nothing. Light-years better.’

‘Still. Starfleet asks a lot of you.’ Another gulp of coffee. ‘Please tell me to go away if this is too nosey, but can I ask: why Starfleet? Why not the Empire, or even the Republic?’

‘I’ve no loyalty to any of those governments,’ Kharth said brusquely. ‘The Empire and the Free State are both the same institutions who refused help for as long as possible, and then prioritised who would be saved on political grounds – if it weren’t for Starfleet, I’d never have gotten off Romulus. The Republic wasn’t much when I left Teros, and I wish them well, but I don’t owe them anything.’ She hesitated, and shrugged. ‘It’s also not like I had a lot of options. Starfleet Academy was my way off-world.’

‘No choice but Starfleet Academy. There are privileged humans born and raised in San Francisco who would kill for that lack of options,’ T’Sann wryly observed.

‘I guess I’m just smarter than them.’

He gave a wicked smile. ‘Arrogance like that, who could mistake you for anything but a Romulan?’

She knew it was a good-natured comment, and normally she would have laughed. Today, her smile was slightly forced. ‘Once this is over, I’ll do what I can to get Endeavour to return to your research, Karlan. I’m not just fobbing you off.’

‘Of course.’ His gaze softened; he must have realised his joke didn’t land. ‘I know you believe in what I’m doing. What it can do for our people – and helping our people has nothing to do with governments.’

I wonder if it has much to do with Starfleet, came Kharth’s treacherous thought as she contemplated Endeavour’s withdrawal from the Teros IV relief work. She pushed past that as quickly as she could, leaning forward and digging into her food. ‘So tell me: what have you learnt from the transponder?’

T’Sann’s eyes brightened, and her heart tightened as he launched into an explanation with an intellectual enthusiasm she found painfully familiar. So she was almost relieved when he was interrupted by a chirrup of her combadge – until it was followed by a shift of the lights and the sounding of the klaxon.

‘Yellow alert,’ came Rourke’s gruff voice. ‘All hands to stations.’

‘As soon as I get the all-clear from Cortez that the King Arthur is ready, the mission begins,’ Rourke explained to Valance the moment the ready room doors shut behind them. He wasn’t sure if he could sense her disapproval or if he was just imagining it; her expression had remained studied and neutral. ‘Airex and I will take the runabout out. You will remain in command of Endeavour.’

He braced for an objection to the commanding officer leaving on an away mission like this, but Valance only gave a stiff nod. ‘My orders?’

‘To withdraw to a safe distance as we enter the Red Area,’ Rourke said, and handed over a PADD. ‘Navigational details are here. You are not to approach the Red Area under any circumstances, do you understand, Commander? I don’t care if you think we’re in danger and want to help.’

The faintest flicker of her gaze was her sole sign of objection. ‘Keep our distance under all circumstances,’ she echoed. ‘I understand.’

‘You are to keep the gravimetric torpedoes loaded,’ he pressed on, ‘and be on standby to fire into the Red Area on my command. If I tell you to fire on the King Arthur, you will do it.’

Her jaw tightened, and for a moment he thought she might argue. But she nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’

Rourke drew a slow breath. ‘If you detect any abnormalities in subspace,’ he pressed on, ‘and I’m sure you’ll know what I mean if you see it, then you’re immediately to go to maximum warp.’ If Endeavour was quick and lucky, she might stay ahead of any shockwave. Otherwise, there was no chance they’d get too far from Teros before they were incapable of sustaining a warp field. Despite Airex’s plea, he couldn’t bring himself to order Endeavour to not even try to escape.

‘Regardless of the King Arthur’s condition,’ Valance confirmed.

‘That’s right.’ He met her gaze. ‘If something goes wrong, I’ve recorded a message for you with your orders.’

‘I assume I’ll know what you mean when the time comes.’

‘Also right.’ Rourke grimaced. ‘Commander, I know I put you in this position once before. You went against my orders and pulled off a hell of a rescue, and I don’t want you to think I’m ungrateful. But that can’t happen again today. You understand?’

‘I certainly don’t,’ Valance said plainly, ‘but I’ll obey your orders.’

He turned to his desk quickly as relief loosened the tension in his chest. ‘I hope some day you will. Just not today,’ he said, voice thicker than he’d have liked. Some day. Some day, when someone pins that fourth pip on your uniform, we’ll have a drink and I’ll explain it all. He took a moment to move something about on the desk, completely unnecessarily but to give him a few moments with his expression disguised, before he looked back at her. ‘Obviously, I intend for this to go well and for me to come back.’

Her shoulders relaxed an iota. ‘I’d rather this weren’t a guaranteed suicide mission.’

‘It’s not. These are contingencies. If all is well, you will have to do nothing and the commander and I will be back in a matter of hours. I don’t -’

‘Captain Rourke to the bridge,’ came Rhade’s urgent summons on his combadge, interrupting whatever final comments he might have had. The two exchanged confused frowns and hurried out.

Lieutenant Rhade stood from the command chair as they emerged, surrendering it at once and moving to the seat to the captain’s left. ‘Sir, a Romulan light scout has just decloaked, raised shields, and is headed for the Red Area. They have an Imperial transponder and aren’t responding to hails.’

A lump settled in Rourke’s gut. ‘Yellow alert. All hands to stations.’ He stopped before his chair. ‘On-screen.’ The display changed to show the small ship, a scout with a crew of probably not much more than fifty, speeding across the system.

Valance frowned. ‘If they’re ignoring us, why did they drop out of cloak?’

Rourke glanced to Thawn. ‘Get me a read on their shields. Standard loadout, or do they have multiphasic shields installed?’

‘Checking, sir. Multiphasic shielding confirmed,’ said Thawn, sounding suspicious of his prediction.

The lump turned to ice. They know what they’re dealing with. They’re after the Omega. Rourke’s nostrils flared. ‘Drake, take us to full impulse and put us directly in their path.’ Behind him, the turbolift doors slid open for Airex and Kharth to arrive, both looking stunned. ‘To your stations, Commander, Lieutenant,’ said Rourke briskly. ‘We have a confrontation here.’

Airex hesitated. ‘Sir, Commander Cortez is on only the final check of the King Arthur. Recommend we take it out immediately if the Red Area is at risk of compromise.’

Rourke glanced between him and the racing Romulan ship. If someone was here to steal or interfere with Omega, he couldn’t guarantee Endeavour could keep them away. The scout still had a significant distance to cover, but this situation risked turning more volatile by the moment. ‘You’re right,’ he said, then chewed on his next choice.

‘I’ll have Doctor Sadek meet me and Cortez in the shuttlebay,’ said Airex, anticipating his uncertainty. ‘The commander and I will complete the mission.’

Their eyes met. I have to stay here, Rourke thought, seething. I’m the only one who can make the necessary choices in stopping the Romulans. He couldn’t expect Valance to navigate this, preventing Omega from falling into foreign hands while trying to not spark an interstellar incident, as the mere first officer with no briefing on the Omega Directive. He gave a low, frustrated sound, but nodded. ‘Take Cortez. You have the away mission, Commander.’ His gaze drifted to the others; the bewildered bridge team, Valance for whom even more tension had entered her shoulders as he’d just ordered the two most important people on the ship to her on an away mission he’d hinted moments ago might be suicide, the increasing scowl on Kharth’s face.

Airex had looked to them for a heartbeat, too, and something softer and more apprehensive entered his eyes as they snapped back to Rourke. ‘I’ll get it done, Captain.’ He glanced to his right, hesitated, then turned on his heel and strode for the turbolift, already hitting his combadge to issue summons and orders to Sadek and Cortez.

Rourke let out a shuddering breath as he turned to his bridge team. ‘Right. Let’s stop that ship.’

Kharth watched Airex go for half a heartbeat, then moved to her post at Tactical. ‘They’re definitely a Romulan Star Empire ship, sir, flagging up as the Erem. They’re in our databanks with several noted operations in the Neutral Zone over the past five years.’

He didn’t know if he was relieved or not, and took his seat. ‘They still have to pass us. Keep trying to hail them, Elsa.’

Minutes later, she reported that the King Arthur was underway and headed to the Red Area, and he knew he had to more-or-less cast the runabout from his thoughts. Airex would contact them if they needed to fire a torpedo. Otherwise, he had to trust his Chief Science Officer and keep his focus on the here and now.

Even longer minutes later, Kharth spoke like she had gravel in her throat. ‘The Erem is within weapons range, sir.’

‘Open a channel, Elsa, let me talk to them directly.’ He hoped they’d be more talkative once he could add teeth to his words, and he straightened at Lindgren’s confirming nod. ‘IRW Erem, this is Captain Rourke of the Federation starship Endeavour. You are on approach to an area restricted by Starfleet decree. Alter your course immediately, or I will have to stop you.’

A moment passed, but just as Lindgren shrugged in the absence of a response, the viewscreen flickered to life. Before him was the shrouded space of a Romulan bridge, a severe-faced woman in military uniform before him. ‘This is Commander Danosa. The Romulan Star Empire does not recognise Federation authority within the Teros system; you have no legal right to dictate any travel or activity within this region.’

‘You would be incorrect. But feel free to leave a complaint with my superiors and the question of Federation overreach can be resolved by our governments,’ said Rourke, knowing these words were empty, knowing he had to say them anyway. ‘I say again; turn around, Commander.’

Danosa sighed. ‘I don’t answer to you, Captain. I am acting on Imperial business, and will not allow you to interfere with my mission.’

Rourke’s jaw tightened, and he glanced up at Kharth. ‘Fire a warning shot across the bow.’ He felt Lieutenant Rhade tense beside him, but didn’t look at the burly Betazoid. His Officer of the Watch’s opinion was not what mattered then. Kharth shifted her weight, but Rourke felt the hum of a phaser shot from Endeavour, saw the beam on his console as it lanced before the Erem.

Danosa’s expression barely changed. ‘I understand you’re doing what you think you is necessary, Captain. As am I. But I will not be deterred by warnings, and I will not be stopped. Erem out.’

‘Sir, they’re taking evasive manoeuvres but still heading for the Red Area,’ Drake reported as the viewscreen went dead. ‘And they’re picking up speed.’

She’d done that intentionally, Rourke realised, lulling him into thinking he had more time before she could close with the Red Area. Another glance at his console confirmed the King Arthur was deep into the Red Area, but he could still detect Omega; they had not yet beamed it all aboard. He glanced to the front and scowled. ‘Stay with them. We’re faster than they think, too.’

‘Sir!’ Thawn’s urgency sounded confused. ‘They’re dropping shields and – I think they’re activating their transporters, but I can’t tell where to.’

They had a better transporter range than he’d anticipated, too; likely enhanced for the mission. Rourke stood, scowl deeper. ‘Can you disrupt it?’

‘I – well, they’re done with whatever they were doing,’ Thawn said, exasperated.

‘Their shields are back up,’ Kharth warned.

‘And they’re coming about,’ said Drake. Even though the Erem had changed course as demanded, the bridge crew were astute enough to realise the danger had not passed. ‘Away from the Red Area and Teros.’

If they cloak, thought Rourke, then the Romulan Star Empire has just flown off with Omega that could destabilise at any moment. His gaze snapped back to Kharth. ‘Open fire, Lieutenant. Take out their engines, if you can, but at the least make sure they can’t drop their shields and cloak!’

‘I -’ Kharth’s eyes widened for one choking moment, then her expression shut down. ‘Firing phasers, sir.’

‘If you can get them in a tractor beam, do so.’

Lieutenant Rhade leaned in, voice dropping. ‘Sir, we’re risking a serious incident with the Empire by opening fire first -’

Valance interrupted before Rourke could. ‘As you were, Lieutenant,’ she said coolly.

Rourke gave her a relieved, grateful look, before glancing to Lindgren. ‘Tell them to cut their engines and lower their shields, or we will keep firing,’ he said, the words cold on his tongue, like the bitterness would come soon but hadn’t yet caught up with him.

‘Their evasion is too much for our tractor beam,’ Kharth said, now sounding frustrated with the ship. That was good, Rourke thought; when her focus narrowed like that, it made her think about her work rather than the implications. ‘But their shields are no match for our phasers.’ A beat, then she gave a satisfied nod. ‘I’ve punched a hole in their deflectors; their shields are still up, but on low power, and I hit their port engines. They’re drifting, sir.’

‘Good work.’ But Rourke’s satisfaction died as quickly as it was born. With their shields up, he couldn’t beam the crew or the Omega away, but too heavy a hit on the scout could overload the power grid and risked destabilisation within whatever containment they were using. Still on his feet, he turned to the side for a moment, mind racing and still with only one option.

Lindgren’s own relief was nearly palpable when she piped up. ‘Commander Danosa’s hailing us, sir.’

‘On-screen!’

They had clearly given the Erem quite a blow by knocking out their engines, and Rourke realised how supremely lucky he’d already been to get this far without it all going very wrong. ‘I hope you understand the situation you’ve put yourself in, Captain,’ said Danosa, and his heart sank at her defiant tone. ‘You have your duty, but I have mine. Do you think I’ll obey you before my superiors?’

Rourke stepped forward, aghast. ‘Lower your shields, Danosa. I know what you have aboard, and you cannot risk losing containment, you cannot take it from here!’ He had nothing aboard Endeavour, he realised, to contain the Omega even if they did lower their shields. ‘Let me beam your people off, or get yourselves to escape pods, but I have to destroy your ship.’

Danosa made a low, bitter sound. ‘You are Starfleet,’ she said, ‘and my ship is drifting. We have not fired on you once. You have the tactically superior vessel and the upper hand. We both know you will not destroy this ship while we’re aboard. Allow us to leave.’

His jaw tensed. ‘As you say. I have my duty.’

‘To Starfleet naivety. So I will trust both our duties today. If you’ll excuse me, Captain, I have engine repairs to oversee. Erem out.’

Silence hummed on Endeavour’s bridge as the screen went blank, and Rourke knew all eyes were on him, had been on him since he made his threat. He went to run a hand through his hair, but found himself shaking and instead clenched his fist by his side to hide it as he looked to Drake. ‘Helm, pull us back. Two thousand kilometres.’ The ripple of relief that met his words only made him sicker, because then he turned to Tactical. ‘Lieutenant Kharth, load a gravimetric torpedo and open fire on the Erem as soon as we’re out of the blast radius.’

Kharth stared at him. ‘Sir, there are fifty-three Romulans aboard that ship -’

Valance was on her feet in an instant. ‘Lieutenant, you have your orders.’

But Kharth ignored her, eyes on Rourke as she leaned forward. ‘Captain, this is crazy; they’re no threat to us -’

Nausea lurched in Rourke’s stomach as he cut her off. ‘This isn’t a debate. This is an order.’

‘Fifty-three -’

‘Lieutenant Kharth, you are relieved of duty,’ he barked. ‘Lieutenant Rhade, report to Tactical.’

The big man looked between the wide-eyed, horrified Kharth, and Rourke. Then he squared his shoulders. ‘Sir, I will not.’ And the deck felt like it fell away from under Rourke’s feet.

It was Valance, again, who stepped into the breach; Valance who turned to Rhade as the bridge stared in slack-jawed horror. ‘Lieutenant Rhade,’ she said in a cold, empty voice. ‘Captain Rourke has given you an order.’

Lieutenant Rhade didn’t move. ‘Captain Rourke has ordered the summary execution of fifty-three helpless Romulan citizens, Commander, and so I believe that to be an illegal order that I am bound by my oath as a Starfleet officer to disobey.’

Power was delicate. Ranks and regulations gave it structure, but in truth they were nothing but decoration upon the illusion that in the moment, there was no choice – only authority. Rourke reinforced it with his pips and his uniform and the words from distant admirals, but in the day-to-day it came from how he carried himself, how he spoke, how he acted; the respect he had earned, and the trust that they gave him. All in order to drill into his bridge crew that in the moment there was his word and no other.

If the illusion cracked, he had tools. A commanding voice. An imposing physical presence. The experience of months of shared hardships. The reminder of regulations, the threat of future consequences. Unable to explain his decisions, rely on reason; unable to convince and reassure his officers to fall behind him, his options were only blunt instruments. And the problem with a crack in the illusion of power was not just the defiance itself, but that it invited more cracks. Make the wrong move, and the fault-lines would shatter.

With such perilous fragility before him, Rourke did the worst thing he could do in an uncertain moment of command: he froze, and did nothing.

Then Valance was by Kharth’s side. ‘Step aside, Lieutenant, or I will make you,’ came the first officer’s icy voice, and for another split second, everything hung in the balance. Lieutenant Rhade turned to them both, uncertain but poised for action, and only on instinct did Rourke react to that, squaring up in the faintest of hopes the threat of further escalation would stop this disaster from getting worse.

Kharth’s expression was far from the cold tension of Valance or the stony determination of Rhade; she looked horrified and sickened, and after a heartbeat of looking like she might fight, she stepped back. ‘This is crazy,’ she said again, but did not stop Valance from taking Tactical.

The bridge breathed again, and as they did so, Drake’s voice came through the quiet. ‘Two thousand kilometres away from the Erem.’

As the officers fell back in line, Rourke’s voice returned. ‘Lieutenants Kharth and Rhade; you are relieved of duty and will report to the brig. I’ll deal with you later.’ He lacked his usual thunder, he knew, his tone empty by now. ‘Thawn, has the Erem abandoned ship?’ Silence met him. ‘Lieutenant Thawn.’

Thawn jumped, and he saw her not defiant, but shocked, spinning back to her console. ‘I, ah – no, Captain, they – they’re still aboard,’ she said, her own voice crumbling.

‘Gravimetric torpedo locked on target,’ said Valance at Tactical, and when he turned to her, he found her so steady and clear-eyed that he could only pray he was doing the right thing. ‘Ready to fire at your order.’

Rourke turned to his console, dimly aware of Rhade and Kharth withdrawing to the turbolift, and took more moments than he should have praying for an escape pod or shuttle to manifest on the sensors. It did not. And more seconds passed with Omega contained on a ship whose engines might be repaired at any moment to carry it far, far away, or whose power grid might overload at any second and trigger a chain reaction of those volatile molecules.

His eyes rose to Valance’s, and it took everything he had to keep his voice steady. ‘Fire.’

A moment later, the blip on his sensors that was the Erem vanished.

Rourke hurried at once to Science, swallowing bile, though he heard Thawn give a numb update. ‘Total destruction of the Erem,’ she reported. ‘No life-signs. No survivors.’ But only once he was at the Science station to run his own scans did Rourke allow himself to feel anything other than mute horror as he confirmed his success: No Omega.

Then a detonation flashed on sensors far away, in the Red Area, large enough to engulf the blip on the display that was the distant runabout King Arthur.

‘What the hell are Romulans doing here?’ Cortez jabbered as she fired the King Arthur’s engines to bring them soaring out of Endeavour’s shuttlebay. ‘Did they think, “Hey, that situation doesn’t look tense enough, let’s wreck it.”’

‘That’s not our concern, Commander, unless they involve themselves in the Red Area,’ Airex chided. ‘We have our mission.’

‘Our mission which just derailed.’ She gave him a cautious glance. ‘I’m only about ninety percent confident in the upgrades to our radiation shielding.’

‘I’ll take a Starfleet engineer’s ninety percent -’

‘Oh, hell, I’ve got a whole “boy who cried wolf,” thing going on after lowballing so many of my predictions none of you know when I’m serious, don’t I?’ Cortez groaned. ‘Or have Starfleet engineers been gaslighting their superior officers for so many centuries they can no longer recognise reality?’ She was babbling and she knew it. Her one piece of reassurance in this uncertain chaos had been preparing as much as humanly possible for the unknown, and now they were denied even that.

Airex checked a console. ‘Harmonic resonance chamber is secure,’ he said levelly. ‘Hull reinforcement tested to necessary temperatures. You finished all but one diagnostic of the radiation shielding. Commander, we’re as ready as we can be in a crisis.’

Cortez scowled as she checked the nav sensors to confirm their approach on the Red Area. ‘Except I didn’t double-check Adupon’s work in Engineering,’ she admitted in a lower voice. ‘And I’m not there.’

His expression cleared with comprehension. ‘I’ve known Lieutenant Adupon longer than you. He might not inspire confidence with his manner, but he’s anxious because he cares, not because he’s uncertain. And trust me, Commander: you are in the best place for your mind and your skills.’

She let out a slow breath, then clapped her hands together. ‘Alright. Let’s harvest these lost particles of a Q who self-destructed so we can supercharge them and ascend.’

‘What?’

‘I’m obviously not allowed to make serious guesses on what we’re up to,’ she pointed out. ‘But I still have to entertain myself. So what will you do once we throw ourselves in the chamber and become one with the universe, Airex?’

He’d been tense for days, weeks, but now she saw the faintest crack in his mask, the faintest flicker at his lips. ‘I’m quite satisfied with my current condition, Commander.’

‘I’m going to instantaneously purge all the EPS conduits without needing to take them offline or crawl through each relay inch by inch to clear them up,’ she said brightly.

‘Wait, what? We transcend space and time and you’ll save yourself some maintenance minutes?’

‘Maintenance hours.’ She tapped the side of her head. ‘This kind of thinking’s why I’m one of the best engineers in Starfleet.’

Airex’s chuckle was low but sincere as he shook his head with wry disbelief. ‘Alright. I’ll teleport that damned CIC into orbit and get my anthropology lab back.’

‘And Lieutenant Dathan?’

‘Can become an anthropologist or get teleported into orbit. I’ve got nothing against her. But I’m going to need that staff capacity,’ he deadpanned.

‘Look at us, dreaming big. It’s good to know that if you could do anything, Commander, you’d make Endeavour a nicer place to stay.’

He rolled his eyes. ‘That was a trap, wasn’t it?’

‘Please, as if I planned ahead that well. I just say whatever’s on my mind and figure out how to spin it to my advantage later.’ She leaned over. ‘But now you mention it…’ Her console beeped, and at once she sat up, all business again. ‘Picking up increasing rad level, six thousand and rising. We are at the periphery of the Red Area.’

‘Our particles are scattered in the area. I’m going to program in a series of transporter coordinates, Commander, and I want you to begin beaming them into our resonance chamber as I go behind,’ said Airex. ‘If I backseat transporter chief, I’m sorry -’

‘Let’s worry about our feelings when all of this is over; I’m a big girl, Commander,’ Cortez said cheerfully. ‘I’ll keep us in one piece while you save the day and steal ascension for yourself.’

‘I’ll remember you when I rewrite the rules to reality,’ he said graciously as he tapped instructions to the transporter controls. ‘I’ll be in yelling distance.’

‘Enjoy the dulcet sounds of my panicked screaming as you work,’ she called as he went to the aft section, just through the cockpit door, where they’d installed the harmonic resonance chamber.

But despite jokes, it was time for business. She slowed the King Arthur to a relative stop, before spinning on the chair to begin the delicate work of transporting obviously volatile particles she was formally not supposed to know anything about. Scattered as they were, it would take several transporter cycles.

‘Batch one received,’ came Airex’s voice moments later over comms, echoing a little as she heard him more faintly through the open door. ‘Containment is good; proceed.’

It was as she targeted the third batch that Cortez faltered. ‘Uh, Commander? That’s, uh…’

Airex just yelled this time. ‘“Uh” is really not the report I want, Cortez!’

She hammered at her controls. ‘Son of a – it’s gone. The Romulan ship is closer, they’ve just ignored a warning shot from the Endeavour, and I don’t know what the hell’s going on but I think they beamed a batch out!’

The pause was telling. Then Airex said, over comms this time, voice tighter, ‘Proceed with the mission. Let Endeavour handle that.’

Muttering, Cortez did, running through the last two cycles. ‘All loaded, Commander.’

‘Confirmed. Firing up the harmonic resonator.’

For all her jokes, Cortez was no fool. She had spent enough time putting the chamber together to make several educated guesses regarding their mission, even if the exact nature of the key substance eluded her. ‘Keep me posted with progression, if you would, sir.’

Airex did not reply, though, and she clicked her tongue and tried to not watch the exchange between Endeavour and the Romulan ship on sensors. It was a distraction she didn’t need. So she studied their internal and immediate scans, and within a minute her heart had crept to her throat. ‘Sir? Interior rad levels are rising.’

‘I know,’ came Airex’s cool response over comms.

‘A lot. Exterior rad shielding is secure, but the chamber’s containment wasn’t ready for these levels!’

No response. Heart thudding, Cortez glanced at the one-sided firefight between Endeavour and the Romulan ship – and shoved it from her mind as she launched out of her seat and hurried to the rear room. ‘Commander!’

A light blue glow bathed the room, Airex pale before the gleaming chamber. He did not look up. ‘Twenty percent progress,’ he reported, jaw tight.

‘And we’re going to bake in here,’ she snapped.

‘The more we progress, the less the rad levels will rise,’ he said, eyes locked on the chamber’s controls. ‘Twenty-one.’

Light-footed, Cortez slid across the deck as close as she dared to see as much as she could without distracting him. From this distance she could only spot snippets of the chamber’s display, figures racing as Airex processed them almost faster than she could read.

‘Cortez, you should return to the cockpit,’ he said after another twenty seconds.

‘Tell me when you hit forty percent.’

‘Forty percent is irrelevant,’ snapped Airex. ‘We’re seeing this through.’

‘Forty percent is where we transport this damn thing into space and hit it with the gravimetric torpedo,’ she countered, hands on her hips.

‘That’s not your decision to make.’

‘Like hell it’s not. I might not know what this stuff is, but I know what this chamber does, I know what the yield on the torpedoes is, and I see the rate you’re destroying these particles. I know how much we’ve beamed aboard. Sixty percent remaining is enough to be destroyed by a torpedo with Sae’s modifications.’

Mentioning Kharth was not unintentional, and the flicker at his brow only redoubled the certainty in her gut. But before he could respond, she glanced to the display and turned on her heel. ‘Time for this stuff to go.’

It was not to gauge his personal opinion that she’d provoked him, the decision paying off when he turned away from the chamber to follow her into the cockpit. ‘Commander, we’re giving this another five minutes -’

‘In five minutes we’ve taken a lethal dose of theta radiation just so you can watch the chamber tick up to a hundred percent,’ Cortez said smoothly. ‘Is my math on the torpedo wrong?’

‘You don’t have a full understanding of -’

‘I have a good enough understanding of all the variables I’ve been fine-tuning constantly for days.’ She reached the transporter controls and hesitated, looking back at his pale, wide eyes. ‘You can trust your freaked-out conscience and go down with this mission, or you can trust both our brains and choose to live.’ Despite it all, her finger hesitated over the controls. ‘You know the science better than me. But you best be damned sure and directly order me to stop if we’re going to see this through and turn our insides to goo.’ It was one thing, she gambled, for him to stand before the chamber and think, just one more minute as the rad levels ticked up and up. It was another for him to consciously and firmly sign both their death warrants because the situation necessitated it.

Airex hesitated. So she took his silence for assent. She punched in the transporter commands to beam the harmonic resonance chamber, and whatever its crazed package was, back into the Red Area.

The moment the glint of transporter lights faded, he’d snapped back to reality. ‘Get us out of here,’ he said, himself again. ‘I’m on weapons.’

Cortez slid behind the helm controls and kicked the impulse engines to full. ‘We want at least a thousand kilometres distance,’ she said, knowing she was lowballing it.

‘Target locked on the chamber.’

Seconds stretched out, and she could almost hear the tension humming in him as she watched their nav sensors, watched the distance clock up moment by moment. They were not quite there when she finally said, ‘Fire, and hang onto your ass.’

The torpedo rocketed away. The shockwave hit them six seconds later. An alert klaxon went off, the King Arthur began to spin, and her sensors went too wild for her to know how badly she’d lost control. Even if she could tell, Cortez had to grab the console to keep her seat, but piloting was a lower priority than surviving and praying her calculations had been correct.

Before her heart rate had slowed, before her head had stopped spinning with the ship, Airex was already at the sensors and barking a report. ‘Confirmed destruction of the chamber,’ he said, voice low and urgent. Then, with an audible wave of relief: ‘Confirmed destruction of – that is – I mean to say, we did it.’

Cortez sagged in her chair as the ship stopped spinning, but she did not open her eyes. ‘Computer. Run a medical scan on both of us, and show me our rad exposure.’ Only at the confirmed bleep did she look up, wincing as her gaze fell on the results. ‘Not great, not terrible,’ she said through gritted teeth.

But Airex’s voice was distant. ‘Cortez.’

‘We should probably get an emergency sickbay beam out so Sadek can stop our insides from melting ASAP, though…’

‘Cortez.’

He was staring at the sensors, and she followed his gaze. ‘…hey. Where’d that Romulan ship go?’

Cortez lifted her head from the bucket Doctor Sadek had thoughtfully provided. ‘Why do anti-rad meds gotta suck this much?’ she groaned.

‘Because I gave both of you doses of arithrazine above the standard,’ said Sadek as she scanned her, voice for once without any sardonic judgement. ‘Which protected you from a lot of rads, but it has brutal side-effects and I have to give you something with more kick now to counter both.’ There was a fresh retch from the next biobed, and she winced. ‘It could be worse. You could be Airex.’

But his retching had set off a fresh wave for Cortez, and she spent the next minute curled around the bucket waiting for death as Sadek let her be. Only once silence filled Sickbay did she look up to see the pale, sweating, wretched shape of the Trill who had spent much more of the mission much closer to the inadequate containment field.

‘You were right,’ creaked Airex. ‘We should have ascended.’

Her laugh came with an unpleasant gurgle. ‘Remind me to never join you on a last-minute mission again.’

‘I’m sorry. But you talk too much sense.’

Cortez gave a weak shrug. ‘I’m not normally accused of doing that.’

‘I’m serious.’ The next silence looked like it was because he was struggling with thoughts, not his stomach. ‘Thank you.’

She sighed, bending back over her bucket. ‘I had a vested interest. Not getting irradiated to death. Not dragging back your corpse and explaining to Karana I let you cook yourself.’ But she could almost hear him gearing up to argue some more, and pressed her forehead against the cool metal of the tub. ‘I have some idea why you were doing what you did. And you let it override your judgement.’

Another pause, but he sounded stronger when he spoke. ‘It seemed the thing to do – to make sure I saw the chamber’s process through to the end. To be sure. I misjudged and you were right to correct me.’

Cortez looked up, bleary-eyed. ‘You can’t give Sae whatever truth has been driving the two of you apart for years, so much it’s now making you leave Endeavour. But you could save her world. You did this ‘cos you were guilty. I’m not going to pass judgement on that guilt, or on you making decisions because of guilt. But letting you die for it? Fuck that.’

He was still pale and sweating, arms wrapped around the bucket in his lap he was hunched over. ‘Don’t tell her,’ he mumbled miserably. ‘I know you’re friends, but knowing wouldn’t help. It’s best I’m far away from her – from Endeavour.’

Then he threw up, a lot, and that set her off again. Which was how they were found when Valance came through the Sickbay doors some minutes later. Shoulders tense, Valance’s eyes first landed on Sadek. ‘Doctor, how are they?’

Sadek advanced with appeasing hands raised. ‘It’s better than it looks. The medication and shielding protected them from the worst of it, and this is a second dose of meds and side-effects. I’ll want to keep them in for the next twenty-four hours and have daily check-ups for at least the next week, with further courses of medication, but I anticipate they’re going to be fine.’

Cortez rolled upright with some effort. ‘Yeah, honestly -’ Then a fresh wave of nausea hit.

Sadek was watching Valance as Cortez regained some awareness of her surroundings. ‘How’s the bridge? The captain?’

‘He’s being debriefed,’ Valance said in a taut voice. ‘And you know I can’t discuss the rest with you.’

‘Is it true, though? Did we really -’

‘Doctor, I can’t -’

‘It’s hit the rumour-mill, Commander. Ignoring it won’t make it go away.’

Airex’s pale eyes flickered between them. ‘What happened?’

Valance’s shoulders slumped, and she lifted a hand to rub her weary brow. ‘The Romulan ship ignored Captain Rourke’s instructions and was destroyed. With a gravimetric torpedo. No survivors.’ Cortez rocked back on the biobed at that, eyes widening, but Valance didn’t stop. ‘Lieutenants Kharth and Rhade were relieved of duty and have been confined to the brig.’

‘What?’ Airex’s voice was low and flat.

The next wave of nausea in Cortez’s gut felt different. ‘They refused to go along with it,’ she realised.

‘You are all senior staff,’ said Valance in that same firm voice. ‘I expect you to stymie the rumour mill, not contribute to it. I’m sure Captain Rourke will be discussing this with his superiors.’

‘The whole ship,’ Sadek echoed. ‘That’s insane, Matt would never…’ At Valance’s gaze, she stiffened. ‘Medical records. Right.’

As she left, the weariness on Valance’s shoulders only seemed heavier. Awkwardly looking between them, she said, ‘Captain Rourke seemed confident your mission was successful…’

‘It was,’ said Airex.

‘I’m…’ She went to gesture, then caught her own hands, twisting her fingers with an uncharacteristic uncertainty. ‘It was wise of you to beam out the chamber and destroy it.’

‘Hey.’ Cortez tried to catch her eye. ‘We might look like death warmed up, but we’re okay.’ When she of course punctuated that by retching again – how did she have anything left, she had to wonder – this time there was, a moment later, a warm and comforting hand at her back as Valance had moved to her side.

‘You look it,’ said Valance in a lower, more wry tone.

‘Why can’t I ever be heroic in a sexy way?’ Cortez groaned. ‘Last time I got literally cooked. Now I’m throwing up my guts. Next time someone else can look like ass when they save the day.’

Valance had sat on the biobed, hand still at her back. ‘It seems you were right to beam the chamber out.’

‘That,’ rumbled Airex, ‘was definitely her idea.’ But his eyes didn’t leave Valance’s. ‘Are you alright?’

Cortez felt her tense at his concern. ‘You should focus on yourselves,’ said Valance. ‘You have another day in Sickbay. I’ll be back once I know more, but I should check in with the captain.’

Valance leaned in to kiss the top of Cortez’s head, even as the engineer mumbled, ‘Don’t, I’m gross,’ and escaped before they could stop her. As the doors to Sickbay slid shut to leave them alone again, Cortez looked miserably over at Airex. ‘See what happens when you leave the ship?’

His only answer was to throw up again.

* *

‘With Omega destroyed in the Teros System, you should consider this a complete success, Captain,’ came the iron velvet voice of Admiral Beckett’s holographic projection about Rourke’s desk. ‘That is always the mission priority so long as the Omega Directive is active.’

‘It can be a success,’ said Rourke, throat hoarse. ‘But complete?’

‘The boldness of the Romulans is regrettable,’ sighed Beckett. ‘But I don’t anticipate much by way of interstellar fallout. It was curious of them to try to seize Omega, and I suspect they targeted a manifestation beyond imperial borders because Teros was an acceptable loss if something went wrong. Why they chose to try to snipe it from under the nose of a Manticore, I’ve no idea.’

‘They thought I wouldn’t destroy them. Not to preserve the Omega, but they thought I wouldn’t kill them. They left me no choice.’

‘That is not in dispute.’ Beckett shrugged. ‘The Romulan Star Empire doesn’t want to admit they picked this fight, let alone that they called your bluff and were caught out. If they tried to make a public issue of it, they’d have to account for their behaviour in the first instance, and nobody is openly admitting anything about Omega, let alone that they’re trying to contain some for their own purposes. This entire affair is best left off the books, for both sides. So don’t worry, Matt. There won’t be fallout.’

He’d been going through the motions since the Erem’s wreckage had been sighted, only breathing again once he’d heard from Airex and Cortez that they were alive and successful. Everything had still been mechanical, his actions feeling barely like his own, the world very far away from him even as he moved through it. It was a sensation he dimly recognised, the numb disconnection he’d experienced after watching his senior staff of the Firebrand be executed. And still there was work to do.

‘Politics was only one of my concerns, sir,’ Rourke said flatly.

Beckett grunted. ‘Helping Teros is going to have to wait. I need Endeavour at Starbase 23 so you can be standby in the region in case anything else happens, and you can’t waste your resources making pillows for refugees. Oh.’ He waved a dismissive hand. ‘You have Commander Airex waiting on a transfer. Have him disembark at 23, I can make use of him on my staff for this crisis. I assume you have the science staff to get by.’

Rourke blinked. ‘I – Lieutenant Veldman is capable.’

‘You clearly need more than capable right now, Captain. You need your people to be loyal. Kharth and Rhade disobeyed direct orders, and that needs resolving,’ sighed Beckett, like this was all a gross inconvenience for him. ‘But the last thing anyone needs is a different public outlet for this incident. We can, of course, court martial them under the various legislation that allows us to keep classified matters discreet. But that is still some effort to cover up. It would be best if it doesn’t get that far.’

Rourke squinted, his mind feeling like it was moving through molasses as Beckett’s political bobbing and weaving eluded him this time. ‘Sir?’

‘For pity’s sake, Matt.’ Beckett rolled his eyes. ‘You’re enough of a soft touch your own crew didn’t listen to you and the Romulans didn’t believe you had the guts to kill them. Now make that work for you by patting them on the head, making them say they’re sorry, and sweeping the whole thing under the rug. Nobody needs the Omega Directive tested by someone standing up in a court martial and saying they disobeyed an order that would be illegal under any other circumstances.’

‘Sweeping it under the rug,’ Rourke echoed.

‘Have everyone shake hands and recognise tensions were high, that they had some moral point but went about it the wrong way, and then everyone’s friends again.’ Beckett shrugged. ‘Or hit them with some misdemeanour – say they were inattentive at their post during a traffic incident – and deal with the discipline yourself.’

He should have felt relieved, Rourke knew. This was permission – no, an instruction – to not ruin the lives of his officers because of his choices. He didn’t know if he felt nothing because all sensation continued to elude him, or through apprehension at the idea of carrying on like nothing had happened. ‘I’ll… see what I can do,’ he rumbled.

‘Mn. Good.’ Beckett watched him. ‘I taught you to speak softly and carry a big stick, Matt. That carried us in good stead during the war; that kept us alive during the war. I know you’ve sneered at me for it over the years since. But being more confident in that big stick might have made your crew obey you and the Romulans fear you. You completed your mission by the skin of your teeth, and everything that went wrong happened because you couldn’t convince people you’d make the hard choice. All I can say is I’m relieved that you weren’t daunted by their disbelief, but don’t think I’m impressed. This could have been avoided if you’d listened to me for all these years.’

Rourke wasn’t sure what he said in response to that. He wasn’t even sure what he felt but the howling void inside, and certainly he did not have it in him to confront Beckett with a defiance or rage he wasn’t sure was anywhere within his grasp. It was likely that polite words alone ended the conversation, and a commitment, again, to make sure he could keep the disobedience of his officers off the admiral’s desk.

Nor was he sure how much time passed before the door-chime sounded and Valance entered, her hands behind her back, her gait taut. ‘Captain.’ He wasn’t certain if he imagined a beat passing before she pressed on. ‘Airex and Cortez will recover. They’re undergoing treatment for heavy levels of radiation exposure, and Doctor Sadek will monitor them, but she’s confident.’

‘Good.’ He drew a deep breath and flexed his hands, trying to fight the tingling in his fingertips. ‘They’ve done well. I’ll thank them later.’

‘They understand you were reporting in.’

He did hear the question at that, and with a more curt gesture than he intended, he waved her to the chair opposite. ‘It looks like both sides would prefer it if the Erem’s destruction were not an incident. My report and explanation have been accepted by Admiral Beckett as appropriate under the circumstances.’

It looked like a knot had loosened in her at that, and her gaze flickered down. ‘Good. The Romulans had to know they were playing with fire, the way they were acting. If Starfleet accepts there was no other way…’

‘Not without the sort of risk Starfleet is unprepared to take,’ he said, then thought of how he’d agreed to protect Endeavour instead of taking it to destroy Omega, how he’d opened fire on the Romulans and risked destabilisation at all. At every point there had been gambles and risks, hoping Omega would remain stable every time he hesitated, waited, or adjusted his plans. Only then did he remember that she had not hesitated, and he forced himself to meet her gaze. ‘You performed exceptionally, Commander,’ said Rourke, and that time his voice came out a passable facsimile of his own.

That seemed to both weaken and reassure her. ‘You made the stakes clear to me, sir. I’ve disobeyed you before, but never because I didn’t trust your judgement. Lieutenants Kharth and Rhade should have known better. Especially Kharth.’

Normally he would have asked her opinion on how to enforce discipline without escalating, on how to repair the cavernous sunders in his authority he’d allowed with the destruction of the Erem. But nothing about this was normal, and instead he chewed on his words a moment. ‘We’ll move forward,’ he said at length, and she didn’t look like she believed him any more than he believed himself.

‘Very well,’ she replied slowly. ‘Our next orders, Captain?’

‘We’re to report to Starbase 23 and be ready to move out again. Conclude the relief operation on Teros. That’ll be all, Commander.’ Looking at her expression at that was more than he dared, and she was halfway to the door before he spoke again, forcing the words. ‘Valance. The mission owes its success to you.’

She did not look back. ‘I followed your orders, Captain.’

‘Others didn’t. You obeyed, and you reasserted control.’

He saw her shift out of the corner of his eye, and eventually Valance said, ‘You’re ignoring every other officer on the bridge who followed your orders.’ It was not a point without merit, he reflected. If Thawn or Drake or Lindgren had stood when Rhade sided with Kharth, that could have tipped it all. He’d taken their silence for inaction and indecision, not cooperation. But before he could reply, Valance had taken another step towards the door. ‘I’m glad Starfleet supports your decisions, sir.’

And when the doors slid shut behind her, he ruminated on the words she hadn’t uttered. I’m glad Starfleet thinks I was right to obey you. Because for all Rourke could barely comprehend his feelings on the orders he’d given, he knew Karana Valance was in an entirely different hell for following them.

The hum of the cell forcefields was more persistent than Kharth remembered. It had been some time since she was a junior security officer, some time since she’d had to take shifts in the brig. Now she’d been in this cell for four hours, and for all the thousand thoughts racing through her mind, the persistent drone of energy was finally a distraction. At last, she needed something new to occupy her.

Kharth sat up and looked at the figure in the cell opposite. ‘Alright. Why the hell did you do that?’

She had not spoken to Adamant Rhade since the bridge. They had both entered the turbolift in a stunned silence, and a rather bewildered Brig Officer had anticipated their arrival, likely notified by an over-zealous Valance. Rhade had tried to say something once they were secure, something about needing to be patient, but his words had rushed over her the first time. The second time, she’d snapped.

‘I didn’t ask you to do that. We’re not in this together,’ she’d said, cold and empty, and so he had stayed silent.

Rhade sat with his back to the bulkhead, legs folded, hands on his knees, the picture of patience and self-control she lacked. When he opened his eyes, she could see no indication of frustration that she’d blocked him out for hours only to arbitrarily reopen the conversation now. ‘It’s quite obvious, Lieutenant. The captain was wrong.’

Was he? Kharth bent over, head in her hands. ‘I mean you didn’t speak up earlier. You didn’t speak up when I did, only when you were ordered.’

She heard his hesitation. ‘It’s true that I wasn’t sure what to do. Before you refused the order, after. But when I was ordered to Tactical, that became clear for me – I wouldn’t step in where you hadn’t. You were right, Lieutenant. Fifty-three -’

‘Stop saying that.’ Her own defence rang in her ears, hollow and desperate and hysterical. She did not look up. ‘We don’t know what the mission was. We don’t know what the Erem took aboard that made Rourke destroy it.’

‘Is there anything that would justify killing the helpless crew of a disabled ship?’

‘A substance that could, I don’t know, destroy the galaxy? Wipe out all life in a ten light-year radius?’ Her throat tightened. ‘Even then, I don’t know if that would justify it unless someone had their finger on the button, or…’ She scrubbed her face with her hands. ‘This is ridiculous. It’s a total hypothetical. We have no idea why Rourke gave that order.’

‘You sound like you regret what we did.’ When she drew her hands down her face, Rhade was on his feet, stood before the forcefield. ‘Your duty isn’t to Captain Rourke. Your duty is to that uniform. We’re Starfleet. We don’t slaughter people. Even in a time of war, what happened would be a crime.’

‘We don’t…’ She twisted her fingers together. ‘We did nothing. The Erem was still destroyed.’

‘I’m not saying that we kept our hands clean by refusing orders. But all we can control is what’s before us.’

‘I could have fought Valance. Stopped her taking Tactical.’

‘I would have helped you.’

‘I don’t know what we’d have achieved. A damned brawl on the bridge. Forcing everyone to pick sides. You don’t come back from that.’ She didn’t know if they came back from this, either.

‘If you think you only took half a step, Lieutenant – that you should have obeyed orders or physically fought your commanding officer – that’s too simple,’ Rhade rumbled. ‘You would be sat here doubting yourself if you had enacted violence against your superiors. You would be sat in your quarters doubting yourself if you had obeyed. No path through this was clear.’

‘You make it sound clear,’ she spat. ‘Duty and uniform, like Starfleet is only bright lights and shining smiles.’ Trapped and uncertain, it was easier to be angry, and Rhade was the only possible target.

It was more maddening that he stayed calm. ‘I know that’s not all Starfleet is. But it’s what Starfleet should be, and it’s what I’ll fight for. I don’t pretend I have your experiences, Lieutenant, but I dare say the time you’ve spent among some of the most desperate souls of the galaxy gives you more insight than I on how the galaxy should be. It’s a lifelong work.’

She shot to her feet. ‘Keep sounding like a first year Academy ethics booklet and I’m going to bribe Lieutenant Vakkis to let me into your cell so I can feed you your perfect teeth.’

Again, Rhade lifted his hands in mollification. ‘I’ll let you rest, Lieutenant. No doubt the captain will be with us soon.’

‘Soon’ turned out to be another four hours. Kharth was on her back on the brig bunk, arm across her face, and was jerked from her reverie by the footsteps and the hum of the deactivation of the forcefield. She looked up to see Brig Officer Vakkis by the controls and Captain Rourke entering her cell, the forcefield reactivated once he was inside. From the higher intensity of the field’s hum, she realised it was blocking out sound, too, letting them speak in private.

Mindful that Rhade could at least see from across the way, she tried to not shrink into herself as she stood and looked at Rourke’s blank expression. ‘Captain. Is the mission -’

‘I don’t think we should pretend the success of our mission is your priority, Lieutenant,’ came his low, flat voice.

‘I mean the King Arthur.’ That had been a background tension since the runabout had launched, like a muscle twitching in the back of her mind she hadn’t realised hurt until she spoke. ‘I don’t expect a debriefing, sir, but did they… are they alright?’

He scowled. ‘They’ll be fine. They’re in Sickbay after heavy rad exposure, because they did their damned jobs. You should worry about yourself.’

Relief brought at least the smallest flash of clarity. She straightened. ‘Then I need you to know, Captain: I didn’t refuse your order because it was an Imperial ship or a Romulan crew. This wasn’t about my loyalty to Starfleet.’

‘It was about your loyalty to Starfleet,’ he said with a blink, then after a moment added, ‘But I didn’t think it was because you had a higher loyalty to your species or a foreign government.’

‘I won’t pretend it didn’t make things worse. But that’s…’ Kharth hesitated. ‘Not the point.’ And because she was a hypocrite, she drew a deep breath and said, ‘Fifty-three people -’

‘I know.’ The shoulders of her bear of a captain squared. ‘I have an entirely different conversation to have with Rhade soon. But you? You knew this mission was classified, you knew this mission had high stakes -’

‘I knew nothing, sir, that explained or justified anything we’ve done the past few days,’ she said, frowning. ‘I knew you had orders from Command and I knew you took this very seriously. But if you think that I knew better than Lieutenant Rhade, you have an entirely different idea of how you’ve communicated any of this.’

‘I have followed regulations.’ He jabbed an indignant finger at her. ‘I have told you as much as I was permitted by Starfleet directives. You didn’t put on that uniform simply to follow orders when it was easy -’

‘If someone else tries to tell me what this uniform means to me, my head is going to explode, sir, I mean it!’ That was not an outburst she’d intended, and it took Rourke visibly aback.

But it had broken the spell between them, the formality and the tension that had them speaking at cross-purposes. Rourke looked down for a moment, and while she still couldn’t easily read his face, his eyes looked more like his own when his gaze rose. ‘Let’s start this again,’ he said. ‘And you explain to me what happened.’

Kharth stared at the bulkhead and sighed. ‘I don’t know why you gave those orders. But it’d be wrong for me to pretend I made a measured, considered decision to disobey. You said it, I couldn’t believe it, and I froze. And the more you pushed, the more Valance pushed, the more all I could do was dig my heels in.’ She looked back at him, large and tense and unreadable, and somehow she wanted to reassure him.

No, that wasn’t it. She wanted him, even if he was disappointed or furious or unforgiving, to understand. ‘I don’t know if you could have said anything to make me follow that order. Disobeying you wasn’t rational. I don’t mean I regret it or I’d take it back, I mean that first it was an instinct, and then it was in my bones.’ She’d spent the last weeks feeling like she was choking on her own choices, but now she was drowning, and sank onto the brig’s bunk. ‘I know you have given me so many chances, sir…’

‘This isn’t about you and me,’ Rourke rumbled, not looking at her. ‘Or if it is, the burden of blame is on me because I couldn’t make you take a leap of faith and believe in my orders, or compel you to follow even if you didn’t.’

That was a fresh wave of suffocation, and she shook her head, staring at the deck. ‘I disobeyed Airex on Teros. I negotiated with the Rebirth against his instructions to get T’Sann’s transponder off them, and for personal information. I’d told them we’d leave Teros, leave all those people to suffer under the Rebirth’s boot, if they gave us what we wanted. I don’t know why Airex covered for me.’

Silence met her words, Rourke’s eventual reply confused and thoughtful. ‘And now he’s leaving.’

She jolted upright. ‘What?’

Once, Rourke might have looked guilty or stunned for this accidental reveal. But now his gaze was blank as he regarded her. ‘We’re withdrawing from Teros completely. As soon as the relief station is packed up, we’re gone for Starbase 23, where Commander Airex will be leaving Endeavour. By his own request.’ Even as she reeled, he didn’t stop, straightening. ‘But you have other worries, Lieutenant. You have two choices: stand by your insubordination, and hope you have something better to say for yourself in a court martial than “it was in my bones.” Or you and I accept what happened on the bridge was screwed up, and you and Rhade walk out of here with slaps on the wrist.’

It was a lifeline and a gift, a chance to have not torpedoed her career, her life, and everything she had, but all she could do was stare at him and utter, numb, ‘Dav’s leaving? We’re leaving?’

It was possible there was pity in his eyes, but she didn’t think she recognised much of the Matthew Rourke stood before her. ‘I’ll give you the night to consider your options. Both you and Rhade will have to agree, of course,’ he said, cold once again.

‘It won’t take us that long to dismantle our relief station.’ She shot to her feet. ‘If we’re leaving the moment that’s done…’

‘I expect we’ll be at warp before you’re out, yes.’ He turned for the forcefield, signalled for Lieutenant Vakkis to let him out. ‘Be satisfied with the allowances you’re getting, Lieutenant.’

She had barely talked to Caleste, Caleste’s mother, to any of the others. She’d waited, afraid and guilty, thinking she could go back once Starfleet had helped the district, proved itself worthy of their trust, proved herself worthy of their trust. But Starfleet was leaving, the job half-finished, and she would disappear once again, this time without even saying goodbye. Leave them again.

And now Dav was leaving, too.

‘Sir.’ Rourke had stepped through the lowered forcefield, and she followed him a step before Vakkis gave her the most tense look of warning she’d ever received from one of her own staff. ‘Sir, give me an hour on the surface before we go, please.’

He waited until the forcefield was back up before he looked back, gaze cold. ‘I think I’ve done you enough favours, Lieutenant. We’ll talk tomorrow.’ Then he turned to enter Rhade’s cell, all sound cutting off as the forcefield was raised behind him for his conversation with the Betazoid lieutenant, and any further pleas fell only on the implacable shape of Lieutenant Vakkis as he walked away.

* *

‘Do you have – put it over there -’ The relief hub on Teros had retracted to nothing but the main hut by the time Drake ducked through its front door. Inside was a storm of activity with Thawn at its eye, nearly rotating on the spot as she issued swift instructions to the hurrying officers.

She stopped at the sight of him, her recent habit of freezing with cautious guilt every time they met reasserting itself. ‘Oh. Lieutenant. You’re early.’

‘I’m not, you’re just late,’ he said, hands on his hips as he surveyed the packing. ‘They’re loading up the King Arthur outside, but I guess you’re not done in here yet?’

Thawn winced. ‘I’m sorry. We were -’ She hesitated. ‘We ran past the deadline before we stopped providing rations and support. There were children, Drake.’

‘Why does everyone think they have to justify themselves to me?’ He shrugged. ‘Take it up with the captain. He’s super forgiving right now.’

The gibe restored some fire to her, at least, and she rolled her eyes. ‘If you’re waiting on us, then, can you go check in with Commander Cortez’s team at the replimat? They asked for an extra pair of hands.’

‘Fine,’ he grumbled, but had only half-turned before he paused. ‘You been down to see Rhade?’

The guilty tension returned to her. ‘No? I’ve been busy.’

‘The dude’s your betrothed or whatever. You should probably see him when you’re done.’ He didn’t know why he was encouraging her. But the only thing worse than being guilty at him about her life was being incompetent while she was at it.

She looked down at her PADD. ‘Yes. Fine,’ said Thawn after a moment. Then she glanced up. ‘That was… tense. On the bridge.’

‘Way above my grade to stick my neck out like those two did. That’s on them.’

‘You don’t care?’

‘I care. But nothing I can do about it.’ Drake sighed. ‘You really need to get better at accepting the things you can’t make a difference over.’

Her chin tilted up a little snootily. ‘I think that shows a lack of imagination.’

He rolled his eyes. ‘Right, I’m out of here. Try to be packed up by the time I’m back with the engineers. That’s something you can imagine getting done, right?’

Drake didn’t wait for her pithy reply as he headed out the door, the heat of Teros hitting him in a wave. It made his frustration at her simmer, not fade, and so he shoved his hands in his pockets and headed past the palisade and into Sanctuary District A at a steady pace.

Had he been stewing less, he might have noticed the ripple of tension down the streets. The residents moving in small, hurried groups the opposite direction to him. Connor Drake had grown up on New Sydney, and he should have known better.

But his awareness only swam back in at the buzz of his combadge, the tense voice of Ensign Forrester coming across. ‘Replimat team to all hands; we’ve got a bit of a situation here. Locals don’t want us to leave and they’re getting rowdy.’ He frowned, looking up the road, and now he could see clusters of the people of Teros, the wave of a crowd on the verge of something – but what, even they probably didn’t know. His combadge chatter carried on.

‘Forrester; Juarez. Hang tight, I’m bringing a Security team to you.’

‘We’re on the move already, so, ah, if it’s all the same to you, Security, we’re going to keep moving unless we find somewhere to hunker down.’

Drake hit his combadge. ‘This is Drake; I’m halfway there anyway. I’ll double-time it.’

He broke into a jog, which only drew more attention than his red uniform and human features already had. More and more as he hurried down the streets he was rushing with the crowd, not against it, and for all his dismissive commentary to Thawn, he could feel the apprehension rise in his throat.

Nobody should have been surprised that the people of Teros viewed Endeavour’s withdrawal as another betrayal, another abandonment. Starfleet had promised help only to snatch it away, the job left half-finished. Even Forrester’s work on the industrial replicator was less than the original plan for maintenance and repair. With most eyes and attention on the ship, Drake was not shocked the situation had got out of hand.

But it was worse than he’d thought. The roar of a crowd met him at a corner, and he rounded it to see a mob atop the half-dozen engineers. A verbal confrontation had turned to a blockade, and as he ran forward he saw Forrester try to push past the furious Romulans before she was shoved back. Someone in the crowd, Romulan or Starfleet, threw a punch.

The storm broke.

Now Drake wasn’t running towards a confrontation, but an all-out brawl. Forrester had swung her toolkit into a Romulan’s gut to drive them back, a petty officer was wrestling another refugee away as they tried to push to her side. And by the wall of a prefab shelter, Drake saw an engineer he didn’t recognise get slammed into the metal before he went down under a flurry of kicks and punches.

‘Hey!’ He had a phaser, but that was an escalation. So Drake ploughed empty-handed into the mob, grabbing Romulans by their shirts to pull them back, forcing his way through to the knot of violence that had descended upon the downed engineer.

It was an outburst of fury, a simmer of frustration that had reached boiling point. Had there been more design to the Romulans’ confrontation, they might have brought weapons, blades, some of the few disruptors on the planet. But there had been no plan, so almost every Romulan beating the fallen engineer did so with kicks and punches. Drake hauled one of those unarmed Romulans back, shoved away another, and turned to face the next shadow that fell over him in the roiling chaos of the melee.

Which was when the solid metal pipe grabbed in desperation caved in his skull.

‘I understand perfectly,’ said Adamant Rhade with a calmness that on any other day would have made Matt Rourke want to put him through a wall. ‘I just cannot accept.’

But today, Matt Rourke was treating every emotional blow as a dull buzz, and so he stared across the brig cell at his Officer of the Watch without expression. ‘You may not understand what motivated my decisions, Lieutenant, but they were legal. A court martial will find you disobeyed the orders of your commanding officer in a crisis, and the consequences will come accordingly.’

Rhade sat on the brig bunk, hands in his lap, but his gaze met Rourke’s without hesitation. ‘If Starfleet wishes to stand by those orders and wants to say I was wrong – insubordinate, mutinous, treasonous, whatever it may be – then Starfleet may say so loudly and publicly.’

The first real feeling to hit Rourke since he’d ordered the destruction of the Erem sank in, and only because it was familiar: the same sinking helplessness. ‘If I court martial you, I have to court martial Lieutenant Kharth.’

‘And I’m saddened if Lieutenant Kharth regrets her choices and would take your offer for this entire appalling situation to be swept away. But I believe what I did was right, and that she was right to oppose you, Captain. Suggesting the consequences are my fault is low and manipulative. A lot of things led us here.’

Somewhere inside the emptiness within him, Rourke could hear a small voice raging: You stupid man, you’ll get both of you ruined for nothing. You have no idea what was at stake. But the only response that came was Beckett’s words echoing in him: Being more confident in that big stick might have made your crew obey you and the Romulans fear you.

‘I don’t have to press charges yet,’ he said instead, and stepped towards the forcefield as Lieutenant Vakkis approached to escort him out. ‘I’ll let you reflect.’

The second real feeling to hit Rourke since he’d ordered the destruction of the Erem came twenty seconds later, as he emerged from the brig and into the bowels of the ship, and Commander Valance’s voice came over the comms to summon him to Sickbay.

His first thought was of Airex and Cortez; perhaps Sadek had been wrong in her diagnosis, perhaps they had succumbed to the high dosages of theta radiation their bodies still battled. He used an emergency override to summon the turbolift, and raced to Sickbay to find he had an entirely new disaster on his hands.

Half a dozen of his engineers sat on biobeds, medical personnel attending to their wounds. He saw vicious cuts and broken bones and more superficial signs of a fight beside, but it was past them he walked, towards the biobed Valance stood beside. ‘What happened?’ Then he saw Thawn sat before them, covered in blood. ‘Lieutenant…’

She was pale, her dark eyes fixed on a point beyond him, but still she spoke in a low, distant voice. ‘I’m fine. It’s not mine.’

Valance turned to him, tense. ‘The locals protested our withdrawal and tried to blockade the engineering team from pulling out. I’m still piecing together what happened, but it turned violent.’ She hesitated, but pressed on before he could speak. ‘Lieutenant Drake arrived on the scene when the fighting was ongoing. It seems the locals were mostly unarmed – it seems this wasn’t planned, but a confrontation that escalated – but he took a blow to the head with something.’

Rourke’s eyes raced across the Sickbay, and his heart sank as he didn’t spot Drake or Sadek. ‘Where is he?’

Valance nodded to the operating room, but Thawn piped up again, still staring at nothing. ‘I think he’s dead. I know head wounds bleed a lot. But I think he’s dead. I think he was dead when I got there.’

‘It’s not good,’ Valance confirmed quietly. ‘Lieutenant Juarez was able to restore control and we’ve withdrawn everyone and our gear from the surface, now.’

What might have been a flame of anger in Rourke, once, was now like a match trying to spark. He still scowled. ‘We need to find who did this.’

‘Sir, I don’t know -’

‘We did,’ came Thawn’s numb voice. ‘We said we’d help them again. Then we stopped. Again. I was there when Security arrived. People ran. People stared. They were scared. Horrified. But of course they hate us. We made all these promises, then we abandoned them again.’ At last she looked up at Rourke, and he couldn’t see much behind those dark eyes. ‘We did this.’

Horror stirred in his gut. ‘There is every reason to hold me accountable for the withdrawal from Teros,’ Rourke accepted slowly. ‘But we didn’t cause a riot.’

The door to the operating room slid open, and Sadek walked out wearing scrubs and a blank expression. Rourke felt Valance and Thawn tense beside him, hope and fear alike twisting them in the wind, but he’d known Aisha Sadek too long to do anything but give a pained sigh. ‘He’s gone.’

Strength was fading from Sadek’s posture as she nodded. ‘He took a serious blow to the head, causing brain damage, internal bleeding, and cerebral edema. That very quickly restricted his blood flow. I expect it was too late by the time anyone got to him. He was brain-dead already when he was beamed up.’ She shook her head as she stepped towards Thawn, reaching a hand for her shoulder. ‘I’m sorry. Lieutenant Drake is dead.’

Thawn jerked up at once, hands up. ‘No – he’s not -’

Valance winced. ‘I’m sorry, Lieutenant, but this is the -’

‘That’s not what I mean – of course he’s dead.’ Thawn’s voice went up a frantic pitch. ‘And I got to him first and I got him beamed out and I’m covered in his blood, but please, all of you, stop acting like he’s my loss.’

Again, came the final unspoken word Rourke heard as he exchanged a glance with Valance. ‘You’re still off-duty for the day, at least, Lieutenant,’ he said. ‘Let Athaka handle the final stages of the relief op.’

‘There is no relief op,’ she said quietly. ‘Just unpacking everything we’ve brought back. Athaka can manage it.’ She paused a moment, then blinked, and while her eyes fell on him, he wasn’t really sure she was seeing him. ‘I expect Lieutenant Rhade is still in the brig?’

‘Yes.’ Rourke hesitated. Then he remembered Admiral Beckett’s words, and he straightened. ‘Due to the nature of the mission, he can still avoid a court martial. These were extreme circumstances. But that will require him to accept disciplinary action from me and not contest it – to accept fault and not push for a public tribunal. He’s being stubborn.’ Normally, he might have waited, might not have pushed Rhade’s betrothed while she navigated a fresh grief. But his normal behaviour had seen his crew turn on him once.

‘Oh,’ said Thawn, then she nodded. ‘I guess I’ll clean up and then tell him to pull himself together.’

She left, and Rourke turned back to see Valance studying the bulkhead as Sadek stared at him. ‘What the hell, Matt?’ snapped the doctor. ‘Her friend all but died in her arms and you’re telling her to -’

‘Time is not on our side here, Doctor,’ Rourke said sharply. ‘If there’s a way through without ruining the lives and careers of Kharth and Rhade, so much the better.’

Sadek watched him a moment. Then she nodded. ‘As you say, Captain. I’ll get back to patching up your engineers.’

He didn’t hide his scowl as she left, and turned to Valance. ‘Make sure we pulled everything from the surface – or if there’s anything we left we have a prayer of getting back.’

‘The withdrawal was quick,’ she said, ‘but I think we have everything important. Anything else will be into the district by now. Sir, we’re not going to find who did this.’

‘I know,’ Rourke grumbled. ‘I’ll inform Command, and prepare a letter for his next of kin. A brother, I think?’

‘And his father,’ said Valance, the two exchanging an awkward glance at how little they knew one of their own. ‘I’ll have Carraway keep an eye on Thawn. But, sir – are you really going to release Kharth and Rhade?’

‘If they see sense and let me, I’m authorised to.’ He shook his head. ‘Commander, I knew the crew will be tense. Our mission was unpopular, unclear, and Lieutenant Drake was well-liked. But that’s no excuse for things to slip, and this crisis isn’t over. I want discipline aboard tight, do you hear? No more quiet sit-downs and understanding looks for screw-ups. We barely got through this.’

‘The lieutenants made the choice to disobey. That’s not on you.’

‘Everything that happens on this ship is on me. Inform Get Harkon running Drake’s shifts, but I expect that to be temporary, Endeavour needs a pilot with more experience. As soon as we’re done on the surface, we’re returning to Starbase 23. Report to the bridge and get us underway.’

Valance left, and Rourke looked to Sadek, tending rather deliberately to the battered and bruised engineers. On another day, another time, he would have stopped to speak with them. But he had a more pressing matter to attend to, and departed for the crew quarters on Deck 2.

Davir Airex looked pale, tired, and suspicious when he let Rourke into his quarters. ‘Captain. What can I do for you?’

Airex had lived in these rooms for almost four years, Rourke mused as he looked around. They were tastefully decorated, reflecting the Trill’s long life, his training as an anthropologist, a stylish demonstration of an interest in a thousand worlds and peoples. ‘Once you’re feeling better,’ said Rourke, gaze trailing about the decor, ‘you should pack.’

‘Sir?’

‘Admiral Beckett wants you on his advisory staff for the Omega Crisis. Probably in large part because you already have clearance to know about the Directive.’ Rourke turned to him. ‘Endeavour is headed for Starbase 23. You’ll leave us there.’

Airex’s expression folded to a slow, thoughtful frown, then he nodded. ‘Thank you, sir. That suits me very well.’

‘Thank the admiral. And yourself; he read about your role in destroying Omega in my report.’ Rourke shifted his weight. ‘You did very well.’

‘Cortez deserves recognition,’ Airex said quickly. ‘She was level-headed, decisive, and logical despite having incomplete knowledge. I expect I’d be dead without her.’

I do need a new second officer, thought Rourke, before immediately rejecting that option as he considered the risks of letting Valance and Cortez team up against him in command decisions. ‘Your assessment of Lieutenant Veldman has been that she’s fit to replace you?’ he said instead, moving on.

‘She’s a capable scientist,’ Airex confirmed. ‘Smart, organised, a good team leader. She’s never been afraid to speak up when she disagrees with me.’ That made him hesitate, and his shoulders straightened. ‘Sir, what’s to happen to Kharth and Rhade?’

‘Nobody wants a court martial for attempted mutiny drawing attention to the irregularities of the Omega Directive. If they accept that, then they’ll return to duty with no more than a misdemeanour on their records.’ Rourke hesitated. Airex was leaving anyway. ‘I don’t want Kharth drummed out of the service any more than you do.’

‘She’s stubborn,’ he said moodily. ‘I would appreciate it if you could make sure she doesn’t self-sabotage. She excels at that.’

Rourke frowned as he regarded him, this man who had been a thorn in his side throughout their time together, who had always thought he’d known best. Until Omega. ‘I’ll look after her,’ he said at length. ‘If I can. If she lets me.’

‘And Karana,’ Airex pressed on, honest now the flood-gates had opened. ‘You won her respect and that’s not easy. Especially when she took against you in the first instance.’

‘Of course I will. They’re my crew,’ said Rourke, and swallowed bitterness as he thought of them on his bridge, defying him.

But when control returned to Airex’s gaze, he said, ‘You were right to destroy the Erem, sir, from Commander Valance’s retelling. If the Romulan Empire is bold enough to want Omega but not in their own borders, who knows what might have happened? And where? They left you no choice.’

Rourke’s lips twisted, and he glared at the spinning shape of Teros IV beyond Airex’s window, a world stained with the life-blood of Connor Drake, and soon to be abandoned so they could all look after a greater good. ‘No,’ he said at length. ‘No, I reckon there’s always a choice.’

Airex shifted at that. ‘Then yours was correct. Just because people can’t see the whole picture, understand even when you’re protecting them, protecting everyone… that doesn’t make you wrong.’

‘Is that for me?’ Rourke looked at him. ‘Or for yourself, and all those choices none of us understand?’

But the Trill’s expression remained level, even as regret creased the corners of his eyes. ‘There are more important things than being able to live with ourselves, Captain. It’s selfish to put our own peace of mind first. You killed fifty people to save hundreds of thousands. Perhaps it will haunt you, yes. But what are more ghosts of our past compared to securing the future and happiness of those we care about?’

They regarded one another, the two men at odds until the galaxy tried to tear itself asunder, parting ways before any true accord could be found. At last, Rourke stuck his hand out. ‘You’ve served Endeavour with distinction for years, Commander. It’s been an honour all these months. And I couldn’t have got through this crisis without you.’

Airex sighed. ‘Then my latest regret is leaving you to shoulder it all yourself. After all, Captain.’ He reached out to shake Rourke’s hand. ‘This isn’t over.’