The picture was wonky, and he’d only just noticed.

In Rourke’s defence, he’d had a lot more on his mind than his ready room’s décor. Every time he’d sat behind his desk, something had felt off. Considering he’d only recently been busted out of a Romulan prison camp and the Star Empire still wanted his head for the deaths of fifty-three of their people, and that this was a mere sideshow to his pressing command concerns, he’d assumed this was a relatively normal feeling and would pass. Only now, with Endeavour at a gentle repose back in Federation territory, within the air-space of Starbase 23, did he realise this was not some lingering vestige of misplaced adrenaline. Wanderer above the Sea of Fog had been jolted, probably in the battle above Tagrador, and needed straightening. But no matter how many times he nudged it and stepped back, it wasn’t quite right.

This was how Ensign Arys and his stack of PADDs found him, and the young officer hesitated in the ready room door when he found his captain glowering at a painting. ‘Sir?’

‘Hang on.’ Rourke advanced to adjust the frame a micron. ‘Is that better?’

‘I don’t know what… better is…’

‘Is it straight?’

Arys frowned and moved to a better angle. ‘I think so.’

Rourke stepped back and surveyed his work. Then scowled. ‘That’s how it bloody was originally.’

‘Isn’t that what you want, sir?’

‘I mean when I started, not originally originally -’ He stopped himself and clicked his fingers. ‘Never mind. Glad you stopped by, Arys; wanted to talk to you ahead of the meeting.’

‘Oh, yes, sir, the meeting -’

‘This is important,’ Rourke pressed on a little obliviously, going to his desk and opening a drawer. ‘Because I’ve been mistreating you, frankly.’

That made Arys shut up about anything he was about to say, brow furrowing with his dutiful mixture of suspicion and disbelief that a superior would do such a thing. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘You were, what, fourth in your class at the Academy? Blazingly good recommendations, command track and all that, and were put on this ship to learn directly under Leo MacCallister. The sort of posting where you could stand at the captain’s side and watch what he did, watch how he made decisions, and get your hands right into the guts of how command works.’ Rourke straightened. ‘Then you got me.’

‘I feel you’re about to sell yourself short, sir,’ said Arys, a little obsequiously. Then he added, ‘Third. I was third in my class.’

‘My point is that I didn’t set time aside to mentor you like MacCallister did. I didn’t involve you in staff meetings like he did, I didn’t send you off to learn from department heads like he did. I used you like any yeoman I’ve had, and had you push paper for me. You’ve been wasted for the last few months, so you’re not my yeoman any more.’

His face fell. ‘You’re reassigning me?’

‘Sort of,’ said Rourke, and pulled a small box out of his drawer and set it on the desk in front of Arys.

Arys stared at it like it might explode. ‘Sir?’

‘You’re a bright lad; yes, that’s exactly what you think it is. Way I see it, you’ve spent enough time watching. Next step in you rocketing your way to captain is doing.’ Rourke nodded him to the box. ‘You’ve been doing the past few weeks – Jhorkesh, Tagrador. You’ve been stepping up.’

With anxious reverence, Arys picked up the box and opened it to see the gleaming rank pip. ‘I don’t understand. Jhorkesh was a mess.’

‘I was wrong to give you the Hazard Team at a time like this. But I needed someone I could rely on, and chose you without thinking. What I should have done was recognise that I do trust your judgement and your skills, and figured out the best place for you.’ Rourke rested his hand on the desk and leaned down to meet the young officer’s apprehensive gaze. ‘I don’t want you managing my schedule any more, Lieutenant Arys. I want you to be my new Chief Flight Control Officer.’

In his surprise, Arys snapped the box shut. ‘But – Helm? What about Harkon?’

‘Harkon’s not ready. Harkon wants to fly shuttles, not worry about schedules, flight navigation, and bridge operations for a whole starship. She’s an excellent pilot – but so are you. You know what you also are? An excellent manager and bridge officer.’ Rourke nodded at the box. ‘You want to be a captain? This is your next step, part of my senior staff, learning by doing and answering directly to me and Commander Valance.’ He hesitated. ‘Or, if you want, I’ll give you a glowing recommendation for a different assignment, but the promotion’s yours anyway; you’ve passed all tests and it’s due.’

‘No!’ His grip tightened. ‘That is – yes, sir, I accept. Thank you.’

Rourke’s face split into a craggy grin. ‘Great! Do me a favour, though, and still pop down to the transporter room and get our guests to the meeting -’

‘The meeting.’ Arys at once looked horrified. ‘Oh no, sir, I’m sorry – that was what I came in for. The meeting’s been relocated from Endeavour to Conference Room Alpha-7 on 23.’

Rourke’s expression fell. ‘On whose say-so?’

‘First Secretary Hale -’

‘She’s transmitting in, she can bloody do that to anywhere!’ Rourke snatched up his PADDs. ‘Shit, it’s in about five minutes. Comm Valance and Beckett, tell them to meet me in Transporter Room 2, and book us a transport onto the station -’

It was not how Rourke had intended Tar’lek Arys’s last formal duties as his yeoman to go, but ceremony was abandoned as he fled the ready room and almost ran into Nate Beckett when the turbolift doors opened to admit him to the bridge. ‘Turnabout, Nate, we’re meeting on the starbase.’

Beckett had been all nonchalance, PADDs under his arm and a cup of coffee in hand, but he spun on the spot to follow. ‘Shit, I mean, yes, sir, sorry -’

‘Nope, you’ve got it to rights,’ Rourke grumbled as the turbolift whisked them down through the belly of the ship. ‘Bloody bureaucrats.’

Beckett looked at his steaming mug. It was one thing to bring that to a meeting; another thing to rush to a conference room with it. ‘Shit,’ he muttered again, and began to drain the mug, turning red as he did so. ‘Ow.’

‘Just – put it down and leave it, Nate, God’s sake.’

‘In the lift?’

‘I’m the captain; I give you permission to litter. Better than you pouring it all over your uniform and scalding yourself before the briefing. You’d look a right state.’

‘And it’d hurt,’ Beckett said petulantly. ‘You’d care about that, too, right, sir?’

Rourke had left that question judiciously unanswered when they made it to the transporter room, Valance already waiting for them with a bemused gaze. ‘Why are we now late for a meeting we’re hosting?’ she asked impatiently.

‘Take it up with First Secretary Hale,’ Rourke muttered. ‘Let’s just go.’

Despite being an ageing outpost and one of the last stops of Federation infrastructure and defence before the border to the Romulan Star Empire, Starbase 23 still boasted facilities that were at least larger and grander, if not necessarily more modern, than Endeavour. But Rourke still wasn’t sure why they were forced to beam over, rush through the busy crowds of officers and key personnel, when he expected this to be a meeting of a mere half-dozen.

It meant they were tardier than he appreciated before he and his two officers burst into the meeting room and found three people already there – and, much to his irritation, no sign of a subspace connection from their representative of the Diplomatic Service. ‘Sorry, everyone,’ he grumbled as he bustled to the conference table, Valance and Beckett flanking him. ‘Bloody unnecessary last-second switch-up from Hale meant we had to rush over…’

He’d focused on the two Romulan officers in Republic uniforms, the guests he’d expected to receive on Endeavour, and paid little mind to the figure bent over PADDs at the far end of the table who he’d assumed was a Diplomatic Service busybody sorting the subspace connection.

So when First Secretary Hale herself straightened with a tight smile, he fair jumped out of his skin. ‘My apologies this took you by surprise, Captain. I hadn’t been sure I’d make it to SB23 in time, but once I realised I would, I notified your yeoman of the rearrangement.’

Commander Vorena of the Romulan Republic gave them a polite incline of the head. ‘It is only a few minutes, Captain. We appreciate the chance to be received here on 23.’

Hale nodded as she sat back down. ‘I thought I’d give our guests the chance to stretch their legs before the expedition,’ she said, and gestured to Rourke and his officers to sit down with an air Rourke felt rather peremptory. He’d anticipated being the host, managing matters between the Republic and a diplomat, and so was rather wrong-footed as he sank into a chair across from the officers, Hale at the head. ‘You know Commander Vorena; let me introduce Commander Astorn. These are the warbird commanders the Republic has been kind enough to dispatch.’

‘I should warn you that my government’s agreement to this expedition remains provisional, First Secretary, Captain,’ said Vorena. ‘You still have to satisfy us of your findings.’

‘As with Endeavour’s visit to Arcidava, your government’s agreed to grant Starfleet access within your borders in this state of emergency,’ said Rourke, trying to not be impatient. He had felt these elementary points had already been decided. ‘That’s not an issue anyone here – except maybe the First Secretary – has authority to debate.’

‘In principal,’ confirmed Vorena. She was a rather short, unassuming-looking Romulan woman, who had less of the military bearing Rourke had come to expect of Romulan naval officers. But then, the Republic was a different beast. ‘And a fact-finding visit to Arcidava is very different to an incursion into the Velorum Nebula.’

First Secretary Hale lifted a hand. ‘Perhaps we can begin the briefing,’ she said gently, ‘and argue about words like “incursion” afterwards?’

‘Right.’ Rourke turned in his chair. ‘Mr Beckett?’

Ensign Beckett hopped to his feet with a hint of nervous energy. ‘Yes, ah – let me get my presentation on this system. I was ready to brief in our conference room.’ Rourke tried to not die inside as the young officer made more of a pig’s ear of the process than was necessary; in practice, it took an extra few seconds of tapping commands on his PADD to get the display before them all showing what he’d wanted, but Beckett did it with enough fussing to seem out of his depth even on that point.

‘Okay, so,’ Beckett began professionally, waggling his PADD. ‘There’s been a joint commitment from the Federation and the Republic to identify and secure sites of the old Tkon Empire. Endeavour received records from the Fae Diwan monastery on Arcidava, which we’ve since gathered the complete set for: a series of star maps depicting the progressive movement of a star system from the same original cluster as the Horizon system. While Horizon was moved outside of our galaxy, this other system – which we’ve referred to as “Ephrath” – appears to have been finally placed in the Velorum Nebula. Of course, due to the nature of the nebula, it’s going to be impossible to confirm that without going there.’

Commander Vorena leaned forward, eyes narrowing. ‘You say you had to find the complete set of star maps. How sure are you that they are complete? That it was once in the nebula, and since moved?’

‘We don’t just have an isolated series of image files containing star maps,’ said Beckett, blunter and looking like he thought this was obvious. ‘We have multiple Tkon file databases, including the collection depicting the movement of Ephrath. After comparing the metadata to that of confirmed completed file collections, I can assert with some confidence that the Velorum map is the last in a complete series of files.’

‘And that’s your assessment, Ensign,’ said Vorena, with just the slightest emphasis on his junior rank.

Beckett straightened. ‘My assessment as a qualified A&A officer, and the assessment of Endeavour’s operations chief and information management expert Lieutenant Thawn, translated by our linguistics officer Lieutenant Lindgren, and compared to findings on the Tkon examined and ratified by top minds at the Daystrom Institute and Starfleet Research. Yeah. Obviously a lot of things might have happened in hundreds of thousands of years, but I have a high degree of confidence in this conclusion.’

Rourke smothered a smirk as Vorena settled down at this. It was her job to be cynical, but it was his job to be pleased with his officer. He leaned forward. ‘As commander of Endeavour and the operation to find Ephrath, I will support the conclusions of my senior staff,’ he confirmed.

Vorena sighed. ‘So long as you’re sure, all of you. This is a considerable risk for a hunch.’

Valance straightened at that. ‘I assume you speak of the political risks. We can manage navigation of the nebula.’

‘The Velorum Nebula is formally unclaimed,’ said Hale, and all eyes fell on the diplomat as she finally weighed in. ‘It lies between Republic and Imperial space, and neither government has any confirmed infrastructure or defences within. But of course, the Romulan Star Empire maintains that all former imperial territory is theirs, which ostensibly includes the nebula. The Federation would be in violation of no treaties or territorial claims it recognises by sending a Starfleet ship through Republic space – with permission and escort – and into the nebula, but the Star Empire may have a different interpretation.’

‘And especially,’ said Vorena, ‘if that ship is the USS Endeavour.’

Hale shook her head. ‘The Romulan Star Empire’s opinions of starship captains does not determine Starfleet operational decisions.’

‘It should perhaps influence Federation diplomatic ones.’ Vorena turned to Rourke. ‘The Romulan Star Empire would like nothing more than to kill you, Captain. It’s one thing for the Republic to aid Starfleet ships entering a nebula directly on their border on which they might suddenly decide to press a territorial claim. It’s another thing entirely for that Starfleet ship to be captained by someone they hate.’

‘In accordance with Starfleet policy,’ said Rourke a little hotly, ‘the mission to find Ephrath and locate Tkon technology in the system is our highest priority. Endeavour has followed this lead so far and is the best-suited ship for such a potentially risky operation.’

‘However,’ pressed Hale, ‘the Diplomatic Service has heard these concerns from the Romulan Republic. We also recognise that once in the Velorum Nebula, outside communications will be difficult. If the Romulan Star Empire do send ships, any commanders in the nebula will have nothing but their own judgement to draw upon in a potentially volatile situation affecting all three governments.’

‘It’s reassuring you recognise that, First Secretary,’ said Vorena, ‘because we keep being told by Starfleet that their Tkon hunt comes first, and not the stability of the Romulan Republic’s interstellar relations. We will help in accordance with our treaties, but we need assurances that our relations with the Empire won’t be damaged by Starfleet’s crisis.’

‘It’s everyone’s crisis,’ Rourke grumbled, but he kept it quiet; he was in no position to point out the extreme risk presented to the galaxy by Omega when he only knew Hale, for certain, had been briefed on it.

‘I will not ask Captain Rourke to compromise the focus of his mission,’ said First Secretary Hale, and Rourke’s heart soared with delighted surprise at the diplomat’s support. Then she spoke on. ‘Which is why I will be accompanying Endeavour and overseeing any diplomatic negotiations with the Republic and, if necessary, the Empire.’

Rourke said, ‘What?’ at the same time Vorena said, ‘Excellent.’

Valance cleared her throat, seeing her captain reeling. ‘We will of course provide the First Secretary with the support she needs,’ she said to both parties, ‘but this will ensure Endeavour can focus on our mission, while the Romulan Republic’s interests are still met by the Federation.’

‘Exactly,’ said Hale politely. ‘So if you’re satisfied with the briefing and with this arrangement, Commanders, we can proceed with the operation as proposed?’

Vorena inclined her head. ‘Then we depart 0900 hours tomorrow?’

Rourke swallowed and nodded. ‘0900 hours.’

The meeting wrapped up from there, the Romulans leaving and Valance taking Beckett with an assurance she would have Endeavour ready to get underway. But First Secretary Hale stayed seated, her polite expression intact, and the two stared at each other until the room emptied.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said at last, ‘for surprising you with that, Captain. It was necessary.’

Rourke sat up. ‘Necessary for you to inflict yourself on this mission -’

‘Necessary for the Republic officers to think that I was prepared to overrule and disagree with you to support their interests,’ Hale said gently. ‘So I did it on a matter I knew wouldn’t be actually contentious. Your first officer had the right of it: this frees you up to worry about finding and repairing a Tkon beacon, while I can worry about peace with the Romulan factions if something goes awry.’

‘You preferred to ambush me,’ said Rourke, ‘than ask me to put on a deliberate theatre for the Republic.’

‘I thought, in the grand scheme of unpleasantness in diplomacy, this was fairly minor.’ Her eyes drifted over him. ‘I hope you’re well after your incarceration, Captain.’

‘Yeah, sorry to make your job harder with getting locked up,’ he grumbled, not very sorry.

First Secretary Hale pursed her lips. ‘That was genuine. I’m not your enemy here, Captain Rourke. I understand you’ve had to deal with much of the Omega Crisis on your own. Me assigning myself to your operation is to try to take the heat off, not to try to overrule or undermine you. The Romulan Star Empire’s dislike of you doesn’t dictate Starfleet operational policy, but that doesn’t mean we ignore it.’

He had, he realised, begun to expect opposition at every turn, and while her ambush in the meeting hadn’t helped, he could understand her tactics. With a sigh, Rourke rested his hands on the conference table and gave a slow nod. ‘I’ll have Commander Valance prepare the VIP quarters for you, First Secretary.’

‘Thank you. And I do apologise for the added inconvenience.’

‘It’s not…’ He swallowed words. ‘I’m happy to work with the Republic. It’ll be easier with you there. But you’re entirely right: my first priority is to find Ephrath, find if it has a beacon, and reconnect that beacon if necessary to the Vanishing Point network. If we can’t do that, a fight with the Romulan Star Empire is the least of our problems.’

‘Then let me, Captain, worry about the Romulans. I’d like to be involved in your staff meetings so I know what decisions are being made if I have to justify or explain them, or even obfuscate them. But as I say, I am not here to overrule you.’ She glanced at the door. ‘Your science officer. Any relation to the Admiral?’

‘His son.’ Rourke gave a gentle snort. ‘Don’t worry, the apple fell far from the tree.’

She set her lips together in a way he thought might be smothering a smile. ‘I thought you and Admiral Beckett went back a ways, Captain? I’ve seen your record.’

‘You’ve known the Admiral long?’ She shook her head, and he smirked. ‘He doesn’t improve on further inspection.’ Then a thought struck him, and Rourke straightened, sobering. ‘I don’t subscribe to his political perspectives, First Secretary. I’ve prioritised the Omega Directive, I’ve prioritised destroying Omega, because of the unimaginable damage to the galaxy at large and the lives of the people who rely on interstellar travel. I’m not putting the Federation, or Federation lives, before anyone else’s.’

He thought he saw her soften at that, and Rourke was reminded that their briefing before Tagrador had consisted largely of Beckett defending his hawkish stance and the extreme necessity of Rourke’s unorthodox operation. Her behaviour began to make a little more sense, if she’d thought she might be dealing with a loyalist of Admiral Beckett.

‘Good,’ said First Secretary Hale gently. ‘Because if conflict breaks out between the Romulan Star Empire and… anyone, really, I don’t think Federation citizens are the first who’ll be endangered. It’ll be the people living in the borders and cracks of the old empire who take the brunt of it. We didn’t look out for them before. I’m not inclined to see history repeat itself.’

That eased some of the tension in his chest, even as it sent a ripple of guilt through him at a reminder of how he had been a bull in a china shop, defying and antagonising the Star Empire under the justifications of the Omega Directive. He cleared his throat. ‘I should let you get to business, and you should get settled aboard Endeavour as soon as possible, First Secretary. But you are still a representative of the Diplomatic Service, and we have something of a journey to Ephrath. Once we’re underway, we should have dinner. With my command staff, that is.’ It was the appropriate thing to do with such a guest, and he had no real justification to abandon etiquette on a long trip.

First Secretary Hale gave a smile that looked rather more genuine than any of the tight courtesies of the meeting thus far. ‘Thank you, Captain. I look forward to it. I think we might need as many pleasant evenings as we can manage if the Romulan Star Empire does decide to take umbrage to our presence in the nebula.’

‘Or,’ Rourke said before he could stop himself, ‘we find something really bloody terrible the Tkon left behind at Ephrath.’

‘Listen,’ said Kharth as she pulled her uniform jacket on. ‘This was fun, but I’ve got a meeting with the boss.’

Zharek was still stretched out under the bedsheets, sleepier and more languid at this early hour. She half-rose at the tone, though, antennae twitching. ‘Oh. Sure. Do you want to catch up later?’

‘We’ll be underway in an hour and I’ve got a lot of work,’ Kharth said bluntly, not looking up from fixing her cuffs. Then she realised that was maybe a little too much, and gave Zharek a fixed smile. ‘We’ll see when this whole disaster’s over, maybe?’ In a just world, Zharek would realise this was the polite lie people told each other when they had no intention of being anything more than ships passing in the night but were at least going to observe some courteous pretence.

There were several reasons Kharth hadn’t had much by way of casual hookups since her assignment to Endeavour, but one was the size of the crew. Already she was faintly dreading the next time she’d need to beam anywhere under the eye of a potentially slighted transporter chief. But after the month she’d been having, with long brig time bracketed by violence, better judgement was occasionally left by the wayside.

She had time to return to her quarters, shower, and even have a leisurely breakfast; her meeting with Rourke wasn’t until after Endeavour departed, but Chief Zharek didn’t need to know that. She wanted to centre herself before this, the first proper talk with the captain since she’d been let out of the brig.

Endeavour’s deck hummed underfoot, the gentle rumbling of warp speed that near-imperceptible presence by the time she crossed the bridge to enter the ready room, and found Rourke sat behind a stack of PADDs with holo-displays shining above his desk. Perhaps he was already regretting sacrificing his yeoman for the greater good of the ship.

‘Kharth, sit down,’ he said, not looking up. ‘Or get a drink and sit down, whatever.’

She grabbed a coffee and tried to not fidget. ‘I can come back later if -’

‘It’s fine.’ He shut down the displays and looked up. ‘We have a representative from the Diplomatic Service aboard. I’m not expecting trouble, but I’d like you to assign someone to ensure her safety aboard. We don’t have a VIP specialist…’

‘I’ll send Petty Officer Tovos,’ she said without missing a beat. ‘He did a leg on the Capella during their diplomatic duties; he understands personal security and has a solid grasp of etiquette.’

Rourke looked surprised, then pleased. ‘Good.’ He fiddled with his stylus. ‘How’s your department?’

‘Juarez is a good officer; Security’s been fine.’ She shrugged, preferring to stick to his tone of talking like she’d been on holiday. ‘Running some drills for close-quarters tactical engagements if we encounter trouble in the nebula.’

‘Good,’ he said again, and hesitated. ‘I don’t know if we’re going to meet trouble. And if we do, I don’t know if it’ll be from the Tkon, the Empire, or something else entirely…’ She stared at him, keeping her expression level as he flailed. If he wanted to say it, he could say it. At last, he managed, ‘You’re confident on the bridge in a tactical situation again?’

Kharth worked her jaw. ‘Are you, sir?’

Rourke sighed. ‘Will you serve on this bridge, follow my orders, and put the best interests of this crew first?’

Will you? She didn’t say it, not just because she didn’t really mean it. But his indirect approach to the issue chafed, and she shifted her weight. ‘You haven’t implemented disciplinary measures yet.’

‘I want to see this mission through.’ He set the stylus down. ‘Lieutenant, we can discuss Teros or we can move forward. I assumed you’d want to move forward.’

‘I want to be sure where I stand.’ But she looked away, because that sounded like a courtesy she hadn’t earned. Kharth shook her head. ‘We move forward, sir. If the Romulan Star Empire send another ship after us, we’re not going to end up fighting another scout. My place is at Tactical.’

His shoulders sank with relief at that, and he brought another PADD’s display up. ‘Now that Juarez isn’t running the department, I thought we could discuss the torpedo launch speeds; there are improvements there I think he could see to…’ And just like that, the meeting pivoted like it was another one of their umpteen discussions on the ship’s combat readiness ahead of an uncertain mission.

‘It was ridiculous,’ Kharth huffed hours later, fists up for another blow to the punching bag. ‘We saved his ass on Tagrador and he couldn’t even look at me properly.’

Rhade grimaced, and she didn’t think it was the impact of her blows against the bag braced at his shoulder. ‘Nobody warned me insubordination would be so socially awkward.’

‘Right?’ They would have been given a wide berth in this gym anyway, two senior staffers taking out their frustration on training equipment. That it was these two staffers gave them even more freedom. ‘I should be relieved. He obviously doesn’t want to pull the usual shit with me – “I gave you an order, you should have followed it, blah blah,” because his order was controversial at best. But even if he was waking up with screaming self-doubt and loathing every night, he can’t tell me he was wrong.’

‘Is it normal,’ grunted Rhade as she delivered a few more blows, ‘to not resolve our punishment yet? Or is that part of the punishment? Stop dropping your elbow.’

‘I don’t know. Normally my commanding officers can’t wait to give me a black mark.’ She followed his instructions, then stepped back with a sigh. ‘But it’s been a few years. I was just an uppity ensign back then. I suppose I kept my nose clean for a while.’

‘Growing up will do that.’ He let the bag drop, and shrugged. ‘It sounds like the captain wants some normalcy and stability ahead of this mission. Perhaps he’ll address Teros after, perhaps he won’t; it seems clear that, for now, the mission comes first. I would focus on your duties.’

‘Is that what you’re doing instead of speaking with Thawn?’

He hesitated. ‘Lieutenant Thawn and I do not need to consult one another on every issue.’

‘But she yelled at you for not taking the JAG deal for her, and then you took it when the captain and Dathan were in peril – and we didn’t have to.’ Kharth shrugged. ‘If we were engaged, I’d be pissed you didn’t think I was worth compromising for.’

Rhade gave a deep sigh. ‘My turn to practice,’ he said at length, and shook his head as they swapped. ‘I’d much rather discuss what we’re doing about the Hazard Team.’

‘And deny me the opportunity to point out someone else has a shuttle-crash personal life?’

‘Have you heard from Commander Airex since he left?’

Kharth rolled her eyes as she steadied the bag. ‘That’s just a cheap shot,’ she pointed out. And still said, ‘So let’s think about using this as a chance to restructure the team completely…’

* *

‘You said dinner,’ Cortez pointed out as Valance arrived in her quarters in uniform, while Cortez was still in a t-shirt and little else and dithering in front of her dresser. ‘So it’s work dinner?’

Valance gave her the startled look of someone who was only now questioning her choices. ‘The captain’s hosting First Secretary Hale in his quarters, and we’re invited as first and second officer. This isn’t civvies or a dress uniform occasion.’

‘This is why I shouldn’t be second officer.’ Cortez yanked open the drawer of fresh uniforms. ‘I didn’t know if I was coming as acting second officer or your date.’

‘Why would I bring a date to dinner with my commanding officer and our diplomatic guest? What if I were dating lounge staff?’

‘If it were a dinner where you’d bring a date, you’d bring the lounge staff, what’s wrong with you?’

Valance set her hands on her hips. ‘I’m not sure when I became the bad guy here.’

‘You’re not.’ Cortez hopped as she pulled on uniform trousers. ‘I just wasted twenty minutes fussing over how smart-casual to be, decided to wait until I saw what you were wearing, and now the answer is, “I shouldn’t have changed in the first place.” Anyway, it’s nice the captain’s being hostly.’

‘It’s appropriate for a guest of her status. After all, by diplomatic rank, she and the captain are equals.’ Valance paused. ‘And if she’s going to have some supervision of the mission, it’ll go much more easily if they have a civil working relationship.’

‘I get it. So do you need me to talk about how wonderful you and Rourke, but especially Rourke are? Or provide pleasant but utterly incidental chit-chat to make it seem like we’re real people with lives and interests? How much is he trying to impress her? Is she pretty?’ Cortez snapped her fingers. ‘Nope, that’s me reverting to, “Am I your date,” tactics; do not wing-man the captain.’

‘I can’t tell if you’re joking, let alone if you’re a brilliant choice or a terrible choice to bring to dinner,’ said Valance, deadpan but still anxious. ‘Can we try to have a nice time?’

Cortez sobered at that, zipping her jacket and going to take Valance’s hand. ‘You’re right. We’re about to cross the border on a totally wild mission where we might yet again get Imperial Romulans trying to kill us. Five seconds of downtime first would be good. I’ll behave.’

Valance nodded, relieved – then hesitated. ‘But yes, if necessary, be ready to fill gaps in the conversation. I’m not excellent at small-talk.’

‘No.’ Cortez smothered a smirk. ‘And I’m not going to assume Rourke knows what the hell he’s doing.’

It turned out Rourke knew what he was doing enough to have told his officers to arrive ten minutes early. Cortez hadn’t been in the captain’s quarters before, but was impressed that even on a Manticore the CO had the space for a full dining table that could squeeze six in a pinch, while she had to choose between eating at a coffee table or her desk and Valance’s rooms had what she charitably called a breakfast nook. But Rourke enjoyed a larger, segmented main room with a comfortable seating area, a desk area, and a dining area, all in the plush and more comfortable design and colours of Endeavour that made her an oddity in her class design. The dining table had been laid out for four already, a gentle and inoffensive jazz Cortez found a surprisingly generic choice by Rourke filtering through the sound system.

‘You picked a hell of a time to promote your yeoman, sir,’ said Cortez on arrival, observing the spread the captain had laid out with surprising competence.

‘I’ve had to ask Chief Sutton for help,’ Rourke admitted. Sutton was the senior yeoman, supervising the ship’s administrative personnel. On the one hand it was natural for her to step in to staff the captain in a time like this. On the other, Cortez had never met the woman and yet people described her as formidable. When pressed, the only explanation they gave was that she was ‘from Yorkshire.’ Cortez wasn’t sure what planet that was, but it seemed like it had provided Endeavour with a hardy enough woman to make the captain think twice about asking for aid lightly. ‘She’s not an etiquette expert but she actually smacked my hand when I tried to lay out cutlery wrong.’

Cortez looked between the dining table and the sofas, and hesitated. ‘Is the First Secretary a stickler for this? Do we sit at the table with drinks first or is it horribly rude if we skip the casual aperitif section first?’

‘The galaxy’s on fire,’ said Rourke bluntly. ‘I’m just trying to be polite.’

‘That’s not an answer. Better do aperitifs first to be sure.’ Cortez looked him up and down. ‘You do know how to do an aperitif that isn’t a pint of stout, right?’

‘He was Academy faculty for two years,’ Valance drawled, watching her CO with a flat expression, ‘and Admiral Beckett’s first officer for five. Don’t let him fool you with his “aw, shucks” act.’

To her surprise, Rourke gave a crooked grin. ‘This is why she’s my XO. Bourbon and blood it is.’

Cortez narrowed her eyes at Valance as the captain hit up the replicator. ‘You two talk?’

‘I’ve read his record and I know he’s a bullshitter,’ said Valance, quietly but not so quietly there wasn’t a snicker from Rourke as he materialised their drinks, dark reddish-brown swirling liquid in martini glasses appearing for him to grab.

‘I’d press this point,’ Cortez said, ‘but real talk, Captain: how are we managing the diplomat?’

‘Surely,’ said Valance, bewildered, ‘we’re here to make a good impression and demonstrate we’re a stable, respectable command team?’

Cortez laughed. ‘Don’t give me that.’

Rourke smirked as he handed them drinks. ‘You’re here to be the people-person, Cortez. Get the measure of our guest. She’s trying to be all friendly, like she’s here to take politics off my plate. But if you don’t play politics, politics play you; last thing we need is for us to do the job and then the Diplomatic Service hangs us out to dry.’

‘Got it.’ She snapped her fingers at him. ‘I’ll play irreverent ass, we see how she reacts, and if it goes badly you can chew me out and you don’t have to look bad.’

Valance stared at her, scandalised. ‘You will do no such thing,’ she admonished. Then the door-chime sounded.

Cortez gave an angelic smile as Rourke answered the door. ‘You’ll not know until it’s too late if I’m kidding, now.’ But then Rourke ushered First Secretary Hale inside, and all Valance could do was shoot venom at her girlfriend before turning with a pasted, slightly desperate smile.

‘Can I get you a drink, First Secretary?’ Rourke was already heading for the replicator. ‘It’s a butternut squash ravioli for dinner, so we’re on bourbon and blood orange cocktails; my staff insisted that was the right palette choice.’ There it was, Cortez realised; the act Valance had mentioned. To her, Rourke had transparently made all of these choices himself, suggesting the cocktails a moment ago without thinking, but now he was downplaying his own involvement.

‘That all sounds delightful, thank you, Captain.’ Much to Cortez’s relief after everyone’s decision to stay in uniform, Hale was only slightly more dressed down than she’d been at the official meeting, a jacket abandoned and a collar looser, but still all-business. As Rourke fetched her drink, she turned to the other women with a more relaxed smile. ‘A pleasure to see you outside of a meeting, Commander. And you must be Commander Cortez.’

Cortez felt Valance tense next to her, but she just grinned. ‘Must be. Welcome aboard; hope we have a much quieter trip for you than our last few adventures, First Secretary.’

Hale gave a gentle laugh. ‘I won’t ask for that. Possibly for some advance warning of a rowdy encounter; they give me a lot of paperwork it’s good to get on top of.’

Valance shifted her weight. ‘I, ah, apologise, First Secretary…’

‘For not notifying myself or Admiral Beckett of your incursion into Romulan territory to rescue the captain?’ Hale’s gaze softened. ‘I’d rather not have that hang over us, Commander. Don’t be sorry for doing the right thing. But I want to be here, now, to help you do it.’

‘Well.’ Valance had a sip of her drink as Rourke returned with glasses for him and Hale. ‘I don’t expect that’ll be needed again.’

Rourke grunted as he passed Hale a cocktail. ‘No intention of getting myself thrown in a prison camp again, no.’

Hale’s amused smile returned. ‘Did you intend it last time?’

‘Difference is this time I’m back to sending my XO on stupid dangerous missions. So it’ll be me launching the damn fool rescue operation.’

Valance turned to the diplomat. ‘We don’t usually need rescuing.’

Cortez was about to weigh in to try to diffuse some of the XO’s gentle desperation, but Hale merely smirked and had a sip of her cocktail. ‘I should hope not, Commander, because it sounds like it’s your turn otherwise. And when I said “help” I didn’t mean by grabbing a rifle, so let’s hope it doesn’t get too desperate.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Cortez, ‘I don’t do that either if I can help it. Come down to Engineering, First Secretary; I’ll find something useful for you to do.’

‘I’m sure the First Secretary has plenty -’

‘So I don’t know much about the Republic,’ Cortez interrupted Valance, mindful that her girlfriend’s idea of ‘best behaviour’ was in sore danger of becoming anxious boot-licking that would make even Lieutenant Thawn blush. Beyond Hale, she spotted Rourke relax an iota as the conversation shifted. ‘Are we really friendly with them, or do we still need to play cat-and-mouse games?’

Hale looked like she both saw and appreciated the pivot. ‘They’re the most reformist government of the Romulan factions, the most outward-looking, And they have a border with the Klingon Empire, which is dangerous. So it’s ideologically and politically useful for them to befriend the Federation. But we both have to be careful their neighbours don’t pick a fight with them – they can hardly stand alone, and we can hardly afford to get drawn in.’

‘And if the captain picks a fight with the Romulan Star Empire that the Republic gets swept up in,’ said Cortez, waving her cocktail at Rourke, ‘then we’re all having a bad time.’

‘We’ll do our best to make sure nothing goes horridly wrong again,’ Rourke grumbled, swigging his drink. ‘I suppose your best outcome, First Secretary, is a boring trip?’

‘Professionally, yes. You’re still chasing after a lost world of the Tkon they hid in a nebula,’ Hale pointed out. ‘Or is that only terribly exciting to me because the Diplomatic Service deals exclusively with living empires?’

Rourke shrugged. ‘I leave that to my science team to get excited about.’

‘It is a fascinating opportunity,’ Valance slid in. ‘And while time is of the essence, I hope we get a chance to scope out more of the purpose of the Tkon’s outposts, or of how they relocated the star of Ephrath in the first instance.’

‘So long as we find the damn beacon.’ Rourke finished his cocktail. ‘Dinner?’

‘Sounds wonderful, Captain,’ said Hale. ‘I’d be delighted to hear more of Endeavour’s past expeditions while we’re at it.’

Cortez had been ready for the meal to be fraught, but she’d assumed the threat would come from First Secretary Hale, whom she’d feared would be a laser-eyed observer here to stop Endeavour from causing another political calamity. It should not have been a surprise, in the end, that a diplomat could keep up with all manner of topics of dinner conversation.

The topics turned out to be the problem. Rourke seemed intent on grumbling his way through the meal he’d proposed and organised, driving Valance to over-compensate with an unusual level of near-obsequiousness. He was never outright rude and she was never outright servile, but it still left Cortez desperately juggling the discussion. Endeavour’s missions over the last nine months were easy to make decent dinner conversation to someone with a high security clearance, but it needed Valance to not play down the risk and for Rourke to not act like he’d bulldozed through every challenge.

Dinner did not carry on late, but Cortez waited until they were back in Valance’s quarters before she spoke her mind. ‘What the hell was that?’

Valance winced. ‘I did panic a bit.’

‘Oh, thank God you realise. But what was the captain doing?’

‘He’s – haven’t you realise he does this?’ Valance set her hands on her hips, frustrated. ‘He acts more blunt than he is, less sophisticated, less clever than he is. It invites people to underestimate him so they let their guard down and he can see how they act. I know, because he used to do it to me.’

‘That’s a great plan; except it’s not and it’s weird, and it’s even weirder when we have a diplomat aboard.’

‘I know. That’s why I panicked.’ Valance shifted her weight. ‘I would quite like to not have an enemy in the Diplomatic Service.’

Cortez wilted. ‘Oh, yeah. Your networking sphere is completely different to mine if you want a captaincy some day. See, that’s the good thing about being an engineer: I don’t have to impress my superiors, I have to impress nerds back home.’ She shook her head. ‘Maybe you should let you record and actions speak for themselves. The only good news about you two being odd is I don’t think Hale bought it for a single second.’

‘I’ll breathe easier,’ said Valance, ‘once the hammer finishes falling after Tagrador.’

And Teros, Cortez thought, watching her. Consequences were still up in the air, and success or failure on Ephrath would likely help Command decide how much forgiveness Endeavour was granted. It was perhaps not her superior social skills that had given her a more relaxed dinner with an influential figure looming over their shoulder, but her freedom. Nobody would come for the chief engineer’s head if this went wrong.

‘Maybe I’m naive,’ Cortez said at last, ‘but I think there’s no way anything can be hidden from Hale if she’s aboard and liaising with the Romulans. So why don’t we do the job and be above reproach by succeeding?’

Valance bit her lip. ‘I’m not going to say my methods at dinner were best. I didn’t expect the captain to host a dinner like that. But you’re right. You do sound naive.’

‘Then I guess,’ sighed Cortez, ‘I’ll just carry on being the one who can talk to Hale without being weird. And if you don’t like it, then next time you should bring the lounge staff.’

‘I’m sorry; we need to slow again,’ said Thawn for about the fifth time that shift.

Arys dutifully brought the convoy’s speed back to a low warp, but Beckett couldn’t stop a frustrated noise. As all eyes on the bridge fell on him, he shrugged. ‘Sorry. But nobody likes this.’

‘I’m not doing it on purpose,’ she complained. ‘Gravimetric distortions in the nebula are playing havoc with our navigational sensors. We can periodically slow so I can triangulate our position and recalibrate, or we can wander wildly through -’

‘Do it,’ Rourke interrupted. ‘Beckett, you might be right; none of us like it, but so’s Thawn: we all have to live with it.’

This, Beckett thought quietly, was why he was a social scientist and not an astrophysicist. He did not share many of his colleagues’ wonder for the ways space tried to turn him upside-down and kill him. Finding a lost star system in the heart of a mysterious nebula sounded interesting on paper; in practice it had been interminable duty shifts across long days deep within the Velorum Nebula at the head of a pair of Republic warbirds that clearly didn’t want to be here and didn’t want them here. Their ETA had already slid back twenty-four hours.

Thawn finished the calibrations and they resumed their journey at the heady heights of Warp 4, and Beckett thought he might explode at not complaining when she piped up again three and a half hours later. ‘I’m not sure, but…’

Even Rourke sighed. ‘Warp 1, Lieutenant Arys -’

‘No,’ Thawn cut in quickly. ‘Beckett, are you seeing this?’

He should have, he realised. His eyes had started to glaze over, but Thawn had appointed herself an extra observer on the ship’s systems, and he had to acknowledge it was for good reason as she pinged his long-range sensor display. ‘I’ve got it,’ he said, perking up. ‘Detecting a K-class star on long-range sensors, and if the five thousandth recalibration of our nav sensors is finally accurate… yeah, this is it! Ephrath!’

Rourke sagged with visible relief. ‘What’s our ETA?’

‘If we can maintain our present speed… fourteen hours,’ reported Arys.

‘Right. Make sure we do maintain our speed. Elsa, notify our escorts.’ Rourke scratched the stubble of his beard’s rapid but incomplete return. ‘I’ll order the relief shift on-duty in two hours. I want you all clocking off so we are, as my mother would say it, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when we get to Ephrath, instead of exhausted from staring at data.’

Thawn turned in her chair. ‘But I wanted to -’

‘You heard the captain,’ Valance chastised gently.

‘Yeah,’ said Beckett before he could stop himself, mock-sober. ‘Bushy-tailed, Lieutenant.’

It was a testament to how tired they were that the first person to laugh, briefly and guiltily, was Arys, which set off Lindgren in a more sincere giggle, and then it had swept across all of them save Valance and Thawn herself in a gentle relief of tension. It lasted them the rest of the shift, at least.

‘Oh, come on, Rosa,’ Lindgren complained when the four junior members of the bridge crew poured into a turbolift at the end. ‘Don’t you dare rush off to your room to stare at the systems records; we’re hitting the lounge.’

Arys shifted. ‘We are?’

‘Yeah,’ said Beckett, throwing an amiable arm over the much taller and broader Andorian’s shoulder because he knew being friendly would annoy and confuse him. ‘We need to welcome you to the senior staff properly, you great lug.’

That just made Arys look even more offended. ‘You’re still only acting…’

‘Schmacting, I still have seniority on you.’

Thawn pursed her lips. ‘That is not how it works, and you are absolutely the most junior department head…’

‘And when this is over,’ Beckett carried on, ignoring Arys’s irritated gaze, ‘I’ll be shunted back to A&A, where I can spend months studying and publishing our findings from this expedition, while you’ll be too busy juggling Endeavour’s systems on an essential but deeply mundane basis to use this fabulous opportunity to raise your career profile.’

Lindgren gave him a mock-serious look. ‘I’m still getting credit in your submissions to the Daystrom Institute just for doing my job and nothing extra on the side, right?’

‘Elsa, you saved me from spending these weeks correcting the crew every time they would have mispronounced Tui Havran; of course you’re getting cheap credit.’ He looked back at Arys. ‘Come on, we need you as an excuse to blow off steam before work kicks off properly tomorrow.’

‘And,’ Lindgren said with a chiding glance at Beckett, ‘to congratulate you, Tar’lek. It’s well-earned.’ She moved to his other side, grabbing his arm. ‘Come on, just one drink.’

Beckett watched as Arys predictably caved to her, and he rounded on Thawn. ‘There you go. You can’t insult Tar’lek by slinking off home.’

‘I didn’t say no,’ said Thawn.

‘I didn’t say I’d be insulted!’ protested Arys.

‘Then it’s decided,’ Beckett said with satisfaction as the turbolift slowed to let them off at the recreation section. ‘At least one drink.’

He didn’t care much for Endeavour’s lounge. Somewhere down the line the ship had been given the feel and decoration of a classic Starfleet cruiser, with deep blue carpets and upholstery and steel fixtures. It let her straddle the line between the even colder and more austere interiors of other modern warships and the homely comforts of contemporary explorers, taking away the worst of the edges without feeling like they were lying to anyone. The lounge was the only place it didn’t really work, in Beckett’s opinion; it made the biggest hub of relaxation and recreation feel like a starbase waiting lounge.

But it was what they had, and with the deep purples of the Velorum Nebula swirling past the huge windows to provide mood-lighting, even on the eve of a mystery it was not the worst celebration for a newly-promoted officer. The whole thing had been Lindgren’s idea, of course, because he would never have thought to celebrate uptight, condescending Arys – but if Elsa Lindgren made a suggestion, everyone usually went along with it.

A small web of junior officers already awaited them, including, much to Beckett’s relief, Harkon, who was first to push a bottle of synthale into Arys’s hand and laugh at his apprehensive expression.

‘Jealous? Are you kidding me, Tar’lek?’ she cackled. ‘We came aboard the same time, which means of course you surpassed me, because you’re a shit-hot high-flier. But who’s gonna be the real winner here? You, Lieutenant, parking Endeavour in orbit when we get to whatever ancient Tkon world’s at Ephrath? Or me, flying the King Arthur past whatever mysterious atmospheric defence system is going to try to kill us on the way down and pulling off some cool act of daring-do?’

Arys’s lips curled as he tapped his bottle against hers. ‘As you say, Ensign. You can fly the runabout into a death trap while I watch from orbit.’

When Beckett went to get his second drink, Thawn all-but pounced on him at the bar. ‘You were in the briefing,’ she said, her own bottle barely touched. ‘With the diplomat.’

‘Hale? Yeah. Had to convince the Romulans we were right about Ephrath so they’d sign off on letting us into their space. What about it?’

‘And she’s aboard now. I know she’s liaising a lot with the Romulan ships, according to comm records anyway.’

‘How all-seeing of you. Is there a question?’

Thawn looked like she’d thought her query was obvious. ‘What’s she like? What’s she doing?’

‘Apparently you know better than me. I really don’t know what you’re asking.’ Then he rolled his eyes. ‘Oh. If you want a lead on the inside-track with our guest, I can’t help you.’

‘Really? You were in the briefing, you have an in to discuss the operation with her directly, she liaised over Tagrador with your father -’

He smacked his empty beer bottle on the bar harder than he meant to. ‘Do your own sucking up, Thawn. Most of this ship just wants to get through the mission with their careers intact. I’m not going to help you throw us off the shuttle so you can try to look good in front of a bureaucrat.’

‘That’s not what I meant,’ said Thawn, but because she was Rosara Thawn it sounded a lot more indignant than it did guilty, and at his unimpressed look, she gave a huff and walked away.

Beckett shook his head and waited for his next drink. Lindgren arrived at the bar beside him. ‘You two need to stop biting each other’s heads off,’ she said.

‘Not everyone’s as good as you at getting on with everyone,’ he pointed out, turning to survey the group. ‘Some of us are Thawn.’

Lindgren barely smothered a smile. ‘Don’t pretend you’re not deeply provocative, Nate.’

He might have taken that with better humour, but Thawn’s suggestion of using his father’s name had lit a long fuse of irritation within him. His gaze raked across the crowd, spotted Arys diverting half a glance from his conversation with Athaka in their direction – in Lindgren’s direction – and Beckett turned back to lean in towards her. His lips curled. ‘I can be very provocative.’

Her chin tilted up, eyes raking over him. ‘So I see, if you’re chatting me up during Tar’lek’s promotion party.’

But her voice had also dropped, and his smirk broadened at the idea she wasn’t completely immune to his charms, even if she saw right through him. ‘Come on, Elsa. Because he stares at you like a lost puppy and doesn’t do anything, you’re still going to fuss about his feelings? The night before we reach the end of this road and find whatever dangers and disasters Harkon was crowing about?’

‘You’re right,’ Lindgren said in a low tone, and lifted a hand to his chest. ‘We don’t know what’ll happen tomorrow, and I’m not responsible for Tar’lek’s feelings.’ Then she gave him a gentle but firm shove back. ‘But that doesn’t mean I have to be totally insensitive. And when we get to the end of the road tomorrow, and you get thrown into the deep danger of an away mission… I’ll be on the bridge, safe and sound.’

She walked away, and all he could do was grab the fresh synthale that had finally arrived and call out, ‘The Enterprise almost got destroyed in orbit by the Tkon, you know!’

For all that they – Lindgren, rather – had wanted to do something to acknowledge Arys’s successes, and they were explicitly off-duty to unwind and come to the next duty shift fresh, it was a brief gathering. Everyone needed a solid night’s sleep ahead of arrival at Ephrath.

‘It was nice,’ Athaka said to Beckett as they headed back to their quarters, his roommate a little less-practiced at concentrating synthahol’s intoxicating effects away. ‘Organising something for Arys, I mean; I didn’t think you liked him much.’

‘Arys is a prick,’ Beckett complained. ‘I just wanted a night out. You don’t like him, either.’

‘I – he used to use his access to the captain as something to lord over us. I know he’s senior staff now, but he can’t pretend to be first among equals in the junior officers any more.’

‘Expect him to forget you came to party with him and to start crawling up the arses of the likes of Rhade and Valance soon enough. He’ll remember he’s a pompous bastard.’

Though they shared quarters they at least had separate bedrooms, for which Beckett was grateful as he knew Athaka snored like a Klingon when he’d been drinking. Beckett still slept fitfully, and made it to the bridge the next morning with a particularly large mug of coffee in tow.

‘This is what you get for partying,’ Thawn commented as she passed his station on the way to Ops. He might have dignified that with a snippy comeback if Rourke hadn’t that moment arrived with First Secretary Hale following him out of the turbolift. At the very least he knew the captain wanted Endeavour to look good in front of the diplomat.

Rourke looked more tense than he usually did with Hale present, and was rather officiously polite as he welcomed their guest before offering her the third command chair. The bridge thus hummed for the next hour, everyone else picking up the need to be on their best behaviour, and it was more of a relief than expected when Arys finally turned back from Helm.

‘Coming up on the Ephrath system now, Captain. Dropping out of warp.’

That was Beckett’s cue to get the ship’s sensors working overtime. The view on his displays shifted from stars to planets, the seven worlds of the Ephrath system and its multitudinous moons blinking onto the screen. He’d studied the reports from other Tkon holdings, the findings of other starships, and already had the sensors ready to pick up anything that would give them a lead on Tkon technology.

Kharth’s report came first. ‘No ships in the system or vicinity,’ she confirmed from Tactical. ‘And no sign of any artificial satellites or orbital platforms. We’re alone out here.’

‘Running a scan for any transmissions or energy emissions,’ Beckett chipped in.

Rourke nodded, looking to Arys. ‘Keep us in the outskirts of the system, Helm. We’ll take a look before we go closer; who knows what the nebula’s hidden.’

‘I’m receiving sensor feeds from the warbirds,’ Thawn piped up. ‘They’re sharing their telemetry in case they find something we don’t.’

Lindgren looked to Rourke. ‘Do I respond in kind, sir?’

Beckett watched Rourke glance at Hale, before he nodded. ‘We’ve nothing to hide.’

Surely, Beckett thought as he granted Thawn and Lindgren access to his sensor feed, and incorporated the Republic warbirds’ findings to his analysis, we don’t know if we’re hiding something until we’ve found it? But that was politics, and not his problem.

Additional sensor feeds were still more use than he’d expected, allowing him to confirm findings that fluctuated with the nebula’s interference, and at last he looked up. ‘Got it. Second planet, I’m picking up indications of an energy field over a section of the surface that’s similar to the reports from Abnia VI.’

Rourke gestured to Arys. ‘Bring us closer, Helm. Is that an energy field we’ll be able to transport through with some work, Nate?’

‘Too soon to tell, but I expect one way or another we’re going to need to go down and look. Between the nebula and Tkon defences, I expect our scans from orbit won’t be great.’

‘Alright.’ Rourke looked at Valance. ‘Once we find a path down, you’ll take an away team.’

Hale straightened at that. ‘Might I ask you to give me an hour before anyone departs, Captain?’

‘Is that necessary?’

‘It’s a request. You still have to identify your route.’ The diplomat stood. ‘Please keep me appraised.’

Rourke’s jaw was tight as Hale left the bridge, but he said nothing as Endeavour approached Ephrath II. After a moment, he got to his feet and padded over to join Lindgren at Comms, speaking with her in a low voice. Lindgren soon said something that made him frown, and he returned to his chair.

Beckett cast her a questioning look across the bridge, and she gave her console a nod. After a moment, a message flashed up on his screen: Hale in communication with warbird commanders. No idea why. R not happy. He blew out his cheeks, decided again that he didn’t want politics, and focused on the world.

‘This is different to the field over Abnia VI,’ he reported once they were in a very high orbit. ‘As I said, it’s only over a section of the planet, and seems to be blocking out any of our scans. Beaming down would be difficult at the least because we wouldn’t know where we’re going.’

Thawn was already tapping at her panel. ‘I’ll see if I can do anything. We have a few tricks for bypassing Tkon shielding.’

I would have got to that, Beckett thought moodily, but he had a hundred scans to do and conclusions to reach, and she had only one. ‘Scanning the rest of the world. It’s a desert planet, though from some of the readings just beyond the poles I wouldn’t be surprised if that wasn’t the case before the Tkon started moving the whole damn system. Energy field covers a two hundred-kilometre radius on the southern hemisphere, and I’m picking up some small signs of life around that latitude – minor vegetation and possibly animals. No indication whatsoever of settlements.’

Rourke nodded. ‘Do you think the energy field will stop a shuttle?’

‘It matches other Tkon defences enough that I’d expect the same energy dampening, yes, sir.’

Valance looked up. ‘That surely can’t work on everything. It’ll impact our warp core, fusion reactors, and probably those of smallcraft trying to pierce the field, right?’

‘What’re you thinking, Commander?’ asked Rourke.

‘The ATV. Equip the King Arthur to carry it, set her down outside the energy field. She has a microfusion reactor, but even if the field kills it, she has batteries and a solar charger.’

‘That’s only a four-people team.’

Thawn looked back. ‘If I can’t break through the energy field from here, a pattern enhancer might do the trick. Especially if we find the source of the energy field and, if we can’t bring it down or dampen it, I could modify the enhancer to bypass the field’s interference. At that point, Ensign Athaka is more than qualified to run transporters from up here.’

‘That’s two,’ said Rourke to Valance. ‘I assume you’ll take Nate.’

‘And Cortez.’ She lifted a hand to forestall protest. ‘I don’t need security down there, sir, I need someone to make sure the ATV keeps moving and who can handle whatever ancient Tkon technology throws at us.’

‘You make a point. Get Harkon outfitting the King Arthur to carry the ATV.’ Rourke looked back around the bridge. ‘Until that’s done… and until our guest gives us the go-ahead… crack on trying to bypass the field. I’d rather not send an away team into a blackout zone.’

For his part, Beckett much preferred the idea of riding the ATV across a mysterious desert planet towards a lost Tkon outpost. But he kept running what scans he could and forwarding findings to Thawn, leaving her to the analysis. He wasn’t a systems expert, and she was prickly at the best of times when working.

Thirty minutes later, the turbolift doors slid open for Hale to return to the bridge. ‘Progress?’

Rourke stood, hands clasped behind his back with a peevish air. ‘We’re prepping our runabout to land an ATV to drive a team to the energy field’s source, First Secretary. Assuming your schedule approves?’

Hale’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. ‘Thank you for your patience, Captain. I thought you might want to know that Commander Vorena has agreed to hold off on sending a team with yours. I believed that under the circumstances, you would rather your people focused on the Tkon than managing Republic soldiers.’

He stopped short. ‘That’s what you were talking to them about?’

Her gaze flickered to the communications station, where Lindgren had the good grace to look bashful. ‘As I said, Captain. I’m here to take political problems off your plate. Not let them dictate your mission.’

‘Well.’ Rourke looked rather graceless at this, and after a moment’s floundering merely turned to Valance. ‘Get your team geared up, Commander. King Arthur should be ready once you’re equipped and packed.’

Beckett couldn’t help but fist-pump the air as he surrendered his station to the relief officer. ‘Oh, yeah. Expedition and adventure time.’

Thawn cast him a dismissive look as she, too, stood from her post. ‘This is a critical operation -’

‘Come on, everyone wants to ride the buggy across the mysterious desert to the ancient dig site.’ He lifted his hand. ‘I don’t get a high-five for this? No?’

Valance’s eye-roll was more indulgent as they gathered at the turbolift. ‘Don’t worry, Ensign,’ she groaned. ‘Commander Cortez will definitely high-five you this op.’

‘There.’ Valance pointed over Harkon’s shoulder. ‘Sensors suggest there’s rock maybe a metre under the sand. Our manoeuvring thrusters should clear that out.’

‘Or it’s not bedrock and everything goes a bit wild,’ the runabout pilot pointed out, and reached for the systems-wide comms. ‘All hands, this is your pilot and her backseat pilot, I mean XO; please buckle up as we’re about to have a bumpy landing.’ Harkon gave her a polite but firm look. ‘Includes you, too, ma’am.’

I deserve that, Valance thought as she slid into the co-pilot’s chair and buckled up the safety webbing. They had been skirting the rolling dunes of Ephrath II for ten minutes now, trying to find somewhere to set down. But the sands were deep and shifting, regular high winds breaking the blistering heat and destroying and reforming dunes, and the runabout was big.

Under the bright skies and blazing sun, Harkon had increased the opacity of the canopy, and began to set them down by sensors alone. Valance watched their guidance systems and grimaced as they calculated and recalculated as stable ground stripped away beneath them over and over. At last they felt the thunk as a landing strut made contact with something, then another – then an alert klaxon sounded as the sand beneath the first strut fell away. Harkon wrestled with the flight controls to steady the runabout, but with a hiss pulled them up a moment later, spitting oaths.

‘So turns out that wasn’t solid rock. We’ll need another landing site for something as big as us, Commander.’

Valance unbuckled her webbing and went to loom over Harkon again. ‘If we maintain a low hover for a period, will the thrusters blast away enough sand…’

‘To cause a whole new valley, and then more sand comes in?’

‘Cortez to cockpit; so that didn’t work, huh?’

Valance thinned her lips. ‘No, Commander. No, it did not.’

‘Then screw it. Find us a steady slope, bring us as low as you can, and we’ll air-drop from the ATV.’

There was a clatter in the background before Beckett piped up. ‘Yes. That’s awesome. Let’s do that.’

Valance rolled her eyes. ‘And if the sands are this unstable, what’s to stop the ATV from getting swallowed up?’

‘Am I in trouble if I point out it’s an All-Terrain-Vehicle?’ came Cortez’s apprehensive answer. ‘It has settings for weight distribution to avoid exactly that. The runabout is not designed to land anywhere; if we didn’t have to drop the ATV I’d have suggested we bring a shuttle. She can handle it.’

Valance looked at Harkon. ‘Find us a patch. Stay above and get ready to drop a line if we sink.’

‘Got it, Commander. You better get down to the ATV, though.’

‘Why. So I don’t backseat pilot?’ But she was gentle despite herself, aware she hadn’t been the easiest colleague in these conditions, and left Harkon to it.

The vehicle module installed on the King Arthur meant most of the runabout was given over to the garage section. Valance had to slide down the ladder to the deck where the other three waited with the vehicle. Cortez was in the front passenger’s seat, piping the runabout’s sensors to the ATV’s navigation systems, while Thawn checked the landing ramp.

‘All aboard,’ Valance called, and lifted a hand as Beckett bounded up. ‘I’m driving.’ She ignored his muttering as she slid behind the controls, and looked at Cortez. ‘You’re sure about this?’

‘Desert mode is active, and with the right drop angle onto a descent, you won’t hit too hard. Once we’re landed, we should be fine.’

‘Will we be fine,’ said Thawn, swinging into the back seat beside Beckett, ‘if the energy field does shut us down?’

‘I don’t think it’ll do that,’ Cortez insisted. ‘The ATV has a fraction of the power levels of a shuttle.’

‘We keep saying, “the ATV,”’ piped up Beckett. ‘This thing needs a name. What’s its name?’

Valance realised eyes were on her. ‘Why are you asking me?’

‘You’ve been on Endeavour since she launched,’ said Cortez. ‘What’s your ATV’s name?’ There was a pause. ‘You never named the vehicle?’

‘We never used the vehicle.’

‘ATV, this is your pilot; picked you a great landing spot. Make ready to disembark,’ came Harkon’s voice over internal comms. ‘Local time is approximately 1500 hours on a 26-hour cycle and the temperature outside is a balmy 34 degrees.’

‘Thank God for climate control,’ said Valance, pulling the main hatch down to seal them in and adjusting the canopy to prepare for blindly bright sun.

‘Does it need to be something cool,’ mused Beckett, ‘like the Thunderbolt, or…’

Valance squinted at the controls. ‘What?’

‘The name,’ said Cortez. ‘And I think that’s trying too hard. Endeavour’s a name with a history of, you know, exploration…’

‘I’m not calling it the James Cook,’ complained Beckett. ‘Screw that guy.’

Thawn gave a low noise of protest as the landing ramp began to lower, sunlight blazing into the garage. ‘Can we focus?’

‘You’re right,’ said Cortez. ‘Where did he die?’

‘Uh. Hawaii?’ said Beckett. ‘I think the island of Hawaii its-shiiiit -’

Valance hadn’t waited. She gunned the engines the moment the ramp was down, the ATV shooting out from the garage, off the ramp, and soaring through the bright skies of Ephrath II.

The vehicle had systems to control any spin when airborne, and Valance hammered them to keep level with the ground thundering towards them. Then they hit sand, and she twisted the controls to straighten the wheels, keep them careening onward without flipping or losing control entirely. Sand scored up past the canopy, but so long as she didn’t drive them into another bank she could keep going, and within dozens of hurtling yards they slowed to a halt at the foot of a long rise.

‘Clarent,’ said Valance without missing a beat. ‘We just launched from the King Arthur. This is the Clarent.’ She hit the comms. ‘We’ve landed safe and sound.’

‘I see you! Nice driving, Commander. Your nav systems all good?’

‘We have our heading, south by south-west. Stay in the area for an hour. We should breach the energy field within ten minutes. If everything fails, we’ll hike back out of its area of effect and arrange a pickup.’

‘Understood. Safe travels. King Arthur out.’

Beckett let out a slow, shaky breath. ‘I was right,’ he said. ‘That was awesome.’

Valance suppressed a smirk, even as she cast a sidelong glance at a rather wide-eyed Cortez. ‘Standard ATV deployment, Ensign,’ she lied. ‘Check our heading, Commander, and monitor our systems for the energy field.’

Beside her, Cortez had shifted to give her instruments a fixed stare. ‘I’m a professional,’ Valance heard her mutter under her breath. ‘This is a professional situation.’ She cleared her throat. ‘On it. Commander.’

Valance looked up through the canopy at the identical sprawling dunes. Somewhere ahead, Tkon technology forbade any sophisticated flight systems from piercing a broad region of desert, but the naked eye could see nothing amiss. Perhaps they would be outwitted by that which they could not see; perhaps she was right, and the ATV was simple enough to let them through. She hit the thrust, the ATV – the Clarent – bursting forward across the rolling dunes. ‘Let’s check out that horizon.’

* *

‘Harkon reports the waiting period is up, Captain. She’s lost the ATV on sensors, but she followed them by telescope. Her estimation is they made it past the energy field,’ Lindgren’s voice came through comms to Rourke’s ready room.

‘I’ll trust Harkon’s judgement,’ he decided with a sigh. ‘Tell her to bring the runabout home. Instruct Athaka and Adupon to keep working on bypassing the energy field.’

It was the right thing to do, he thought, to let Valance lead the away mission. She’d proved she understood how important the operation was even without being briefed on Omega, and with his limited engineering expertise, he’d run out of excuses to handle these missions himself. Cortez had seen Omega up close at Teros, and he expected she had some suspicions and could be discreet. The right people were doing the right jobs. But it meant he now didn’t have a lot to do except wait in orbit, and Rourke hated waiting.

Impatience rendered his ready room claustrophobic, but he knew the bridge would be worse with its constant updates of nothing important. So five minutes later he was walking into the ship’s VIP quarters to meet the politely curious gaze of First Secretary Hale.

‘Captain. Is there news?’

‘Only that the away team is probably through the energy field. We’re monitoring things.’ Rourke cast a gaze around the rooms. VIPs enjoyed comforts comparable to those in the captain’s quarters, with Hale granted the privacy of a separate bedroom and space to work, relax, and entertain. She had been at her desk when he arrived, but ushered him to the comfortable seating. ‘Thought I’d check on our allies.’

‘You’re allowed to speak with them yourself, Captain; I’m not the sole point of liaison,’ said Hale with some amusement, and brought drinks from the replicator. She’d observed his habits, he realised, fetching a strong and sweet black coffee. It was the sort of detail that was probably child’s play for a diplomat to notice, but skills like that took work.

‘Vorena’s happy to patrol the system, and Astorn’s at the outskirts on the Imperial side to keep watch. If I talked to them, all I’d learn is they’ve found nothing on sensors, because they’d tell me otherwise.’ He sat on the sofa, unaccustomed to feeling like the guest on his own ship. ‘I wanted to know more… are they happy? Grumpy?’

Hale had brought herself a fresh cup of tea, but put the sugar in here with delicate tongs from a laid-out bowl of cubes. He wondered if the ritual was comforting, or if it was an act to make her seem deliberate and sophisticated. ‘Vorena and Astorn don’t know about Omega,’ she said. ‘They’re operating on trust from their superiors, which is a difficult thing for Republic officers to do. Most of them are in the Republic Navy because they don’t want to follow instructions without explanation any more. But those in the know in the Republic are aware they don’t have the infrastructure to deal with Omega, which is why they’ve been so open to cooperation with Starfleet – they need us.’ She sipped her tea. ‘Give the commanders respect, treat them like adults in a difficult situation, and act like their input has merit, and I expect they won’t give us problems.’

‘Almost like that works with everyone,’ Rourke mused.

Hale’s expression set with concern. ‘If I may be direct, Captain. You and your XO seemed very on-edge at dinner the other night, somewhat… unsure of yourselves. I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable; you absolutely did not have to stand on ceremony for my sake. Or was there something else I need to worry about?’

He sighed. ‘I don’t want to speak for Valance. But I was figuring out what to make of you.’

‘While making it difficult,’ she said, eyes on him, ‘for me to make anything of you.’ At his raised eyebrow, she shrugged. ‘You behaved not at all as I’d anticipated from your record. But I understand that. I’m an outsider, and I’m not Starfleet. I didn’t expect you to make it easy for me.’ She tilted her head. ‘Did you reach any conclusions?’

Rourke winced. ‘At dinner? No. For keeping the Republic out of our way? Some.’

‘You mean, you believe I’m not lying when I say I’m here to help you.’

‘I didn’t think you were lying.’ He was mostly sincere. ‘I wasn’t sure your idea of help was the same as mine.’

‘It might not be. But you could tell me.’

‘Sounds awfully novel.’ He squinted. ‘The Omega Directive means a lot of sins are permitted. But when it’s over, will they be forgiven? You say you have to live with the aftermath, and I don’t question that. But my crew are the ones who have to live with the now, and they’ll carry it with them for a while. Unless someone makes an example of them.’ Commander Lotharn’s words at Tagrador rattled around inside him, and he swallowed them.

‘Commander Slater fair fell over himself taking responsibility for Tagrador,’ mused Hale. ‘He used to serve with you, and I know you went to him at Qualor. I assume you made it clear your crew would not take the blame for the mishap?’

‘You can let me swing,’ Rourke said bluntly. ‘But I won’t let you condemn Commander Valance for firing on the Erem, or for launching a rescue mission without permission, or anything she has to do down on Ephrath.’

Hale watched him, and he realised with a bitter twist that he’d let his feelings get the better of him. She leaned back. ‘I’ve no intention of finding or creating a scapegoat, Captain. If nothing else, it’d be awfully naive to act like our tension with the Star Empire comes down to one moment or one person. A series of decisions, by many people on both sides, led to Teros. And even then, the Erem’s destruction is an opportunity for the Star Empire to complain about other frustrations.’ Hale shook her head. ‘If we make this about individuals, we lose sight of anything resembling justice or fairness.’

‘I understand your point. But make this too big a picture, and then it’s easy to forget fifty-three people were killed. By me.’

Her gaze raked over him once more. ‘It does you credit to be this protective of your first officer. Of your crew. The Omega Directive could be a shield for you that doesn’t quite reach over them.’

‘Sure, but that’d make me an arsehole, wouldn’t it?’

Hale gave a gentle but sincere laugh. ‘Commander Cortez told quite the stories of your missions. It sounds like you earned your crew’s loyalty by standing with them when your backs were up against the wall – over and over again.’

‘We’ve had our share of trouble.’

‘More than your share. You stand by them so they’re not alone. You do understand that you’re not alone, either?’ She hesitated. ‘No matter what Admiral Beckett suggests about the support from Command, or lack thereof?’

He had a gulp of coffee, ignoring how it singed. ‘How do you expect to keep the Empire happy after this?’

There was a pause as she watched the conversation shift. ‘I’m waiting to see if they respond to our presence. If they do, it means they’re prepared to stir things up with the Republic, which will need managing.’ Her brow furrowed at last, something occurring. ‘Your Lieutenant Kharth.’

‘Kharth might have disobeyed me at Teros, but I owe her my freedom and I have no doubts of her loyalty to Starfleet -’

‘I did not mean to imply otherwise.’ She lifted a hand. ‘You haven’t yet implemented disciplinary measures against her?’

He sighed. ‘We’ll see how this mission goes. But I don’t expect more trouble from her, if that’s what you’re asking.’

She nodded. ‘I don’t suppose I could borrow her, then? A Romulan Starfleet officer assisting as I collaborate with the Republic Navy would be a useful advisor and send a positive sign to the Republic. I’m aware she left Romulan society at a young age…’

‘I think she’d view being sent to help a diplomat as punishment,’ Rourke mused. ‘So you can definitely borrow her. If I need her undivided attention, we’re way past you needing an advisor.’

‘I think you underestimate how well I can diffuse a problem,’ said Hale, lips twitching. ‘But I take your point.’

He finished the coffee and stood. ‘I’ll send her down to you now, First Secretary. Appreciate the chat.’ He hesitated. ‘If you need more – assume my ready room door is always open to you. Like the bridge is.’ She’d earned that much, and while it wouldn’t quite make up for dinner, it was a gesture that made him feel a bit better.

‘Thank you, Captain. If I can be of assistance, I’ll speak up.’ She looked up at him, dark eyes piercing. ‘Perhaps together we can make sure this mission isn’t another battle Endeavour has to win through desperation, grit, and sacrifice.’

Only once he’d left did Rourke realise he couldn’t remember the last time his ship had pulled through a situation any other way.

* *

‘Stupid, blasted… this is as good as I can get you.’ Cortez thumped her fist on the Clarent’s control panel, and the navigation sensors flickered back to life with barely better range than their eyes.

The energy field hadn’t killed their engine when they’d crossed the threshold, but it had played havoc with their systems. Valance had navigated by the sun while Cortez and Thawn tried to crawl through the Clarent’s guts and restore sensors. She had expected something more dramatic; if the field wasn’t visible, she’d thought he might feel something. Instead they had been fine one moment, careening across the dunes, and the next barely able to see more than five feet in front of them on their instruments.

That contributed to her decision to stop at night, giving Cortez and Thawn hours in the dark to sit in the front and argue over how to pierce the interference. They’d pressed on the following morning, with Cortez only now getting the Clarent’s sensor systems functioning enough to once more pick up the approximate location of the source of the energy field.

An hour in, Beckett’s bored murmur came from the back. ‘I think this world was once really different.’ He’d been fiddling with a tricorder for a while. ‘Maybe once a jungle. But relocating a star probably doesn’t do habitats much good.’

Thawn leaned over his shoulder. ‘Surely that depends if the star was relocated at speed, or if it was instantaneously transported through some sort of wormhole technology?’

Valance heard him snap his tricorder shut, and he said, ‘Give me somewhere outside an energy field that screws with our sensors, and ask me to study that instead of the Tkon technology, and I might be able to figure it out, yeah. But I’m a bit busy now.’

‘You’re not,’ she pointed out. ‘We’ve nothing to do until -’

‘There!’ Cortez’s interruption was a vast relief as her panel blinked. ‘Six kilometres south-west. That’s the source.’

Valance had to course-correct only slightly. ‘Any idea what we’re looking at? Structures, anything?’

‘I’m lucky I can pick up an energy source.’

Beckett popped his head up between them. ‘What I’m afraid of is if it’s underground, and the pattern enhancers don’t do the trick.’

‘Let’s all stop borrowing trouble,’ Cortez chastised. ‘We’ll see soon enough.’ She directed Valance as they closed in on the signal, and soon they could see a craggier edge to a dune ahead, the sign of solid pale rocks breaking out of the sand. The wheels shifted underneath as they got closer, finding purchase on solid stone, and within the hour they were trundling up a steep, rocky rise.

‘Reminds me of Teros,’ mused Cortez, then shrugged. ‘I mean, when we were setting up the power facilities on the hill. Not with the desperation and death and all.’ The nav systems beeped at her. ‘There it is. Picking up signs of metals, alloys I’ve not seen anywhere else, right at the top. Thank God Tkon technology still works best if it doesn’t have to pipe through rock.’

Valance brought the Clarent to a halt as they reached the final rise. ‘Proceed on foot. I don’t want to risk damaging the ATV.’ She pulled on the top layer of her desert terrain field uniform, knowing it was better than being under direct sunlight, and hopped out the open hatch. Sun reflected off sands and stone, but as she squinted up, she could see metal glinting at the peak.

‘Yeah,’ said Cortez, looking up. ‘That’s the field emitter. Seems similar to the one on Abnia; we should be able to modulate the field, if not kill it.’

‘Is there a risk to switching it off? A purpose other than defence?’ asked Valance as she followed, Thawn in their wake. Beckett wandered in a different direction with his tricorder, muttering to himself, but she left him to it; she trusted Cortez’s study of Tkon technology at Abnia to see her through without their archaeologist’s help.

‘No idea,’ said Cortez cheerfully.

The metal pillar had been set into the rock itself, with additional pylons to brace it. Grey metal stabbed twenty feet into the sky, and Valance could finally feel the hum of energy as they approached.

‘The interfaces should appear in response to us,’ Thawn said, a little coy. ‘Assuming it doesn’t have defence systems. My tricorder’s barely registering anything other than the power.’

‘Is it safe to touch?’ said Valance.

‘If it’s not,’ said Cortez, advancing before she could stop her, ‘we’re really screwed.’

‘Isa -’

But Cortez planted a hand on the solid metal. And screamed.

Thawn screamed for a heartbeat, too, while Valance lunged forward as her heart tried to choke her – but then Thawn stopped screaming and said, ‘What?’ and Cortez dropped her hand and bent double, laughing.

‘Your faces -’

Thawn had gone sheet-white. ‘Commander, what the – that’s not – what -’

Beyond Cortez, a holographic interface shone to life above the pillar, what a detached part of Valance’s brain recognised as Tkon text scrawling across it, and Cortez jerked a thumb back as she chortled. ‘Same thing happened on Abnia.’

Valance had gone very still, fists now clenched by her side. ‘What,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘The away team commander murdered the chief engineer?’

Cortez finally looked a bit abashed, turning back to the pillar. ‘If Beckett were here, he’d have laughed,’ she grumbled. ‘Come take a look, Thawn.’

Valance folded her arms across her chest, ramrod straight as she watched. ‘Is this the beacon?’

‘No way. But it is the interface for the field emitter,’ Cortez called back. ‘With the how-to from Abnia, I reckon I can shut it down. There’s no sign it’s doing anything but keeping people out.’

‘No,’ agreed Thawn, her upset gone once she had something to focus on. Valance envied her that. ‘I think this is just a defence system. Sometimes the Tkon facilities control the biomes around them, but if that’s happening here, it must be separate equipment.’

Valance let out a slow breath. ‘Okay. Bring it down, and then maybe with sensors we’ll have a hope in hell of finding where in these hundreds of square kilometres of nothing the beacon is.’

‘I can do that,’ Cortez said, ‘but once I do, I don’t think it’ll be easy for me to bring it back on-line again. This is only one interface point, not the central control system.’

‘So long as we can use our sensors, transporters, and contact Endeavour, I don’t care if we never bring this back on,’ said Valance.

‘Commander!’ The urgent call from Beckett had her heart rate shoot back up, but she turned to see the ensign clambering up rock towards them and looking excited, not apprehensive. ‘No need to look elsewhere. Found a passage into the rock – it’s collapsed, but the markings are distinct. Once we have a connection back to Endeavour, I want a full archaeology team down here. We’re right on top of a tonne of Tkon… something.’

Kharth kept quiet as the diplomatic conference room’s doors slid shut behind her, clasping her hands behind her back and waiting. At the main table, First Secretary Hale gave her a sidelong glance before returning her attention to the holographic figures on the projector.

‘I’ll speak to the science staff aboard Endeavour,’ Hale was saying. ‘Obviously they’re somewhat preoccupied with Ephrath II. But I’ll see about sharing their records on the nebula with you, Commander.’

‘It’s in everyone’s interests if the Republic can improve visibility through the nebula,’ said the projection of Commander Vorena. ‘Installation of worthwhile early-warning security systems would reduce the risk of surveillance or incursion by Imperial ships along our border.’

‘I understand, and I’m sure Captain Rourke’s staff will, too. I’m glad you have the opportunity of this expedition to expand your knowledge of the region.’ Hale’s smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. ‘We’ll speak again soon, commanders.’ She killed the comm feed, the holographic images disappearing, and turned to Kharth. ‘What do you think, Lieutenant?’

As an open-ended question, it was transparently a test. Kharth decided to take the most obvious path, and shrugged. ‘If they’re worried about the Empire spying on or breaching their border, they should be more concerned by cloaking technology than the nebula.’

Hale gave a gentle scoff. ‘You’re right. It’s a smokescreen of a request. They want to remind us that we’re in their territory, and that we’re here at their invitation. They would ideally like us answering to them.’

A response to that was less evident. ‘You wanted to see me, First Secretary?’

‘Please, Lieutenant, sit down. I expect you’re not thrilled Captain Rourke volunteered you, but we don’t have to stand on ceremony.’ They both pulled up chairs. ‘I won’t patronise you. I asked for your assistance because you’re a Romulan woman in Starfleet. I think you can help make negotiations with the Republic go more smoothly.’

Kharth raised an eyebrow. ‘I have absolutely no experience of the Republic. I’ve never been there, I didn’t live in any of the communities that founded it.’

‘That’s not strictly true.’ Hale tilted her head. ‘The division your late mother was assigned to largely broke for the Republic. Many of your father’s political contacts and allies went on to have a role in the Republic government.’

She had never cared to go looking into her parents’ politics or old friends. None of them had helped her at any point with anything. Kharth shrugged. ‘That doesn’t mean I have insights I can share.’

‘Perhaps not,’ Hale sighed. ‘My career has always been on these borders, but I wouldn’t pretend my understand of Romulan society and psychology is perfect and complete.’

‘What, specifically, do you want me to explain about the Republic’s actions here? You seem to have a grip on it. If we’re not standing on ceremony, First Secretary, I’ve no interest in being a Romulan stood next to you so you can look friendlier to them.’ She knew speaking like this wasn’t necessarily wise; with her fate still up in the air, the support of someone like Hale could make or break her career. But pride still burned deep.

Hale looked undeterred. ‘I don’t want you to do that, Lieutenant. Truthfully? Joining Endeavour’s mission was a last-minute decision. I left without staff or much preparation. This job is easier with a second pair of eyes and ears witnessing a meeting, noticing things I haven’t, and sharing thoughts and analysis after. You’re the most qualified person aboard.’ She pressed on before Kharth could object. ‘Not just because you’re a Romulan, but yes, you have a unique perspective and set of experiences and I’m not apologising for recognising that. You studied interstellar relations at the Academy, and your assignment at Starbase 371 is marked with notes of you managing political disputes and balancing local interests. You have the training and the experience and the insight.’ Kharth hesitated, and Hale tilted her head, eyes going harder. ‘Or are you going to be the latest person on this ship who acts like they’re less than they are?’

‘Ma’am?’ It was safer to let confusion reign longer to delay angry resentment.

‘Giving an officer with your background and training a chance to work with the Diplomatic Service is both normal for me and an opportunity for you. I’m not saying you should fall over yourself with gratitude, Lieutenant, but treating this like exploitation or patronisation is a curious choice.’ Hale tapped a stylus against a PADD. ‘You disobeyed orders at Teros and refused to open fire on a defenceless ship. The ongoing crisis forced Endeavour to abandon that world, a world you lived on for years. You then had to plan and lead a rescue operation that violated Romulan Imperial territory.’

Kharth tensed. ‘What happened on Teros is between the captain and me.’

‘I don’t debate that. But I can’t imagine you liked any of it very much. The way I see this joint operation, Lieutenant, is that I can spend it keeping the Republic off Endeavour’s back, or I can build bridges. Develop this friendship with the only Romulan faction who opens their doors for us. I’m asking for your help not in stirring up trouble, shooting first to protect our own necks, or abandoning those in need. I’m asking for your help in actually developing something. The Federation keeps pretending it’s forgotten how to extend its hand instead of close its fist. We can’t turn that around today. But we can come away from this better than we were before.’

Kharth stared at the table a moment, and swallowed. When she looked up it was with a guarded, reluctant gaze. ‘Commander Vorena has seniority in status but not rank over Commander Astorn,’ she said at length. ‘She’ll be trying to prove herself better than him at every turn. Don’t overlook the politics between the two. If she won’t give you what you want, you can get it from Astorn – or get her cooperation by making her worry you will.’

A smile tugged at Hale’s lips, and try as Kharth did, she couldn’t see a sign of smugness – merely approval. But then, diplomats were trained liars. ‘Thank you, Lieutenant. Perhaps we can go over the recent discussions I’ve had with them and you can give me your thoughts…’

* *

With the energy field powered down, the away team had established communication from Endeavour.  From there, Beckett had wasted no time transporting a science and engineering team to the surface. Endeavour was not blessed with a large number of archaeologists, but between them and his geologists, he’d cobbled together a tolerable set of talents and skills. The rest of the expedition had set up the tents and shelters and equipment to monitor the region, protect them from the elements, and let them work on what was now the undivided priority of the mission: finding a beacon.

‘Are you even sure there’s a beacon here?’ Valance asked as she ducked under the canvas canopy that protected Beckett’s main equipment from the sun and wind, the work site of Starfleet officers behind her managing the dig and the field emitter.

‘“Sure” is a difficult word to throw around. Because the only things I’m sure about is that there’s an energy field pylon over there, and the collapsed entrance to some underground passageways with Tkon iconography on the rock over there,’ said Beckett, pointing back and forth. ‘But the setup of this site, the nature of the energy field, and the construction work we’ve seen so far does match other Tkon outposts which have been home to important technology, including some of the confirmed beacon sites.’

She folded her arms across her chest, looking like the desert heat had done her patience no good. ‘How’s progress, then?’

‘With the field down, we’ve been able to conduct sub-surface scans by the passageway.’ He reached for his projector to bring up the predicted map of the complex they were uncovering. ‘I don’t have a huge degree of confidence in the accuracy of this recreation, because this site is much older than what this technology was developed for. Normally we’re digging up sites a few thousand years old, not a few hundred thousand years old. But one thing is clear – we have a passageway, and then we have a deep shaft down.’ He gestured at the holo-display showing a corridor working down into the ridge, before a long fall. ‘Which is better news than it sounds, because based on these scans, I think any chambers below are reasonably intact, rather than collapsed.’

‘Can’t you just beam down there?’

Beckett blew out his cheeks. ‘I’d rather not. That’d take protective suits, breathing apparatus, and a pattern buffer, and even then I’m not a hundred percent sure the chambers aren’t collapsed. So we could be beaming into rock. Beyond that, anything in the chamber that’s survived these hundreds of thousands of years is likely to be very, very fragile. There are preservation methods I couldn’t use.’

‘We’re here for a beacon, Ensign,’ Valance reminded. ‘Not cultural discovery.’

He scowled. ‘We’re here for both. Our understanding of the beacons has been based on thousands of findings, many of which probably looked irrelevant in themselves. We don’t know what we have here. If it was an either/or, we could have that argument, Commander, but until then I’m going to proceed with all due caution for the historic significance of this site.’

Valance looked surprised at his indignation, but then there was a call from across the rocky ridge. ‘Beckett! Commander!’ Thawn’s head had stuck up over a rock. ‘We’re getting through the passageway!’

Commander Cortez was not a geotechnical engineer, but she’d insisted she could manage Endeavour’s geologist to safely clear the collapsed entranceway. Still, Beckett hurried with as much concern as excitement as he bolted out from under the canopy into the bright, direct sunlight of Ephrath II.

That bright sunlight meant working on the collapsed passageway was happening in intense conditions. Cortez looked like water had been poured over her several times that hour and already evaporated. At his insistence, she’d scaled down to hand-held tools, and they’d spent a while studying the approach to identify what needed shoring up before starting to move the large rubble that had fallen across the archway of masonry and metal he’d found.

‘Been moving things one rock at a time,’ she assured him as he skidded to a halt beside her. ‘Making sure we’re not going to bring half the damned ridge down. But you should be pleased with yourself.’

Beckett watched as she advanced on the partially-cleared passageway. Her gravitic shovel was not something he’d want to use to clear everything, but as a hand-held piece of technology it let her lever out rocks one at a time with relative ease and check her work as she went. ‘Pleased with myself?’

‘Don’t worry,’ mused Thawn. Pale and red-haired, she had covered as much skin as possible, and now he only saw judging eyes under a head scarf. ‘He usually is.’

‘I usually have reason to be; the commander’s just telling me why today.’

Cortez flashed him a grin as she levered out the largest chunk of fallen masonry blocking the entranceway. ‘I think his initial scans were right. We don’t have much digging to do.’

And as the rock was rolled away, dust and sand blossomed up, and Beckett lifted a hand to shield his face as the others coughed. But this time, behind it was not more stone – only darkness. He beamed. ‘Alright, nice going, Commander.’

As Valance had once promised, Cortez gave him a high-five for that. ‘A little bit of ingenuity and modern technology, and here you go. A lost passageway someone’s not been in for a few hundred millennia.’

Beckett pulled out his light and ducked down through the narrow opening into the passageway. He kept his pace slow after one whiff of musty air, hoping the breeze would see to that, but a sweep of his torch across the interior suggested he had little reason to be cautious. Masonry was crumbled and damaged, any markings or definition of architecture long-faded. There was little to preserve here.

He ran the torch along the paved floor, and grinned more as he saw the sudden break in the stone. ‘There’s the shaft,’ he said, and moved on, the other three following.

‘How far down did your scans suggest it is?’ called Valance from behind.

‘Could be thirty metres,’ he admitted. ‘I assume this was once a lift. That didn’t last.’ Some lingering metal fixtures remained, but by the state of the stone at the top of the shaft, he suspected the rest had fallen below. He was cautious as he approached the edge, feeling every step, until he could shine his light into the darkness. ‘Could be a hundred.’

Cortez’s head popped up beside him, the Chief Engineer either bolder or more confident in her assessment of the stone. ‘So we’re going to have to repel down a ways and then drill,’ she said, sounding unduly cheerful.

‘And try to not wreck anything below it. If this passageway’s intact, I think there’s a good chance that once we get through whatever’s blocked the shaft, the chamber below should be okay?’ Beckett glanced again at the roof, then down, and tilted his head. ‘If we start by drilling a narrow enough gap to not bring the lot down, we can lower some equipment into the chamber.’

‘Good idea,’ said Cortez. ‘Get a look at what we’re dealing with.’

‘And start recording for digital imaging,’ he said. ‘Some stuff down there’s going to turn to dust the moment we go near it, almost certain. The more we can scan ahead before we physically show up, the better. That way I can recreate a lot of it holographically, both to plan ahead and to keep a record.’

Cortez looked back at Valance and Thawn, stood by the passageway entrance. ‘Listen to him. It’s like he’s trained, or something.’

‘He is our Chief Science Officer,’ Valance pointed out.

‘Acting,’ added Thawn.

Beckett turned back to them with a waggle of his hands. ‘Guess I’ll just act my way to a beacon, huh? Oh, brighten up, Lieutenant, Commander. Nobody but us has been here for hundreds of thousands of years. This is still really cool.’

‘You’re right,’ said Valance, and looked to the shaft. ‘But I’ll cheer up about it once we have a beacon.’

Then her combadge sounded, and they all stiffened at the tense voice of Rourke. ‘Endeavour to away team. Commander, we have a situation up here.’

* *

Rourke fair flew onto the bridge as the alert klaxon sounded. ‘Report!’

Lindgren surrendered the command chair with near-palpable relief. ‘Romulan warbird decloaking within the system. The Republic ships are coming to join us, but they’re a ways out – and it’s not one of theirs.’

He stopped before his seat. ‘Red alert! Ops, get me an ID on that ship.’

‘Trying, sir,’ Ensign Athaka said desperately. ‘But it’s not easy through the nebula’s interference. Looks like a Valdore-class, though.’

Rourke glanced back as the turbolift doors slid open for both Kharth and Hale to pile in, his tactical officer going to her post. ‘The Valdore’s almost exclusively used by the Empire these days. Any response on comms, Elsa?’

‘Nothing.’

‘They have shields raised and weapon systems ready,’ warned Kharth once she was at Tactical. ‘They do not appear to be targeting us.’

‘They’re closer than our allies,’ Arys warned. ‘They snuck past them under cloak.’

‘Captain!’ Athaka’s voice took on a new tone of urgency. ‘Got an ID on the ship, sir. The Kalvath, Romulan Star Empire.’

Kharth swallowed an oath. ‘That’s the ship we fought at Tagrador.’

Rourke’s throat tightened. Lotharn. He rounded on Lindgren. ‘Open a channel; they can be coy, but they’ll listen.’ He caught Hale’s eye on him, the diplomat looking like she was swallowing words, and he gave her the slightest of nods. He would keep his cool.

He rounded on the viewscreen. ‘Kalvath, this is Captain Rourke of the USS Endeavour. I assume you’re listening, Lotharn. We have an unfinished conversation, but keep coming towards us ready for a fight, and I guarantee you our ships will finish their business from Tagrador.’

Thudding heartbeats of silence followed, and he felt the eyes on him of the bridge crew who had no idea what had happened to him in the prison camp. Then the viewscreen blinked to life with the sight of an Imperial Navy bridge, and the crisp, uniformed figure of Commander Lotharn.

‘Captain. Shall we dispense with the initial bickerings about if this nebula is in Imperial space or Republic space?’

‘That would save us some time.’

‘Which means my ship has a right to be here, and those Republic warbirds rushing back to meet us have a right to be here. However.’ Lotharn tilted his head. ‘Starfleet positioning a warship so close to our border – one which did lately violate our territory – is something else. Diplomats can argue about the insult. I’m here to investigate.’

‘My business here has nothing to do with the Empire,’ Rourke said sincerely.

‘That’s a novelty for you lately.’ Lotharn looked down at his instruments. ‘I see you’re conducting a study of the planet. If your business is so innocent, I’m sure you’ll be happy to explain.’

His jaw tensed. ‘I’m not at liberty to do that. This is still a Starfleet operation.’

‘Supported and aided by the Romulan Republic, who covet our territory. Why should I believe you’re not installing a surveillance outpost?’

‘If I am, then you’ve found it. We’d be pretty foolish to carry on.’ Rourke shrugged. ‘This is a scientific expedition. We’ll leave nothing behind and have no intentions of breaching the security of the Romulan Star Empire.’

Lotharn shook his head. ‘I have absolutely no reason to believe you, Rourke. Or believe that you, of all people, are conducting innocent exploration here, with the Republic, on this border.’ He reached for a control. ‘I see there’s a low-level energy field on the surface, and I see it is not Federation in design. I’ll be sending my own team to investigate.’

‘I don’t -’

‘As you say. Nobody has a territorial claim over this system. A scientific oddity this close to the Romulan Star Empire is of far more concern to us than to Starfleet. If this is innocent, we can share notes.’ Lotharn leaned forward. ‘Or you can explain what you’re up to with the Republic. I’ll let you mull on which lie to tell. Kalvath out.’

‘Damn it,’ Rourke muttered as the viewscreen cut out. ‘Endeavour to away team. Commander, we have a situation up here.’

‘Valance here.’ His XO’s taut tone did not dissipate as he explained the situation. ‘We’re still not in a position to reactivate the energy field. Commander Cortez expects it’d need fully recalibrating, and we haven’t found any central controls yet.’

‘Captain.’ Athaka turned in his chair. ‘The Kalvath is launching a shuttle.’

Rourke turned to Hale and Kharth. ‘What do you expect them to do? Will they be bold enough to drop troops on our site?’

The two women exchanged looks, and Hale shook her head. ‘The Empire is using the situation to justify investigation and paranoia; they’d struggle to justify an act of aggression, especially with the Republic here.’

‘Agreed,’ said Kharth. ‘I think they’ll establish a beachhead nearby and conduct observation and surveillance.’

‘We can handle that,’ Valance pointed out. ‘Most of our work is in the underground complex. This is a more mountainous region, and they can probably set up somewhere nearby we won’t easily scope out, but they’ll struggle to see more than the topside of an archaeological dig.’

‘Understood.’ Rourke scowled. ‘I’m still going to dispatch additional security.’

‘Send Rhade down with them,’ said Valance. ‘Keep Kharth at Tactical in case the Kalvath turns hostile, but I could do with extra eyes watching our back.’

‘Agreed. The good news is that while we don’t want the Empire getting their hands on Tkon technology or interfering with a beacon, we don’t have any hostile intent towards them. They can watch all they like.’

‘We’ll work on how to restore the energy field to stop anyone from interfering with the site after we leave,’ said Valance, ‘but we’re juggling a few dozen challenges of ancient tech and ruins at once here.’

‘Acknowledged. Send up what you have on the field emitter; I know you have the best minds with you, but I’ll get Adupon on it, too. I’ll send down the security. Endeavour out.’

Kharth’s eyes were on him, and he braced for her rebuke at his letting Valance bench her up here. Instead she said, ‘I’ll continue monitoring the Kalvath and preparing for possible combat alongside the Republic warbirds.’

‘I’ll talk to the warbird commanders,’ said Hale. ‘Showing we’re prepared to defend them, and making plans to do so, will go a long way to keeping them happy.’ Her gaze met Rourke’s for a moment. ‘I hope.’

He nodded, and turned back to the bridge with a sigh. ‘Set condition down to Yellow Alert,’ said Rourke. ‘Now we wait. And let the Empire loom over our shoulder.’

Nate Beckett fancied he was good at reading people, which was why he gave Lieutenants Rhade and Thawn a wide berth as he passed through the field expedition camp. While some of the dig team rotated back and forth to the ship, he and a few key personnel – or keen personnel – had pitched tents and spent a day living, eating, and breathing Tkon ruins. Although Thawn was among them and Rhade looked set to be the same since his arrival, this was the first time he’d seen them together.

Stiff and tense body language had him take the rear exit from the mess tent, going the long way around to the dig site entrance as he chewed on a ration bar. But though he didn’t want to be in the middle of it, it seemed he hadn’t escaped notice, Thawn calling after him.

‘I don’t have an opinion,’ he blurted as he turned back.

But only Thawn was approaching, Rhade looking on with a bemused expression. ‘You said you wanted me to look at the facility controls below?’

He blinked. ‘Cortez is still restoring full…’ But her gaze went intent. ‘Oh. Yes.’ Was there any point to lying in front of a telepath like Rhade? Did it matter if Rhade saw through her transparent escape from the conversation? ‘Urgently. Right now.’

If Rhade was vexed by this, it didn’t show, the burly Betazoid merely nodding politely. ‘We’ll speak later.’

Beckett kept his expression studied as he let Thawn follow him across the ridge. ‘So it’s going well with you two.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she sniffed.

‘But you’ll use me as an escape so you don’t have to discuss him not getting himself out of the brig? Because that sounds like it’ll be a dampener on however the hell an arranged betrothal’s about to work.’

‘Yes,’ Thawn said simply. ‘I will use you.’

‘That’s fair,’ he grumbled. ‘I don’t care anyway.’

They ducked into the passageway, now cleared and illuminated, the masonry shored up to keep it stable. At the far end was the shaft, which they’d cleared of obstruction all the way to the lower chamber, and the anchored ropes for rapelling down that was their best means of descent.

‘I’m sure Commander Cortez can make use of me while she does actual work,’ said Thawn as they slung on harnesses. ‘It looks like we’re going to discover an awful lot about Tkon defences and biome controls.’

He scowled. ‘Cortez still hasn’t fully accessed anything; all she can do is confirm something’s on.’

‘And that there isn’t a beacon.’

‘We haven’t found a beacon. That’s different.’

‘We’ve checked every chamber. This is a fascinating dig-site. It’s just not what we were looking for.’ She swung down the shaft before he could reply, and because he didn’t have a cutting retort anyway, all he could do was follow.

He and Cortez had both agreed to restrict access to the lower chambers so they didn’t have unnecessary boots tromping through. While the lift equipment had collapsed under the ages, the chambers themselves had been found intact, if musty. As above, rooms were carved into and from the natural stone of Ephrath, but now reinforced with metal beams his scans suggested were from native alloys across the walls and ceilings.

They had found only a half-dozen rooms, two of which housed the power generator and processors of the systems for the energy field and the only other facility they’d found. The panel for that was in a third room. Beckett and Cortez were both confident it controlled something that at least monitored, if not regulated the climate of Ephrath II, but they had yet to gain systems access.

As Beckett and Thawn landed in the main chamber, it was from that room that voices drifted, and with a smirk he lifted a finger to his lips as he recognised Cortez and Valance speaking.

‘…still no sign of them,’ Valance was saying. ‘But I’d feel better if -’

‘What’s a security guard going to do here? Stare at the one access shaft? If a Romulan agent gets past the whole field camp and comes down, we’re already screwed.’

‘I didn’t say it was essential. I said it’d make me feel better.’

‘You’re adorable,’ came Cortez’s wry but not entirely insincere response, and Beckett had to clamp a hand over his mouth to stifle a snicker.

Thawn cast him a judging look before she cleared her throat and approached the chamber. ‘Commander Cortez, did you need an extra pair of hands?’

Valance straightened like she’d been caught doing something wrong, but Cortez gave her a look of an entirely different kind of suspicion. ‘I can use an extra pair of hands. But weren’t you managing supplies up top?’

Thawn shrugged. ‘Camp logistics are in order. I wanted to be helpful.’

‘She’s finished ruling over her domain with an iron fist,’ Beckett drawled, ‘and wanted to hide from Rhade down here.’

‘I did not -’

‘I’ll head back up,’ said Valance with a sigh. ‘If we can press on trying to crack the climate control, perhaps that will give some indication if there’s a beacon anywhere on this planet. Otherwise we’ll have to report this operation as a bust.’

‘There’s something here,’ Beckett insisted, but nobody listened to him as Valance went to the shaft to begin the ascent out of the chamber. Peeved, he turned back to Cortez with his hands on his hips. ‘Does she explode if people notice you two are a couple, or something?’

Cortez raised an eyebrow, and though he saw her amusement he also saw the glint of warning. ‘She likes professional boundaries.’

‘Including fussing over your safety in an adorable way?’ Apparently he was going to ignore the warning.

‘We weren’t eavesdropping,’ Thawn blurted.

‘No, it was just too cute to miss.’

‘I am super cute, and it’s kind of you to notice,’ Cortez agreed. ‘But make the commander self-conscious about demonstrating a single emotion in public and I might bury you down here.’

Beckett’s grin eased. ‘I’m not that stupid. You can keep pointing out that nobody cares, though. I’m confident that if she has to make some desperate command decision about saving you or me, she’ll let me die for professional reasons.’

Thawn side-eyed him. ‘I don’t know. They might be personal. But not because of her relationship with Commander Cortez.’

Cortez laughed. Then they turned to the panel they’d uncovered which, while an astonishing find in its own right, was frustratingly not what they were here for. ‘I hope you brought your Tkon brain, both of you, because I want us to crack this thing.’

‘I wasn’t coming for that,’ Beckett admitted. ‘I still think something’s here.’

‘Do you think it’s here,’ said Thawn, ‘or do you want it to be here?’

‘None of this makes sense if it’s not here,’ he protested as the two women approached the control panel. ‘Enormous defence facilities? The Tkon only put them up if there was something to guard. They only controlled the climate of worlds for a reason.’

‘It’s possible the controls aren’t working, and this was meant to be a much more temperate and habitable world,’ Cortez pointed out. ‘Then the energy field would be protecting the equipment sustaining a whole colony.’

‘Or they put a beacon essential to their subspace network that maintains and builds the Galactic Barrier here, made the world inhospitable to most forms of known sapient life, and popped a defensive shield around both bits of equipment to keep it safe.’

‘A good theory,’ said Cortez. ‘But so far my guess has better backing.’

He wandered out of the room, hands shoved in his pockets, grumbling to himself as the women got to work.

I didn’t go through all this shit, he thought, surveying the bare rooms with a gloomy air, just to find a dig site we’ll never be allowed to get to the bottom of. If there was no beacon, Endeavour would surely leave, and access to this historic site would remain restricted under the usual bounds of Federation-Romulan politics.

But he had run scans of all the walls, all the floors, and there was no sign of anything else carved into this mountain. One room was bare now, its contents all but turned to dust the moment they were disturbed. Recreations from his digital imaging scans suggested it was a break room for staff, and while that had fascinating anthropological implications, it didn’t help him much in finding a beacon. It was still a place to stand out of the way and glare at the walls, crumbled masonry cast in jagged shadows under the temporary lighting.

He hadn’t realised he’d let himself sink into brooding for quite a while until he heard footsteps at the door, and Cortez’s voice. ‘Walls giving you any answers?’

Beckett snapped upright. ‘I’ll figure it out; you worry about the interface -’

‘Woah, kid. Calm down.’ She wandered in, hands raised. ‘I was checking on you. Not judging you. I don’t know if you noticed, but sometimes people don’t do that.’

‘Here? Of course they do.’ He nodded sharply the way she’d come. ‘Thawn jumps down my throat every five seconds, because she thinks Rourke assigned me as a favour to my father.’

‘Thawn jumps down the throat of anyone who doesn’t outrank her and threatens her nerdery, either by out-nerding her or pointing out what a nerd she is. You do both.’ Cortez shook her head. ‘I get you think you have something to prove, but pinning your self-worth on whether this place has a beacon or not isn’t healthy. You can’t control what the Tkon did hundreds of thousands of years ago.’

‘I’m the Chief Science Officer. I’m the ship’s archaeologist. It’s been on my say-so, my recommendation, that we hunted this lead out of everything we could have learnt from Arcidava. How do I accept that being for nothing?’

‘Because it’s not all on you. You based that conclusion on findings from other experts. Other people looked at your recommendation and went along with it.’ Cortez sighed. ‘This ship is really bad at remembering we’re a team, sometimes.’

‘You should get back to figuring out the equipment. If the Tkon really did control this entire biome, that’s a cool thing for you to work -’

‘I just said we’re a team.’ She didn’t leave, looking around the room, and lifted her PADD. ‘So you think this was a mess hall?’ she said, and brought up the holographic recreation of the initial scan. ‘Wow, we already wrecked this place.’

‘It’s pretty horrific,’ he agreed. ‘Normally we’d take it much slower before barging down here. Instead we’ve disturbed stuff, messed with the humidity and heat levels, even the acidity in the air. The last lingering remains of a culture’s tea break, all turned to dust in a day.’ Beckett shrugged as she span the projection before him. ‘But we didn’t come down here to study Tkon kettles – hang on.’

She paused the projection. ‘You see something?’

He reached out to zoom in on a section of wall art that had crumbled after their arrival. ‘I didn’t spot that.’

‘The pattern? Is that art, or are we really in the Tkon equivalent of a break room’s inspirational posters?’

Beckett stared at it. Then he turned on his heel and stormed out of the bare room. ‘We’ve been going about this all wrong.’

‘The wall art told you so?’

He rounded on her, eyes lighting up. ‘The records from Argus were dated to the Age of Xora, so we assumed this place was built then. But that design?’ Beckett looked up, gaze sweeping about the walls, all of it beginning to fit together. ‘This wasn’t built in the Age of Xora! It was built in Makto! They moved Ephrath here in Xora, but they didn’t build this facility until much later!’

Cortez straightened. ‘Okay, okay, so we’ve been following the cultural blueprints from the wrong century or two. What does that mean?’

‘I should have guessed; in Xora the Tkon built original structures, like at Abnia,’ Beckett muttered, and in the main chamber he got down on his hands and knees, studying the floor. ‘But this is built into the rock. Maybe this was a colony, once, and they only needed to build defence systems an age later? Maybe they also added to the beacon network over the centuries…’

‘We’ve scanned below,’ Cortez said. ‘No sign of any lower levels.’

‘Tkon border outposts, for defence and protection, implemented new security features by Makto,’ said Beckett, tilting his head at the floor. Then he pulled out his tricorder and, instead of flipping it open, twisted off a screw and set it on the paving slabs. His eyes lit up as it rolled. ‘Additional secure chambers with their own internal defence systems. Panic rooms, or for sensitive equipment. We thought we could scan this whole ridge with the main energy field down. But I think there’s a second field blocking out our sensors.’ He pointed at the near-imperceptible dip in the pavings where the screw trundled to a stop. ‘Under there.’

Cortez looked about. ‘I don’t see a control panel. Maybe it eroded? I’ll get the shovel.’

Five minutes later, Thawn came out of the equipment room to find them levering up a paving slab. ‘What are you two doing?’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Beckett as the slab came up with a groan of rock. ‘We’re geniuses.’

Cortez cackled with satisfaction. ‘There’s metal set into this slab. This was a hatch once.’ And as she pulled the paving away, underneath was not more rock or dirt, but another darkened space.

Beckett stuck his head in the gap, torch ready. A quick wave around confirmed only one more chamber below, fifteen feet high and not much wider. Then his torchlight fell on a glint of tall metal, and his breath caught. ‘Bingo.’

Cortez joined him. ‘Beacon bingo?’

‘You know it.’ He waved a hand in Thawn’s direction. ‘Toss us the end of that climbing rope,’ he said, and scuttled down into the chamber once she had.

The air was musty, but that was to be expected. Beckett landed cat-like in the darkness, and turned to the tall shape that matched everything he’d read on Tkon beacons. ‘There you are,’ he breathed, approaching it with a hand gingerly raised. At his proximity, the beacon sprang to life, again like he’d read, with a holographic interface swirling an inch above the surface.

But the gasp of Thawn from above sounded more shocked than that deserved. ‘Beckett.’

He didn’t know what had rattled her, turning wildly – but then when he turned back to the beacon, he wasn’t alone. ‘Shit!’

He’d read about the Tkon Portals, the artificial intelligences that guarded their outposts. That was what this figure had to be, a wizened, human-looking shape with dark, glinting eyes locked on him. But it didn’t make the sudden appearance of someone else in a dark and ancient chamber any less terrifying.

The Portal straightened, expression folded into a scowl. ‘Savages,’ it said in a voice that scraped on the rock.

Then the ground, the walls, and all the masonry around them began to shudder.

* *

Ensign Athaka sat bolt upright as an alert blatted at his bridge console. ‘Captain, I’m reading a sudden change in surface conditions. There’s a massive increase in air pressure and wind speed over the dig site, and I’m picking up a lot of static electricity. This – this has come from nowhere.’

Rourke stood. ‘A sand storm? That doesn’t just appear.’

Lindgren frowned. ‘Commander Cortez reported they found, but couldn’t interface with, Tkon technology to regulate the environment.’

‘Hail the away team.’

A moment later she shook her head. ‘This isn’t just a sand storm. There’s a massive electromagnetic surge in the atmosphere. It’s highly localised, but I can’t get through on comms.’

‘I’m losing them on sensors, too,’ Athaka said with some small panic. ‘Do you think they pressed a wrong button?’

‘If they did,’ said Rourke through gritted teeth, ‘then they’ll be able to fix it. Lieutenant Arys, evaluate a possible flight route for a shuttle.’

The Andorian hesitated. ‘Flight conditions would be poor -’

‘I want options right up until they’re impossible.’

‘Captain.’ Lindgren looked up. ‘The Kalvath is hailing us.’

‘Just what we need,’ Rourke muttered. ‘Put him through.’

Lotharn’s face appeared on the viewscreen. ‘This is audacious even for you, Rourke.’

He squinted. ‘What, controlling the weather?’

‘Are you really going to patronise me? We know as well as you that the Tkon could control the climate of their worlds. I know your away team is sat on some sort of facility.’

‘They haven’t done anything,’ Rourke insisted. Intentionally. ‘Why would they bring a sand storm down on their own heads?’

‘To keep my team away, of course. I can still detect my shuttle’s transponder, but I can’t establish a communications link, and they’re in considerably less shelter than yours.’

Athaka twisted in his chair. ‘Sir, I’m picking up signs of an electromagnetic storm in the upper atmosphere. If that reaches the surface, that could make it very dangerous for the Romulans sheltering in their shuttle, while our people have the Tkon -’

‘Yes, thank you, Ensign,’ Rourke snapped.

Lotharn’s expression darkened. ‘If anything happens to my team, Rourke…’

‘You sent them down there!’

Impatience crossed the Romulan’s face. ‘You keep acting with intense outrage every time I refuse to give you the benefit of the doubt. You have repeatedly proved you’ll put your mission ahead of Romulan lives, Rourke. After Teros and Tagrador, what’s one Romulan shuttle?’ Lotharn straightened. ‘I’m going to see to the rescue of my people. Endanger them at your peril, Endeavour.’

The viewscreen winked out, and Rourke glared at Athaka. ‘Don’t give me reports like that when I’m on the line with someone who hates us, Ensign.’

Athaka squirmed. ‘Sorry, sir.’

‘Don’t be sorry. Just -’ Rourke stopped, blowing out his cheeks. ‘Get me the away team or the Romulans. Can you find that transponder?’

‘I’ll try.’

Kharth piped up at that. ‘Sending you the scans from our tactical systems of the shuttle, Ops. Might help.’

Normally, Rourke mused, we’re worrying about whether we have to blow the Romulans up.

He gave a sigh of relief when Athaka spoke a moment later. ‘Got them. They’re a few kilometres away from the dig site. We had that as another ridge. Maybe they can find shelter in some caves?’

‘If we can’t break through this storm, and we can’t fly down,’ said Rourke, ‘try to make a connection through the pattern enhancers the away team brought with them. We have to trust our people will do what they can on their end to make contact, if it’s fix Tkon environment control or just boost their signal.’

‘Sir.’ Kharth looked up. ‘Kalvath is launching a shuttle.’

Arys sucked his teeth. ‘Very bad idea.’

‘It looks like a flyover,’ she elaborated. ‘They might be trying to boost a signal to the surface. They’re in the upper atmosphere but not descending further into the storm.’

‘That won’t help them much,’ Arys said. ‘They’d have to get through the worst of the interference before trimming off a few hundred kilometres will make a difference.’

‘He’s trying whatever little bit he thinks will help his team.’ Rourke ran a hand through his hair. ‘What about a probe? Can we rig it to transmit back to us through the interference and drop it near the dig site? Give us eyes down here, maybe something for the away team to bounce off to make contact?’

‘It could work,’ said Athaka. ‘I’ll go see about the modifications.’

But the moment he left the bridge, Lindgren’s breath caught. ‘Sir. I’ve lost the Romulan transponder. And nearby interference isn’t worse.’

Rourke’s chest tightened. ‘You think the storm hit the ship?’

‘It might have just killed their systems, but…’

‘Sir.’ That was Arys. ‘Romulan shuttle in orbit has come hard about; they’re returning to the Kalvath.’

‘He’s not going to be pleased,’ muttered Kharth.

‘We’re being hailed again,’ said Lindgren, and at Rourke’s nod, she patched the Kalvath through.

Lotharn’s eyes were cold. ‘The storm’s taken out my away team. I think it’s time we stopped pretending we’re all here on a delightful scientific expedition.’

‘My people had nothing to do with -’

‘Perhaps not. But I was sent here with two sets of instructions, Rourke: to observe operations in the Velorum Nebula, and to bring you into custody. Observation has become impossible.’

Rourke glanced at the tactical display on his console, then looked back at Lotharn. ‘You’d be cocky to think your ship can best mine in a straight fight. I won’t ask the Republic to weigh in on our side, but I don’t know how badly you want to gamble.’

‘Of course this won’t be a straight fight. I’m not an idiot,’ said Lotharn. ‘But if there’s one thing you care about, Rourke, it’s completing your mission. And your mission is on the surface of Ephrath.’

‘Sir.’ Kharth’s voice held low urgency. ‘The Kalvath is powering up weapons, but they don’t have a targeting lock on us.’

‘We do not,’ Lotharn confirmed. ‘But one word to my tactical officer, and I hit your away team’s dig site with enough torpedoes that it doesn’t particularly matter if the storm scatters them. Enough will hit home. Which will be more of a problem for you, Rourke: burying your team, or burying whatever you’ve defied treaties and murdered people to find here?’

Heat coiled in Rourke’s gut. ‘If your weapon systems so much as twitch -’

‘Then you and I will have a fight, and we’ll test our skills and your friendship with the Republic. But your team and their discovery will be dead whoever prevails.’ Lotharn shrugged. ‘Or you surrender yourself to my custody. My ship will leave, and Endeavour can carry on with her mission.’ The Romulan gave a tight, humourless smile. ‘After all. That’s what really matters to you, isn’t it, Rourke?’

‘You -’

‘You have three hours to mull this over. If I see any sign of your ship powering up transporter systems, launching a shuttle, or making contact with the surface, we will open fire. Kalvath out.’

Silence rang out on the bridge as the viewscreen went dead, silence broken only when Kharth leaned over from Tactical. ‘You better not take that deal, sir,’ she said, voice flat. ‘Because I’m not busting you out of a second Romulan prison.’

‘This facility has lasted for eons, and no savages such as you will claim their prizes!’

The voice from the darkness below reverberated through the underground chambers as Valance landed after rapelling down. She pushed her protective goggles to her forehead and pulled down her face wrapping before she unbuckled her climbing harness. ‘Any luck?’ she called down the trap door.

‘Begone from here! Or I will bring down further wrath of the skies and see you destroyed…’

There was a scuffling sound and Beckett scrambled up the rope to appear next to her, wide-eyed. As he left the lower chamber, the Portal’s voice faded, but the young officer still looked shaken. ‘He’s, ah. He doesn’t like me.’

‘Is it even engaging? I thought past Portals were open to discussion.’

Beckett winced. ‘Past Portals hadn’t had their inner sanctums broken into, their defence systems shut down, and their major site facilities tampered with. This one won’t even open a dialogue.’

‘Damn.’ Valance looked to the room with the environmental control systems, and raised her voice. ‘Any luck?’

Cortez gave a grim shake of the head as they padded in. ‘They locked this up pretty tight, and nobody’s bothered to ace Tkon planetary environmental control technology like they did energy shields or the beacons. How bad is it up there?’

‘Canvas has been dropped and tethered,’ said Valance, scrubbing her face of sand that promised to get everywhere. ‘Equipment’s covered and weighed down. It’s as safe as we can get it.’ She gestured out the room. ‘I’ve got most of the team in what you called the mess hall, but the topside passageway is reasonably sheltered and Rhade’s keeping an eye on things. Is that out of the way enough?’

Thawn grimaced. ‘So long as we can work in here, people can go wherever they need to stay safe.’

‘We think the Portal brought the storm down?’ said Valance.

Beckett nodded. ‘To ward us off, apparently. So I don’t know why he dropped on us a storm that made us shelter in place. But I left him alone because he started threatening to make it worse, so I don’t want to piss him off more.’

‘He’s right,’ said Cortez, jabbing at controls to no avail. ‘Let’s not provoke the hostile AI until I know how to turn these systems off.’

Valance turned to Thawn. ‘Any success establishing comms?’

Thawn had dragged the signal boosting equipment below before the away team had abandoned the topside camp. But though Cortez looked dubious, Thawn brightened an iota. ‘Not yet, but I have an idea. I think I can interface with the field emitter to boost our signal.’

‘I can’t recommend,’ muttered Cortez, ‘linking our technology to theirs. Not while there’s a hostile AI being batshit downstairs.’

‘It’s only our signal emitter,’ said Thawn. ‘It might be useless if Portal breaks it, but it’s useless if we don’t use it, either.’ She looked expectantly at Valance, who gave a reluctant nod. ‘It’ll take me a minute to connect.’

Valance watched as she tapped at her PADD, and shrugged at Cortez’s sceptical expression. ‘You don’t seem that optimistic you can break into ancient Tkon technology with nearly no research behind you,’ she pointed out. ‘We have to try things.’

‘I’m a big fan,’ muttered Cortez, ‘of not making things worse.’

Thawn ignored that, finishing the remote connection and tapping her combadge. ‘Thawn to Endeavour. This is the away team. Please respond.’

The ringing silence was broken with Beckett’s sigh. ‘So much for that.’

‘I’m not done,’ she snapped. ‘Broadening the frequency.’ She tapped a few commands, and spoke again.

Cortez looked at Beckett in the next silence. ‘What about Tkon system records? Do we have much on those? If I can see exactly what the technology here did, it might help figure out how to undo -’

‘…Centur… -rin; our ship ha… to shelter in the storm. If any… -spond; members of my tea… -uire immediate assistance.’

They all stared at each other, and Thawn bit her lip. ‘That’s a Romulan communication signal. On an emergency frequency.’

Cortez’s eyes widened. ‘The Imperial away team?’

‘Can you clear up the signal and connect us?’ Valance asked Thawn.

‘I think so.’ Thawn tapped at the PADD, and nodded. ‘Try now.’

Valance tapped her combadge. ‘Romulan officers, this is Commander Valance of the USS Endeavour’s away team. What’s your status?’

She heard the hiss of static in the silence; this delay was not technological, but someone thinking. At last the same voice came. ‘Commander, this is Centurion Odarin of the warbird Kalvath. Our shuttle was struck in the electromagnetic sandstorm and we’ve been forced to abandon it. We’re trying to shelter in hillside caves, but I have wounded here and need immediate assistance. Do you have contact with your ship?’

‘Negative.’ Valance hesitated, then set her jaw. Starfleet responded to distress signals. ‘We’ve taken shelter in our dig site. How many of you are there?’

There was another pause, then Odarin gave a hiss of aggravation. ‘Six,’ he said at last. ‘Two are badly wounded, and these caves aren’t providing much shelter. We only have one medkit, and supplies are low. Do you have transporter systems?’

‘We do not.’ Valance looked up at Thawn, and dropped her voice. ‘Can you get a fix on their location?’ The Betazoid nodded apprehensively, and Valance drew a deep breath. ‘I have shelter, medical staff, and medical supplies here, Centurion. And an ATV to pick you up.’

Cortez’s eyes widened. ‘The Clarent is not rated for -’

But Valance cut her off with a sharp wave of the hand, and she heard Odarin sigh. ‘Blast it. I don’t have a choice, do I, Starfleet?’

‘We’re all stuck down here while this storm continues, Centurion,’ she said. ‘I don’t think politics should come into it. This is about survival, and saving lives. Keep your comms open, and the ATV will be with you soon. Valance out.’

Cortez stood straight, arms folded. ‘That sand is hell to visibility, nav systems, and ground stability; driving out there risks getting lost and buried. And that’s before we consider if the storm is going to mess with the Clarent’s internals. Anyone taking that thing out will be in danger of needing rescuing themselves.’

‘There’s no way that Centurion accepted an offer of help from Starfleet for anything less than mortal peril,’ Valance pointed out. ‘We’re sheltering in structures that have endured for hundreds of thousands of years. They sound like they’re in a gap between rocks.’ She nodded at the control panel. ‘Keep trying to figure this out.’

Cortez’s jaw tensed as Beckett and Thawn discreetly tried to fade into the background. ‘You’re going? You’ll need an engineer to -’

‘I’m rated in basic vehicle maintenance,’ said Valance, wilfully ignoring her qualifications were a few years old now. ‘But if you can crack the Tkon technology, there’s not even a storm. The dig site is yours, Commander.’

She headed for the shaft, but hadn’t made it far before Cortez called out, voice a different pitch of intense. ‘Wait!’ She caught her at the door, eyes blazing. ‘I – be careful.’

Valance had never been very sure why people said that, as if she’d have been reckless without the reminder. But it still settled something solid in her gut; gave her grounding, a reminder of her personal motivation to come back in one piece. Despite herself, she reached up to squeeze Cortez’s arm. ‘Of course. Complete the mission.’

Something flickered in Cortez’s gaze – frustration, apprehension – but Valance didn’t wait any more, grabbing the climbing harness and starting the ascent to the top passageway. Here the howling of the wind cut through the masonry, and she suspected Rhade only anticipated her arrival through his telepathy; hearing her would have been difficult. He was still heavily swaddled in his field gear, but pulled her up the final few inches and helped her out of the harness.

‘I need to head out, Lieutenant,’ she said once her feet were on solid ground, and explained the situation.

She could only see his dark eyes, but they narrowed as he gave a slow, thoughtful nod. ‘Then I’m coming with you, Commander.’

‘Someone has to -’

‘I’ll call Ensign Jain topside to keep watch,’ he said. ‘But you’re the mission commander and the ship’s XO. I disapprove of you conducting this rescue operation yourself at all, but you can’t do it alone.’

She would, Valance considered, go spare at any superior if she were in his situation. ‘Then let’s do another rescue mission, Lieutenant.’

* *

Back below, Cortez turned to Beckett with her hands on her hips. ‘You need to try again with this Portal thing.’

He drew back. ‘Are you kidding? Waking up Portal got us in this situation in the first place. These things are AI protection systems; the one the Enterprise encountered almost killed them all.’

‘They talked it down, didn’t they?’

‘Yeah, William Riker did, and they had Ferengi there to make them look good.’ Beckett grimaced. ‘I’m not William bloody Riker, and I think this Portal is already angry at how much we’ve disturbed this site, which the Enterprise never did. We’ve turned off the Tkon shield, broken through their doors, and started poking the rest of their technology. Portal’s pissed.’

‘And we’re not going to figure out how to access the environmental controls,’ she pointed out. ‘I can try, and I’m good, but I’m not that good. But now Commander Valance is out there trying to rescue some damn Romulans with a sandstorm trying to kill her, so you’ve got two options, Ensign. Deal with Portal being pissed or deal with me being pissed.’

‘It didn’t even want to talk, just yelled at me like I was at a family reunion,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how to -’ Then he stopped and turned to Thawn, who was studying her PADD hooked up to the comms system. ‘You sensed it.’

She looked up. ‘What?’

‘You warned me a second before it appeared.’ Beckett snapped his fingers. ‘The Portals have telepathic capabilities, somehow; Riker reported the one he encountered read his mind.’

‘A highly advanced AI being able to read a human’s mind,’ said Thawn slowly, ‘is different to me being able to telepathically communicate with it.’

‘But if you could sense it,’ said Cortez, ‘then that’s a start, no?’

‘Or,’ said Beckett, ‘Commander Cortez is definitely going to bury us down here.’ Commander Cortez nodded sagely, and he jerked a thumb at the door. ‘Come on, Lieutenant. Let’s try a dialogue.’

‘I’ll crack on with this damned interface,’ Cortez called, ‘and make sure we’re still in contact with Valance.’

Thawn followed Beckett to the trap door, scowling. ‘Do you have anything in your records discussing attempted telepathic contact with a Portal?’

‘If you’re asking me if anyone’s ever tried this before… I have no idea,’ he admitted. ‘I just want you to convince it to open a dialogue instead of trying to ward us off or kill us, or whatever it’s trying to do now.’

Thawn looked dubious. ‘You’re asking me to diplomatically engage with an ancient, powerful, and angry AI.’

‘I know, asking you to diplomatically anything -’ She smacked him on the arm, and he withdrew with a grimace. ‘Just get it talking, alright? Convince it we’re not here to destroy the facility – we want to restore it, even.’

She sighed, half-closing her eyes. ‘I can’t sense it.’

‘It must have gone dormant again.’ Beckett looked at the hatch. ‘Down you go.’

‘Me? I can sense it from up here.’

‘It hates me!’

‘Lots of people do, and yet you show up anyway! If I’m the key to all of this, I can be the key from a safe distance!’

If there is such a thing, thought Beckett. ‘Okay, compromise. We both go down. And if you sense my horrible impending death, please plead for my life.’

They took the rope and slid into the darkness. He hadn’t so much as dropped a light down here yet; the Portal had screeched at him in fury every time he’d arrived, and after the first time with the world shaking around him, he’d barely dared do more than stick his head in.

They landed in the dark, the beacon looming before them, and Beckett turned. ‘Portal? It’s time to channel my father and yell at me to get out.’

‘This,’ came Thawn’s voice in the gloom. ‘This is why nobody likes you. I don’t -’

But she stopped short, and Beckett turned to see the hunched, robed, grey-haired humanoid figure of the Portal emerging from the gloom, sudden enough to set his heart off at a thunderous rate. ‘Portal,’ he began. ‘Please listen; we’re not here to steal your people’s secrets -’

‘You will leave,’ rumbled the Portal. ‘You have breached this sanctum, this vital holding, and will go no further. If you persist, I will bring the sky down upon you…’

Thawn tilted her head, eyes half-closed. ‘I can sense it,’ she said quietly. ‘The mind feels… odd. It’s too ordered, running along far too-straight lines. I’ve never read an artificial mind before…’

Beckett kept his hands up. ‘Can you calm it down?’

‘I can’t influence minds, and I don’t want to try. Except.’ Her head cocked again. ‘Maybe I can.’

‘Please do.’

‘You are primitives,’ the Portal continued. ‘Our devices are not for you. My people may be long gone, but I am a last guardian of their heritage and secrets…’

‘The mind’s compartmentalised,’ said Thawn. ‘I think by breaking in, we triggered its full-on defence mechanisms. But there are other mental compartments and… maybe I can…’

But she swayed on her feet, and Beckett had to grab her arm. ‘Thawn! Passing out down here doesn’t help -’

‘I can change it,’ she gasped, leaning heavily on him. ‘I can set it to full functionality, instead of just trying to kick us -’

The Portal disappeared, and she collapsed into his arms. He staggered, but she was still conscious, groggily trying to keep her feet. ‘What did you do?’ he hissed.

‘It’s still there,’ Thawn slurred. ‘I can sense it…’

Then the beacon surged back to life, its interface bright enough to light the whole room, and a heartbeat later, the Portal manifested before them once again – no longer hunched over and furious, but still tense, straight-backed, and staring at them.

‘I am the guardian of this place,’ it said, the voice now level and measured but by no degrees warm. ‘It is my duty to protect this facility from outside interference, and you are outside interference. Explain yourselves, interlopers.’

Beckett sucked on his teeth. ‘Do you want to talk now?’

‘You are not the savages I thought you were,’ it said, inclining its head to Thawn. ‘But you are still not Tkon, and you have no right to be here. So tell me: why should I let you live?’

He looked down at Thawn, who was pale and still leaning on him heavily to stay upright. ‘…is this actually an improvement?’

* *

Rourke could see Ephrath II out his ready room window, but not the storm. Endeavour remained in geosynchronous orbit with the dig site, but the angle of his windows gave him only the peaceful sands below. It was an uncomfortable illusion.

The sound of the door-chime had him bracing; he’d expected Kharth or Lindgren to follow him sooner, or perhaps for someone to have alerted Carraway. But his sigh was no less tense at the unanticipated arrival of First Secretary Hale.

‘Lieutenant Kharth told me,’ she explained in a wry, level voice. ‘I assume we’ve not re-established contact with the away team?’ She approached the desk as he shook his head. ‘Do we have any means of communicating beyond the nebula? Lotharn’s ultimatum is unacceptable; the mere threat of involving our governments might deter him.’

Rourke shook his head again. ‘Contact beyond the nebula will take leaving.’

‘Then I assume there is a Plan B.’

‘I’ve been working on tactical solutions with Lieutenant Kharth on intercepting any shots the Kalvath directs to the surface, if it comes down to it.’ He couldn’t summon a good deal of enthusiasm. Neither of them had liked their chances of completely protecting the dig site from orbital weapons fire.

Hale narrowed her eyes. ‘Don’t tell me you’re considering surrendering yourself.’ She straightened as he hesitated. ‘Captain, that is absolutely ridiculous -’

‘If we can’t contact the away team, confirm the status of his landing party, or adequately protect the dig site, it might be necessary.’ Rourke tilted his chin up. ‘If there’s a Tkon beacon on that site, we can’t afford to let the Romulan Star Empire destroy or bury it. So long as the mission objective and my team are at risk, Lotharn has us over a barrel.’

‘We cannot trust the Empire to stand by any agreement like this,’ she pointed out. ‘They don’t care about the Erem; to them it’s an incident they can lever to get what they want and for once paint themselves the victims. They’ll still continue to invoke it whenever it suits them.’

‘Maybe. The dig site and the away team will still be protected.’

‘Commander Lotharn has every reason to be suspicious of a joint Starfleet-Republic operation here. It’s naive to assume that if you surrender, he’ll allow us to complete our mission.’ She planted her hands on the desk, watching him. ‘I mean you no insult, Captain, but despite the Romulans’ posturing, this isn’t about you.’

He gave a bitter laugh. ‘I’m not egotistical enough to think I’m the one-man crisis of Imperial-Federation relations. But I’ve talked to Lotharn. I believe him. I think this, for him, is about justice.’

‘If he’s so intelligent and sincere, then he’ll know you were acting on orders; that the destruction of the Erem came down to more complicated factors than one man on one bridge.’

‘He told me on Tagrador that, when it came to justice, his people would get nothing or they would get a gesture – that both our leaders would allow nothing more. And he’s right, isn’t he? The Romulans sent a ship on an unethical mission, and a Starfleet captain followed an unethical directive. All the Federation cares about is shielding itself from consequences, and all the Romulan Star Empire cares about is exploiting loss for leverage.’

Hale straightened, gaze troubled. ‘Even if you’re correct,’ she said slowly, ‘surrendering yourself so the Romulans can hold a sham trial and execute you won’t bring back any of the dead, it won’t make Starfleet rethink the Omega Directive, and it won’t make the Empire reconsider whatever policies led to Teros in the first place. You’ll be sacrificed so everyone can make themselves feel better. That’s not justice, Captain.’

‘The complete and utter absence of accountability isn’t justice, either.’ He tossed his hand in the air. ‘Fifty-three people died, and nobody cares. Nobody’s doing anything for their families, nobody’s doing anything to try to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Fifty-three people died, and I’m facing the loss of at least seventeen more if I don’t stop Lotharn. All we do is point fingers, throw around blame, proclaim that we’re doing what we have to do. And the cycle continues. What’s going to break it?’

She shook her head. ‘It’s not that simple.’

‘Then we make it that simple. I was wrong at Teros.’ The words rumbled through him, making his knees feel weak but lighting a fire in his chest. ‘I don’t know what the Romulans would have done with Omega, if it would have destabilised there or somewhere else. I knew my orders would kill them, though. I was wrong. Starfleet was wrong to say we can murder our way to galactic stability. The best I can argue is that nobody imagined the Omega Directive would stop being about hard choices in one tiny corner of the galaxy, and become foreign policy.’ He jabbed his finger into the desk. ‘Allowing it to become so was irresponsible and unethical and -’

‘And Starfleet did that to you.’ Her voice was low, unaccusing – gentle, even, but her words stopped him in his tracks and his gaze snapped to hers, bewildered. Hale gave a tight smile. ‘Starfleet told you to do whatever it took, and you did it. But you don’t have any trust in Starfleet to make it better again, do you?’

Rourke straightened slowly. ‘This is nothing to do with my loyalty -’

‘I know you’re loyal, Captain Rourke. But you built your career on being a protector, and somewhere down the line, you stopped believing anyone but you was doing the protecting.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t mean arrogantly; I know you have many colleagues you respect and rely on. I mean you stopped thinking Starfleet, as an institution, took care of people. The first thing you did after being freed from prison and making sure your mission was complete was leverage your influence to shield your crew from being sacrificed on the altar of politics. Those aren’t the actions of a man who thinks Starfleet has his back.’

‘I don’t…’ But his voice trailed off, arguments eluding him.

‘I spent the last fifteen years on these borders,’ Hale admitted. ‘I watched an empire die and its people flee to survive, and for every time I’ve been able to extend a helping hand, ten times I’ve seen the Federation refuse to stir. It wraps itself in knots to justify why it can’t help today, why it shouldn’t help these people, why it can’t intervene on this crisis.’

His gaze dropped. ‘…yeah,’ Rourke admitted at last. ‘The Federation is still the greatest force for good in the galaxy. I believe that with my whole heart. But that’s a low, low bar, and still every day it falls further and further.’

Hale’s eyes raked over him, pained. ‘You won’t change the Federation by sacrificing yourself, Captain. All you’ll do is take away one more good man who could make a difference.’

‘Perhaps. And don’t get me wrong, First Secretary – I will use this time to look for another way.’ He shook his head. ‘But if it comes down to it, somebody has to break this cycle. Somebody has to accept responsibility. And I was wrong.’

‘You look tired.’

Kharth blinked at the cup of tea set next to her console, and squinted up at Elsa Lindgren. ‘We’re all tired,’ she grumbled, but she took the tea anyway. ‘What do you want?’

Lindgren’s smile was wry. ‘I want our Chief Tactical Officer on the ball with plans and reactions if the Kalvath kicks off. It’s not that complicated or subversive, Lieutenant.’

‘Fair enough.’ The tea was refreshingly piping hot. ‘Blue leaf.’

‘I know you like it.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Yes, I notice what people drink. This is also not a trick.’

‘Okay, okay.’ Kharth scrubbed her face with her hand. ‘I don’t love our chances. There’s no easy way to intercept all the weapons fire heading for the surface. I really hope the away team fixes this, or the captain has a better idea.’

‘The captain won’t let it get that far.’

But there was an edge to Lindgren’s voice, and Kharth’s head snapped up. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ She straightened as Lindgren hesitated. ‘He’s not.’

‘He’s not said anything -’

‘But he’s thinking of surrendering himself. That’s ridiculous.’ She turned towards the ready room.

Lindgren had to side-step to block her. ‘He also asked to not be disturbed. I’m sure he’s working on alternatives.’

Elsa Lindgren was, Kharth reflected, a good person. From her core to her behaviours, she was decent and optimistic and bright. Which was why Kharth better trusted her own judgement when it came to assessing self-loathing. ‘I need to consult Juarez on something,’ she said instead, and turned for the turbolift. Lindgren didn’t look like she believed her, but was in no position to stop her.

It took a matter of minutes to reach the conference rooms that had become First Secretary Hale’s workspace, and Kharth didn’t wait before barging in. ‘We cannot let this happen.’

Hale was mid-call with Commander Vorena, and for the first time Kharth saw irritation on the woman’s face. But her expression was steeled quickly, and she gestured to Kharth to wait. ‘Let me get back to you, Commander.’ As the holo-display of their ally disappeared, Hale straightened. ‘Not appropriate, Lieutenant.’

‘What’s not appropriate is Captain Rourke planning on handing himself over to the Empire -’

‘I don’t intend to let that happen.’

‘Right. And how’re you going to stop that?’ Kharth set her hands on her hips. ‘Matt Rourke is a stubborn man and thinks he knows best, and would much rather throw himself on his sword than risk his away team or, I think, this mission.’

Hale narrowed her eyes. ‘What are you expecting me to do about this, Lieutenant?’

‘Aren’t you a diplomat, or…’

‘I’m happy to discuss options. But I’m not happy to be the place you come to vent your displeasure. Talk to the counsellor if you want to do that.’

Kharth stopped. She was a little too accustomed, perhaps, to her venting being indulged, and Hale had rank and logic on her side. She drew a deep breath. ‘I don’t think we can stop the Kalvath or contact the away team. We can’t control if the away team will resolve the situation on the surface. And short of physically tackling Captain Rourke, I can’t stop him – but I’ll do that if you say so. So our best bet is to get the Romulan Star Empire to not demand his head.’

The faintest smile tugged at Hale’s lips. ‘Very good, Lieutenant. Now you’re thinking productively. They want Captain Rourke not for justice, but to embarrass the Federation. To force us to produce someone accountable for Teros, and all the better if it’s a captain of a major starship.’

‘But they’re still the Empire. They’re still pragmatic. This isn’t anything like Klingon honour, where face and prestige is the insult. They’re leveraging a situation where, for once, the Federation can be painted as the villains.’ Kharth scowled at the table. ‘Getting the captain and punishing him is just a part of that narrative. It’s not the ends.’

‘It’s not.’

Kharth tongued her cheek. ‘So we have to figure out what the Empire actually wants out of this. What would they try to get once they’d successfully painted themselves as victims, shamed the Federation into owing them or needing to claw back interstellar good faith?’

‘What the Empire really wants is legitimacy,’ said Hale. ‘Especially with the Free State’s position since Coppelius. But no matter what happens, the Federation cannot afford to embolden the Star Empire against the Republic.’

‘Of course not.’ Kharth rubbed the back of her neck and looked up. ‘Just how much authority do you have here, First Secretary?’

‘I cannot override Captain Rourke -’

‘I mean that this nebula is a locked room. We have a Romulan commander charged with resolving this entire dispute, and a diplomat. No outside interference. Nobody can go running to superiors.’

Hale looked apprehensive. ‘Captain Rourke may have made a very valid point that absolutely nobody is thinking about justice for the lives lost at Erem, or even reparations. But I cannot give ground to the Romulan Star Empire, even in a time of crisis such as this.’

‘I’m not talking about giving ground.’ Kharth straightened. ‘You said you want to build bridges here, First Secretary? Let’s go build a bridge.’

* *

‘…hear me?’

Rhade grabbed the on-board communicator from the Clarent’s dash at Cortez’s voice. ‘Rhade here. You’re breaking up a bit, Commander.’

‘Looks like you’re a little off-course. You’re going to want to swing south about fifteen degrees.’

Valance squinted through the canopy and then down at her instruments, which flickered in and out of life. ‘I can barely see a thing either way.’

‘Which is why I’m comparing your comm signals with the Romulans’,’ came Cortez’s voice. ‘But I can’t account for environmental dangers.’

Valance corrected her heading. ‘Any better? We’re not moving fast.’

‘Good. Keep this best you can. You should pick them up on comms yourself soon.’

Rhade grimaced as he surveyed the canopy. They could see little but dark brown of the dunes and a lighter brown of the sand-filled air. Light and shadow was the best they had to tell if they were ploughing into an embankment – or the rise they knew had to be ahead. ‘This is bold of you, Commander.’

‘I’m not trying to be bold,’ muttered Valance. ‘I’m responding to a distress call.’

‘In horrific conditions, with a dubious chance of success, at enormous risk to yourself. Before we factor in how these are potentially enemy combatants.’

‘Nobody’s declared war with the Romulan Star Empire. They’re officers investigating an unusual Starfleet presence on their border. They’re doing their duty. So will I.’ She felt Rhade’s eyes on her, and was relieved that driving in this storm required so much of her focus she couldn’t easily look at him.

It took a while before Rhade pressed on, sounding thoughtful. ‘It would be rude of me to pretend I can’t feel your guilt, Commander.’

Her back tensed. ‘You didn’t have to comment on it.’

‘I’m sorry. It’s my habit to be open in such things.’

‘If you’re suggesting I’m doing this because I feel guilty about Teros or Tagrador, I think you misunderstand,’ she said in a clipped voice. ‘This isn’t some gambit to redeem myself for choices I regret.’

‘I didn’t say that. I wasn’t making any assumptions.’

Valance studied the pale brown of the sky and the dark brown of the ground, and adjusted her angle as she anticipated a rise. The Clarent surged a moment later, wheels skidding for a moment before they found grip, and the ATV trundled upward. They had to be close.

‘I don’t respect your choice, Lieutenant,’ she said at last. ‘I didn’t think I’d say this, but I respect Kharth’s choices more. She’s the Tactical Officer and was asked to fire on her own people, and balked at unusual orders. She’s plainly wrestled with it. She plainly doubts. You?’ Valance shook her head. ‘I find you naive.’

Rhade paused. ‘If you think I have no doubts, then you misunderstand.’

‘I’m committed to Starfleet’s principles of exploration and diplomacy. I served under one of the greatest captains of the last twenty years, who held strong to hope in the face of cynicism. But I learnt that none of that could be upheld if a ship didn’t stand strong. I didn’t obey Captain Rourke out of blind loyalty. I did it out of trust, in him and in this ship. You? You set yourself apart.’

‘That,’ he said quietly, ‘became clear to me, yes.’

‘I’m not guilty about my personal decision to follow orders. I feel guilty because Starfleet did this. I’m not on this rescue mission to save Romulans because once I killed them, I’m on this rescue mission because bringing hope and salvation is what we should be doing.’ She didn’t wait for a response, hitting the comms again. ‘ATV Clarent to Centurion Odarin. Are you out there?’

A moment. A crackle. Then, ‘Odarin here, Commander. We’ve taken shelter deeper in the caves, but it’s dangerous here. Are you close?’

‘I don’t -’ Then pale brown gave way before them for a wave of shadow, and Valance slammed on the brakes. Sand skidded under them and the Clarent kept going far more than she wanted. When it slid to a halt, finally she could see, because the huge cliff shielded them against the blinding sand and wind. She swore under her breath, then reached for the comms. ‘…we’re close.’ She glanced at Rhade. ‘See if you can narrow down the signal.’

He nodded, reaching for the dash. ‘South,’ he said at last. ‘A few hundred metres.’

‘I’ll move to the cave entrance, Commander.’

‘Do you have anything to signal?’ asked Valance as they trundled next to the cliff-face. Visibility remained atrocious, and she couldn’t get too close. ‘A flare? A light?’

‘We left the ship in a hurry. I have a hand-held torch. I don’t know what good it’ll do.’

‘Activating our external lights,’ said Rhade. ‘Call if you see us, Centurion.’

It felt like they had covered more than hundreds of metres, though in reality the Clarent couldn’t move very fast in these conditions. Valance hammered her instruments as they flickered, and shook her head, jaw tight. ‘Nothing. Damn it.’

‘Are you there, Commander?’

‘I don’t see you,’ she hissed. ‘And the interference is bad enough that we could be on top of each other and I’m not sure our instruments would know.’ She glanced at Rhade and dropped her voice. ‘What if this isn’t the right side? The right cliff?’

His jaw set. ‘We can barely run a deeper search in these conditions.’

She shook her head. ‘I’m flashing our signal lights, Centurion. We have to be close.’ But it was more like a prayer than a confirmation, tired and desperate.

‘I don’t –’ Her heart lunged into her chest as Odarin’s signal broke up. ‘…there, Commander?’

‘Boost power to comms,’ she snapped at Rhade. ‘You’re breaking up, Centurion. Keep talking.’

‘…don’t… visibility’s poor…’

‘I’m trying,’ insisted Rhade. ‘But the storm’s only getting worse. We -’

‘I see you!’

Relief almost made Valance collapse, but they weren’t out of the woods yet. She turned closer to the cliff-face, and thudding heartbeats later could see a weak light breaking through the sand storm and a figure cowering in a narrow cave entrance she would have likely missed in these conditions. ‘We have you, Centurion! Get your people out!’

The ATV had seating for four and a tight rear storage space, so fitting the two of them and six Romulans, several of which were injured, was not easy. Rhade and Valance both swaddled up in their gear to disembark, helping the soldiers struggle through the storm, helping heave the two wounded into the rear seats, while the rest crammed in the back.

‘Take the front seat, Centurion,’ said Rhade as he slid in the back beside the wounded. ‘I’m rated for combat medicine, I’ll do what I can for your soldiers.’ He pulled out the onboard medkit.

Odarin was a burly, square-faced Romulan officer who looked more like a bruiser than a scout, but more than anything he looked exhausted as he slid in beside Valance. ‘Thank you, Lieutenant. Our ship lost all power and then the electromagnetic storm came on top of us. Something – lightning? – hit us, and that peeled off a section of the hull. That caused the injuries and it wasn’t a safe shelter any more.’ He glanced at Valance. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t see the shuttle.’

‘I think it’s buried under sand by now,’ said Valance, kicking the Clarent into drive. ‘You were right to leave it.’

Odarin nodded and slumped back in his seat, watching as the ATV pulled away from the cliff and back the way it had come. ‘I understand you have an encampment at the top of your ridge. I’m grateful for the assistance, Commander, so I understand if you need to keep us in this vehicle under guard.’

Valance squinted. ‘You have wounded, and if the storm drops on top of us, this ATV won’t fare better than your shuttle. You’ll have shelter and medical aid.’

A gentle scoff escaped him. ‘I appreciate that. My apologies, it’s not amusing. But it’s remarkable how our ships, our leaders, our governments can be at-odds… but then the natural disasters of the universe have better ideas.’

‘The universe doesn’t have better ideas,’ said Rhade from behind them. ‘We did – all of us, Centurion. You asked for help, and were right to put your team’s safety first.’

But Valance saw Odarin stare past the canopy, his jaw tighten. ‘Perhaps,’ was all he said.

She reached for the comms. ‘Valance to Cortez. Do you read?’ No response. ‘We have the Romulan shuttle team and are headed back.’

Odarin looked down at the instruments. ‘Your nav sensors aren’t faring well in the storm, Commander.’

‘They’re not.’ Valance ground her teeth. ‘Cortez, come in. I’m driving blind here. Check my heading.’

‘Can you at least retrace your route?’ said Odarin, leaning over the controls.

‘It thinks I’m retracing,’ she said. ‘But like you said, the storm’s getting worse. I don’t trust this.’ She thumped the comms panel. ‘Isa, now would be a great time to boost power.’

Rhade blew out his cheeks. ‘If we take it slowly and keep going east, we’ll find the right ridge,’ he pointed out. ‘From there it’s just finding a route up. The landscape will look completely different as the storm moves.’

‘I can’t even see the landscape,’ Valance pointed out. ‘I -’

‘Cortez here! Picking you up, Commander, had to reroute a few things. Confirm you’re inbound, but you’ve gone off-course.’

‘How badly? Advise course-correction.’

‘All I got is where we are and where you are,’ Cortez warned. ‘I have no visual on local environment. You’ll want to turn a hundred degrees left, though.’

Valance did so, and as the above brightened for more sky, she dared gun the engine a little more. ‘Acknowledged, Commander. Get the medical staff on standby. We’ll be -’

One moment there had been sky before them – the next, shadow, then darkness making way for a sheer surface of a dune or a cliff, and it was impossible to know which as Valance tried to swerve. But too slow, too late, and after shadow came the thudding impact.

Then nothing.

* *

The air in Sickbay hummed as Rourke entered. There had been no specific order to make ready for battle, but the tension of the Velorum Nebula, of Endeavour’s confrontation with the Kalvath, had rippled across the ship. His crew were too seasoned to ignore that the situation could turn ugly, and none aboard were more seasoned than Doctor Aisha Sadek.

As medical staff hummed to check each biobed, its systems, its medical supplies, she stood calm in the centre, the eye of the storm, issuing instructions and corrections. But she turned at his arrival, and for all her dryness and control, he’d known her too long to miss the apprehension in her eyes. ‘Captain.’

Rourke’s lips twisted. ‘Doctor. Can we talk?’ Here, before her staff, he did not dare imply this was anything but business. It would not do for Medical to think their chief was the captain’s chew-toy.

Sadek glanced at her office. ‘Are we about to fight?’ At his expression, she rolled her eyes. Perhaps he didn’t need to protect her image, after all. ‘The ships. Endeavour, Kalvath.’

‘Oh. We have twenty minutes before the deadline ends.’

‘I’m sure Commander Lotharn will be thoughtfully punctual, so your brilliant last-second resolution had better not so much as stutter,’ Sadek said wryly, leading him into her office and sealing the door behind her. ‘I haven’t needed to be at briefings to know what’s going on, Captain. We’re ready down here.’

He watched her take position behind her desk, assume her station to remind him either that she had dominion in these rooms or she was a professional, but he barely felt those shields. Not because they were not redoubtable, but in his gut had settled a swirling cocktail where nausea and numbness fought for supremacy. ‘I know you’re ready. You’re always ready to do your job, Aisha.’

Aisha Sadek’s face turned to stone. ‘No.’

Rourke straightened. ‘We’ve run every possibility -’

‘Are you kidding me, Matt? In twenty minutes you hand yourself over to be strung up by the Romulans?’

‘Without a plan that gives us any degree of confidence in shielding the dig site from torpedo fire.’ His lips twisted. ‘Yes.’

‘You would never,’ said Sadek flatly, ‘ever allow this if it were someone else. If they wanted Valance or Kharth or anyone, you would fight tooth and nail against this, dig deep and find a third way.’

He swallowed and pulled out a PADD. ‘I’ve written several messages,’ he said at length. ‘Which I’d like you to make sure get to where they need to go. Sarah, my mother, Tess, Ellie -’

‘Oh, screw that, Matt.’ She jabbed a finger at him. ‘You don’t come down here, say you’ve decided to self-sacrifice, and ask me to be the one to tell your daughter. Because no matter what you’ve written, Matt, she’ll have questions – like why, and how on Earth do I answer that?’

‘She’s spent most of her life without me. She’ll do fine.’

Sadek pressed her hands together. ‘Okay, so we have a lot to address here and apparently no time. Do you truly have so little regard for the people you’re leaving behind?’

‘No, but I’m realistic about who I’m responsible for, and it’s not Ellie and it’s not my family. It’s this ship, this crew. It’s the people down below.’ He shifted his grip on his PADD. ‘You can’t talk me out of this, Aisha. I’m here to ask you to do one last thing for me.’

She stared at him, gaze flickering. ‘You have so much bloody nerve coming down here like this after last time.’

He did flush at that, throat tightening. ‘I know. I owe you better.’

‘You’re damn right. And I know you’re only coming here, cap in hand, because you don’t have a choice.’

‘It’s not because I need something from you, Aisha.’ Finally he found some solid grounding of indignation. ‘But there is nobody, nobody aboard I trust more to see this done. To give people the answers they need.’

She advanced, snatching the PADD out of his grip. ‘You’re lucky I’m smart enough to recognise that of course I’ll do it. But how dare you, Matt, honestly? You’ve bull-rushed this entire catastrophe with stupid choice after stupid choice, and when I dared call you out – because there’s nobody you allegedly trust more – you pulled rank on me, acted like I was some idiot resident with no idea how Starfleet works?’

He heard her frustration and her surrender; these were things she had to say, but she didn’t want this to be all or the last she said. Rourke sighed. ‘I’m sorry. I am.’

‘No, don’t bloody apologise, because you didn’t listen to me and you’re still doing it! You brute-forced Jhorkesh and now you’re hammering your face into this -’

‘That isn’t why I’m doing this,’ he insisted, because for all their arguments and for however little time he had, he needed her to understand. ‘I don’t see another way. Because nobody else is coming here to save us; Starfleet told me to make this bed, and now I have to lie in it.’

She faltered, hearing something he hadn’t realised was in his voice. ‘You sound bitter.’

Rourke sighed. ‘Hale pointed something out to me. That I lost faith in Starfleet, as an institution, to do right by the galaxy if it was inconvenient. I guess she might have a point. I’m doing this to save my crew – but after Romulus, I think I have no expectation anyone else is going to make amends for the Erem. Whether you blame me, or the Romulans, or Starfleet… I can’t just wait for anyone else to make this right, can I?’

But Sadek was staring at him with an odd expression, and his confusion was only compounded when she laughed bitterly. ‘Oh, Matt. You think Romulus made you lose faith in Starfleet?’

‘What’s so funny?’

‘You’ve never truly trusted anything or anyone, Matt, all the time I’ve known you.’ She watched him as if astonished, and he realised she thought she was telling him something he already knew. ‘Not with the things that really matter. You trust your crew to do their jobs, sure. You trust a team to pull through with a mission objective. But you never trusted, say, Tess with your hopes and fears and dreams, and that killed your marriage. You’ve never trusted anyone else to share your principles and bleed and sacrifice and die for them like you believed you would.’ Sadek shook her head, gaze going sad. ‘Hale’s wrong. You didn’t lose faith in Starfleet because it abandoned Romulus. When your back’s against a wall, Matt, you’ve never trusted anything but yourself. Your father saw to that.’

He stared at her, working his jaw. At last, all he could manage, somewhat lamely, was, ‘I trust you. Or I wouldn’t give you this.’ He gestured at the PADD holding all his messages to all his loved ones.

‘If you trusted me truly,’ Sadek said, rather gentle, ‘we wouldn’t have fought after Jhorkesh.’

The silence felt like it would swallow him worse than Lotharn’s threats, and as it surged up, he said, weakly, ‘Lily’s dead.’ Her expression shifted for confused concern. ‘I’d… there’d been things which made me think she was alive. Don’t call me crazy, it was a long story. Intel affairs. But then I spoke with Slater, and…’ He shook his head. ‘She’s gone. She’s been gone for years. And I did trust her.’

The corners of Sadek’s eyes creased. ‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘I think you did. And if she were alive, I don’t think you’d sacrifice yourself.’

‘This isn’t why I’m doing this; it’s not because I’m grief-stricken or…’

‘That’s not what I mean.’ Sadek sighed. ‘Lily took a lot of you with her when she died. Even if you didn’t let people in, you used to have a… a joy in what you did. A fire. Maybe you didn’t trust the galaxy at large to make things right, but that used to make you so angry, Matt, it made you fight hard and play hard. You’ve clawed back your sense of duty, your commitment to that fight, but…’ She swallowed and shook her head. ‘I think if she were alive, you’d fight to come back to her. That’s all.’

He clenched and unclenched his fists. ‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’d dig deep and pull off something against the odds for someone else.’ Rourke looked up at the display on the wall panel, and the clock. ‘But it’s too late for that.’

She looked over, and her shoulders sank. ‘Oh, Matt.’

‘Maybe – maybe Valance has pulled it off on the surface.’ But they both knew he would have been told, and he straightened. ‘I need to be on the bridge; Lotharn will communicate or he’ll do something rash, and either way -’

She opened a drawer on her desk and slid the PADD inside. ‘Then let’s go.’ At his look, she shrugged. ‘I once said I wanted to be around for your biggest and stupidest mistake. So I guess I’ll be on the bridge, won’t I?’

They had never been demonstrative in their twenty-four years of friendship, neither of them. Perhaps this had helped, if he was so averse to trust as she seemed to think. But he reached out first when she approached the door, pulling her into a fierce hug that surprised even him.

‘I’m glad you’re here,’ he said quietly, roughly. ‘Even if you want to kick my arse.’

‘Matt,’ she sighed, and pulled back, bringing her hands up to cup his face. ‘My best friend. You complete fucking idiot.’

He cracked up at that, though humour brought with it a surge of emotion, and he had to swallow quickly before it overwhelmed him and he lost his nerve. ‘Come on. Watch me be stupid.’

She stayed close as they left Sickbay, walking the corridors for the turbolift. Every step felt like it dragged, his feet leaden, and when he stopped before the lift controls he hadn’t realised he was a little unsteady until her hand was at his back. That gave him the strength to get the rest of the way, the strength to eventually step upon the bridge straight-backed, chin up.

‘What’s our time, Lieutenant?’ he asked Lindgren as he approached the command chair.

She bit her lip. ‘Three minutes.’

Kharth leaned across from Tactical. ‘Prepared to play with the odds on our last scenario, Captain,’ she said, eyes blazing. He lifted a hand, but didn’t answer, and a moment later there was a blat at Lindgren’s console.

‘The Kalvath is hailing us, sir,’ she said, expression taut, cautious.

Rourke drew a deep breath, looking over at Sadek. Despite himself, he winked before he nodded to Lindgren. ‘On-screen.’

As the viewscreen flickered to life to show the bridge of the Kalvath and the stoic figure of the warbird’s commander, he turned and, all of a sudden, felt nothing but a level, soothing peace. They’ll do fine, he thought, and set his expression. ‘Commander Lotharn. We have an appointment.’

‘…and I don’t know what else to say,’ Beckett admitted to the Portal. ‘We have to repair this beacon and re-establish the network your creators left behind.’

In the gloom of the lowermost chamber, the Portal regarded both of them with an unimpressed gaze. ‘You are children,’ it concluded. ‘Tampering with devices you do not understand.’

‘We’re trying to save people,’ said Thawn. ‘Across the galaxy.’

‘I believe you believe that,’ said Portal. ‘But as guardian of this place, I must also guard you from yourselves. Do you know what damage you could wreak if you err?’

Beckett pressed his hands together. ‘We – I, other scientists, my superiors – have studied Tkon technology. We’ve successfully repaired and recalibrated other beacons. If you let us get to work, if you watch, you’ll see we do have some understanding of the devices.’

But as Portal thought, there were thudding footsteps from above and a shadow fell upon them. ‘We’ve got a problem,’ snapped Cortez, already grabbing the rope to slide down. ‘The ATV’s gone dark. They picked up the Romulans but I lost their signal and their transponder.’

He swallowed an oath. He didn’t know if swearing in front of the Portal was bad, but it didn’t seem like a good idea. ‘Portal, at the least, please lift the storm. We have people out there…’

‘And I will not have more come to this place.’

Cortez’s expression had been apprehensive, but now it turned thunderous. ‘If they die out there, you’re going to have a lot more problems than people crawling over your outpost,’ she snapped, and hefted a hyperspanner. ‘I’ll take this place apart brick by brick until I find your power source, and then I’m taking that apart.’

Beckett winced. ‘Commander, I don’t think that’s gonna -’

‘That will not end the environmental protections,’ Portal said levelly. ‘Without me or the equipment to regulate it, the storm will worsen and you will be buried here.’

‘Doesn’t sound like you’re lifting it anyway! So if it’s a choice between slowly watching you kill us, or taking you down with me…’

‘This,’ said the Portal. ‘This savagery and fury is why I cannot trust your primitive minds with -’

‘With kicking your ass?’ Cortez stormed forward. ‘If they die out there because you’re too caught up in following the rules and laws of people dead for hundreds of thousands of years, I swear there’ll be consequences. Or what good are you? What use are you to the galaxy? What are you a guardian of, huh?’

‘Commander!’ Beckett grabbed her arm. ‘This isn’t helping! I know you’re worried, but… please, we’ll get through this by talking.’

Portal’s beady gaze flickered between them. ‘He is correct. If you would destroy me, I will let you destroy yourselves with me before I aid you. But…’ It tilted its head. ‘My design was not prepared for this.’

Beckett’s heart thundered in his chest, and he had to fight to not blurt out the words which came to mind. ‘New beginnings are often disguised as painful ends.’

Thawn narrowed her eyes at him. ‘What?’ she mumbled, but he waved a hand at her.

The Portal gave a slow nod. ‘The first hint of wisdom I have seen from you.’

‘Your old purpose is gone,’ he pressed on. ‘You were made to watch over these devices for the Tkon. Now the Tkon are long-dead, but what they left behind still has impact on the galaxy. Will you see it wreak havoc and collapse to nothing?’

‘The Tkon did not leave a plan for this many eons after their fall…’

‘Then – then you’ve gotta dive deep.’ Beckett drew a deep breath. ‘Figure out what you are at your core. And be true to that. You were designed to preserve the affairs of the Tkon, but why were they worth preserving? What did they stand for?’

‘Order,’ said the Portal, sounding a little like this was an automatic response. Then it paused. ‘Stability. Which is why these devices cannot fall into the wrong hands.’

‘Okay, okay, so… you don’t trust us.’ Beckett grimaced. ‘We’re from a government called the United Federation of Planets. Our founding document is all about bringing different people together from across the galaxy so they can thrive as both individuals and a collective. But also…’ He looked wildly between his fellows. ‘Why’d you two join Starfleet?’

Cortez still had a grip on her hyperspanner. ‘I wanted to see the galaxy, and I loved engines. I wanted to learn what I could, build what I could, and put it to work out there,’ she said, eyes locked on the Portal.

Thawn stayed silent, and wilted under Beckett’s eye. ‘I – it was what my family wanted. But my family believe in the Federation, in contributing to it, in making a commitment.’ She sounded like she didn’t think this was a particularly useful truth.

Beckett winced. ‘Yeah, but you’re good at it. You found your place. I also joined for – not the best reasons. For other people’s reasons. But then I found a chance to, like Cortez said – to learn. About everyone out here, and everyone who’d been out here. Like the Tkon. We’re not here because we want to steal your devices and inflict our own will on the galaxy. We’re here so the stability your creators wanted can continue in a new age. And we’re here to see of a culture so different to our own, so… so we can know ourselves better.’

Thawn shifted her weight. ‘Why do you keep sounding like an inspirational poster?’ she muttered again.

The Portal looked across each of them and said, at length, ‘I cannot let you tamper with what you do not understand. Tell me of this beacon.’

Beckett clapped his hands together. ‘Uh, right! It’s part of a galaxy-spanning network of other beacons, all connected to each other through subspace, to provide geospatial data to the a facility in a system the Tkon transported outside our galaxy. That facility maintains what we call the Galactic Barrier, which has so far stopped our ships from leaving the galaxy. It might do other things, but we don’t understand that yet.’ At the looks of the other two, he straightened with an assumed gaze of serenity. ‘Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.’

Thawn’s expression twitched. ‘The facility – we call it the Vanishing Point – has been losing connection with the beacon network. We need to re-establish it.’

Portal gave a slow nod. Then it said, ‘Why?’

Beckett’s eyes widened. ‘Uh. It’s – there’s a bad – it’s causing bad.’

Thawn jumped in. ‘With the Galactic Barrier losing cohesion, there are significant consequences to…’ But her voice trailed off, too.

‘Subspace.’ Cortez’s voice was low, level, and she cast a warning glance to the others. ‘The collapse of the Galactic Barrier is causing a molecule to flood into regions of the galaxy. These molecules have the capacity, if not safely destroyed, to damage or even destroy subspace.’

Beckett’s jaw dropped. ‘Oh, holy shit.’

The Portal’s gaze swept over them all. ‘Then you do understand,’ it said at length. And winked out of existence.

Beckett looked up. ‘Uh. Portal?’

Thawn rounded on Cortez. ‘Molecules that could destroy subspace -’

‘I don’t know that for sure,’ Cortez hissed at her. ‘I built and deployed our equipment at Teros, and I’ve put two and two together from everything I’ve seen. Definitely subspace problems, definitely a molecule suddenly appearing, we definitely destroyed the molecule. If you two assholes so much as whisper this to anyone…’

‘Oh, how bloody typical.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘The information which convinces Portal we’re not a bunch of backward chumps is so classified we can’t admit to it.’

‘Worry about that later. I’ll see if he’s given me access to stop the storm, and after that we look at the beacon,’ snapped Cortez, turning to the rope.

Then their combadges beeped. ‘Anyone out there, this is Commander Valance. Come in.’

* *

‘Sir!’ Athaka called as Valance’s voice crackled across the bridge. ‘The storm is – it’s dissipating, just as quick as it manifested!’

Rourke turned away from Lotharn and rounded on Lindgren. ‘Put her through!’

‘I repeat,’ came Valance’s voice again. ‘This is Commander Valance in the ATV. We’ve been immobilised on return to the dig site with wounded aboard. We have recovered the Romulan shuttle team.’

Lotharn’s expression shifted at that. ‘Captain, if your people are holding my team hostage…’

Rourke bit down on an instinct to admonish him. Lotharn’s point that he didn’t have grounds to be indignant at accusations had been well-made, but he still lifted a careful hand. ‘Let’s get to the bottom of this, Commander Lotharn. I’ll ask my officer and you can hear, too.’ He nodded at Lindgren, who keyed a button on her panel. ‘Commander Valance, we hear you loud and clear from Endeavour. What’s your status?’

‘Captain.’ Valance’s relief was palpable. ‘The storm blocked us from all contact with you, but we established communications with the Romulan shuttle team and they requested assistance. Lieutenant Rhade and I took the ATV out to retrieve them. All six are with me, but two are wounded. We got buried in a sandbank on the way back and lost contact with the dig site, but the storm just… cleared up, all of a sudden.’

Rourke looked to Athaka. ‘Do we have them on sensors?’ The young officer nodded, and his gaze lifted to Lotharn. ‘I’m speaking with the Kalvath now, Valance. I assume, Commander Lotharn, you’d like to beam your people back to your ship?’

Lotharn’s jaw was tight as he hit a control on his end. ‘Centurion Odarin, this is Commander Lotharn. Report.’

‘Commander.’ A new voice came through on the same channel as Valance. ‘The storm damaged our shuttle, injured two of our number, and forced us to seek shelter. The Starfleet team heard our distress call and rescued us, which, with the storm worsening… I expect it would have killed us by now.’ There was a pause, then Odarin pressed on. ‘We have been well-treated and are not being held against our will, sir.’

Lotharn gave a slow incline of the head. ‘Stand by for medical beam-out.’ Athaka shifted back to let Rourke read his display, which confirmed six of the life-signs they’d detected in the ATV vanish, and the two life and combadge signals of Rhade and Valance remained. At last, Lotharn returned his gaze to the viewscreen. ‘Assuming the Centurion confirms his story once safely back aboard my ship, it seems I owe your officer my thanks, Captain.’

Rourke drew a slow breath. ‘I know I’ve made us enemies, Lotharn. But we don’t have to be.’

‘That sounds rather simplistic, Rourke. But I can hardly force your surrender by threatening to bombard the people who saved my officers’ lives, can I?’ Lotharn’s brow furrowed, unsettled. ‘I still cannot let you leave without answering for your crimes.’

‘Commander!’ The turbolift doors slid open for First Secretary Hale to burst in, PADDs under her arm. ‘My apologies, Captain, but I think it’s appropriate I intervene at this point.’

Rourke squinted at her. ‘You were listening?’

‘I asked Lieutenant Kharth to patch me audio on all dealings with the Kalvath and came as quickly as I could,’ she said without apology, and turned to Lotharn. ‘Commander, I’m First Secretary Sophia Hale of the Diplomatic Service. And if you are empowered to seek justice for the destruction of the Erem, I think it more appropriate you discuss with a representative of the Federation than holding one single captain responsible.’

‘My apologies, First Secretary,’ sighed Lotharn, ‘but the Empire is not interested in listening to platitudes -’

‘I’m transmitting to you,’ said Hale with the briefest nod to Lindgren and the tap of her PADD, ‘an arrangement for recompense to be paid by the Federation to the families of the crew of the Erem. Through the usual channels to ensure it gets to the right people and places, of course. This will come with a formal apology from the office of the Ambassador to the Romulan Star Empire.’

Lotharn’s gaze flickered down to his control panel, reading for a moment. ‘This would not account for the naked aggression Starfleet has shown these past weeks.’

‘I understand,’ said First Secretary Hale calmly. ‘Which is why that’s only part of what I want to offer. I’d like to re-open discussions on the humanitarian projects in the resettlement areas, with the Federation providing support to joint operations under Imperial oversight. Furthermore, I’ve spoken with the Republic officers, and Federation is willing to negotiate a joint research agreement exploring the former Neutral Zone, cooperating and sharing our findings between all three governments in regions which have gone unexplored for centuries.’

Rourke’s breath caught at that. The humanitarian aid was a coup for the Empire, giving support to resettled refugees outside their borders that were a hotbed for crime and trouble, and giving the Empire credit while the Federation funded it. He doubted it would survive the negotiation process in such a condition, but it was a powerful gesture. So, too, was the research agreement. The Romulan Star Empire had long been bitterly jealous of the arrangement between the Free State and the Federation of the now-lost Borg Artifact, not for the knowledge gained so much as the legitimacy it gave the Free State. With the Free State’s status now falling, this offered the Empire a chance to be recognised in their stead, inevitably the figureheads of Romulan independence despite the Republic’s involvement.

Lotharn gave a gentle exhale. ‘And all it takes,’ he said soberly, ‘is for me to let Captain Rourke leave.’

‘You and me could do this a while, Lotharn,’ Rourke said, straightening. ‘You as the only one of your government truly interested in justice. Me as the only one of mine held responsible. You called that a gesture, and you were right, but we both knew that was the price of doing business. That was politics. This can be a change – but only if you and I change first.’

Lotharn ground his teeth. ‘Conveniently, your change lets you off the hook. Your officer rescuing six Romulans does not balance out you killing fifty-three…’ But he shook his head and let out a low sound of frustration. ‘You have an accord, First Secretary. I look forward to seeing the apology from your ambassador, and will personally ensure the families of the fallen receive the recompense from your government. And if this is a double-cross, understand that the galaxy will hear of it.’

‘I understand,’ said Hale, inclining her head. ‘Thank you for talking, Commander, and for listening. There has been too little of that from us of late. I respect your choice to try.’

‘I’d rather succeed.’ Lotharn’s gaze flickered. ‘The Kalvath will withdraw to the periphery of the system. I must still observe your affairs here. But in the interests of cooperation, I will trust your word this is not a military undertaking, and will examine the site later to be sure. Kalvath out.’

As the viewscreen went blank, Sadek gave a short, incredulous bark of laughter. ‘You don’t skimp on your timing, do you, First Secretary?’

Hale flushed a little. ‘I apologise. I was speaking with the commanders and needed their commitment to the research agreement. There are still some plates to spin for this to all get pulled off.’

Rourke rounded on her, eyes wide. ‘You’ve made this agreement with – with no contact with your superiors?’

‘I have rather broad authority on negotiations of this ilk, especially in emergencies,’ Hale said loftily. ‘But, yes. I am going to have to justify my actions and spend quite a lot of my political capitol. I would much rather do that than explain how I allowed a Starfleet captain to surrender himself to Federation custody, however.’

His shoulders sank. ‘Thank you,’ he said at length.

‘You should also thank Lieutenant Kharth. She assisted most ably, especially in bringing our Republic friends to the table in the first place.’

Kharth’s gaze dropped to her console as he looked at her, and she shrugged. ‘Like I said, Captain,’ she said roughly. ‘Didn’t want to bust you out of a second prison.’

Rourke let out a slow, exhausted breath, and ran his hands through his hair. ‘Alright. Alright, we’ve still got a job to do. Elsa, get me the away team. They brought down a storm and then turned it off; let’s see what the hell’s going on down there.’

‘You will follow my instructions to the letter,’ said Portal as, with a gesture, the beacon’s interface expanded to a kaleidoscope of lights, displays, and controls. ‘Or our accord will end.’

Cortez’s jaw dropped. ‘Goddamn. The subspace filaments you’re detecting… no wonder you can sustain a galactic network.’ She lifted a hand to expand a small map which blossomed outward, big enough to fill the room and have her, Portal, Thawn, and Beckett stood among the stars. ‘I don’t think our systems could successfully interface with these even if we could find them.’

‘Which is why the Tkon built this network,’ said Portal, ‘and you did not.’

‘So if this is the Vanishing Point.’ Beckett tapped a light at the edge, near the wall. ‘Then we need to make sure we restore two-way communication with our location.’

‘We can detect it from here,’ Thawn pointed out. ‘Does this beacon actually need recalibrating?’

‘I swear,’ he muttered, ‘if we went through all this just to find out our beacon is fine…’

‘Detection and connection,’ she said, ‘aren’t the same thing.’

‘I don’t see a problem with the systems on our end, though,’ said Cortez, walking deeper into the map. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, Portal.’

The Portal folded its arms. ‘I will.’

‘So let’s make sure we’re calibrated for the regional subspace harmonics; those may have fluctuated over the millennia,’ she continued, ‘and take it from there.’ She glanced back at Thawn. ‘Can you get me the readings from Endeavour’s astrometrics?’

Portal scoffed. ‘The readings here will be more precise.’

‘The readings here all use Tkon measurements,’ Cortez said, a little defensive. ‘I understand our readings a hell of a lot more. It’ll be easier for me to understand.’

‘I’ll head up top,’ said Thawn, ‘and connect to astrometrics from our field station.’

Beckett sighed. ‘I’ll come with, because I sense my role down here’s about to become the tea boy while you do terribly complicated technical things.’ True to form, Cortez had already turned away to gaze at the beacon’s display, beginning to tap through and familiarise herself with the interface. She had studied the findings from Abnia VI as much as he had, and her understanding of the science behind it would be more thorough. Until or unless she needed help translating from the context of Tkon culture, he didn’t expect to be much use.

He and Thawn were in the upper passageway leading to the surface before he spoke again, making the most of the shelter to give them privacy. ‘By the way. I didn’t mean to put you on the spot earlier down there. With Portal.’

She stopped and frowned at him. ‘What are you going on about?’

‘The whole thing about core purpose,’ he said, now more uncertain. ‘And why we joined Starfleet. I was trying to lever the idea that maybe the Federation’s core principles and the Tkon’s weren’t all that different in this specific situation.’ He hesitated. ‘I wasn’t trying to make you defend your reason to join the Academy or anything.’

‘Oh.’ She shook her head. ‘I wasn’t awkward. I was aware it didn’t sound very good for your point, and I wasn’t prepared to lie. Especially not to an entity I’d telepathically connected with.’

‘I meant what I said, though. You’re good at what you – hell, you don’t need or want me to validate you.’ Beckett shrugged. ‘But I get it. Family says Starfleet’s what you do, so you go do it. But it turns out it’s a big enough tent that you can still find your own place here, something you want. Forget what they want.’

‘I don’t forget what they want. If you think I’m beleaguered because I’m dutiful to my family, you’ve misunderstood,’ Thawn said, suddenly cold. ‘And you’re naive if you think you can ever have “your own place” in Starfleet so long as your father is an influential admiral who will always make sure opportunities are before you. Of course you can tell yourself that your talent and hard work gets you through the door, but being shown the door is a matter of politics.’

She proceeded towards the daylight, leaving him stunned in her wake, and when she spoke once they stepped out on the surface it was as if they hadn’t discussed this at all. ‘When you were debating the Portal,’ she said, ‘you kept saying things. Very trite things.’

‘Oh, that.’ His attention snapped back to the present, stark and bright under the now-clear skies of Ephrath. They’d uncovered and reinstalled the dig site’s gear, and while many of the team had returned to Endeavour, operations had continued almost as if they’d never been nearly blown off a mountain, their skin nearly flayed off by diamond-sharp sand. ‘It was taoism.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘So we don’t know much about Tkon culture,’ Beckett explained as they approached the main canopy, the field station console back online to connect with Endeavour’s systems. ‘Captain Riker managed to impress the Portal he met thirty years ago by expressing the philosophies of Sun Tzu in the face of peril. That helped their Portal conclude that there was some similarity between the Federation and the Tkon. So I thought, maybe it’d work now? Only I went with Lao Tzu.’ He paused. ‘And Confucius, whose work isn’t taoist, but I… panicked.’

Thawn ducked under the canopy and began to work on the field station’s controls, but she spared him a dubious look. ‘You lied to and manipulated the telepathic Portal?’

He winced. ‘That’s a strong way of putting it. You could say I used my vast understanding of Tkon culture to, in a pinch, ah… okay, I bullshitted the Portal.’

‘It could have sensed that!’

‘It didn’t. And I wasn’t really lying, I was just pitching things in a way it would like.’

‘So you manipulated the telepathic Portal.’

‘But it worked -’

They were cut off by the roar overhead of impulse engines, and Beckett stuck his head out to see the King Arthur descending. ‘Oh good!’ he called back under the canopy. ‘Harkon finished digging out your boyfriend!’

Thawn did not dignify this with a response, and the King Arthur did not set down for long. Nor did Rhade disembark, though Beckett saw him aboard as the hatch opened to show the battered shape of the Clarent in the garage. Only Commander Valance alighted, the runabout shooting back off to deliver the ATV to the doubtlessly delighted hands of the maintenance crew.

‘Heard you had a hell of a rescue mission!’ Beckett called out with a wave as Valance crunched across the camp site towards them.

‘I hear you got the Portal to cooperate,’ the commander said, but her wry tone faded as she joined them under the canopy. ‘Thank you. We might have been buried out there if the storm hadn’t lifted.’

‘What happened?’ asked Thawn.

‘Navigation became impossible and I banked into a collapsing dune. We got trapped and lost all contact,’ Valance sighed. ‘The Romulans were beamed back to their ship when the storm ended, but Harkon had to get a tether on and drag us out from under a good few metres of sand by the time she got down here.’

‘Glad you’re alright, Commander.’ Beckett nodded at the dig site entrance. ‘Commander Cortez is below, working on the bacon.’ He followed it with an impish smile he didn’t pretend was innocent, but after little more than the pretence of a thoughtful nod and a glance at their work, Valance left for the passageway.

Thawn clicked her tongue once they were alone. ‘Cortez will bury you if you tease Valance.’

‘Please, I don’t tease Valance; I’m a random junior officer and she’s the XO. I pick my targets.’ He leaned forward, elbows on the field station, and smirked at her. ‘You’ll miss me when I’m not senior staff. We were a good team; you could say we saved the day down there, bringing the Portal around.’

‘One could say I made contact with it possible, and Commander Cortez demonstrated we had the knowledge to be worth assisting,’ Thawn drawled. ‘You were… the mascot, maybe.’ But she hesitated, drawing a slow breath, and looked up at him. ‘You did better than I expected.’

And he laughed, because that sounded like it hurt her to say.

* *

‘I’ve got bad news,’ said Valance as she dropped into the beacon chamber, subsumed at once by the interface’s lights. ‘The Clarent is a state.’

Cortez stood in the middle of a projection Valance could only imagine was the whole network of the Vanishing Point, bright specks of light that were beacons scattered amid the dimmer sparks of the stars of the Milky Way, inky black spots peppering the space between. The Portal stood beside the beacon, watching in unnaturally still silence, but Cortez froze perhaps even more at her voice.

Without turning, she said, ‘That’s okay. I’ve figured out how we can set the field emitter to reboot. It’ll take an hour from activation to being at a level that would disrupt our flight systems, so we can leave and this place will protect itself before we depart the system.’ Then she pivoted on her heel, gaze cautious. ‘Are you okay?’

Valance gave a slow nod. ‘And the Romulan team. The Imperial ship’s withdrawing from orbit. Negotiations up there went well.’

‘I heard.’ Cortez swallowed. ‘I know you hate public displays of anything, and Portal’s kind of creepy, so I’m just gonna…’ She gestured vaguely. ‘You scared the hell out of me.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I know you didn’t mean to. And there’s nothing to be done about mortal peril in our line of work. But it was… distracting.’ Cortez’s jaw tightened. ‘Make sure I mention in my report that Beckett did well. I wasn’t the level head I should have been. I don’t think Portal would be chatty if it weren’t for him.’

‘I am not chatty,’ said Portal. ‘I am supervising your work to reconnect this beacon to the network.’

‘This, this is why we can talk later,’ said Cortez to Valance with a nervous laugh. ‘But, yeah. The kid did well. I think he’s going to get a kicking from a lot of people, and obviously he’s too young to be science chief, but he deserves a gold star.’

‘I’ll make note of it.’ Valance padded forward, into the ring of light of the whole galaxy, gaze lifting. ‘This is the network?’

‘It’s amazing,’ Cortez breathed, turning back to her work. ‘I’m seeing subspace filaments and layers and signatures we can’t even begin to detect, and I can’t imagine how. We honestly didn’t think subspace was this complicated, but without their sensor technology…’

‘We’re not here to expand our technology,’ Valance reminded gently, with a cautious glance to Portal.

‘I know, I just mean – it’s astonishing.’ She pointed to a central light. ‘This is us. This is the network. That’s the Vanishing Point. That must all be the Galactic Barrier.’ Her gestures continued, before she stopped at the black patches. ‘I think these are damaged regions of subspace.’

‘Areas of subspace stress,’ Portal confirmed.

‘So I think Ephrath can detect the network and the Vanishing Point by pinging off other beacons,’ Cortez said, ‘but subspace stress has popped up in the routes it used to use to send its geospatial data to the facility.’

Valance nodded. ‘Do we reroute, or compensate?’

Cortez looked at Portal. ‘Can we reroute?’

‘Then this beacon would be reliant upon another,’ it warned. ‘If that beacon became inactive, so would this. But…’ It shrugged. ‘None of this is within standard operating procedures.’

Valance watched as thoughts and emotions flooded Cortez’s expressive face. For a heartbeat it was like seeing every consideration, concern, and issue wage war as the mind beneath raced a million light-years a second. ‘Can we boost the tetryon emissions of the beacon? That would make the network signal more powerful.’

‘It would take,’ said Portal, ‘a considerable increase.’

‘Does the facility here have that power?’

‘It does. But there are other concerns.’

It was speaking, Valance thought, rather like a schoolteacher; suggesting without correcting, leading them to answers. She grimaced. ‘How high would the tetryon radiation be?’

Cortez clicked her tongue as she calculated. ‘Dangerous to most forms of life. Not instantaneously lethal, just… you wouldn’t want to hang around here for more than a few hours.’ Her gaze went back to the network display, pained. ‘We could do it. But then nobody would be able to come back here, even if they bypassed the energy field. We’d lose Ephrath as a place of possible study.’

‘That might be for the best,’ mused Valance. ‘This is a star we know was moved by the Tkon, the site of environment-controlling technology and energy fields that can repel starships.’

‘There’s so much we could learn.’

‘The Republic, Federation, and Empire all know it’s here. Right on a border. If this world became an object of contest, in an unclaimed region…’

‘So what you’re saying,’ said Cortez, sounding bitter, ‘is that I should make the tachyon emissions powerful enough to make anyone think twice about even warping into the system.’

‘That,’ said Portal, ‘would certainly boost the connection to the facility enough to transmit even through the regions of subspace stress.’

She nodded. ‘It wouldn’t make access impossible. Especially if you already had the information we have. But if you don’t know where to go, you don’t know how to deal with the energy field, and Portal doesn’t know or trust you, you’ll have a hell of a time getting to this facility and doing anything, and getting away again, before taking a lethal dose of radiation. Even after mitigations and protections.’

Valance grimaced. ‘That sounds like a good way to stop this from being tampered with by the wrong people.’

‘In a different universe,’ Cortez mused with a sigh, ‘this crisis would have been – well, it would have been a crisis, still. But it would have been an opportunity to learn so much as we came together against it. Instead it’s been all classified data, breaking the rules to dig up what we have to but not trusting anyone, burying things we find because it’s too dangerous…’ She shook her head. ‘It didn’t have to be like this.’

‘We still saw it,’ Valance pointed out. ‘You still came here and understood this astonishing device, and found out how to restore it. Maybe it’ll end up classified or locked away, but you’ll know.’

‘Yeah,’ Cortez said reluctantly. Then she gave a smile Valance knew was forced. ‘Gotta keep the galaxy interesting by keeping a few of its secrets, anyway. Alright, Portal. You and me; let’s fix this thing and then stop anyone from ever bothering you again, huh?’

Portal took a step forward. Its hands extended and the display shifted, bringing up a vast set of calibration controls Valance didn’t think she’d understand if she had a hundred years to study it all. And yet Cortez looked thoughtful, not overwhelmed.

‘As you say, Commander. For the good of the galaxy, let us do our work. And keep our secrets.’

* *

It took the better part of the day before Valance was back aboard Endeavour, stood before Rourke’s desk. ‘Between the energy field and the increase in tetryon emissions, once Commander Cortez’s modifications reach full power, it would be difficult for anyone to reach the site,’ she said as she concluded her report. ‘Especially if they lack the information we had on Tkon defences from the Abnia dig.’

‘If the Portal is vigilant of outside interference, now, that might be for the best.’ Rourke’s gaze was fixed on the wall, and he scratched his beard. It was in the itchy stage of growing out, still. ‘I’ll note in my report that if we need to send a team to Ephrath, they might be best bringing Cortez, Beckett, or Thawn to mollify it.’

She nodded. ‘Commander Cortez’s modifications should be at full power within the hour. The beacon will be in realignment with the Vanishing Point and the site will be inaccessible. All personnel and equipment are back from the surface now.’

‘We’ll depart as soon as it’s finished, then.’ His eyes flickered over to her. ‘Good work down there.’

‘I wish I could take credit for defusing the situation in orbit. I was just answering a distress call.’

‘One you answered at significant risk to yourself.’

Valance hesitated. ‘If I have to follow orders to shoot down a ship… then I have to follow regulations saying I answer distress calls,’ she said rather carefully. Then she pressed on, more quickly: ‘I’m relieved First Secretary Hale managed to negotiate with Lotharn. It would have been unacceptable for you to surrender yourself to Romulan custody and take the full blame.’

‘I expect you’d have made it very difficult for me if you’d been aboard,’ Rourke drawled. Then he got to his feet and approached the picture on the wall. ‘This damn thing…’

‘Sir?’

‘There.’ He adjusted it. ‘Now it’s straight.’

She gave an approving nod. ‘The crew will benefit from some downtime after this.’

‘I expect there’ll be questions, reports, maybe an enquiry,’ Rourke sighed. ‘That’ll hopefully give people some time. We’ll take it as it comes.’

‘Commander Cortez insisted on it being known that Ensign Beckett did well down there. Despite his inexperience. But I expect we still need new staff.’

‘I suppose who we’re sent will reflect how unpopular I may have become in Command,’ he drawled. ‘Regretting not taking that ship of your own, yet?’

Even as he studied the picture, he felt her unwavering eyes on him. ‘Not for a moment.’

Rourke bit his lip. ‘Thank you for the report, Commander. Get us underway as soon as possible.’

He pottered about his ready room with a dissatisfied air once she left. This was it; mission complete. They had a long journey back to Federation space, and if more beacons needed pursuing even then, he would deal with those orders if they came. There would be, as he had warned Valance, questions and investigations; reports would be written and scrutinised, justifications would be demanded. But for a few days at least, they had won.

Rourke eyed the cabinet against the wall. ‘Sod it,’ he muttered to himself, and poured a glass of the Islay he kept for special occasions which had proved too few and far between. He had only just put on some music and sat back down before the door-chime sounded, and at the summons entered First Secretary Hale.

She stopped as the doors slid shut behind her, tilting her head at the scene. At last, she said, ‘I didn’t think you were a jazz man, Captain.’

‘I’m a man of many things,’ he said, before hesitating. That was his usual habit, to evade and shift his masks, his appearance. ‘I’ve been reminded I’m not that good at taking joy in things. Ephrath has been a success, and I’m sure that’ll go wrong at some point, but until then…’ He nodded to the cabinet. ‘Join me for a drink?’

‘I shouldn’t,’ said Hale, and went to pour herself a glass.

He swirled his drink gently as she returned to take the seat opposite, and with some difficulty, he spoke. ‘Thank you.’

‘I said I was here to make your job easier,’ she pointed out. ‘And to keep politics from getting in the way of the mission.’

‘I expect you’ll have hell from the Diplomatic Service for the deals you’ve made with Lotharn. That’s a significant commitment to further negotiations and relations with Romulan factions.’

‘It won’t be easy,’ said Hale levelly. ‘But not in the way you’re thinking. What Lotharn and his superiors won’t know is that there were already discussions on how to improve relations with the Star Empire, since engagements with the Free State have cooled. I didn’t put forward anything that wasn’t already being seriously considered. There’s a reason these are all projects focused around the Neutral Zone. Victories can be cheered. Defeats can be ignored.’

Rourke straightened. ‘So you just attached extant plans to this situation?’

She winced. ‘I attached extant discussions to this situation. Don’t get me wrong, Captain; I’m going to have to defend this and I’m going to have to justify this, and I expect there’ll be the devil to pay. Especially with reparations and an apology – that, I will have to fight for.’

He frowned and looked down at his drink. ‘I should thank you for that, too.’ At her questioning silence, he dragged his gaze back up. ‘You didn’t just save my neck. You tried to make things right.’

Hale hesitated, plainly taking a sip of her drink to buy time. But for once she seemed ill at-ease, uncertain. ‘I thought it was important the Federation, Starfleet, actually did try to make things right. Because we have a collective responsibility to do that. For the Erem, for Romulus, for the Neutral Zone.’

‘I’ve trusted and expected people to have my back in danger,’ Rourke said, voice rumbling as Sadek’s words hummed through him. ‘But the last ten, fifteen years, I’ve been more used to my superiors just wanting problems to go away. So I appreciate what you’ve done – reminded at least someone that we’re meant to be a force for change, a force for good – even at a cost to yourself.’

‘Like I said; there’ll be the devil to pay, but not in the way you’re thinking.’ Hale regarded him for a long moment, and he raised an eyebrow. ‘It’s common, if an official of my level takes relatively unilateral action like this, they’re the one who has to follow through on it.’

‘Makes sense. You expect to be dispatched to the Neutral Zone to continue these negotiations and arrangements with the Empire, the Republic?’ He winced. ‘So you can take the full blame if it all goes wrong?’

‘Exactly. And I’m satisfied enough to lie in the bed I’ve made. I’ve put my superiors in a corner, but if their response is to tell me to go and make lives better and a region safer, then…’ Her lips twisted. ‘How very sad for me.’

Rourke gave a gentle, impressed laugh. ‘You seem to have done quite well for yourself out of this, First Secretary.’

‘In that I’m happy to commit myself to an under-funded project a lot of people will want to see fail, in a volatile region of space, dealing with an underpowered ally who is sometimes unreliable as they try to stay afloat and a resentful, authoritarian neighbour. Well for myself indeed.’ The smirk extended, but her gaze on him stayed level. ‘And I’d like you to help me with it, Captain.’

He stopped. ‘Help you? I’m sorry, First Secretary; I’m not a diplomat, and unless you expect Starfleet to strip me of my command I won’t leave this ship…’

‘I hope not.’ Hale sipped her whisky. ‘I rather need Endeavour, too. If these operations go ahead, this will be one of the most significant diplomatic missions into the Neutral Zone since the evacuation. It would be appropriate for this to be a joint undertaking with Starfleet, appropriately represented by a command-level officer and protected by a ship of adequate tactical capabilities.’

Rourke stared, working his jaw. ‘Bringing a Manticore to diplomacy is a bit like taking a fully-charged phaser rifle into the negotiating room.’

‘And there will be places in the Neutral Zone where I might have to do exactly that,’ Hale pointed out. ‘It’s one of the most dangerous places in the Quadrant. What better use for this ship than to protect a mission trying to build peace and cooperation?’ She watched him a moment, and drew a level breath. ‘You can be a part of the Federation making a real difference for once, Captain, in a place we’ve historically ignored and abused. And maybe we’ll fail. Maybe the Empire will refuse to treat in good enough faith for it to be worthwhile, maybe the Republic will have to withdraw to protect themselves, maybe humanitarian missions in the Neutral Zone are just a black hole of resources which won’t change enough.’

He fidgeted with the glass. ‘And if that happens, that’s justification to go silent on the wider galaxy for a generation.’

‘I’ve read your record, Captain. You’ve been sent for years to go hunt down trouble and then walk away. The Borderlands, the Neutral Zone, Midas, Archanis. You’ve made it clear that’s taken a toll on you; that it’s never been enough.’ Hale drew a slow breath. ‘Work with me. And maybe we can make it be enough.’

Beneath them, Rourke felt the faintest hum of the deck. Endeavour was firing up her impulse engines under Valance’s orders, bringing them away from Ephrath, heading away from the mysteries of the Tkon, the tensions with the Empire – even, eventually, the cautious watching eyes of the Republic. He would need to head to the bridge, ensure they parted ways with Commander Lotharn with some civility.

But first, he extended his glass to clink it lightly against hers. ‘As you say, First Secretary,’ Rourke said slowly, ‘there’ll be the devil to pay for all this. We can be in debt together.’