Captain’s Log, Stardate 2400.928. After months on the Romulan border, Endeavour has finally been called back deeper within Federation space. A diplomatic summit at Starbase 414 demands the attention of myself and First Minister Hale, while the ship herself gets some overdue software maintenance and updates. 414 orbits Aeriaumi III, one of the Federation’s earliest colonies, with several notable leisure resorts and a rich local culture. As such, I’ve directed the crew to enjoy shore leave for the next week or two.

‘Yyyyup. Right there. Perfect.’ But Cortez felt sunshine spill back across her back as Valance drew away from the lounger.

‘I’m just applying sunscreen,’ Valance said suspiciously.

‘And I’m enjoying it.’ Reluctantly, Cortez rolled onto her side and opened one eye. Bright sunlight tumbled down from a peerless blue sky to bathe the white sands and ebbing waves with flecks of gold. Down in the surf, Endeavour crewmembers splashed or swum or drove further towards the waves with carbon fiber boards painted vivid colours by enthusiastic locals. But up here was the row of white loungers, stood like sentinels awaiting those in search of relaxation, and she’d claimed hers with a long towel and a fizzing purple cocktail stuffed with fruit sat on the side table.

It was a good spot not very far from the beach-front resort the captain had secured for the crew who’d wanted this kind of break, with good sun and a good view and the straw-roofed bar less than twenty metres away. And yet her girlfriend looked unimpressed. ‘We can try the jet skis this afternoon,’ Cortez offered.

‘I know.’ Valance flopped onto her lounger. Even on beach-front shore leave, she was all straight lines and discipline, sat upright and in swimwear more suited to sport than relaxation. ‘But I also know you’re keen to finish that… book.’

‘Don’t say it in that tone.’ Cortez smirked as she hefted her PADD. ‘Timewarped is a perfect summer read of a thriller -’

Valance snatched the PADD out of her hand and flicked to the blurb. ‘Hypatia Bunk has lost her job and her girlfriend in one day. Desperate, a chance encounter with an old flame makes her sign up as staff on the Starlight Expanse, a pleasure liner bringing Alpha Centauri’s richest and most famous up close and personal with astonishing stellar phenomena. But a navigation error sends the Expanse too close to a black hole. When the ship is dragged inside, it seems too late – except Hypatia wakes up not dead, but at the start of that week. A week she, and only she, is destined to relive over and over. Can she break the cycle of stars and misfortune?’ Valance tossed the PADD back. ‘That sounds -’

‘The science,’ said Cortez with unbridled delight, ‘is terrible. I’m still on the first repeat, and Hypatia’s yet again spilt a tray of drinks on the senator’s son.’

‘And you’d rather read this than head to the Old Town?’

‘Ugh.’ Cortez flopped back onto the lounger. ‘You’ve seen one colonial old town, you’ve seen them all. There’s one major street that’s two hundred years-old, the cafés try to sell you local coffee, there’s an old book shop with local history books, the museum has at the heart of it the hulk of the first colony ship, except it’s the same damn design that was used to settle every other late twenty-second century Federation colony world…’ She opened one eye, a little bashful as she heard her own vitriol. ‘Sorry. I grew up on a place like this.’

‘I know you and I have slightly different ideas of what makes a good holiday…’

‘Yes, I want to relax, not run through a full itinerary of cultural enrichment. My only disappointment with this resort is that there isn’t an actual bar in the ocean that I could swim up to. I’ll have to plan my drinking, and I resent planning anything right now.’ But Cortez saw Valance’s face, and sighed. ‘Reading and sunbathing til the afternoon. Then the toys on the water?’

‘Maybe.’ Valance patted her lounger, then stood. ‘I’ll go see what they’ve got at the depot.’

Cortez knew she could have called her back – made amends, found a compromise – but in the end she was silent as Valance traipsed off into the sand. Even here, Endeavour crewmembers shunted out of their XO’s way. Perhaps she’d just trained them that intensely. Perhaps it was the fact that, even here, Valance strode straight-backed and square-shouldered and with the same determination in crossing a beach as in crossing the bridge.

With a sigh, Cortez lay back on the lounger. The warm sun made her feel better at once, at least. If not perhaps a little over-exposed, a little over-heated. So she nudged her sunglasses back down, took a sip of the iced, fruity morning cocktail she’d been enjoying, and picked up her PADD with its terrible book.

‘Oh, Hypatia,’ she sighed with satisfaction. ‘Let’s see if you get locked half-naked out of your quarters this cycle.’

This first day of shore leave followed that pattern in good order. Valance took much, much longer to investigate the options for water sports than Cortez thought necessary, and she suspected her girlfriend had taken a walk just to keep occupied. Even the afternoon’s proposed power-ski excursion around the bay did not spark the enthusiasm Cortez had hoped for, with she herself thinking longingly of her lounger or a gentle paddle in the ocean or back in one of the hotel pools, and Valance visibly distracted.

Cortez woke in their luxurious hotel room – beach-facing balcony, bed big enough for six – later than usual the next morning, and alone. This was little surprise, as Valance was prone to rising early for exercise and nobody thought shore leave would stop this, but Cortez chose to not wait for her, dressing and heading down to the beach-front patio. Soaked in morning sun, white linens wafted in a gentle breeze as serving staff brought out food and hot drinks, and here she found more like-minded colleagues taking the day easy.

She’d already secured a coffee as she slid into a seat at one of the longer occupied tables. Doctor Sadek sat there with her wife Yasmin, across from Lieutenants Danjuma and Song. A small stack of PADDs by the last empty chair suggested it had been claimed.

‘I see we’re starting the day as we mean to go on,’ Cortez drawled in greeting. ‘Getting a break from the kids?’

‘They went to the sports centre this morning,’ said Sadek, sipping her tea. ‘I’ve already given them up for dead.’ At Lieutenant Danjuma’s startled look, she waved a dismissive hand. ‘I’m sure Lawal is smart enough to leave the rest of them behind, don’t worry.’

‘That would be inauspicious,’ deadpanned Lieutenant Song on the potential cowardice of his young brother-in-law. ‘The captain’s daughter is with them, after all, and I’d expect this to reflect poorly on us in the next personnel review.’

‘Commander Valance won’t be joining us?’ asked Yasmin, stirring her chai.

‘Commander Valance has to get a chill twenty-five k in before breakfast,’ said Cortez, checking the breakfast menu on her PADD. ‘She and I have aggressively different ideas about shore leave.’

The glance between Sadek and her wife was not lost on Cortez, and at length the doctor gave a wry smile. ‘Have you considered not spending shore leave together?’

Cortez raised an eyebrow. ‘We’ve not had a proper break in months. I thought it’d be nice for us to enjoy this fortnight.’

‘You live together,’ Yasmin pointed out. ‘You see each other plenty. This is a chance to refuel by whatever means you enjoy, not whatever means you feel you ought.’

The Chief Engineer swept her gaze up and down the table stacked with married couples. ‘You’re all together.’

‘For now,’ said Sadek. ‘I’m going to read and do a yoga class later. Yasmin’s heading into the Old Town.’

‘There’s a base camp up at the Yorviken Range where Lieutenant Rhade and some others are doing hiking and mountain climbing; I was going to join them after lunch,’ Lieutenant Song agreed.

‘I would, too,’ said Danjuma apologetically, ‘but the latest Annual Review of Astrophysics is out and I need to stay on top of it.’

Cortez made a face at the Head of Stellar Sciences. ‘Now that’s work. Is your department still fighting like cats in a sack?’

‘I’m only acting department head and I really don’t want that to last, so if our next mission occupies my team then that’s all the more excuse to pass the baton to Turak.’

Cortez glanced at Sadek. ‘I’ve never known people to dodge a promotion more than our science department.’

‘We’re blue-shirts. We’re here to be nerds.’

‘And this,’ came the voice of a new arrival, ‘is from the chief engineer, who didn’t complain a bit about being passed over for second officer.’ Saeihr Kharth padded up from the beach in sandals and a bathing suit, her hair damp, a towel slung over her shoulder, and pulled up the last empty seat. ‘There’s a human saying about glass houses somewhere.’

Cortez smirked. ‘You see, I work for a living down in the engine room. You just snooze on the bridge until trouble comes along. You’ve got the time to help run the ship.’ She cast her gaze down the beach, which at this time of morning was not yet the hustle and bustle of holiday relaxation, but the domain of committed swimmers and surfers. ‘The water’s warm already?’

‘Barely drops below twenty this time of year,’ said Kharth, smoothing her rumpled hair back. As Cortez watched, she glanced at her stack of PADDs and slid the one on top somewhere hidden in the middle with, Cortez thought, a rather affected air of nonchalance. ‘I thought I’d get a swim in before breakfast.’

‘You’re all really bad at vacationing. I refuse to do anything intellectually or physically stimulating this entire time.’

Lieutenant Song set down his teacup and looked to Kharth. ‘Were you going to join us at Yorviken, Commander?’

Kharth shook her head. ‘Despite Isa’s condemnation, I was planning on enjoying the beach.’

‘Someone has to!’ said Cortez. ‘I didn’t force Adupon to draw the short straw and supervise the software upgrades for nothing!’

‘Poor Adupon,’ snickered Kharth. ‘You’ve probably saved him; I think he’d have a breakdown if he disembarked and had to choose how to relax.’

‘People keep getting overwhelmed by options. I view it more like a buffet.’ Cortez twisted again to survey the beach, then straightened as she spotted two familiar shapes making their way back up from the sea, surfboards slung over their shoulders. ‘Tar’lek, Nate! How’re the waves?’

Arys and Beckett stopped at the edge of the patio, and the young Andorian gave a nod that was in her eyes altogether too disciplined and polite when the crew was crammed together on beach-front shore leave. ‘Diverting enough, Commander.’

‘He means,’ said Beckett with a sunnier grin, ‘surfing isn’t actually our favourite thing.’

‘What’s wrong with everyone? We come to a luxury resort and you’re all sick of the break!’

Beckett planted his board in the sand and shrugged. ‘Because it’s all surfing and jet skis and water sports, there’s pretty much nothing of sailing boats here. I’d have to go up to Klentemon on the northern coastline for that.’ He jerked a thumb at Arys. ‘This one wants a bloody museum.’

Arys looked indignant. ‘You’re an anthropologist and you’re criticising me for -’

‘Colony museums are all the same,’ said Beckett, with the same dismissive air Cortez had deployed on the topic the day before. ‘But go, don’t let me stop you drinking coffee on a cute cobbled street and waxing lyrical to pretty girls about the age of space exploration.’

‘You should join me, then, Nate,’ called Cortez. ‘I intend to blend my brain with the most inane trashy books and trashy cocktails possible for the next fortnight.’

‘And I think I’ll be there,’ mused Kharth, frowning at a PADD, ‘to make sure she doesn’t fall in the ocean and die.’

‘Tempting offer, Commanders,’ said Beckett, shouldering his board again. ‘But I have other plans.’

Sadek raised an eyebrow as the two young officers headed back for the hotel. ‘Did anyone else get a shiver up their spine at that? A bored Nate Beckett with a plan.’

‘Most importantly,’ said Cortez, picking the menu back up, ‘a plan far from here. But enough of this – what’s actually good for breakfast?’

‘You look tired, Captain.’

Rourke had to force a polite smile as he walked the Starbase 414 corridor towards the conference room, though he knew Hale wouldn’t be fooled by his mask. Sometimes the courtesies were more about being seen to try than about succeeding. ‘I don’t much enjoy sleeping on Endeavour when she’s docked. It’s too quiet aboard.’

They were the first there, bright and early this first morning of the meetings that had summoned them to the sector and kept them in orbit while most of Endeavour’s crew and residents enjoyed the pleasures of Aeriaumi III’s surface. Sophia Hale, of course, looked collected and dignified while he felt like he’d been turned inside-out by a restless night.

Her smile was more convincing. ‘You could easily stay on the surface. We do have transporters.’

‘I think that’d just depress me more that I’m not getting shore leave,’ Rourke said wryly, and took a sip of steaming coffee from the travel mug he’d filled at the replimat.

‘If we can broker an arrangement between Colonial Affairs and the new Romulan Republic Outreach Program,’ Hale reminded gently, ‘then we’ll be due a lot more shore leave.’

‘Why, First Secretary,’ he mused. ‘Are you trying to put yourself out of a job?’

Her laugh was gentle. ‘Unfortunately it’ll take a little more than a week’s worth of meetings for us to become redundant on the Romulan border.’

‘You’re probably right.’ He looked up and down the well-furnished corridor, and squinted with suspicion. ‘Did you get that briefing package from Rosewood last night?’

At last the mask suggested something approximating dissatisfaction. ‘Yes. It was brief.’

‘I know. Not really what I’d expected from him.’

Rourke was about to ask where Endeavour’s new diplomatic officer was, just as the doors to the conference room slid open and the bright-eyed figure of young John Rosewood emerged with a sunlit smile. ‘Captain, First Secretary – I was worried you’d be waiting out there. Come on in, I got a head start on setting things up.’

Rourke’s back tensed as they entered, and only grew more taut as he took in the pre-loaded display, the briefing documents carefully positioned at each seat, the cultivated refreshments on offer he noted included several Romulan pastries. ‘When did you get here, Commander?’

If John Rosewood had sacrificed sleep for an early start, it did not show in his manner. ‘An hour ago. Caught some waves down on the surface, beamed up, got to work. Half the diplomatic battle’s won in the prep, right?’

‘Cy said he offered assistance,’ said Sophia Hale, veteran diplomat, as she moved to take the seat at the head of the table with no visible disapproval of Rosewood seizing command of logistics.

‘He did.’ Rosewood poured himself a fresh coffee from the refreshment table. ‘I didn’t need it. Starfleet base, Starfleet staff – just easier.’

Rourke took the chair at Hale’s right, and looked down at the briefing document placed at his spot. ‘This is more than you sent us last night.’

‘I did a bit more prep after I sent the file over.’ At last Rosewood sounded apologetic. ‘But it was pretty late when I finished. You have the essentials.’

Rourke opened his mouth to protest the suggestion he wouldn’t have risen early or stayed up late to do more reading, but then the doors slid open for the officer from Federation Colonial Affairs to arrive, and they were out of time. Soon after would arrive the representatives from the Romulan Republic. The business of the day – of the week – had begun.

The morning became an exercise in swift reading and keeping a strict poker face, and it was not until lunchtime, when he caught up with Hale on a turbolift heading for 414’s promenade, that he felt he could speak his mind.

‘Was it me,’ Rourke started roughly once the turbolift doors slid shut to grant them privacy, ‘or did Rosewood screw up and send us in there half-cocked?’

‘I don’t think Commander Rosewood put a foot wrong,’ said Hale, and for a moment Rourke worried he’d horribly misjudged the situation. Then she said, ‘I think he thoroughly intended to put you and me on the back foot.’

Rourke frowned and quickly replayed the morning’s meeting in his mind. Then he scowled more. ‘He gave us half of the information so he could take charge of the meeting.’

‘That’s an extreme way of putting it,’ she said, in that light voice he knew by now masked a searing analysis. ‘He’d done research on the delegates he didn’t pass on, which is entirely deniable as personal knowledge not fit for formal briefing documents. He made routine amendments to the agenda that left everyone on an even footing so nobody could accuse us as intermediaries of steering the discussion, but it meant he could steer the discussion.’

‘What’s he bloody playing at?’ Rourke grumbled. ‘Does he want Starfleet and the Diplomatic Corps to come across as toothless in this? Does he have friends in Colonial Affairs he’s trying to massage this negotiation for?’

She arched an eyebrow at him. ‘I think, Captain, that Commander Rosewood has done exactly what Starfleet sent him to Endeavour to do.’

The turbolift stopped then, and the two of them were no longer in the habit of thoughtlessly spending time together. He let her get her own lunch, condemning himself to an uninspiring sandwich from one of the replicator lounges, and spent the hour desperately scrabbling through Rosewood’s expanded notes to not feel like his own diplomatic officer was leaving him half a step behind.

It did not make a material difference on the afternoon. Rourke knew there was nothing bad about the negotiations; while he was not the most seasoned diplomat, he knew people, and he knew Hale was keeping up with everything with a relative ease. But he could feel Rosewood being half a step ahead – quicker to anticipate people’s needs and wants, quicker to feel and redirect the pulse of the conversation. That he, a professional diplomatic officer, could run rings around Rourke didn’t worry him. That he was pushing Hale to her limit did.

‘Can I help you, Captain?’ was all he said with an easy cheer when the day was done, everyone else had left the conference room, and Rourke lingered as his new officer packed up from this first session. ‘I thought that went well.’

Rourke pursed his lips, considering his options. Then he decided that if Rosewood was going to try to make him look like an idiot, he didn’t have to pretend to be polite. ‘What’re you playing at, Commander?’

Rosewood blinked. ‘I don’t follow.’

‘Half-arsed briefing papers sent unfinished the night before, full documents given to us without enough prep time, alterations to the agenda, personal knowledge of the delegates you didn’t share…’

‘I met Representative Grivak last year at Qualor,’ Rosewood protested. ‘I’m a diplomatic officer, sir. It’s pretty normal for me to notice things like his drink preferences. That’s the kind of stuff I should be keeping off your plate, not dumping on it.’

‘I guess the agenda’s not my business, neither?’

‘Again,’ said Rosewood, unapologetic, ‘I keep things off your desk. Colonial Affairs wanted some more things discussed, so did the Republic, I made the decisions on what to talk about in what order.’ He shrugged. ‘It upsets people. This way I’m the bad guy, not you.’

‘So you’re both here to please them with small, personal details, and take the heat off me by being the gatekeeper and bureaucrat.’ Rourke folded his arms across his chest. ‘You get why I’m not convinced.’

‘I don’t -’

‘I don’t know why you were assigned here, Commander,’ Rourke pressed on. ‘Not when First Secretary Hale’s here, and her whole staff.’

‘I’m here to brief you, sir, and support you and Starfleet’s interests.’ Commander Rosewood tensed at last, shoulders squaring. ‘I don’t answer to the Diplomatic Corps.’

‘Maybe not. But so long as you serve on Endeavour, you’re here for the crew of Endeavour. And that includes Ms Hale.’ Rourke set his jaw. ‘I don’t give a damn for turf wars between services. Understood?’

Rosewood made an exasperated noise. ‘This is the first diplomatic summit since I’ve come aboard, and I’m committed to it going well -’

‘Understood?’

In the silence, the holographic display chirruped. At length, John Rosewood shifted his feet. ‘Understood, sir.’

There was a curious exhaustion to a long meeting, where running the marathon happened in his mind rather than with his feet. It left him more worn than he’d realised once he was back in his quarters, staring at an open wardrobe, his next move determining what he’d change into.

Collar undone, Rourke made a frustrated noise and stepped to the wall display. With a surly hint of guilt he checked Sophia Hale’s location, no secret on 414’s computer system.

Moonbright Lounge. The closest thing to fine eating on the station; hardly a place someone would go alone. It was no real surprise; Hale had friends in a dozen sectors and contacts in a score more. There was hardly a major station in the quadrant where she couldn’t find company, he suspected. She was perfectly fine without his.

Besides, Rourke thought to himself as he pulled off his uniform jacket and reached for a summer shirt. It was a much better use of his time for him to get down to the surface and embarrass his daughter over a late supper.

Big transport hubs were a necessity in the largest resort town on the planet. The vast majority of visitors to Aeriaumi III were tourists coming to enjoy the world’s natural delights, and while these stretched from snowy diversions on the highest northern peaks, to thick and inviting wilderness along the mountainous ranges, down to these golden coastlines of sun and sand, it was at this last, where flat land was bounteous and infrastructure plentiful, that visitors began any trip.

This was the excuse Thawn had used for why she wasn’t yet at the Yorviken Range with her fiancé and his friends. It was only appropriate, she said, to take a day or so at the beach-front hotel, make sure her department was settled, have a little time to herself. But she’d known that excuse wouldn’t last long, so now she approached the bustling transport hub, a structure that both towered and sprawled and bore all the beauty of any industrial hulk.

Restrictions on surface transport meant only large shuttles and transports left at set periods, crossing the continent or heading for orbit. This kept the skies of Aeriaumi as free and blue as possible. Larger hover transports hummed mere metres above the ground, rushing past and over her to take travellers much shorter distances – but here, along the hundred-kilometre stretches of coast by the sapphire seas, was where most people wanted to be.

She was booked on an atmospheric transport and thus, bag slung over her shoulder, consulted signs and shouldered through the crowds to find her departure gate. Within a half hour she’d be on her way to Yorviken.

Or she might have been had she not spotted a familiar face in a different queue – and only one familiar face. Thawn detached from the crowd to approach the passengers waiting to board a transport, and had to reach out to touch an arm to be noticed in the hustle and bustle. ‘Elsa?’

Elsa Lindgren looked near-incognito, blonde hair tied back, dressed down in drab colours, shoulders slumped and head down. From the guilty look on her face as she looked up, Thawn realised this was intentional. ‘I didn’t expect to see you here.’

‘What’re you doing? Waiting on a transport for…’ Thawn’s eyes flickered up. ‘Nalvark? What in Great Fire’s there?’ At Lindgren’s hesitation, she sighed. ‘Nothing. That’s the point, isn’t it?’

‘I’m sure I can find a quiet room in a quiet town and get some time to myself,’ Lindgren said, but she looked like she knew the jig was up. ‘Shouldn’t you be off in Yorviken with Adamant?’

Thawn’s grip on her sleeve tightened. ‘I should be pulling you out of this queue for a coffee. Yorviken can wait.’

It was plain Lindgren had relied on secrecy to slip away, as she didn’t fight any further. Thawn knew she’d miss her transport by pulling her from the queue, and committed even more when she took one look at the bustling cafés of the hub and said, ‘Let’s go somewhere else.’

There was not much more peace and quiet at a café just outside of the transport hub, with passengers walking past their outside table and vehicles racing along and overhead. But it was away from the claustrophobic crowds, the hustle and bustle of a hundred people crammed in close as they tried to get far, far apart.

‘So,’ said Thawn once they’d sat down with disposable cups of coffee on plastic chairs on a tarmacked sidewalk, ‘are we going to ask each other questions, or are we just… not doing that?’

‘Do you want to answer questions?’ Lindgren said with a raised eyebrow.

‘I’m the one who’s still in therapy, so I have a little more of a get-out.’

‘Are you talking to your therapist about how you just jumped on an excuse to not join Adamant in Yorviken?’

Thawn fiddled with the lid on her coffee, eyes drifting to the street. They were not on the main road to the hub, the throbbing vein linking it to the city, but a quiet if wide route between hub and the resort housing most of Endeavour’s crew. But the majority of their colleagues who were going anywhere else had long left. Only strangers walked or drove these streets.

‘Concern for you,’ she said at last, ‘isn’t an excuse. I know I’ve been a bit… busy, lately.’

‘I’m not upset with you about that,’ said Lindgren, shrugging. ‘You’ve been through some awful things. I can’t imagine what you experienced on that ship. And everyone’s reeling at least a little bit about Dathan, and it must have been terrible for Adamant…’

‘I don’t know what it was for Adamant,’ said Thawn before she could stop herself. ‘Because he won’t talk about it.’

Lindgren clicked her tongue gently. ‘Did you ask?’

‘I’m not going to push…’ Then Thawn stopped and glared at her. ‘This isn’t fair, I brought you here to talk about you.’

‘And yet here we are,’ mused Lindgren.

Many people assumed a Betazoid to be good with social skills, naturally empathic even if it was socially unacceptable to use telepathy outside their own culture. But in Thawn’s case, it meant she could feel only the knot of guilt and grief and doubt twisting inside Lindgren, one of her closest friends. She didn’t know where one feeling ended or another began, she didn’t know the root of any of it, and because she was expected to use her words rather than her telepathy, she had absolutely no idea how to begin untangling any of it.

Salvation came from the most unexpected and unwelcome of corners as there was a screeching of wheels, and the shadow of a vehicle pulling up by the café fell over them. Thawn looked up with indignation at the sight of a hulking camper jeep, an all-terrain vehicle with a sturdy and extendable compartment on the back to provide basic living amenities. It looked deeply out of place on the road to a beach-side leisure resort, but her heart sank with realisation as the driver’s window slid down and out stuck the head of Nate Beckett.

‘The hub’s that way,’ he called, jerking a thumb back the way he came, before tilting down his mirrored sunglasses and peering at them. ‘Hell are you two doing here?’

‘Stopping on our way, Beckett,’ Thawn said quickly, irritably. ‘What’s that?’

‘What does it look like? Everything you need to live off-road in comfort.’ He glanced between them, then shrugged. ‘So there was an indigenous culture on Aeriaumi, but they died out, oh, ten thousand years ago. The old capital’s ruins are about one and a half thousand k away, right in the hinterlands before you hit the mountain ranges. Studied all to hell, but apparently pretty impressive.’

‘This doesn’t explain that… contraption.’

‘Sure, I could beam up there in a day, walk around, take notes. Or there’s a whole colonial culture and beautiful planet between here and there. Live a little, Thawn. I’m going to see it all from the ground.’ He arched an eyebrow. ‘What were you gonna do? Go see…’

But he audibly stopped himself halfway through a gibe, and she could almost hear the end of it echoing in the silence. Go see Captain Federation and spend a week doing your damndest to not talk about anything of substance?

Thawn clicked her tongue. ‘We were making plans,’ she lied.

‘Bad plans,’ said Lindgren, and got to her feet. Her eyes swept up and down the camper jeep. ‘How many fit in that?’

A slow smile tugged at Beckett’s lips. ‘If I pop the top compartment, double bed over the driver’s cabin, a third on the seats on the back. Bit of a squeeze for all of us. How about it? You want to see the real Aeriaumi?’

‘It doesn’t need to fit all of us,’ said Lindgren, shouldering her bag.

Lindgren expected she could manipulate Beckett much more easily than Thawn, she knew, because while Beckett was socially canny, she was blunt. In one heartbeat, Thawn could see the next week spilling out before her: Lindgren slipping out from her grasp to evade all her problems, and her headed to Yorviken and Rhade and everything she didn’t want to face.

‘Fine,’ she said, with a somewhat cultivated irritation. ‘I’m not convinced this is a way to see a world in the “real” way any more than flying is, but you’re not going to shut up about it when we get back to Endeavour if I don’t see for myself how wrong you are, am I?’

Beckett leaned back, his grin turning more surprised – then sincere. ‘Alright, ladies,’ he drawled at last. ‘Hop aboard, and get ready for a bump ride halfway across the continent. I warn you, we’ve got roads and towns and hills and tracks to go before we’re done.’

They tossed their bags into the back, which was indeed a tight arrangement, before clambering up to join Beckett in the driver’s cabin. A wide bench accommodated all three of them, and the moment the door was shut behind Thawn, he gunned the engine and pulled out back into the road.

‘Okay!’ he called, guiding the vehicle into traffic. ‘First stop tonight is the town of Borean; not the most direct route between here and the hinterlands, but the night market is apparently something. We can camp up at the periphery and head in to see it for ourselves. ETA about six hours.’

He reached to tap the dash controls, and Thawn’s eyebrow raised as the map on the holo-display shifted to show their route. It was at least, for now, taking them along main roads and still in Aeriaumi’s bustling hub of civilisation, though she could see they were heading further and further from the centres of habitation.

Then Beckett turned on the music, and her eyebrow raised only more at the thumping rock that pounded through the compartment as he knocked his sunglasses back down. As Thawn rolled her eyes, both he and Lindgren began to sing.

She pursed her lips. This was going to be the longest favour she’d ever done for her best friend.

‘Lieutenant?’

The problem with sitting on your own and reading, Tar’lek Arys reflected, was that people often thought that meant you weren’t doing anything, and were free to be interrupted. On the contrary, he had come a significant distance to be left entirely alone. Alone in a crowd, for certain, sat as he was on a street-side cafe in the old town, a steaming, half-empty cup of coffee on the metal table before him as tourists and locals bustled down the road to take in the sights or just live their lives.

But that was different to the hum of life aboard Endeavour, where his time was almost never his own, or the brief days spent at the seaside resort a hundred kilometres west, where he was still surrounded by his colleagues and they felt they had more license to talk to him. Arys was not anti-social. But he did value his time, and he had parted ways with Beckett and come inland for this time.

So it was with little relish and a pinched expression that he looked up from his dog-eared paperback, and immediately regretted the sigh he knew had escaped his lips when he saw Karana Valance. He shot to his feet, rattling chair and table and drawing several eyes of tourists sat nearby. ‘Commander!’

Valance frowned and gestured for him to relax. ‘At ease, Lieutenant – this isn’t a formal check-in.’ She looked casual in the sunshine at least, in a linen blazer with a leather bag slung over one shoulder. ‘I spotted you on my way and thought I’d say hello.’

Arys nodded, heart-rate slowing. Almost on instinct he gestured for her to join him as he sat back down. ‘Apologies, Commander. I’m still switching off, I suppose.’

She glanced at the chair, then unslung her bag and took it. ‘I understand that. I didn’t personally find the resort very relaxing. I don’t do nothing very well.’

‘Likewise.’ Swallowing, he reached for his coffee cup. ‘I thought you were at the resort. With Commander Cortez.’

‘I was. The commander and I thought…’ There was a pause as she picked her words. ‘We concluded we want different things from shore leave. We’re trying at least a few days pursuing our own interests separately. I’ll likely be back at the resort for the second week. Or some of it.’

‘I didn’t mean to pry,’ Arys said apologetically, but she waved a dismissive hand.

‘You aren’t the first person to comment.’

He nodded. ‘What brought you here, if I may ask?’ The old town was the site of early colonial settlement. Most of its buildings dated back to that time, the first permanent structures built once the colonists had outgrown the prefab shelters and had the infrastructure to indulge in architecture, decoration, culture. The streets were made for only small and local wheeled vehicles and otherwise for pedestrian use, while the buildings, limestone hued by the centuries, stood no more than five storeys tall. Walking the town was to feel the weight of a lived-in and vivid history of a former frontier.

‘I expect the same as you: the pursuit of a different relaxation.’ Valance shrugged. ‘Some people are dismissive of the museums and sights on colonies like these. I rather enjoy them.’

Despite himself, Arys sat forward, eyes sparking. ‘Did you know this wasn’t Aeriaumi’s first colony settlement? That there was one which failed a year before?’

‘A botched landing and unexpected storms drove them back into orbit, yes.’ Something in Valance’s gaze softened. ‘I was hoping to read the colonial accounts in the central museum.’

‘Some are there. Others are in the archives.’ Arys stopped himself. ‘Apologies, Commander. I’m something of an enthusiast for early Federation history.’

‘I didn’t know that about you.’

‘I spend far too much time with Lieutenant Beckett to ever admit to having an interest in something he, an historian, could lord over me with either his superior knowledge or probably an implication that it’s “not real history.”’ He rolled his eyes.

Valance’s lips quirked, the closest he generally saw to the XO showing open amusement. He supposed she did smile and perhaps even laugh with friends and loved ones, but their relationship was strictly limited to the bridge. He’d looked up to her ever since arriving aboard the last Endeavour, fresh out of the Academy, and this was still the first time they’d had a one-on-one conversation off-duty that was more than small-talk waiting for a turbolift. ‘I enjoy colony worlds,’ was her admission. ‘I think cultures more interesting than people give them credit for evolve here. I grew up somewhere not so dissimilar.’

‘Cantelle,’ Arys said before he could stop himself, and promptly looked bashful. ‘Sorry, Commander – it’s just I do know it. A lot newer than Aeriaumi, but only by fifty years or so. Colonies on the Klingon border have…’ But he was approaching another trip hazard, and hesitated. ‘I don’t want to keep you if you were on your way to the museum.’

Valance simply gave a thoughtful nod. ‘Have you been?’

‘Not yet.’ Another hesitation. ‘I stopped for a break after walking the parks. I was going this afternoon.’

‘I admit I came here to get away from the crowds and the rest of the crew,’ said Valance after a moment’s pause. ‘It’s my intention to see the history museum, the art museum. I know parts of the old colonial capitol are open for visitors. But there’s also apparently excellent eating in the northern district, for example.’

‘I know,’ Arys said a little quickly. ‘Don’t worry, Commander, I’ve no intention in -’

‘What I was going to say,’ she interrupted with a light, polite air, ‘is that I’d welcome the company of someone who also wants to tour Aeriaumi’s colonial culture. You and I have spent very little time together, Lieutenant. It would be appropriate for us to fix that.’

He blinked, and it took a moment before he realised he would have to use actual words to convey his response. ‘I’d be delighted, Commander.’

‘Good,’ said Valance simply, and looked down at his empty coffee cup before standing. ‘I’m staying at the Regimonde, by the way. I was planning on a run in the park in the morning. You’d be welcome to join me on that, too.’

Arys stood a second later than he perhaps should, slow to realise she was expecting him to follow. ‘I would like that.’ He grabbed his bag to shove away his book, and pulled out a PADD as they began to walk down the old town’s main street. ‘There was an article I found before I got here, written by a travel journalist about ten years ago. They talk about some of the hidden gems in the old town that look like they’re still open. I could forward it to you, if you’d like, Commander…?’

They had to race the sun to the next rise, and still they were left pitching under the last, dying rays of light amidst the trees. Had they taken their time, Carraway knew they could have stayed with the main body of the expedition a couple of kilometres back, pitching with the rest of the dozen or so Endeavour crew who preferred the rugged wilderness of the Yorviken Range to the delights of the ocean-front resort.

But Rhade had set a steady pace since the morning, and while it left Carraway huffing and puffing, he’d been determined to keep up lest the Betazoid wander into the woods alone, never to be seen again. He didn’t know what the Aeriaumi equivalent of bears were, but this looked like bear country.

‘While there’s still light, I’ll leave you with the tents and go fetch firewood,’ Carraway said as he watched Rhade thump in pegs as if they had personally wronged him. Rhade’s outdoorsmanship was good, but he came across more ready to survive a hostile environment than take simple, sensible measures as befit a wilderness hike. There was no need for them to make this more complicated than they had to.

It was good to take a breather on his own as he ventured into the treeline and began his collection. He’d spent most of the walk with one eye on Rhade – on the tension in his shoulders, the knot in his brow, the way he’d been uncommonly brusque with his colleagues if they’d stopped to talk. Most of them had given up, and Carraway knew he’d been allowed to keep pace not necessarily for their friendship, but because he’d been prepared to hike in silence.

The day had been hard. It would not be easy once he returned to their camp and the cloud over Rhade’s head. So Carraway took the time of his collection to breathe in the wood-stained air, closing his eyes and letting the evening chirrup of birds wash over him. The troubles of the stars above should have been far away from here, but he knew they awaited him back at camp. For once, fresh air, good ground under his feet, and a horizon to pursue at a steady pace were not doing their usual work in banishing woes. His walking partner had brought too many with him.

Tents were up by the time Carraway picked his way back through the undergrowth, a bundle of wood in his arms. Rhade had laid out rocks and the flame-retardant sheet so they could build a campfire, set up near a fallen log to make tolerable seating, and had stabbed a couple of lights into the soil to provide illumination in the meantime.

Carraway took one look at his solemn face and said, in a too-cheerful voice, ‘Let’s eat. What did you pack?’

Adamant Rhade’s approach to recreational hiking continued to be similar to Academy classes on wilderness survival, it turned out, as they heated terrible foil packets in the fledgling fire and Carraway looked on with gentle despair at the emergency rations. He was accustomed to good packets of chili and rice, heated and mixed up in a mess tin for that hearty warmth after a day’s excursion, but suspected he was about to eat warmed-up nutritional paste.

‘We didn’t have to leave in such a rush, you know,’ he said as Rhade stabbed the fire with a stick. ‘There was more we could have packed.’ This was not in any way what he wanted to talk about, but Greg Carraway was a qualified counselling psychiatrist, and he knew better than to come at a topic head-on.

‘Sorry,’ said Rhade with, at last, a hint of a rueful smile. ‘I packed what I did out of habit, I admit it. I forget not everyone is so accustomed to this fare.’

‘I’m accustomed,’ said Carraway good-naturedly. ‘It’ll at least make a difference to having every meal we could ever want at our fingertips. We’re here for a break, after all.’ He cocked his head and kept eye-contact, wanting to press on before Rhade could keep this conversation on absolutely nothing. ‘We also could have waited for Rosara.’

‘Please, Greg. Rosara isn’t coming.’ Rhade grimaced at last.

‘It’s not so unreasonable,’ Carraway said gently, ‘for her to delay joining us to help Elsa. They’re friends, and Elsa could honestly benefit from some company.’

‘I know. But tomorrow there’ll be another message with another excuse. If I’m wrong, we can…’ A more bitter smile than Rhade usually wore tugged at his lips. ‘We can beam down some nicer camping supplies.’

Carraway was silent as his eyes fell on the fire, and for a while there was no sound but its crackle, the chirrup of the undergrowth, the rustle of the evening air in the trees. They were deep into the woodlands on these ranging hills, and had not pressed on far enough to get much of a view of the path they’d taken so far. Perhaps it was for the best to be here, though, with trees shielding them from all they’d left behind.

‘I expect you’re right,’ he said at last, then his lips twisted as he looked up. ‘Sorry to say it, then: how does that make you feel?’

Rhade gave a rueful chuckle. ‘For her to stay away? It’s not so unreasonable of her, after all. She’s been through a lot – she went through a lot in captivity.’ But Carraway stayed quiet, because he knew that was when others rushed to fill the gaps, and at length Rhade sighed and said, ‘And I understand her not wanting to be near me.’

‘Do you? I don’t.’

Rhade’s gaze flickered. ‘You do. After Dathan.’

Carraway had to swallow down his own feelings. ‘You’re not the only one Dathan Tahla lied to.’

‘Maybe not. But I’m the one who…’ Rhade stopped and scrubbed his face with his hands. ‘I was closest to her. And she lied to us, and betrayed us, and if I hadn’t vouched for her…’

‘Adamant, if anyone else aboard had thought she was a spy, they weren’t going to keep quiet because a junior officer was friends with her,’ said Carraway as kindly as possible. ‘And why are you particularly concerned what Rosara thinks about that?’ Silence met him, and he shifted his weight, because he suspected the answer. ‘If you feel you’ve betrayed Rosara’s trust, that’s something you should speak about with, if not Rosara, then perhaps me. And it doesn’t have to be here. We can book an appointment when we’re back aboard.’

Rhade said nothing at that, simply reached to the firepit and tugged out one of the foil packages. He took longer than he needed to picking it open, and stared at the steam soaking out. ‘I don’t know why she’s kept to our arrangement,’ he admitted at last. ‘I don’t know why she broke it and then recommitted. I don’t understand her.’

Carraway sat quietly, thinking of the things he knew about Rosara Thawn, of her heart, her family, and the cracks he’d seen in her since they’d met three years ago. He said nothing, of course, because he knew almost all of it in a professional context. ‘I always recommend,’ he said at length, ‘the simple art of communication.’

‘I don’t -’

‘And if you need help understanding what you want to say and how to say it,’ he pressed on gently, ‘then I think we talk in my office. So I’ll only say one more thing in my professional capacity.’ He reached into his hiking jacket and pulled out a hipflask. ‘Let’s spend the next four days thinking about nothing more than this wilderness, this hike, this challenge. And for the love of God, Adamant, let’s wait tomorrow morning for the rest of the team so you don’t spend so much time in your own head. Or I’m stuck in here with you, and it’s surprisingly loud.’

Rhade watched him, the big man suddenly bashful. But at last he nodded, and gave a small smile when Carraway passed him the hipflask. ‘Alright,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing more than these hills. Just for a little bit.’

‘Just for a little bit.’

They hit the town of Borean as the sun was hitting dirt and scattering gold across dusty land and sandstone buildings. Though this gold could not reach the town’s streets and walkways, shadows were pushed back by the kaleidoscope of colours from lanterns on the walls, lights rigged across and overhead in vibrant mosaics, and the flickering torches of the stalls of the night market.

Beckett parked the ATV at the town’s periphery and they proceeded on foot. He was already in full-swing explaining the night market’s history to an amused Lindgren, and Thawn had no choice but to follow and try to not be too blatant in her sourness. If nothing else, she’d chosen to be here, and knew that would be used against her the moment she complained.

He was at least, she thought, cheering Lindgren up as he pointed out impressive sights, ridiculous goods for sale, things that were a scam or a bargain or just plain ugly. They stopped at a used book stall and he identified a few well-worn volumes he thought she’d like, then had the audacity to do the same for Thawn as she lingered near the back.

‘Come on, Thawn,’ he said with a crooked grin. ‘Don’t tell me you can resist an early edition of Verebier’s only poetry book.’

‘Maybe,’ she allowed, ‘but did we need to come to a small-town market to get a worn out hardback? I thought we were going looking for ruins.’

‘The ruins are still a few days away,’ Beckett pointed out. ‘If you wanted to see them and not have the journey, you could go hiking with Rhade and beam over to join us in seventy-two hours?’

Her eyes flickered to the stall, where Lindgren was still picking through what looked like a selection of short stories and seemed to have already found a few volumes of horror tales by local authors Thawn was sure would make her own hair curl. Trying to not grimace, she met Beckett’s gaze with a cool air. ‘I’m not on the journey to see things.’

His smile was knowing. ‘Then try to have fun when I’m trying to make things fun, hm? Come on.’

He had the audacity to move them on to a few stands by local artists then, something of too much interest to all of them and far too genuinely original and unique for her to summon up even a token protest. From there they weaved through the bazaar to the food stands, where a dozen sizzling scents competed for their attention.

‘I bet half of this is replicated,’ Thawn said a little snootily.

‘I bet that doesn’t matter if it’s local cuisine and if you’re not a snob,’ Beckett retorted.

‘I bet,’ said Lindgren with an eye-roll, ‘neither of you can manage a whole skewer of that spiced meat.’

If it hadn’t been Lindgren challenging, Thawn wouldn’t have tried. She got two mouthfuls down before nearly collapsing against the food stall, sputtering, and Beckett laughed even though he was sweating. He barely got through half of the skewer before surrendering, while Lindgren smiled serenely at them and polished off the whole thing.

‘Amateurs,’ was all she said as she helped herself to Thawn’s leftovers. Then she heard something despite the buzzing of the crowd, all locals and tourists alike mingling together, and turned down the street. ‘Oh, there’s dancing?’

It must have been the music she heard, Thawn realised when they got to the main square and were met with the swirling mass of cheer and life hammering along at the tempo of the four-man band atop the dead fountain in the centre. The fiddle and pipes gave the music a folksy twang, and its toe-tapping quality only made it harder for Thawn to evade when Lindgren grabbed her hand.

‘Oh, yeah,’ Lindgren said, pulling her into the square. ‘There’s dancing.’

If it hadn’t been for Lindgren, Thawn would have lurked at the periphery, pretending to be superior to it all but actually being too awkward to dip her toe in. But aside from being forcibly bundled into the throng of dancers, she was here to try to help. To cheer Lindgren up.

But if there was one thing Elsa Lindgren never struggled with, even when difficult and grief-wrestling, it was finding company and finding attention. They swirled through the first tune, but by the second there was a local coming to sweep her in on his arm, and while for this next song he’d had the foresight to find a friend to whisk Thawn off, too, Thawn didn’t think it would last. She wouldn’t let it last, in truth.

Beckett had, of course, either found or been hunted by a partner, and that at least meant she could beat an escape after this second dance. There were too many social cues she couldn’t read – was she supposed to make eye-contact at a prospective partner for a next dance, would that make her look eager, did she even want to dance? – and too much of sights and sounds she didn’t know. In a Betazoid ball-room she’d be fine, but this was something more raw and casual and neither of these were words which fit her well.

She found her way to the periphery of the dancing, alone and satisfied enough for it; found a stall giving drinks, and she had to try something sickly sweet and local and probably very alcoholic before she could also find just a beaker of water. She sat on a bench in the shadow of the back of a stall where a craggy-faced man drew bad caricatures for tourists, and found it wasn’t any quieter here. Not in the way that mattered.

Perhaps that had been bothering her more than she’d thought – the crowds. Their thoughts. It wasn’t that she could hear them, it wasn’t that she was listening, but she was aware, painfully aware, of all these minds bursting with ideas and thoughts and feelings. There’d been so many in the resort, too, and the transportation hub, and only now did she realise that she’d only begun to feel relaxed on the long stretches of empty road.

Thawn leaned back against the dusty wall, closed her eyes, and exhaled slowly through her nose. Carraway’s meditative methods weren’t fit for the middle of a crowd, but they were all she had in this battle to rebuild the walls her time on the other Endeavour had not broken, but had at least cracked. No wonder she’d been so on-edge.

‘Nope.’ One eye snapped open at Beckett’s voice, and she found him stood before her, hands on his hips.

‘I’m just sitting down, Beckett -’

‘You’re wallflowering,’ he said, and extended a hand. ‘It won’t do.’

She looked at her beaker and held it up. ‘I warn you, it’s very sickly -’

‘I don’t want your drink!’ He took it anyway and put it on the bench beside her. ‘I want to dance.’

‘You can dance all you -’

‘I want,’ he said, grabbing her wrist, ‘for you to dance.’ It was the lightest of grips, enough for her to pull away very easy. She realised why he sounded so casual: it made it easier for her to bat him away if she really wanted to.

Thawn chewed on the inside of her cheek a moment. Then she stood up. ‘Fine,’ she said with an aggravation she didn’t quite feel. ‘Or you’ll never stop calling me a buzzkill.’

‘Please,’ said Beckett, leading her back to the crowd with an even bigger grin. ‘You gotta stop being a buzzkill to make me stop calling you one.’

He was an annoyingly good dancer. All her skills were fit for ballrooms, but it meant she at least could manage some footwork and follow a beat and follow his lead. The next tune had enough of a tempo to have them swirling through the crowd, breathless, and she had to laugh when he spun her so clumsily they both nearly went flying. It had her hanging onto him tight enough that when the next song started, she didn’t have a chance to disentangle, and this one was slower, at least.

‘You should know,’ she said once she had her breath back, now they were in a dance where they had a chance of talking instead of fighting to keep up, ‘I’m only here because of Elsa.’

‘Yes, you clearly had her at the top of your mind when you agreed to dance with me,’ he drawled.

‘I mean –’

‘I know what you meant.’ Beckett shrugged. ‘You’re a good friend.’

She’d expected him to make some obnoxiously smug joke, perhaps about how right he was that this would be a fun trip. The sincerity wrong-footed her, and she looked away, spotted Lindgren with the same man she’d danced with after her. They were talking, and there was a lightness in her eyes Thawn hadn’t seen in months, now.

‘It’s good for her to get away,’ she realised. ‘But I don’t think she should be completely on her own.’

‘Yep. So, thank you.’ He shrugged again as she frowned at him. ‘Hey, Elsa’s my friend. But I’m not pretending it wouldn’t be hard work if it was just me and her. That’d be a bit intense, right? But you’re here, and…’

‘Intense is just my everyday?’

He grinned. ‘You said it, not me.’

She laughed despite herself and shook her head. ‘You’re a surprisingly tolerable dancer.’

‘Excuse me,’ he said with mock-indignation. ‘I came up through the best prep school on Alpha Centauri. We were taught to be excellent young citizens and future leaders. Learning to schmooze was mandatory, and schmoozing includes dancing.’

‘That’s quite the curriculum.’

‘Schmoozing, hobnobbing, waltzing – all important lessons.’

The buzzing thoughts and feelings of the scores of people around her felt less pressing. ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly, and grimaced as he raised an eyebrow. ‘For giving us an out.’

‘I notice the plural there, with your totally normal choice to sack off spending time with your beloved fiancé doing something wholesome, and I’m not going to draw attention to it.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘You just drew attention to it.’

‘Yes, but like, in a subtle and charming way where you don’t have to answer and can just change the subject by saying something like, I don’t know, “Oh, Nate, you’re such a good driver, by the way, can you teach me?”’

‘Why in the Great Fire would I ask you to teach me how to drive an ATV; we all went through the same training -’

‘But there’s training and there’s talent…’

They made it back to the ATV late, and the further they drew from the lights of Borean, the more the stars above shone bright. It would only get better from here, Thawn knew; the night would be deeper and the sky more seductive the further they drew from Aeriaumi III’s cities and towns, and into the hinterlands on this wandering journey she knew, deep down, all three of them needed.

When Thawn and Lindgren rolled into the big bed above the driver’s compartment together, Beckett sprawling out on the seating section below and in the back, Lindgren paused to pull her into a quick, strong hug. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured, then rolled away and gave the impression of falling asleep almost at once.

It was just as well, Thawn thought as she settled under the blankets to sleep. She wasn’t sure what she’d say to that.

The next day, Thawn insisted on them driving in shifts. Hard-worn habit meant she complained about Beckett’s driving to justify this, and it was worth it for his look of sheer outrage. He retaliated by seizing control of the music when it was her shift, insisting on playing Klingon acid punk as the ATV raced down wide, open roads taking them from the sandy scrubland that housed Borean and its night market, and up to narrower routes through hills and trees. The mountains were still a shadow on the horizon, but it was like they could begin to feel their shadow as the terrain became less flat and more green, with the sun more often broken up by thick trees and the flash of clouds.

They stopped for dinner at a break stop that was, at last, the kind of sticky diner that spoke of convenience rather than culture, and all agreed over greasy slices of pizza and too-sweet fizzy drinks to press on for another hour. Eventually, they found a spot off a dirt-track emerging from under a canopy of trees to find instead a canopy of stars, and it was Beckett who brought the ATV to a halt and said that while it was pretty, he was very tired, and was going to crash out.

‘I’m going to sit up for a bit,’ said Lindgren, looking wistfully out the window.

‘Do you want company?’ said Thawn awkwardly. ‘We could pop the canopy, get chairs…’

Something sparked in Lindgren’s eye. ‘Only if you replicate hot chocolate, and it has to be in a battered mess cup.’

They were bundled on their chairs outside under blankets, hands wrapped around steaming mugs of cocoa, settled under the scattered beacons of shining stars, before either of them spoke.

‘You didn’t have to do this.’ Lindgren’s murmur carried in the dark, even over the chirrup of insects in the long grass sprawling beyond their vehicle. Thawn glanced over, saying nothing, and at length Lindgren shifted in her chair. ‘Come with me, I mean.’

Thawn sipped her drink, partly for warmth, partly because she had to gather the strength for an honest answer. ‘I didn’t know you wanted me to.’

‘I didn’t,’ came the awkward admission. ‘But it’s easier to talk to you than Nate.’

Thawn had to gently scoff despite herself. ‘Nobody ever says that.’ But she kept her words wry, as much of a self-effacing jest as she dared, because this wasn’t about her self-pity. ‘I don’t want to push you. But I do know… a little what you’re going through. I know it’s not the same…’

Lindgren bowed her head. ‘That’s not something you talk about much. Noah, I mean.’

‘Everyone liked him. And Gorim. And T’Sari was… one of us. And we’ve lost Connor since then, too.’

‘You don’t need to pretend that you and Noah weren’t close,’ Lindgren said gently.

The conversation was shifting in the wrong way, and Thawn had to speak quickly. ‘I’m not trying to off-load about Noah’s death or divert from it, I’m trying to say that I know what it’s like to lose… someone. Someone important.’ She had to swallow other thoughts, other memories, at a discussion of Noah Pierce. Of cold metal chairs, and restraints, and eyes she’d once known and trusted in her life now impassive and uncaring as they oversaw her torment on the ISS Endeavour.

Lindgren sank more under the blanket. ‘Petrias and I were just dating. And only sort of dating. Besides.’ She sipped her mug. ‘He dumped me before the battle.’

Thawn’s heart sank. ‘I didn’t know that. I’m sorry.’

‘So, it’s really awkward that he went and died when I wanted to smack the hell out of him. And I know it wasn’t going to go anywhere, I know he saw me as a silly little girl and that it was just a silly little fling, and I can’t even pretend that I really liked him…’

Thawn, ever gently prudish for a human, let alone a Betazoid, squirmed a little. ‘It’s okay to acknowledge you were, uh, mostly just hooking up.’

‘That’s not really the thing.’ Lindgren’s eyes turned skyward, to the canopy of silver specks on velvet above. ‘The thing is that he died, and I’m just here, living my life. Days keep happening. Suns keep burning. It’s like something big happened, and like absolutely nothing happened at all.’

Thawn was quiet, remembering the first day after the Wild Hunt’s attack on Endeavour, when she’d woken up, remembered Noah was dead, then got out of bed and made a coffee like she always did. ‘Yeah,’ she breathed. ‘Yeah, I get that.’

Neither of them said anything for a while. Gradually, the chirruping from the undergrowth faded. The wind settled for less rustling in the nearby trees. Any light from nearby settlements dimmed and dissipated, leaving them in a still dark, with a rolling view of the lowlands they’d left on one side, and the looming promise of the hills they were headed to on the other.

But by the time Lindgren broke the silence, their eyes were on the sky. ‘Why is it we’ve come down to a beautiful planet,’ she murmured, so soft it was as if she didn’t want to break a spell, ‘and we’re still captivated by the stars?’

‘It’s more than a test of skill.’ Cortez closed one eye to focus. ‘It’s a test of patience. Consciousness. Focus.’

‘Arguably, those are all a part of skill,’ said Kharth, and effortlessly flicked the raspberry into the empty cocktail glass on the table between their two sun loungers.

Cortez sat up. ‘You’re cheating.’

‘How?’ Kharth lifted her sunglasses, indignant. ‘How do I cheat at this – what did you call it?’

‘Fruit-Fly,’ said Cortez, then went back to outrage without missing a beat. ‘You’re a security officer! You’re an expert in hand-eye coordination and marksmanship!’

‘Shit, I should have told my Academy instructors that they were unfairly giving me an edge in drunken shore leave games and to cut it out.’ They stared at each other. Then burst out laughing, both flopping back onto their loungers and letting the beach-front sunshine wash over them.

‘Do you ever wonder,’ mused Kharth at length, one arm now thrown over her face to protect against the brightness, ‘if maybe Valance was on to something and we should be doing more with our time?’

‘I refuse to acknowledge she might be right,’ groaned Cortez, ‘and it’s gross for you of all people to suggest that.’

‘I’m not saying we go off and find culture. I’m saying maybe we need some beach sports.’

Cortez opened an eye and looked up and down the beach. While some of Endeavour’s crew had broken off for the various offerings of Aeriaumi, a respectable number were just as committed as the two of them to lying back and doing absolutely nothing. She herself was turning it into an art, onto the third of the Hypatia Bunk books – which were by now a rollicking ride through space and time with Hypatia struggling to choose between about three competing love interests per era – but had to admit that this mid-afternoon ‘game’ was perhaps a new low.

She looked at Kharth. ‘Not to sound passive-aggressive. But you don’t have to be here.’

With most of her face hidden, all that could be seen was a twist of Kharth’s lips. ‘I know. I’m not martyring myself on a sun-soaked beach to keep you company. You’re a grown-ass adult. I’m trying to switch off.’

Cortez thought to the past few days – some gentle surfing, some cocktails, a little beach volleyball, more cocktails, roaming the resorts for new and interesting dinner options, yet more cocktails, finished off by whatever decadent club lured them in at night or just the hotel bar or drinks on the beach. It had been a very vigorous switching off. ‘I guess,’ she said at length, ‘I didn’t think this would be your scene.’

Kharth sighed, dragging her hand back. ‘It’s not,’ she allowed.

‘And maybe I think there’s something on your mind.’ At Kharth’s expression, Cortez sat up. ‘Let’s get more cocktails.’

‘I’m not sitting around here with you because I’ve got a problem,’ Kharth protested only once they had refills of swirling pink, fizzy, alcoholic drinks on their tables. She’d taken a quick detour to adjust the sunshade, keeping them faintly more sheltered with the heat this intense at this time of the afternoon. Most of the rest of the crew had also ventured inside or were taking it easy, waiting for the sun to be lower and fatter in the sky before they returned to the open sands for simple pleasures.

‘Sure,’ said Cortez, adjusting her lounger so she could better sit up and still drink. ‘Grown-ass adult.’

There was a pause. ‘Dav wrote to me.’

Cortez’s head snapped around. ‘This is the first time?’

‘Yep.’

‘Since you fixed his brain and found out -’

‘Yes.’ Kharth’s jaw was tight.

‘What did he say?’

‘He said…’ Another pause. Her nose wrinkled. ‘He let me know how he was doing. Working on the frontiers where Lerin did the most damage as the Myriad. But he’s about to return to Admiral Beckett’s office, and he…’

Silence. Cortez sipped her cocktail and the straw gurgled noisily. She winced. ‘Sorry.’

Kharth sighed. ‘He just said we should talk. Catch up. It sounds so normal for something that isn’t.’

‘It does. But how else would you want him to reach out? Do you want him to reach out?’

‘I don’t want him to disappear. But what do I do? Talk about this shore leave? Talk about being second officer now? It all sounds so mundane.’

‘You could launch immediately into opening your heart and sending him all of your deepest, darkest, most complicated feelings about your messed-up relationship,’ said Cortez cheerfully, ‘but I think it’ll be easier if you reconnect on something simpler first.’

Kharth slowly drew out a PADD. Cortez had noticed her often having it to hand these past days. ‘…like what?’

Cortez sipped her cocktail again, thoughtful. ‘I think,’ she said at length, ‘you should start with explaining the rules of Fruit-Fly.’

Kharth didn’t say anything to that, and she didn’t seem to make much progress on any response for the rest of the day. But they had a packed schedule of lounging and relaxing to get on with, and Cortez knew better than to badger Kharth when something like this was fresh; all it did was make her cocoon in her insecurity.

So they sunbathed. Read more terrible books. Challenged the yeomen to beach volleyball, and found they had grossly underestimated both blonde and leggy Nestari, and the wizened senior yeoman, Chief Sutton, who acted like taking time out of her busy schedule to knock them onto their arses was in itself an inconvenience.

‘Okay, Nestari I get,’ Cortez huffed when they returned to their loungers, sandy and sore in spirit as much as in body. ‘I didn’t think there was anything between her ears, but I was wrong – there is, and it’s murder. But she’s at least taller than either of us. But Sutton?’

‘Also powered by murder,’ said Kharth, who had come off better in the whole incident but still without an unblemished pride. ‘They know the ship would fall apart without them, but who gets the glory? Not the admin. Every once in a while, they like to keep us in line.’

‘Diabolical,’ Cortez grumbled, brushing sand off herself with a towel. She looked up and down the beach, saw the sun getting fat in the sky, and sighed. ‘Right. I want a shower. To think about dinner. And then we need to find a new bar tonight.’

‘We do?’

‘To wipe that shame from our memories? We do.’

They didn’t. They did try, sprucing up and getting a bite to eat before wandering the resort’s main road to pass bars and clubs they’d tried before. Eventually, Cortez chose an establishment that looked like it wanted to somehow emulate a classic Earth diner and party all night, a terrible combination of alcohol and bad historiography that at least included alcoholic milkshakes.

But they had only had one drink before Kharth looked up and down the plastic tables, at the figures dancing on them – the tourists themselves, mostly, and said, ‘Is it me, or is everyone here about -’

‘About nineteen, yes.’ A boy younger than Cortez’s smallest sibling leaned back from the bar and winked at her. She averted her gaze and vigorously sucked at her straw. ‘We better go.’

It didn’t get better from there, so by midnight they were stumbling, tipsy but not wiped, back into the hotel bar. This place did, at least, reliably keep them going all night.

‘It’s a bad sign,’ sighed Kharth as they slid onto bar stools, ‘that they know to bring the tequila the moment we arrive.’

‘I think it’s a very good sign. But it is not, unfortunately, very good tequila.’

‘Is this what you had in mind?’

‘What?’

‘When you sent Valance away.’

Cortez made a face. ‘I didn’t send Karana away. We reached a mutual decision to vacation apart, like adults.’

Glasses were set in front of them. Kharth’s expression didn’t change. ‘When anyone insists something is a mutual decision…’

‘It actually is! Come on, there’s no way Karana would have gone into that joint with us tonight.’

‘Might have spared us some heartache and heartburn. You’re really okay with this?’

‘I… mostly.’ Cortez made a face. Then she drank tequila. Then she made another face. ‘I think the doc’s right. It’s better for us to mentally refuel however works best for us, instead of doing what we think we should. We’ve been together…’ She blew out her cheeks. ‘Over a year. Nearly a year and a half? I don’t think we have to act like we’re close so as to be close. Does that make sense?’

‘Maybe.’ Kharth’s lips thinned. ‘I guess I’m not the best person to judge.’

‘No – speaking of…’ Now she had a few drinks in her, Cortez didn’t mind leaning over, elbow on the bar, and zeroing in. ‘That letter to Dav.’

‘Oh, Vor…’

‘You should reply.’

‘I know.’

‘I mean,’ said Cortez, plucking out a PADD from her bag, ‘now.’

Kharth stared at the PADD. ‘When we’ve had this much to drink.’

‘And your impressive skills at pretending nothing he did hurt or affected you are compromised?’ Cortez smiled happily at her perfect plan. ‘Yes.’

‘I don’t think -’

‘Hi, Dav,’ Cortez started dictating to the PADD. ‘It’s me, Saeihr, your emotionally repressed ex whose heart you broke because it turned out you were a crime boss. I really miss you, even if I don’t admit it –’

‘Give me that.’ Kharth snatched the PADD.

‘Was anything I said there untrue?’

‘That’s really not the point.’

‘You two have a chance to at least be honest with each other for the first time in years,’ Cortez insisted. ‘You should jump on that, and now, when you’re relaxed, when you don’t have to see him for his response, when you can send it and let him absorb your words in his own time…’

‘When I’m drunk?’

‘Exactly!’ Cortez waved down at the bar. ‘More tequila!’

‘I’m not doing it.’

The night became a blur from there. More drinks, staggering down to the beach with a bottle, an ill-considered game of dares with Chief Koya and her deck gang. Cortez didn’t particularly remember making it back to her hotel room, and when she was awoken the next morning by a hammering at the door, it was plain she’d lost not an insignificant amount of time.

Though not, she mused as she grabbed a robe and staggered to the door, noting it was barely 0700, enough time. She could have slept more. She could have sobered more. But the hammering was determined, and yet even the cheerful Cortez couldn’t keep a snap out of her voice as she opened up and demanded, ‘What?’

Kharth was still in the rumpled clothes from the night before, her hair wild, but her eyes were upsettingly clear. Cortez dimly remembered that her Romulan friend suffered far, far less from hangovers than her.

But was not, apparently, that much more resistant to alcohol. ‘We’ve got a problem,’ Kharth slurred, also still a little intoxicated.

‘Is it a problem we desperately need to talk about at this -’

‘We wrote a letter.’ Kharth brandished a PADD at her. ‘To Dav.’

‘Oh. Was it any good?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Kharth, voice going light in a way that suggested things were really wrong. ‘We deleted it.’

‘Oh. That’s a shame.’

‘But not,’ Kharth continued, eyes narrowing, ‘before we sent it.’

‘Oh,’ said Cortez once more. Then the vivid memory of them drunkenly composing something in the middle of the hotel lobby at about 0400 came crashing back. It was intense, but it was also rather hazy on petty details such as words. ‘Oh,’ she said again. ‘Oh, no.’

‘I thought we were going to the old town tonight!’

Rourke decided he wouldn’t describe his daughter’s voice as a whine. She wouldn’t thank him for it, but there was a definite edge of petulance as she stared across the hotel room. He lifted his hands. ‘I said we might. But I really need to meet with Grivak this evening; it’s the only time his schedule’s going to be free -’

‘You’ve been talking with these people all week!’ Ellie had been stopped on her way to a shower, and thus any dignity of her outrage was undermined by the fact she was still in a sand-smeared bathing suit after a long day at the beach. ‘Why do you have to talk to them more?’

‘Because I do,’ he said, and felt a distant, greater understanding of what he’d put his mother through with this unfathomable logic. ‘I didn’t realise you wanted to spend this time with me. You could have come back from the beach sooner.’

‘I didn’t think I needed to! I thought I could surf and then we’d go and see the show later!’

‘I said I wasn’t going to be around a lot for this trip,’ Rourke found himself admonishing. ‘I figured you’d be happy hanging out with your friends.’

‘If I just wanted to spend time with friends,’ Ellie said with a hint of sulk, ‘I’d have stayed on Earth.’

He had not taught her to be open with feelings. That would take him being open with his, instead of couching affection in jokes and understatements, and her clear admission – reminder – that she had left her life behind to be with him took him by surprise. But even if he wasn’t great with these admissions, he was still an investigator, and still good at reading people. Rourke set his hands on his hips and sighed. ‘We haven’t talked,’ he said slowly, ‘about how your mother’s doing.’

Ellie’s expression studiously didn’t change. ‘I’m not your go-between, Dad.’

‘I’m not asking that. Because I know you’ve hardly spoken to her since getting here.’

‘Ugh.’ She threw her hands in the air and turned around. ‘I need to shower if I’m gonna go see the guys later.’

‘She told me,’ Rourke said to her back, and braced, ‘that she’s getting married.’ Ellie stopped in the bathroom doorway. ‘What’s his name, again. Brett?’

‘Bryan.’

‘Bryan.’ Rourke nodded. He and Tess had separated so long ago that what he felt wasn’t jealousy or pain, but the memory of it, the idea of it, as the part of him that had loved her gave one final death-spasm. ‘Do you like him?’

Ellie looked back, indignant. ‘You think I came here to run away from Bryan? You’re just…’

‘I don’t need you to explain yourself,’ said Rourke, largely because he could read the situation quite plainly now he’d pushed this button and observed her reaction. ‘I’m sorry I’m working this week. I’ll make sure to schedule a couple of days right at the end so we can go up to Yorviken together, extend shore leave if I have to or make Valance run some drills on board. A trip for you and me.’

She’d been pulling a towel off the rail through the door as he spoke, and he watched her sling it over her shoulders, an emotional as much as a physical barrier. ‘You don’t need to make the ship stick around for a couple days for me, Dad -’

‘Captains need rest, too. I bet I can make Counsellor Carraway force me to do it,’ he said with a lopsided smile. Then he sobered. ‘I’ve got to be the captain of this ship, and that usually does have to come first. But when I’m not the captain, you come first, right, kid? I don’t know if your mum’s lost herself in this Bryan or whatever -’

‘She hasn’t…’ Ellie hesitated, gathering words, eyes going to the ceiling. ‘She’s happy. He’s happy. They want to travel and adventure and do stuff. I don’t want to hold her back.’

He knew he shouldn’t poke that understatement; if she felt neglected by her mother, if she’d run to him because she was hurt that Tess’s life didn’t have the same space for her any more, then that was an admission he had to leave room for her to make on her own terms. So Rourke gave the lopsided smile again. ‘In which case, you and me can do some travel and adventure and stuff.’

‘Just in a few days.’

He winced. ‘In a few days.’

Ellie shifted her feet with a bashfulness that belied her youth. ‘I guess putting a whole ship on hold for a couple days is fine,’ she said in a mock-grumble. ‘Go have your meeting.’

‘Thanks, kid. I’ll be back later.’

He was almost at the door by the time she called out, apprehensive. ‘Oh, and Dad? I know you’ve complained about Commander Rosewood. Maybe you do know best. But you sound really tense in that… scrunchy way you get, like a bear with a bad head, and I don’t know, maybe he’s just trying to be helpful. It’s hard to be the new guy.’

‘He’s not the new guy,’ Rourke said brusquely. ‘He’s an upstart son of admirals who…’ But she looked indifferent, and he probably did sound like a bear with a headache. ‘Alright. Maybe.’

The meeting with Representative Grivak was still good. They were all decent people coming together to try to figure out the best way forward for independent worlds and the periphery of the Romulan Republic, and how to make sure these places could learn to stand on their own feet without becoming satellites of other governments – or too beholden.

It was unclear if spending some one-on-one time with the Republic’s representative made much of a difference. The next morning in the conference room, Rosewood was as he’d ever been, running the agenda and the table, and Rourke couldn’t help but stew a little in resentment and regret. He’d fobbed off his anxious daughter to do a job to which he was left feeling surplus to requirement.

And yet, once the visitors and even Hale left for the lunch break, Commander Rosewood lingered near the door with his gaze on the still-seated Rourke. ‘I hope you slept well enough, Captain,’ he said in his light drawl.

Normally Rourke struggled to tell if Rosewood was being sincere, manipulative, or obsequious, and he found himself in enough of a mood to decline to extend the benefit of the doubt. He put his coffee cup down with a thunk. ‘I guess I’m trying to not get in your way, Commander.’

Rosewood sighed. ‘You’ve had the agendas in plenty of time, sir, I’ve been liaising more with Mr Brigan so Ms Hale’s office is informed…’

‘You’ve made sure we’re briefed.’ Rourke stood. ‘Not so sure you’ve relinquished an ounce of control.’

‘This is my job. And you didn’t tell me to cede everything to Hale’s office.’

Rourke blew out his cheeks. ‘Why are you making this so difficult, Commander? It’s just a bloody frontier supply negotiation -’

‘That’s the point!’ Rosewood burst this out, then snapped his mouth shut and straightened. ‘I don’t know why you’re here every day, sir. You or Ms Hale.’

Rourke narrowed his eyes. ‘What?’

‘Of course this needs you and her to sign off on it, of course it’s important, but… but you’re the captain, and she’s your equal in diplomatic rank, and at the beginning and end, and at the big stuff, it’s good for you to be here, but…’ Rosewood gave a frustrated exhale. ‘I’m not your aide, sir. I’m the Chief Diplomatic Officer, and I’m trying to do my job.’

‘The job you asked for,’ Rourke reminded him. ‘You wanted to be here, and…’ Then his voice trailed off, and he ran his tongue along his teeth. ‘Huh.’

Rosewood hesitated. ‘Sir?’

‘Okay.’

‘Okay?’

‘Okay.’ Rourke walked around the table and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Let me know when you need us. Everything I said about Ms Hale the other day stands, so if I find out you’re not keeping Cy in the loop I’ll have your hide.’

‘Sir?’

‘I’m giving you what you want. It’s your table, Commander. Run it and call me back when it’s time for us to be the big guns.’ It was the best way to acknowledge someone was right, Rourke mused as he left the conference room: in a manner that still completely baffled them.

He found Hale in one of the tea shops aboard, ending what looked like a drive-by briefing with Cyrod Brigan, and because it was a rather nice establishment – if twee, with bunting out the front that reminded Rourke of the village where his grandmother lived and framed embroidery on the wall – he hung back. He could be master of a ship and veteran of a hundred official events, and still sometimes he felt like a bull in a china shop.

‘You’re wearing a hole in the carpet,’ called Hale at length, ushering him over. ‘Come have a scone with me, Captain. Cy was just leaving.’

‘I don’t want to be drowned in kitsch,’ Brigan grumbled as he stood.

‘Don’t go too far, Cy,’ said Rourke, taking the emptied seat. ‘I expect you’re about to get some new marching orders.’

Brigan looked between them, then sighed and loosened his collar. ‘Love that. Love being kept in suspense.’

Hale gave a genteel smile as he left. ‘He thinks you live to vex him sometimes.’

‘Only sometimes,’ said Rourke, signalling for tea he knew he’d drown in milk and sugar. It was that kind of day. He looked her in the eye. ‘What’re you doing next?’

She frowned. ‘Back into an interminable meeting -’

‘Nah.’

‘No?’

‘I’ve realised what’s going on. I know what Rosewood wants: he wants this whole summit to be a feather in his cap.’

Hale set down her teacup. ‘Matthew, I’m not really sure how to say this, but that’s, ah, rather obvious.’

He couldn’t help but smile at her politeness even as she clearly thought he was being a complete idiot. ‘Sure, but what’s this meeting? What’re the stakes here?’

‘Support for settled planets in the Neutral Zone that don’t fall under anyone’s purview…’

‘You mean, meetings and missions you and me have done countless times in the eight months we’ve worked together. We don’t just know the drill, we’ve got the credit for them. It’s our names inked at the bottom of every agreement.’ Rourke leaned forward. ‘Rosewood’s being a prick, but he’s not complicated: he wants this win because he wants to prove why we need him aboard.’

Hale was silent as a staffer appeared to drop off a fresh pot of tea, and Rourke let her chew on his words as he peered at the glass display of cakes and scones and made his choice of lunch. Only once they were alone again did she say, ‘Truthfully, I was surprised he was assigned here.’

‘You weren’t surprised,’ said Rourke with a shrug. ‘You think he’s here because Starfleet is trying to elbow you out. I think you’re underestimating us.’

‘Us?’

‘There’s no way we’d have pulled off Nerillian without you. Whixby. Agarath. And it’s run you ragged and it’s run me ragged, and sure, John Rosewood saw all of Endeavour’s diplomatic accomplishments and decided this was where he wanted to be next to shower himself in glory. Thing is, we act like this pie is so small that if he takes some, we look bad.’ Despite the frivolous simile, he sobered and looked her in the eye. ‘There’s no world where I write a report where your diplomatic contributions aren’t essential to our mission, Sophia.’

They had been on an uneven keel for the months since Agarath. Brought so close to not only danger, but the frayed edges of who both of them were, the weak spots in their scar tissues, and they’d both allowed formality to fall down on them. He had also, he knew, been more than a little diverted by his daughter’s arrival aboard.

But Sophia Hale was a consummate diplomat and so it was only because he was good at reading tells and good at reading her tells that he spotted the faintest widening of her eyes. She poured herself some more tea. ‘I’m not insecure about my place aboard.’

‘Good,’ said Rourke roughly. ‘Because you didn’t come onto Endeavour to handle the day-to-day of a pretty minor supply agreement. You came here to change Federation frontier policy.’

‘Which is changed through the day-to-day…’

‘What’re you going to do after Aeriaumi?’ She paused, and he smirked. ‘You came aboard with a vision and a plan. What apple cart do we upset next? What bold new thing do we do next? You told me you could help me make a difference on a whole frontier. Send Cy in the room with Rosewood to be your eyes and ears, swoop in at the end to make a big song and dance – and get your share of the feathers for your cap – and in the meantime…’

‘In the meantime, what?’

‘Sniff out our next opportunity. The bigger fish, the one that’s your fish and makes all the difference. Let Rosewood keep the little things off your desk and focus on the bigger picture, and then he’s happier and more useful so all of us can make a difference when the time comes.’

Hale was silent again for a moment, and while she masked thinking with sipping tea, he could see the faint knot in her brow. At length she said, ‘I was surprised you came to the likes of these meetings at all after Rosewood was assigned.’

He was confused for a moment – then realisation made his heart sink. ‘Rosewood was forced on me. I didn’t ask for a diplomatic team so I didn’t have to do the work myself.’ But there’d been a further implication to her words, and he felt he owed her at least to acknowledge them – even if it was taking a step further than what she’d said. ‘Or so we’d have to work together less.’

Their eyes met, and the silence between them felt more full than the gentle rattling of the tea room around them. At length, she put down the cup. ‘There is a black market trade in historic artefacts across the Neutral Zone,’ she said eventually. ‘I know we wanted to avert this manner of trouble with the Koderex, but the fall of the Empire has changed circumstances. I think we can enter the fray in helping return objects of cultural importance to the right hands, and in making those determinations of “right hands.”’

He gave a slow, pleased smile. ‘You mean, build diplomatic bridges by letting me do what I do best – solve problems in difficult corners?’

‘This is why I wanted you for this mission, Matthew.’

‘Then let’s use this time, while Rosewood proves his worth and deals with the little stuff, to make that plan.’ But though his heart felt lighter, there was still a shadow, and Rourke had to draw a slow breath to find the next words. ‘And also,’ he said carefully, ‘make the most of shore leave.’

Sophia Hale inclined her head. ‘I’ve not seen anything of Aeriaumi,’ she allowed.

‘Well, then.’ Rourke grinned. ‘I definitely owe Ellie some attention, but God knows she’ll want to spend time with her mates. So otherwise… where do you want to start?’

The ATV thundered along dirt tracks and between trees, winding its way up the wooded slopes towards their destination. Yet if it were to screech past someone – not that anyone was in sight for kilometres around – it was likely not the engine they would hear, or the thudding of the tyres, or the rattling of the canopy. The pounding bass of the music blasting from inside was enough to overwhelm it all.

Inside it was like being wrapped in an aggressive blanket of sound. Rosara Thawn’s jaw was iron-tight as she drove. ‘I am trying to navigate and you two -’

‘What?’ Beckett only paused in the hollering sing-along between him and Lindgren to cup a hand around his ear. ‘Can’t hear you!’

‘Because you insist on blasting this out at so many decibels and you can’t -’

Lindgren leaned in. ‘What?’

Thawn’s hand slammed onto the controls for the ATV’s sound-systems and brought the Orion synth metal down to a whisper. ‘I said,’ she hissed, returning to a vice-like grip on the vehicle controls, gaze locked on the track and canopy of trees before them, ‘that I am trying to navigate.’

‘You don’t need to listen to navigate,’ Beckett pointed out. ‘Mostly comes through looking.’

‘It’s rather distracting, though!’

‘Uh, I think it’s against Starfleet regulations to not sing along to “Seventh Valve,”’ said Lindgren.

‘Yeah,’ said Beckett. ‘It comes right after General Order One. I thought you were a stickler for regs, Thawn?’

‘Do you want us to drive into a tree?’

‘Don’t worry,’ he said, patting her on the arm. ‘I don’t think you’re that bad a driver.’

She looked like she might have spat something else, but then they crested the rise and suddenly all their thoughts and breaths were gone. The trees fell away behind them, bringing the blazing sunlight down on the route ahead after an hour of branches and hills blocking it, and without thinking Thawn slowed the vehicle to a halt.

The silence became thicker the longer it dragged out, until, at length, Lindgren said softly, ‘Is that it?’

Beckett drew a slow breath. ‘So, uh. It’s a little overgrown.’

Thawn looked down at the navigational display. ‘This,’ she said, surprisingly level when she had something to hold over him, ‘does appear to be the spot.’

‘It’s, uh.’ Lindgren shifted her feet. ‘It’s a bit small.’

‘Well, it’s a few thousand years old, exposed to the elements for all that time…’ His voice trailed off. ‘Look, you can see a tower over there.’

‘That ruin can’t be more than fifteen feet high,’ said Thawn.

‘Fifteen feet of ruins of an ancient civilisation.’

‘There’s not,’ said Lindgren, ‘even a heritage site setup. We’re just in the middle of absolutely nowhere.’

‘Is that a ruin?’ said Thawn, pointing northwards.

Beckett peered. ‘No,’ he said at last. ‘That’s a tree.’

‘Are you telling me,’ she pressed on, ‘that we travelled for days across this continent to find an archaeological site that has been so thoroughly explored and then abandoned that there’s not only no heritage support system in-place, but there’s basically nothing here but four piles of rubble?’

Lindgren had her tricorder out, sweeping it through the canopy. ‘Okay, so I’m not up close, but I don’t think these ruins are actually more than, like, a hundred years old?’

There was another pause as Beckett pursed his lips, and thought back to the original message that had sent him here: a subspace communication from an old Academy classmate, with a recommendation and an attached article. Then he thought harder, back to an exam period party when he’d last seen said Academy classmate, and dimly recalled a joy-ride that had given Cadet Mulligan one tiny, insignificant, very-late disciplinary note in their otherwise spotless record.

‘There’s a chance,’ Beckett said at length, ‘that I’ve been had.’

He felt Thawn tense beside him in the silence, and braced for an admonishment he, for once, knew he would absolutely deserve. When she shuddered, he winced and only then dared to look at her – only to find her shoulders shaking, her head down, and at last, the faintest giggle escaped her lips.

‘So you’re not telling me we travelled for days to find an underwhelming archaeological site,’ she wheezed as she struggled to maintain control. ‘You’re telling me we travelled for days to find the remains of, what, an old weather monitoring outpost because someone told you it was an ancient lost city?’

Beckett bit his lip and drew a slow breath. ‘…yes.’

Lindgren laughed next. Then they were all cackling, sat in the front of the vehicle they’d commandeered for a mission of exploration and adventure that had turned out to be nothing but a while goose chase.

‘We ate that shitty pizza,’ Lindgren squeaked between laughs, fighting for breath, ‘for nothing.’

Thawn had not remotely regained her composure. ‘I got stung by a bee yesterday!’

Beckett stared again at the broken remains of what he was now sure was a weather surveillance tower. ‘I can’t believe Mulligan lied to me. She must have faked that article!’ It seemed disproportionate, until more memories slunk back. ‘Oh,’ he sighed. ‘I did sleep with her boyfriend that one time.’

Lindgren laughed harder even as she looked scandalised. ‘Did we go on a ridiculous trip to nowhere because you couldn’t keep it in your pants?’

‘They weren’t together then, she just had the mad hots for him and I got there first!’ said Beckett, aware he didn’t have much moral high ground if they dug deeper into other past Academy exploits.

The two women fell apart cackling even more, and it was some time before Lindgren wiped her eyes and reached for the door. ‘Come on,’ she sighed. ‘Let’s see what wonders await us at the end of all our journeys.’

Thawn watched as she clambered out. ‘Gosh, it’s a bit chilly, isn’t it?’

‘We are pretty high up,’ Lindgren said as she sprang onto the moss-covered and somewhat soggy ground. ‘I’ll get the field jackets.’

She shut the door to head to the rear of the vehicle, and Beckett sat in silence with Thawn for a moment, biting his lip. ‘So,’ he said at length, ‘I expect you won’t let me forget this.’

‘Never.’ But when he looked at her, her eyes shone with delight. ‘This is the best of all possible outcomes. You bloody idiot. But.’ She glanced to the rear of the vehicle. ‘Elsa’s happy.’

His chest tightened. ‘And you? You left Rhade behind for this…’

‘I left Adamant to have his own shore leave so I could help Elsa.’ Thawn paused, and rolled a shoulder. ‘Alright, and maybe to get away a bit. But I didn’t change my entire shore leave plans in five minutes for the lure of an ancient lost city. Don’t worry, Beckett. I have other things to hold against you.’

They were done with the ruins in about a half-hour, and it only lasted that long because Lindgren drew out and invented as much trivia as possible about twenty-third century weather monitoring systems to add nuance to their tour of rubble and metal. Despite Beckett’s burning shame and desire to get something out of this wild goose chase, even he couldn’t conjure more of an occasion out of the venture, and there was nothing for it after but to turn around.

He couldn’t blame Thawn for being in a better mood most of the return journey. He was so despondent he couldn’t stop her from commandeering the sound system, and far too-modern and popular music became the soundtrack of the journey. Lindgren bounced along with it too, and he opened himself to be sneered at by making dismissive and provocative comment of girl-rock.

‘I think we’ve established,’ said Thawn with her nose turned airily towards the vehicle canopy and a sky burning to dusk, ‘you don’t really know anything about culture, Beckett.’

‘Unless that culture is last-century weather monitoring stations,’ Lindgren chirped.

He sighed. ‘I’m just gonna have to eat that for a while, huh.’

‘At least another week,’ said Lindgren.

‘Month,’ amended Thawn.

‘Neat,’ concluded Beckett.

But it was good-natured, even if being the clown when he’d hoped to be the saviour stung. He couldn’t deny that he had lightened their spirits, even if it wasn’t anywhere near as cool as he’d have liked. It didn’t have to be about him.

So they drove. Back down the winding paths that had taken them to this ridge, back from dirt-tracks to narrow roads. Stopped off for a night near a roadside diner that did terrible burgers but, it transpired, excellent desserts, and then were back on their way bright and early the following morning.

To descend from the hinterlands was to slide back into the depths of infrastructure, of Aeriamui’s settled civilisation. They started the day barely seeing anything person-made but the road for a whole hour, and by the end roved from village to village. As dusk soaked in around them, Beckett pointed out a fish restaurant at the edge of a lake he thought promising, but it was Lindgren who shook her head and said, ‘Let’s keep on another hour and just use the replicator.’

He wasn’t in a position to argue. And when Lindgren eventually parked the ATV, he realised they were on one of the last great peaks before the land fell to the flat and sandy scrubland racing towards the ocean, and from up here, they could see it all. Not merely the horizon, finally unobstructed by hill or rise, but the dazzling web of lights of settlements and cities. Huddled in hubs but skittering along roads and connections, it was as if he could see the ebbing threads of life – and here they were, high in the dark, above it all.

‘Unlike Nate, I did a little reading,’ Lindgren said as she parked, but her tease was gentle. ‘This view is one you’re not supposed to miss.’

They sat in the driving compartment in silence. By the time Thawn spoke, a hundred years might have passed. ‘I suppose we’re back into it all tomorrow.’

‘Still two days’ driving or so,’ murmured Beckett, ‘but yeah. Towns and cities and shuttles overhead and everything.’ He glanced at her. ‘You going to Yorviken after?’

Her lips pursed. ‘Even if we only get a cabin for a couple of nights.’

But her voice sounded heavy, and he had to scrub his face with his hand. ‘I’m back at the resort, I guess? I don’t know. Hard to complain about more sun, sea, and sand. But I’m not sure.’

‘You don’t want to join Tar’lek in the old town?’ said Thawn.

‘And cramp his style sitting in coffee shops looking terribly pretentious?’

‘I’m quite sure,’ Thawn said, ‘you can make him look even more pretentious.’

Beckett opened his mouth, then shook his head and looked across Thawn to Lindgren, sat in silence at the driver’s controls still. ‘What about you, Elsa? Fancy some sun, sea, and sand?’

With the vehicle dead, light came only from the stars and moon and the faintest glow of distant civilisation. Even this close, she was nothing but a silhouette in the shadow beside him, and her voice was thick when she said, ‘I think I’m ready for that.’

They were silent again, and despite the dark Beckett could feel himself exchange an uncertain glance with Thawn who, ever awkward, reached for Lindgren’s hand. ‘I can stay instead of -’

‘Rosara, you don’t get to use me as an excuse to hide from your problems any more.’ The admonition was gentle but firm. ‘Go see Adamant and talk, whatever it is you say.’ But Lindgren sighed in the silence, and when she swatted at her cheeks, Beckett could see the glint of tears smeared away. ‘But. Thank you. Both of you.’

‘We didn’t do much,’ Beckett admitted. ‘Really, I didn’t know what you needed. Except maybe not be treated like a warhead about to go off.’

‘Unless you are a warhead about to go off,’ said Thawn. ‘In which case we should have probably been more directly attentive -’

‘No, I…’ Another sigh as Lindgren slumped back. ‘I’ve been walking around trying to make sense of things after Agarath, and honestly? I don’t think I can do that.’

Thawn’s nose wrinkled. ‘If you need more time to -’ But Beckett touched her arm lightly, and she shut up.

‘I mean,’ said Lindgren, ‘I don’t think there’s a sense of it to be made. Of Petrias, I mean. Battle happened, and he died, and it’s senseless. And more importantly, he and I were involved, and that was senseless. I’ve just been tying myself in knots trying to give everything more… significance than it had, as if that’ll give it purpose.’

Beckett tensed as he heard Thawn swallow, but then she said, ‘Why were you with him?’ and despite the bluntness, he was quietly relieved she’d asked it.

Lindgren’s first response was a quiet, bitter laugh. ‘I thought it was because he was interesting, and smart, and a different sort of choice for me. And that’s sort of true. But really, I wanted him because he was a truly terrible choice.’

Thawn frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Sometimes,’ Beckett found himself saying, ‘deliberately bad choices make us feel like we have a bit of control over our lives.’ His gaze fell on the web of lights below, towards the line between bright and gloom that was the shoreline – and somewhere there, the resort where most of their shipmates were enjoying themselves.

‘There’s that,’ Lindgren agreed, ‘but also, ever since I came aboard Endeavour I’ve been… Elsa. The sensible one. The responsible one. The nice one. I don’t think any of this was very complicated. I think I was sick of being what everyone expected of me all of the time. Sick of being someone who never made stupid or selfish choices.’

‘Definitely don’t relate to that,’ Beckett drawled gently.

‘But then,’ said Thawn, ignoring him, ‘Graelin died, and you felt… it should have been more than a silly whim to have been with him because it didn’t really… matter that much?’

‘And also everyone expects me to be so sensible they expect me to be much more heart-broken than I am,’ Lindgren sighed. ‘Please don’t mistake me. I’m horrified he died, and I miss him. But now everyone seems to expect me to be this bereft, widow-y person because the guy I was sleeping with for a few months got killed, and I’m not that, either.’ She looked over at them, and now she sounded lighter, less burdened. ‘So, thanks for this. For helping me get away without – without hiding from me. I needed a bit of time.’ Another silence settled on them, but this one wasn’t as thick. The lights of civilisation below shone upward with a hint more promise than apprehension, as if they beckoned them back to reality without the searing of unwelcome truths.

It was Thawn who broke it once more, quiet and small. ‘I needed this, too,’ she admitted. ‘I need to talk to Adamant about… about the other Endeavour. About everything that happened there.’

Beckett watched her and held his tongue, wondering if she actually would. But instead of commenting, he blew out his cheeks and said, ‘This was a complete goddamn waste of time for me; I mean, no alone-time, no ruins…’

‘A little bit of an ego-check?’ said Thawn, but her small smile shone over the gleam of light, and it took any sting from the jest.

He scoffed. ‘Didn’t want that, either. So, I don’t know about you. But I’m ready to go back.’

‘Even if you don’t know what you’re doing when you get there?’ said Lingren.

‘Oh,’ said Nate Beckett. ‘Especially if I don’t know.’