“This is weird, right?”

Nevahl Bohkat glanced up at the man seated across from him in the runabout’s passenger section. Dr. Binshou Ang, as he’d introduced himself just moments ago when they boarded, rested his arms on a guitar case in his lap and leaned forward as he addressed him. Well, addressed them: himself and Sanjiv Anand, the man sitting next to him.

Anand had also turned his attention to Ang, his eyebrows raised in confusion at the doctor’s question.

“A ship receiving a new commanding officer and a new executive officer on the same day,” Ang clarified. “Starfleet usually tries to space out the reassignment of a ship’s top tier, don’t they?”

Bohkat remained silent and kept his gaze on his soon-to-be new commanding officer. Anand smiled and nodded.

“That’s the ideal, yes. I’ve anticipated this new assignment for several months since Captain Banoub, the departing CO, announced her retirement date well in advance, but there was never any mention that the first officer would be departing at the same time.”

Anand turned to look at Bohkat as he finished his statement, and Bohkat knew that he was hoping for more information.

“I received this assignment less than 48 hours ago,” said Bohkat. “I had been told a transfer was imminent due to my recent promotion, but I had been given no reason to believe that ‘imminent’ meant ‘less than two days from now’.”

Anand’s eyebrows went up again, and he looked at Ang who mirrored his expression. Bohkat kept his eyebrows firmly in place.

“Well, I’m sure we’ll find out more once we reach the ship,” said Anand. Then he leaned back and considered Bohkat, a faint smile still on his face. “And as much as this isn’t ideal for either of us, you seem like…”

Anand trailed off and he pointed at Bohkat as if he were trying to zero in on a description. “You seem like you’ll be a steady partner in this metaphorical three-legged race.”

Bohkat said nothing, but Anand continued to stare at him with that pleasant smile, so he gave a jerky nod of acknowledgment. That seemed to satisfy Anand, who turned back to Ang and politely asked what his trip had been like. As their conversation flowed, Bohkat made a mental note to look up “three-legged race” once he was properly installed in his new quarters.

It would have been nice to get a proper view of the Babylon when they dropped out of warp at the rendezvous point, but the runabout pilot made no offer of an exterior inspection, and the three officers and their belongings were transported over to their new vessel with great speed and zero ceremony.

Bohkat expected another whirlwind of activity to greet them as they materialized on the Babylon’s transporter pad, but all he saw was a still, dim room with a single technician at the control panel. Then from below he heard a voice.

“Dr. Binshou Ang, Commander Nevahl Bohkat, Captain Sanjiv Anand: Welcome aboard the USS Babylon. I’m Lieutenant Commander Qsshrr, chief science officer and interim commanding officer.”

He looked down to find the source of the soft alto voice and saw a species he’d only ever seen in images and holograms: a Horta. She had what looked like an oversized commbadge adhered to the front of her mound-like form, and towards the rear were many opaque blue-green stones. Bohkat recalled reading that Horta could affix stones to their natural form, not unlike the way humanoids wore clothing. Perhaps the stones were meant to evoke the teal color of the science division.

Bohkat felt a smile creep across his face, then quickly looked up to see if anyone else had noticed.

Ang and Anand had most assuredly not noticed, as they were both staring down at Qsshrr and wearing the same expressions of pure joy. The looks on their faces made Bohkat feel… something.

It was easy to feel alone as a Rigelian in Starfleet, particularly as an introverted one. Then again, he’d always felt alone back home as well. But that sense of wonder that came from experiencing new planets, meeting new species, making great discoveries: that was the driving engine of Starfleet, or at least it used to be.

It was what made him want to put on the uniform in the first place.

It was what made him want to dedicate his life to defending the organization and its work.

It was something that was in short supply lately.

But there it was on their faces, and it made Bohkat feel less alone.

“I wish I could offer the three of you a tour,” said Qsshrr, interrupting his thoughts, “But my orders are to take you to the bridge and transfer command immediately.”

“Of course, Commander Qsshrr,” said Anand.

“By the way, if my name is troubling for you, you may address me as Kate. That would be short for ‘Silicate’. It’s my own little joke.”

Anand laughed. “Well, it’s a great joke, but I’m happy to call you Qsshrr. As long as my pronunciation isn’t unbearable for you. Qsshrr?”

“Qsshrr?” Ang chimed in.

Bohkat attempted the name as well. “Qsshrr.”

“All of you pronounce it just fine,” she said. “I rather like hearing my name spoken in a humanoid accent, anyway. Now if you’ll follow me.”

Qsshrr turned and skittered out the door into the hall, moving quickly enough that Bohkat and the others scarcely had time to nod to the transporter technician on their way out.

“Two days after Captain Banoub had departed and left me in temporary command, the Fourth Fleet received orders from Admiral Ramar to assemble in the Deneb Sector immediately,” said Qsshrr. “That’s why you had to meet us in transit. That is all the information I have at my disposal, but there is an encrypted message for you to access in your ready room as soon as the command transfer is complete.”

“Well,” said Anand, trying to catch Bohkat’s eyes as they hurried down the corridor. “The ‘race’ part of the ‘three-legged race’ metaphor is starting to feel a bit literal.”

Bohkat furrowed his brows. Maybe he could discreetly look up the phrase on a PADD when they got to the bridge.

They had a brief respite once they reached the turbolift, but they quickly arrived at deck one where the doors opened just behind the flight controls on the bridge.

“Captain on deck!” Qsshrr called, and the sparse crew stood up at their stations.

“At ease.” Anand waved a hand in a ‘be seated’ motion. “Hopefully we won’t have to do that too many times before I’m settled in. I’ll have to send out a ‘no standing’ memo or something.”

The woman who had been keeping the captain’s chair warm remained standing, tugged the hem of her uniform jacket, and tromped her way over to them.

“This is Lieutenant Zamora,” said Qsshrr. “She’s our chief engineer, but she often takes shifts at the helm.”

Zamora gave a brusque nod to the group before silently seating herself at the flight control panel.

Bohkat decided immediately that he liked her.

“Computer,” Qsshrr announced, “Transfer all command codes to Sanjiv Anand.”

She made her way over to the nearest open console and Anand followed.

“Voice authorization: Kate-Sierra-Iota-Zero.”

“Biometric authorization required,” said the computer.

Qsshrr extended one of her cilia out and up and placed it on the top of the console. Anand followed suit and placed his hand flat on the surface. It took less than a minute for the surface to flash green.

“Transfer complete. Babylon now under command of Captain Sanjiv Anand.”

Anand removed his hand from the console and stood at parade rest in front of Qsshrr. “I relieve you, commander.”

“I stand relieved,” she replied.

Anand looked around at the bridge with slightly furrowed brows, took a deep breath, and was about to speak when a nearby crewmember rose from her chair and extended a hand in his direction.

“Captain Anand, wonderful to meet you,” she said, speaking rapidly. “Chief Petty Officer Robin Szarka, jack-of-all-trades, nominally comms. We will absolutely forgive you if you want to forego your speech until after you get settled; it’ll probably be easier to hit those inspirational notes once you know what we’re doing out here. I think we’d all be inspired by a little context.”

Bohkat felt his nostrils flaring and clenched his jaw, giving Anand a chance to respond before he marched forward to tell this Szarka a thing or two about insubordination and minding one’s manners, in that order.

Anand, however, took her proffered hand and released the breath he’d been holding. “Nice to meet you too, Szarka, and you know what? That sounds like a fantastic idea. I’m going to go inspect my new ready room and hopefully catch us all up to speed. Why don’t you send out that ‘no standing’ memo in the meantime?”

“Yessir!” said Szarka, punctuating the statement with finger guns as she collapsed back into her seat and turned back to her console.

Anand turned towards Bohkat and jerked his head in the direction of the ready room before disappearing through its narrow doorway.

Bohkat stood frozen for a moment, considered saying something to Szarka anyway, then shook his head and followed Anand into the compact office space.

Anand was already sitting behind his desk, pulling up the holographic LCARS screen to access the encrypted message. For all that Bohkat wanted to say something, he was loath to interrupt, so instead he paced.

He tried to pace, anyway. Three steps were all he could manage in either direction and crossing the room back and forth so quickly was only making him more irate. Finally, he halted, stood in front of Anand’s desk with his arms crossed, and was about to speak when he noticed the look on the other man’s face: brow creased, eyes dark and moving so rapidly across the screen that Bohkat couldn’t tell if he was reading or panicking. 

Bohkat let his arms drop to his sides and asked, as softly as he could manage, “Captain Anand, what is it?”

“The Deneb sector is being overrun by the–” Anand stopped and tore his gaze from the screen to look at Bohkat. “By the Dominion.”

“They’re the ones that show up 27 years late and now we’re in a rush.”

Szarka’s attempt to lighten the mood was only successful with Lieutenant Ixabi, who quickly stifled her giggle and turned it into a cough and a clearing of her throat instead.

“Okay, let me see if I have this right,” said Ixabi, sitting up a little straighter, “This ‘border skirmish’ and Breen incursion is actually the result of the reappearance of the Lost Fleet, 27 years later and in the Deneb Sector of all places. I know Starfleet is in the business of dealing with the improbable but as scientists it’s our job to question the improbable, so I– um. I am. Questioning this.”

Her voice quieted and her posture deflated as she stumbled over the end of her statement. Anand assumed she was bracing for a reprimand, so he smiled in the hope of reassuring her.

“I don’t blame you,” he said as he swiped his hand and sent more data to the projection at the center of the conference table. “I can tell you that the Fourth Fleet managed to perform a quantum analysis on at least a few of the Jem’Hadar fighters that confirm the 2374 origin, so that gives us one answer along with a dozen more questions.”

“Well here’s another question,” said Szarka, “Why are we going to the Deneb Sector?”

“That’s a great question,” said Anand. He balled his fists on the conference table in order to restrain himself from throwing his arms up in a ‘hell if I know’ gesture. “That’s my favorite question so far. Hopefully, we’ll find out at the next rendezvous point. Most likely they need this ship to perform its usual routine of scanning things from very far away.”

“Good,” grumbled Zamora. Her hands were clasped over her stomach and her eyes seemed to be staring through the data projection, but Anand couldn’t quite tell if she was disinterested or concerned.

“Well,” he said, “Whatever chores they have for us out there, we need to make sure that we can see the enemy coming, hide if necessary, and get away. Level three diagnostics on everything. Zamora, you and your team cover the warp and impulse engines. Ixabi, you take shielding. Qsshrr: sensors. Szarka, program a kill switch you can hit to shut down any non-critical equipment in the outrigger if we need to run silent. Dr. Ang, I really hope we won’t need you but we’ll proceed under the assumption that we will. And Bohkat, find out if anyone on board other than you has any post-academy tactical experience.”

Anand leaned back in his chair and let his shoulders droop a bit. “And listen, I’m sorry you have to face a situation like this with two brand-new senior officers. Speaking of, I’m not clear on exactly what happened to your previous executive officer.”

“He died,” said Zamora flatly.

“He died!?” The question was a bit more incredulous and far louder than Anand had intended, but the news of Dominion aggressors from 2374 had pushed him past his limit of ‘things he could react normally to’. Even Bohkat looked a little wide-eyed at the revelation.

Szarka held her hands up and shrugged. “The man was 120 years old. It happens.”

“Okay, well, I’m sorry for your loss,” Anand said uncertainly as he glanced at the impassive faces around the table. He was now more than just professionally curious about the ship he’d inherited, but he had to stay focused.

“At any rate, Bohkat and I don’t know this ship or this crew as well as any of you, but maybe we can expedite the process. You’re all on call in four hours, right?”

There were tentative nods all around the table, and Qsshrr chimed in with a “Correct.”

Anand clapped his hands together and grinned. 

“Great! Then meet me in the lounge after the shift turnover. I want to get to know you all better with some one-on-one time. Well, two-on-one.” He gestured to Bohkat. “You can tell me about your routines and your department’s strengths and weaknesses in your own words, and it would be great to hear about yourselves as well. Hell, you can ask Bohkat and I questions at the end too, if you’d like.”

Bohkat slowly turned his head to stare at Anand, but he didn’t offer any vocal objections, so Anand kept talking. “It’ll be like speed dating, professionally, like–”

He waved a hand in the air, trying and failing to conjure a better comparison. “Like the vocational version of speed dating.”

Anand counted at least one raised eyebrow per face, and Qsshrr was making a low rattling noise that her synthesizer wasn’t translating, so he decided to quit before he dug his hole any deeper.

“Alright, dismissed!”

As the crew stood up and wove their way past the chairs in the narrow room, he heard Qsshrr ask with her synthesizer volume on low: “Officer Szarka, what is ‘speed dating’?”

“Well, those are all the questions I have for you,” said Anand. “Bohkat, what about you?”

The beads in his hair rattled as Bohkat shook his head, and some reflected the bright overhead lighting in their corner of the otherwise dimly lit crew lounge.

Anand nodded in acknowledgement and settled back into his overstuffed chair to face Zamora, who was squatting on a low drink table despite the presence of a similarly plush chair just behind her.

“Do you have any questions for us?” asked Anand.

“I do,” said Zamora, crossing her arms.  “What do the two of you remember about the Dominion War?”

The low chatter and the tinny big band music coming from the other side of the lounge made the question seem out-of-place, like a line from a period film rather than a perfectly relevant inquiry.

Anand glanced at Bohkat, who seemed to be waiting for him to answer first, then leaned forward so that he wouldn’t have to speak too loudly.

“Well, I was only 14 when it started, living on Earth at the time, so not much. My sister was at Starfleet Academy in San Francisco when the Breen attacked, but she made it through uninjured.”

After a long pause, Bohkat spoke up as well.

“I was 14 also, and I was relatively fortunate. My homeworld remained safe throughout the course of the war. I lost some cousins when their freighter was destroyed near Bajor, but… we were not close.”

Zamora nodded slowly as if absorbing their statements. “I’m glad you didn’t experience worse, especially at that age, but a part of me does wish that at least one of you had some instinctive idea of what this fleet is up against. Sometimes fear can be a good thing.”

She punctuated her statement by pushing herself off her seat with a grunt and turning her back on Anand and Bohkat, plodding over to the group on the other side of the lounge.

Zamora nodded at Qsshrr as they crossed paths halfway across the lounge, Qsshrr skittering past her for the next Q&A.

“So what about you, Odalys?” Ixabi asked as Zamora reached their low table and plopped down into the next chair over.

“What about me?”

“What do you remember about the Dominion War?”

“Mmm, I’m getting all talked out. My throat’s too dry.”

“Maybe this Cuba libre will help?” asked Szarka, offering a tumbler glass to Zamora as she sat down next to her.

“Aah, good woman,” sighed Zamora, accepting the drink with one hand and patting Szarka’s arm with the other.

Ang leaned in towards Zamora. “Lieutenant, aren’t you on call right now?”

“That’s why I told the replicator to make it with synthehol,” said Szarka, pointing a finger gun at him with a wink.

“Ugh. I’ll need a few moments to pretend I can feel the effects then,” said Zamora, taking a long sip of her drink before continuing.

“You kids go first, tit for tat.”

Szarka rolled her eyes and collapsed back into her seat.

“Pff, nothing to tell. My colony wouldn’t have known there was a war going on if the Dominion had lobbed antimatter warheads into our town square.”

“These beads?”

Bohkat grasped one of the long beaded braids framing his face and held it up.

“The material varies,” he said. “Some are wood, several are glass. This one is a–”

He paused and smiled.

“It is a silicate mineral native to Rigel V.”

Slowly and delicately, he pulled the last bead off the end of the braid and offered it to Qsshrr.

“Oh!” Qsshrr twitched in surprise. “I did not mean to imply–”

“I have dozens of these,” said Bohkat, still offering the bead. “I’d take it as a great compliment if you’d accept at least one.”

Qsshrr extended one of her cilia, thin enough to thread through the center of the bead, and curled it back in towards her body.

“Thank you,” she said. “I look forward to analyzing its molecular structure.”

“What about you, Doc?” asked Szarka as she lifted her head from where it had been lolling along the back of her seat to look at Ang.

Ang flinched, then reached forward to pull his cup of tea off the table and cradle it in his hands.

“Well,” he said,  “I’ve treated dozens of patients with PTSD from their service in the Dominion War. It was a big focus from day one at Starfleet Medical, especially during the psychiatry rotation.”

Zamora scoffed. “I don’t want to know what your interviewees remember, I want to know what you remember.”

“Oh.”

Ang took a long pull from his tea and stared into his cup, but the group remained quiet and attentive.

“Well, I was living on Starbase 11 with my family during the war, when– uh.”

There was a low scraping sound as Qsshrr crept back to her place in front of the table. The second she finished settling into place, Ang shot out of his seat.

“You know,” he said, “I think I’m gonna go get this interview over with right now. I’ll be back.”

The group watched him depart and sat in silence for another moment.

“They do say,” drawled Szarka, “That people become shrinks so they can diagnose themselves.”

“Yeah, you mentioned it just briefly on the shuttle,” said Anand, “And I was curious.”

“I started practicing guitar a few months ago,” said Ang. “The same time my partner Rurj’ started learning to play the leshpal, which is a Klingon instrument almost exactly like a guitar. He’s very proud of the fact that Klingons ritually destroy their guitars at the end of any really intense performance, and I don’t know how to break it to him that humans have been doing the same thing for centuries.”

“I don’t remember the war at all,” said Ixabi, absently clinking the ice cubes around in her glass. She was staring out the window where the stars went streaking past them.

“I was just a toddler at the time. I learned never, ever to bring it up around the adults because they’d get such intense, frightening flashes of memory before immediately shutting it down, and then I’d either be shooed away or even reprimanded for mentioning it. They taught us about it in school, of course, but they couldn’t convey how awful it must have been the way those memories did.”

Ang returned and slipped quietly back into his seat. Szarka stood up and caught Ixabi’s eyes, offering her a soft smile before making her way across the lounge.

“So that’s what speed dating is,” said Anand, as Szarka listened, bent forward with her chin in her hand.

“It certainly works for some people,” he continued. “That’s actually how I met my ex-wife, so I’m not really sure whether or not that’s a point in its favor.”

“I encountered the Borg once, traveling on a small ship with other Horta.”

Qsshrr shuddered, and even Zamora leaned in closer to hear her story.

“The ship was old and obsolete, and when they found they could not assimilate our species they simply left us, ship and all. But the Dominion… The Dominion attacked one of my people’s mining colonies during the war. It was not enough for them to destroy our processing machinery and facilities. When they saw that the miners had survived the bombardment, they turned all their strength and firepower on each individual Horta. Then, when they saw how well the Horta defended themselves, how quickly they could burn even a Jem’Hadar soldier to carbon, the Dominion soldiers became even more enthusiastic in their massacre. They had far greater numbers than the Horta, and they were unrelenting.”

Qsshrr paused long enough to pull a large ice cube from a glass on the table and pull it back into her mass of cilia with a crunching sound.

“Just three of my people survived in the end, only because it is not an easy thing for humanoids to tell when a Horta still has life in it.”

Ixabi was silent as she stood up and left the group, and when Szarka returned she took a long glance around the table before settling in without bothering to make a quip or comment.

“The moment I met Zamora I knew I wanted to be her friend.”

Ixabi emphasized every other word with a wave of her hands. Her wide smile was reflected on Anand’s and even Bohkat’s faces.

“An older woman who’s seen half the galaxy, a human born and raised on Tellar Prime: how fascinating is that!? Sure, she puts up a prickly, grouchy front, but–”

She paused and tapped at her temple.

“I can sense all the good stuff bubbling up underneath.”

Zamora set her empty glass on the table with a loud clink and leaned forward, waiting until she had all eyes on her to begin.

“During the war, I was one of a team of engineers sent to analyze and dismantle a Dominion subspace communication array, which was of course located on some barren speck of dirt in the middle of nowhere. When we first set down on the planetoid, we were naive enough to think that maybe its location would be the worst deterrent we’d encounter.

“I wasn’t the first, second, or even the third to enter the facility, so I avoided the electrified grids that burnt Smith’s arms up to the elbows, and the cloaked explosives that left almost nothing of Wang or Devi to send back to their families. I actually made it to the central core in one piece. We couldn’t download the data on-site – there was far too much of it – so we had to take the core apart and retrieve as many isolinear rods as we could.

“As we were working, we could hear the phaser fire outside, little by little growing closer but not letting up. It never let up. The Jem’Hadar, for all they looked it, weren’t dumb brutes. They could be cunning and clever at times, but when they had the advantage in numbers they didn’t need to be. They could just keep coming, wave after wave, hour after hour.”

“So what are your thoughts?” Anand whispered once Ixabi was out of earshot.

Bohkat’s nostrils flared as he took a deep breath and considered his words.

“After these interviews and a brief review of personnel files, I believe this crew is more than adequately staffed to keep this ship functioning under normal mission parameters.”

Anand waited for him to continue, and when he didn’t he prodded with, “And?”

“And I am the only one on board with extensive tactical knowledge or training. Two other officers in engineering display superior knowledge of intra-ship shielding function and utilization. None have more than average familiarity with ship or hand-held weaponry.”

“Right.” Anand nodded. “Concerning, but not surprising.”

“Indeed,” said Bohkat. “My other concern is–”

“Eventually our tactical crew must have lost too many to keep holding off the Jem’Hadar, because the explosion in the hallway was set off by one of our own. I’m sure of it,” said Zamora.

“It took out half the structure, collapsed the walls and roof back the way we came. The only way in was cut off, and we were trapped, but it gave us the time we needed to finish the job. And we damn well finished it. All that was left was to wait for rescue.

“In the hours after, we started to hear cracking noises, like rock hitting rock over and over again. Instead of simply waiting for one of their own ships to arrive and teleport them in or teleport us out, the Jem’Hadar were digging out the mountain of rubble piece by piece. Poor Wang had the only tricorder capable of reading the depth of the rubble, so we had no idea how long it might take them to get through, but it went on for days. All we could do was sit and listen to them tear at the wreckage bit by bit.

“I think we’d been in there three days when suddenly the cracking and the voices began to sound much louder and clearer. We began looking for the hundredth time for some place, any place, to hide, until we felt our skin begin to flicker and we were teleported away. I would have welcomed even a Breen ship at that point, but when I realized it was a Starfleet transporter pad under my feet I collapsed, and I… I don’t remember much for a while after that.”

“Zamora,” whispered Anand, and Bohkat nodded. “She’s nominally our chief engineer, but she’s also our most experienced pilot by a long shot.”

“The ship does spend an excessive amount of time on autopilot,” said Bohkat.

“I guess we’ll have to wait until we get our next orders to decide where to put her, but–” Anand sighed and rubbed at his forehead with both hands. “I don’t want to stretch her too thin. No matter where we station her, it feels like we’re putting all our eggs in one basket.”

“Alright,” said Zamora, loudly enough to be heard across the lounge. She stood up and straightened her uniform.

“I’m going to spend the rest of my on-call shift in my quarters.”

She made her way to the exit and looked pointedly at Anand and Bohkat as she passed. “I need to make sure I contact my loved ones tonight.”

Ixabi closed her eyes and took a slow, deep breath in (‘One, two, three, four…‘) and out (‘…five, six, seven, eight.‘) as she stood in front of the captain’s ready room. ‘It’s fine,’ she thought to herself, ‘You’re not in trouble.’

And why would she be in trouble? The new captain and first officer had only been there a day; they were perfectly pleasant during her interview last night; they–the captain at least–seemed incredibly easy-going; she had not detected a single stray critical thought or uncomfortable emotion directed at her since they’d arrived!

‘You’re acting crazy– no! Not crazy! Self-critical. Allow yourself some grace. And stop staring at his door and go inside already.’

She physically shook off her thoughts and flicked her wrist out to hit the door chime.

“Come in!”

Anand swiped aside the display on his desk and beamed at her as she stepped through the door, but his expression didn’t completely eliminate the spark of anxiety in the pit of her stomach.

“Lieutenant Ixabi! Please, have a seat.”

She took the chair he gestured to, and as she settled herself upon the firm surface she felt more of her anxiety dissolve and condense into curiosity.

Anand folded his hands in front of him and seemed ready to speak, but then furrowed his brows and unfolded his hands. The fidgeting should have ignited Ixabi’s anxiety all over again, but it was overlaid by the traces of thoughts and emotions that radiated off every one of her crewmates like body heat. In this case, she was picking up a current of worry and concern.

Concern for her.

Oh, she could feel the anxiety re-condensing. 

“Ixabi,” Anand said at last, “I just got our latest orders in from Fourth Fleet command.”

She nodded, and the curiosity she felt about why she needed to be the first to know was so overwhelming that she actually started to feel a bit numb.

“I wanted to speak to you before the official mission briefing because–” 

Anand cut himself off, sighed, then re-folded his hands and sat up a little bit straighter. Under any other circumstances, Ixabi might have relished catching his brief physical and mental recalibration. When she reoriented herself like that she thought of it as ‘entering Starfleet Officer Mode’.

“Because,” Anand started again, “We’ve been ordered to locate and make contact with a space-borne lifeform, and there was a strong suggestion that I utilize the talents of my telepathic crew members for the task. Well, crew member. Right now, that’s just you.”

Anand leaned forward, and Ixabi was hit with another wave of concern. “But from what I understand, attempting to communicate with such a radically different kind of intelligence can be taxing and even dangerous, so we’re going to go over our options for finding and talking to this creature together before the briefing. If you don’t want to use your telepathy on this mission then I won’t even suggest it during the meeting and I’ll personally shoot it down if anyone else suggests it.”

That was a lot more information than Ixabi was prepared to digest. Part of her had picked up the raw content and was already sifting through the exciting possibilities and practical challenges of encountering a new intelligence. The other part of her had walked straight into a wall of emotional subtext and didn’t know how to proceed. She probably ought to react somehow, but she couldn’t. All she could manage to do was blink, and– oh no. Her eyes were wet.

Anand noticed immediately and shook his head. “I’m sorry, I should have approached this better–”

“No!” Ixabi jolted and started waving her hands at him. “No no no! Captain, I think this is an amazing opportunity! I would love to help you reach out to this creature! I just–”

She couldn’t even begin to untangle and name the surge of emotions she was feeling (gratitude? relief? connection?), so she went with the most convenient half-truth.

“I’m just so in awe at the incredible diversity of life in this universe!”

“I can’t believe you had the audacity to ask us if we’d ever heard of Gomtuu!”

Szarka’s words reverberated down the corridor as the senior staff filed out of the conference room. She caught Ixabi’s eye and gave her a wink and finger guns as the other woman went with Dr. Ang to get some ‘baseline readings’ done. Ixabi gave her a little wave in return as she disappeared into the turbolift.

“Well, you know what they say about people who assume,” said Anand, the last one out of the room. He sounded more weary than facetious, and Szarka felt a little bad for him.

She also noticed Bohkat glowering at her and flaring his nostrils again and decided to tweak her mock indignation into mild self-deprecation as they entered the bridge. “I’m just saying, some people might take that as an insult to their nerd credentials, especially on this ship. Even Zamora’s heard of Gomtuu.”

“Tin Man,” said Zamora, nodding in acknowledgement as she swapped in at the helm.

Anand didn’t seem to be listening anymore. He’d followed Bohkat over to the tactical station and was nodding along as the commander muttered and pointed out little purple blips on a map, probably reiterating the fleet intel they’d just reviewed in the briefing. 

Qsshrr skittered behind them and took up her place at the science station. Szarka never tired of watching the holographic LCARS automatically appear at Horta level as she approached. It was covered with inscrutable patterns in deep reds and bright violets, ghosts of wavelengths that Szarka couldn’t perceive but which seemed to communicate meaningfully to Qsshrr.

Szarka turned back to her workstation and started manually synchronizing the incoming fleet intelligence with their sensor readouts. When the results loaded, she turned in her seat to announce them to Anand, but he was now standing in front of the center seat with his hands on his hips, glaring at the chair as if it might jump up and bite him.

‘He hasn’t sat in the captain’s seat yet,’ Szarka realized with amusement. And at this rate, he never would.

Anand must have felt her eyes on him because he glanced up in her direction. Szarka smirked and waggled her eyebrows. He looked away and took his seat so quickly that he almost collapsed into it.

“The path is still clear according to the latest cross-reference I made,” she announced, somewhat louder than necessary.

Anand swiveled towards Szarka and nodded; his attempt at nonchalance just made him seem overly stiff, but that was fine. She seemed to be the only one paying attention to the emotional journey he was clearly broadcasting.

“Looks like it’s full speed ahead to our mysterious space creature: Gomtuu Two? No, wait!” Szarka snapped her fingers. “Gomthree!”

Anand groaned and sank into his seat, but he sat upright as he noticed the same sound Szarka was hearing: a low chuckle coming from the tactical station.

“Really!?” Anand called loudly to Bohkat. “That’s what gets a laugh out of you?”

Bohkat cleared his throat and stared back at Anand, all hint of amusement gone. “I appreciate wordplay.”

“Ugh, as if I didn’t suffer enough under the tyranny of my sister’s puns,” said Anand. ”She’s out there somewhere laughing at my expense right now, I can feel it.”

Szarka smirked again as she turned back to her workstation, pleased that she’d found a potential means of disarming Bohkat and his weaponized scowls.

“Hang in there, Gomthree,” she muttered. “We’re coming for you.”

Ixabi lay on the biobed and twiddled her thumbs, taking a deep breath as the scanner chirped its completion. She watched Dr. Ang’s face as he read the results, and when it didn’t immediately spasm into a mask of horror followed by the words ‘You have 8 types of hyper-cancer and only an hour to live!’ she sat up. Another doctor’s visit completed with only minimal panic.

“So… you might have already figured this out from your scans, but I’m kind of nervous right now. Well, really nervous. That’s not going to mess up your data, is it? For these baseline readings?”

Ang tore his gaze away from the scanner readouts to look at her and shook his head. “No, no, it’s fine. Since you’ll probably continue to be nervous throughout the mission I think this is exactly the sort of data we want. Although…”

He plucked the glasses from the front of his uniform and put them on as he leaned in to get a closer look at the scan readout. ‘Oh no,’ thought Ixabi, ‘Here it comes: the hyper-cancer.’

“You’re not kidding about the ‘really’ nervous part,” said Ang. “Stress hormones at this level aren’t really tenable.”

He pulled up another holographic screen and started scrolling through it rapidly. “The ship’s formulary has sedatives I could give you that won’t disrupt your psilosynine transmitters, but according to your medical file you’ve had a bad reaction to some of them in the past…”

Ang trailed off, scrolling with one hand, tapping the tabletop with the other, brain whirling so fast that even while not actively listening it nearly made Ixabi dizzy. His obvious concern was enough to give Ixabi the courage to clear her throat and share the idea that had been tickling the back of her mind.

“I think,” she said, “What would help most right now would be if I could get some practice in somehow.”

Ang stopped scrolling and tapping and turned to look at her again. “Practice?”

“Yeah! I–” Ixabi paused, looking up at the ceiling while fidgeting her hands. How should she explain it? “I’m holding back all the time on this ship per the ethics code–per my ethics for that matter–and I feel rusty! Out of practice! And I’m also worried about it being too much too fast, you know? Like turning on the lights after sitting in a dark room.”

Dr. Ang didn’t immediately scoff or roll his eyes (‘Why would he?’ she had to ask herself) but rather pulled off his glasses and fiddled with the arms as he seemed to consider her words.

He didn’t consider them for very long at all before offering, “Well, I would be more than willing to help you practice.”

Ixabi practically jumped off the biobed in excitement and ran over to Ang. “Really? Are you sure? Actually, I can tell you’re sure! I know we technically haven’t started yet but the feeling is very loud!”

She realized that was probably the wrong thing to say when Ang’s gaze immediately shot down to his shoes, but for once the other party beat her to the awkward apology.

“S–uh, sorry about the volume, there. Uh.” He hung his glasses on the front of his uniform and looked up again. “My shift ends in a few hours, so just come back to sickbay then and we’ll start practicing.”

“Of course!” Ixabi was tempted to go in for a hug, but after her ‘loud feelings’ comment, she worried it might knock Dr. Ang right over, so she opted for a two-handed handshake instead. “Thank you!”

The rest of Dr. Ang’s shift went by swiftly, and exactly five minutes after it ended Ixabi walked back into sickbay, still smiling as broadly as she had been when she’d left.

“Glad to see you’re still in good spirits,” he said as she approached his desk.

“Well, just the prospect of getting some time in to practice has felt like a weight off my shoulders, so I was able to get through the rest of my shift without any more– you know.” Ixabi gritted her teeth, clenched her fists in demonstration, and made a strained “raaaahh!” noise.

Ang did know, though he was fortunate to have a decade or two of therapy on Ixabi.

“That’s part of the Hippocratic Oath, you know,” he said. “First do no ‘raaaahh!’”

Ixabi laughed, and the tension in her neck and shoulders seemed to soften by a degree. ‘Every little bit helps,’ thought Ang.

“So I’ve pulled a list of exercises from the medical database that we could pick through if you’d like,” he said, leaning across his desk and flipping through pages on the holographic display. “But I suspect you already have some idea of where you’d like to start.”

“I do!” Ixabi nodded. “I thought we could start with some hide and seek!”

Ang felt his face go slack for a moment until suddenly her meaning clicked.

“Right, of course. That’s almost exactly what you’ll be doing, isn’t it?”

“Yeah! I–” Ixabi cut herself off, hesitant and perhaps a bit embarrassed. “I probably shouldn’t be so out of practice with this one–it’s not explicitly or implicitly against anything in the ethics code–but I guess I got lazy?” She shrugged. “It’s too much work to feel around for someone’s mind when I can just ask the computer to find them for me.”

Ang leaned forward with his chin in his hand so that he could physically clamp down on the laugh that was threatening to escape. He hadn’t expected a conversation about telepathy to be so relatable.

“Anyway,” Ixabi continued, “I’ll be trying to find a massive unknown lifeform across the vastness of space instead of a humanoid on a ship with only eight decks, but the mental process is about the same. Just on a different scale.”

“I defer to your judgement as the expert in this field,” said Ang,  “So let’s get started.” He snatched a PADD off his desk as he stood up and started for the exit. “I’ll go hide–”

“And I’ll count to 100!” said Ixabi.

Ang halted. “Well, I was just going to comm you.” He pointed to his badge.

“Oh! Right, right, that’ll probably work better,” said Ixabi with an exaggerated nod. Ang briefly considered suggesting that maybe she should count after all, but she was still bouncing on the balls of her feet and raring to go so he darted out of sickbay and into the nearest turbolift, trying not to think about his destination.

He found himself a few decks below sickbay in one of the labs off main engineering. It was quiet except for the humming of the warp core and the chirping of one of the consoles where a lone crewmember had sequestered himself.

Ang affected a curiosity about his surroundings as he looked around, aiming for casual but not quite hitting the mark. There were some storage bays in the corner, approximately him-sized, and the first one he opened was conveniently empty.

He knocked on the side of the storage bay and the crewmember on the opposite side of the lab finally looked up from his console.

“You’re not planning on using this any time soon, are you?” Ang asked.

“No,” the crewman answered flatly, immediately returning his focus to his workstation.

Ang nodded, and in one fluid motion ducked inside and closed the door on himself. He managed to settle himself into a position that wasn’t too uncomfortable, then activated the PADD he’d pulled off his desk and selected some light reading before tapping his combadge. “Okay, lieutenant, you’re good to go.”

“Great! Ixabi out.”

He’d only gotten a few pages into the study he was reading when he heard a click, and Ixabi was throwing the door open in triumphant glee.

“That was fast,” he said, blinking hard in the bright light of the lab.

“Yeah! The hardest part was picking you out from the rest of the noise,” said Ixabi, offering him a steadying hand as he stood. “But once I knew which mind was yours it was easy to zero in.”

“Good!” He pushed his fists into his lower back and stretched until he felt a crack. “Should we try it a couple more times just to be sure?”

“Okay!”

She found him just as easily each time, first in the Jefferies tube adjacent to the deck two mess hall, and then…

“Back in sickbay?” called Ixabi, strolling in through the doors. “It almost feels like cheating.”

“Double bluff,” said Ang, back at his desk and scrolling through yet another report. “It’s the last place you’d look for me exactly because it’s the first place you’d look for me. And I left my glasses here.”

He dismissed the report and turned his attention back to Ixabi. “How are those nerves?”

“A little better,” said Ixabi, her voice hesitant again. “Now instead of being panicked about finding it, I’m panicked about talking to it.”

She glanced at the ground, then back at Ang, possibly waiting for some kind of platitude or reassurance. He just nodded in acknowledgement and waited for her to continue.

“I mean, maybe I won’t even have to!” she said, suddenly animated, pacing and waving her hands. “Maybe it will immediately respond to linguacode and that will be that! But I don’t think I’m that lucky, and the prospect is daunting, and it’s difficult enough talking to non-telepathic humanoids, so.”

She stopped pacing and stood there for a moment, clenching and unclenching her fists, until suddenly she rounded on Ang and leaned forward on his desk.

“Would you be okay with me giving you a task…” She waggled her fingers and pointed them from her forehead to Ang’s as if he needed the visual demonstration. “You know, remotely giving you step-by-step instructions, seeing if I can communicate them clearly enough for you to follow through?”

Ang shrugged. “Of course. That’s a great idea, in fact. What did you have in mind?”

Ang was immensely grateful for the dimmed after-hours lighting in the corridor as he approached Lieutenant Ixabi’s quarters and prepared to just walk in, casually as anything.

It was surprisingly hard to tell if the instructions were being given to him as words or just raw ideas because, by the time he registered that there were thoughts in his mind that weren’t his own, he was already putting words to the images and images to the words and could no longer see their original shape. He was just grateful that he could make sense of the end result. (Or was that Ixabi feeling grateful?)

“Alright, so these are your quarters, and I’m… supposed to go in,” he said, double-checking the room number. “Of course. Just casually entering Lieutenant Ixabi’s quarters, something that is in no way noteworthy and would not be discussed among the rest of the crew if any of them saw me entering.”

Ang looked left and right down the corridor. Then left again. Then right again. Then left and right again, all the while straining to listen for the slightest disturbance or footfall.

Suddenly the thoughts ‘empty hallway’ and ‘hurry up!’ appeared in his mind and he nodded, bending forward to enter a code into the door’s control panel.

“Okay, okay, okay.”

The door whooshed open and he stepped inside, where the lights automatically activated on a dim setting.

He didn’t need much light to find the glowing dodecahedron sitting in the middle of the nearest table. It was a familiar puzzle game that had been popular as far back as his academy days. Did Ixabi want him to try to complete it with her instructions? Or…

‘Go find Szarka.’

Back into the turbolift, down to the next deck, and into one of the direct-access labs adjacent to the main computer core. Szarka was there with Qsshrr and they were muttering to each other, something about sensor filters.

Szarka’s face brightened as soon as she saw him and she swiveled her chair to face him. “Hey, Doc! What can we do ya for?”

“That is a great question,” said Ang as he took slow, measured steps into the room. With each step, the next instructions took shape.

“Ixabi wants me to give this to you,” he started, holding the puzzle out towards Szarka. “She wants me to tell you that–”

He closed his eyes briefly in concentration, then felt his face begin to flush.  “Well, that’s a little, um, perhaps not rude so much as overly familiar.” He opened his eyes and found himself instinctively speaking to an empty space in front of him. “I don’t think I can say that.”

Szarka’s face split into a grin and she jumped out of the chair, closing the distance between herself and Ang. “Ha! She’s talking to you right now, isn’t she? She mentioned something about ‘practice’ earlier,” said Szarka, emphasizing the word with air quotes. “C’mon, Doc, don’t scramble the message. What does she have to say?”

“She says–” Ang sighed and rolled his eyes, still holding the dodecahedron out for Szarka. “She says she beat your silly puzzle in five minutes, try programming one not meant for… children next time.”

“Ha!” Szarka slapped her leg and took the puzzle from Ang before jabbing a finger in his face. He tilted back a bit. “You can’t even trash talk me to my face and you think I’m just gonna give you another puzzle– sorry Doc, I’m being a bit too intense here, lemme pull it back a bit.” 

She gave him a conciliatory shoulder pat before stepping out of his personal space and returning to her seat. 

“Well I WILL give you another puzzle,” she said. She swiveled in her chair again and projected her voice loudly to Ang as if Ixabi were simply listening from behind the door rather than via psionic field and well out of shouting range. 

“And to hell with making it fun and enjoyable. If you want a challenge, I will give you a challenge.” She leaned forward, jabbing her finger again from a more reasonable distance. “And I cannot wait to see your glistening tears of inadequacy when you realize that you will never solve it. Again, not you Doc, you’re great. Have fun.”

The jabbing finger of accusation became a pumping fist of encouragement. “You got this, Ixabi!” she said with a smile and genuine good cheer.

Ang might have nodded. He definitely stumbled out of the lab and leaned back against the nearest wall as he tried to clear his thoughts.

“That was a bit intense,” he muttered, and his brain was immediately filled with a chorus of ‘sorry! sorry!’ He shrugged and chuckled a bit, wondering ‘What next?’ before finally saying it aloud to the corridor. 

“What next?”

Anand had assumed that he was in for a scolding when Ang entered the bridge, but the doctor didn’t seem to notice him immediately. Ang was too preoccupied with his surroundings, inspecting them as intently as if he’d never seen them before.

When Ang finally did spot him at the tactical station, he said, “Lieutenant Ixabi says you should get some rest.”

Anand furrowed his brows and glanced around the bridge, as though he might catch a glimpse of her hiding under one of the consoles.

“Nevermind,” said Ang, relieving him of the need to piece together the joke. “But while we’re on the subject, your chief medical officer also thinks you should get some rest.”

Anand made a noncommittal humming sound as he rotated the tactical map floating above the console.

Not taking his eyes off it, he asked Ang, “Did you ever play ‘statues’ when you were little?”

Ang seemed to wrack his brain for a moment before understanding flashed across his face. “Ah, yeah we did. Though we called it ‘shuttle pilot’ or something along those lines. ‘Warp one, two, three, full stop!’” he said, and though the words were different, the cadence was the same one Anand remembered from childhood.

“Exactly. It just feels as though if I were to take my eyes off this map, all the little Dominion blips that are lurking just out of range–”

Ang cut him off, “Will defy all laws of physics and appear in weapons’ range before you get a chance to crawl out of bed and get to the bridge?”

Anand huffed. “I’d thank you to leave your logic out of this conversation about childhood nostalgia.”

Finally, Anand turned fully away from the map to face Ang. “I actually did get a bit of a nap in,” he said, nodding in grateful acknowledgement of the doctor’s concern. “But we’ll be within range of the first subspace vacuoles soon. I was debating whether or not to call alpha shift to the bridge early, but I guess I’ll refrain on the off chance that any of them are asleep.”

Ang didn’t respond. He was still looking in Anand’s direction, but his eyes had become glassy and unfocused. Before Anand could say anything, he heard Ang speak, barely above a whisper.  “Captain, it’s here.”

A shrill proximity alarm rang and Anand nearly jumped out of his skin, and a second later, much louder, a thundering boom hammered the ship. He flailed for the tactical console and managed only enough of a grip to slow his descent to the deck plating.

“Red alert, damage report, and what the HELL was that?” he said, scrambling to his feet and glaring at the accursed tactical map. He’d only looked away for a minute.

“Jem’Hadar fighter, sir!” called the officer at ops.

“How many?”

“Just the one. I think.”

“You think!?”

The ensign threw his hands up in frustration for a second before immediately returning them to the controls, “As far as our sensors are concerned, that one might as well have not existed a few seconds ago… but it’s still the only one I read so far.”

“All propulsion systems offline,” he heard from behind him, “Shields down to 50%.”

So he was still napping and this was an actual nightmare, surely.

He felt the briefest second of relief as Bohkat came barreling through the door to take his station at tactical, prompting Anand to finally release his death grip on the console and get to his seat.

The relief began warring with confusion when he heard Bohkat announce, “The fighter is moving away from us at full impulse.”

“I need to see it!” called Ixabi, appearing breathless on the bridge as if she’d run the whole way.

“Lieutenant??” was the only response Anand could muster as she dashed over to his chair and gripped the arm (and his arm).

“Captain, I need to see it! Please.” Her eyes were locked on the viewscreen.

“The… Jem’Hadar ship?” he asked, despite his strong suspicion that that was not at all what she meant.

“The creature!” Ixabi locked eyes with Anand. “It’s here! But it’s so–”

She closed her eyes and grimaced, and Anand might have reached up to pat her shoulder if she didn’t already have one of his arms in a vice grip.

“It’s so much,” she said at last. “If I could see it…”

“Ensign Bolen,” Anand called to ops. “Are you picking up anything other than the Jem’Hadar fighter?”

“No.”

Another proximity alert chimed at the ensign’s console and he threw up his hands again. “Yes.”

“Close enough for a visual?” asked Anand.

The response was the flash of the viewscreen, and in the center was a seed-shaped mass floating in space, its matte husk absorbing the surrounding light. A filament of iridescent light shot across its length from tip to tail every few seconds, each one briefly hinting at the breadth and width of its form.

Ixabi stared, mouth agape, while Anand watched her face for any hint of distress.

Another shout from ops: “The Jem’Hadar ship is closing on the creature.”

“We’re still within weapons range,” noted Bohkat.

“Of them AND the creature,” said Anand, denial implicit in his tone. “ I can’t risk you accidentally hitting… Gomthree.”

Szarka rushed through the doors and settled at a console behind Anand. “Qsshrr and I have already begun transmitting linguacode,” she announced. “No response yet.”

“Lieutenant Ixabi,” said Anand, reaching over with his right hand to gently pry her off his arm. She let go immediately and began walking slowly towards the viewscreen. Anand stood up and followed her. He wanted to tell her to stop whatever it was she was doing at that moment, at least long enough to come back to reality and check in, but before he could say anything she whispered.

“It’s aware…” she said.

“It’s aware of our ships… it’s aware of the Jem’Hadar, and us, it’s…”

Suddenly Ixabi hunched over and clutched her head in her hands. “It’s aware of me.”

Anand reached for Ixabi’s arm, but before he could say anything the creature on the viewscreen began to spin. It began to glow.

That stupid Gomtuu report that apparently every science ship nerd with credentials has read flashed through his mind. What had that thing done to the Enterprise? 

And they were much closer than the Enterprise had been. And much smaller. 

Damaged shields. 

Couldn’t move. 

Guess that’s it! The mission ends here.

All he could do was watch while a white disc of energy arched out and away from the creature, but Anand couldn’t help but stare as he realized what he was seeing. He kept his reaction restrained in case he was mistaken, but he wanted to shout. ‘Gomthree, Gomthree, you talented little space pip. Thank god you know how to aim.’

The disc had no depth: it was angled away from Babylon as it expanded through space, slicing through the Jem’Hadar fighter in a brilliant, blinding explosion that consumed the entire viewscreen and illuminated the bridge. The Babylon wasn’t even grazed.

“I’m sorry!”

Ixabi was clutching his arm again, though he couldn’t begin to imagine what she was apologizing for.“Ixabi,” he started.“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she muttered absently. She sounded so far away, Anand wasn’t even sure she was speaking to anyone on the bridge.

“Seems like a great time to compare against those baseline readings,” came Ang’s voice from behind them. Ixabi released her grip on Anand’s arm and followed the doctor off the bridge, muttering all the way.

“What’s the status of the creature?” he asked, rubbing absently at his bicep.“It’s… gone, sir,” said Ensign Bolen.

Anand’s heart sank. “Did it destroy itself?”

No answer for a moment. Then, “I’m detecting debris from the Jem’Hadar fighter…” 

Another pause. “And that’s it.”

Anand nodded. “Continue scanning the area, I need that double and triple confirmed. Find out what, if anything, the debris can tell us about the energy it emitted. Szarka,” he called over his shoulder. “Confer with Qsshrr and meet me in the conference room in an hour so that you can tell me exactly why neither the Jem’Hadar nor Gomthree appeared on our scanners until the last possible second.”

“Yessir.”

He tapped his commbadge. “Zamora–”

“Already in main engineering, Captain,” she said, and that was another relief. “Impulse in a couple of hours. I’ll keep you updated.” 

That left just one more thing.

“Bohkat?”

Anand turned around and began shuffling back towards his chair, gesturing in the direction of tactical for Bohkat to come closer.

Bohkat said nothing, but Anand could hear his footfalls and felt him halt less than an arm’s length away.

“Can you help me get to sickbay?” he asked quietly. “I can’t see a damned thing.”

“How many fingers am I holding up?” the doctor asked.

“Definitely fewer than eleven, but more than zero,” said Anand.

“Careful, I don’t hold back when my patients are well enough to crack dumb jokes.”

Bohkat huffed in amusement as he hovered near the exit, scrolling through the incoming status reports. The assistant medical officer–Lieutenant Dvinak, as she’d introduced herself–was quietly added next to Lieutenant Zamora on the list of ‘people he immediately liked’.

Dvinak turned to a nearby cart and grabbed another pre-prepared hypospray off it; Anand hadn’t been the only one with vision complaints after the near-miss from Gomthree. Though he’d gotten the worst of it, he’d insisted on the rest of the bridge crew being treated first. Bohkat had quietly excluded himself from said group, taking advantage of his captain’s blindness to hide quietly in the background.

Bohkat rubbed his eyes and squinted at the PADD in his hands. He could still read, ergo he was fine.

“So tell me,” said Dvinak, shooting the hypospray into Anand’s neck without warning. Anand flinched a bit, then started blinking rapidly. “Do you also stare directly at a solar eclipse when it’s happening?”

“In my defense, an eclipse usually comes with a lot more warning.”

“Fair enough,” Dvinak conceded, then held up her hand again. “How many?”

Anand squinted. “Three?”

“Good!” She smiled broadly and set the empty hypospray on the counter as she sauntered over to the nearest replicator. “I had to double-dose you, but at least it’s working at all.”

Bohkat heard a few beeps and saw the shimmer of matter taking form, and when she turned around she had a pair of sunglasses in her hand. “The medication will make you photosensitive, so you’ll want to wear these for the next six hours– correction, you will wear these for the next six hours. Doctor’s orders.”

She pressed them into Anand’s grip and stepped back to watch as he put them on, hands on her hips. “The replicator lets you play around with the style, though, and I like to think I’m pretty good at accessorizing.”

Anand slipped them on, and Dvinak considered his face from a few different angles before nodding and giving him thumbs up. “How many fingers am I holding up now?”

“Trick question!” said Anand as he slid off the biobed and quickly made his way to the exit, hands hovering in front of him. “Thank you, doctor!”

“Just don’t walk into any solid objects, please!” she called after him.

“Don’t jinx it,” he replied, finding a wall with one hand and following it down the corridor.

Bohkat turned to follow him but stopped short at the sound of Dr. Dvinak loudly clearing her throat. He chanced a look behind him, and he could see clearly enough to tell that she was staring him down.

“Your turn,” she said.

Bohkat gestured vaguely after Anand, but Dvinak didn’t break eye contact as she picked up the last hypospray and patted the biobed. He sighed and marched himself over. ‘But I don’t look good in sunglasses…’

On the other side of sickbay, Ixabi pushed her prescription sunglasses up to dab at her tears. “Can I go now? I need to go apologize to the captain again.”

Ang handed her a tissue and tried his best to make eye contact through his own set of darkened lenses. “I’ve finished the scans, but I’m a little curious about what you think you need to apologize for.”

“I pushed it away!” yelled Ixabi, before hunching her shoulders and lowering her voice. “When I reached out to it, I felt it–”

She waved her hands in the air, soaked tissue still clutched in one of them. “I felt it recoil from me. I probably should have pulled away first, but I was curious. I really– I just really wanted to say hello.”

Ang nodded and crossed his arms over his chest, reaching up to tap his chin with his finger. After a few solid taps, an idea shook loose in the form of a question. “Did it recoil as if you’d just said something insulting about its mother, or did it recoil as if it had just burned itself?”

“I–” Ixabi let her arms fall limp into her lap. “I’m not sure. Maybe– I think it was more like the second one.”

“I remember you saying–well, thinking, since you were also still in my head at the time–that it was overwhelming, dealing with so alien a mind,” said Ang. “Do you think the creature might have been a bit overwhelmed too?”

“Huh.” Ixabi slid off the biobed and stumbled over to a replicator, depositing a small pile of soaked tissues. “Huh.”

She wandered back over to the biobed, absently trying to sit and just slumping over from the waist down instead, one steadying arm on the bed. “But if I’m overwhelming it, how do I– not do that?”

“Well, as I mentioned, it seemed like you were briefly in my head and the creature’s head at the same time. Maybe you could link up someone else instead.”

Ang tried to give her a meaningful look through his sunglasses, but Ixabi seemed to be staring off into space.

Suddenly she popped up off the biobed. “Qsshrr??”

“Maybe,” he said. “We don’t know anything about the biology of this creature yet, but all space-born entities that we do have data on are extremely long-lived. Horta are also extremely long-lived. The longevity of a lifeform tends to have an effect on its bio-neural signature. So…”

He shrugged.

Ixabi clapped her hands and bounced. “So that’s a great idea! It’s so clever! It’s almost like you’re a brain specialist of some kind,” she said with a wink.

“Well, that’s sort of– oh, okay, you’re being facetious. Yeah,” said Ang.

“Yeah!” Ixabi grabbed him by the arm and pulled him along with her out of sickbay to find Qsshrr.

“So there’s nothing wrong with the sensors?” Anand asked.

“There was nothing wrong with the sensors,” Szarka corrected. “That little light show from Gomthree fried about a quarter of them.”

She pointedly pushed her sunglasses up the bridge of her nose to emphasize the point.

“Then how did we miss a Jem’Hadar fighter and Gomthree sitting right on top of us?” he asked, sounding lost.

Szarka was about to ask Qsshrr to solve the puzzle for him when Bohkat flew through the doors like an Anand-seeking missile zeroed in on its target.

Her barking laughter was an automatic response to seeing Bohkat, in his own pair of sunglasses, jerking to a halt next to their bespectacled captain. She couldn’t have held it in if she’d tried.

His shades protected her from his glare, but the flaring nostrils and clenched jaw were impossible to miss.

“Ha! I’m sorry,” she said, breathless with laughter. “I just never expected to be taking orders from the Blues Brothers.”

“The who?” asked Anand.

Bohkat was equally unfamiliar, and fortunately for Szarka, his confusion smothered his irritation until he shook both off and redirected his focus to Anand.

“Status update from engineering,” said Bohkat. “Impulse engines are back online–”

“Already?” said Anand, perking up.

“Shield generators are fully operational,” Bohkat continued. “They’re running final checks on the warp systems now. Diagnostics are still being run on the damaged sensors.”

“Fantastic,” said Anand, reaching for the PADD Bohkat held and pulling it closer and closer to his face before finally giving up. “How did they do that so quickly?”

The doors to the lab whooshed open again, and Ixabi came through with Dr. Ang in tow.

“Lieutenant Ixabi!” Anand beamed at her. She smiled back. He smiled even wider and the feedback loop threatened to break their faces. “I’m so relieved to see you up and about.”

Szarka was suddenly overcome with an impulse she couldn’t resist. She saw her opening and she had to take it before it was too late.

Like a cobra striking, her arm whipped out to grab the nearest unused PADD, and in less than two strides she was in front of the assembled crew, back turned to them as she held the PADD arm’s length in front of her.

“Shades Crew group photo!”

She grinned so hard she thought her cheeks would rupture, and she hit the shutter, only for the PADD to be immediately torn from her grip. “Hey!”

Szarka turned, saw Bohkat holding the PADD, and decided not to push her luck. Or maybe just push it a little. “Good idea! You keep it!”

“Where’s Qsshrr?” asked Ixabi, redirecting Bohkat’s attention.

“Here!” she called, skittering out from under a console. “I’ve just re-verified Officer Szarka’s findings…”

“Qsshrr!” Ixabi bounded over to the Horta and clasped her hands in front of her chest as she gazed down at her. “Qsshrr, I want to ask for your help. I want to link minds with you the next time I reach out to the creature. I think I might have frightened it off because my mind is so alien to it, but Dr. Ang thinks that your bio-neural signature might be–”

“Might be more similar, yes,” said Qsshrr, and she quivered. “I think the prospect is terribly exciting, and I’d love to help if you think I can be of assistance, but first it’s imperative that we finish briefing the captain on our findings.”

“Oh!” Ixabi stepped aside and turned towards Anand. “Of course!”

Qsshrr slid into the center of the group and pulled a small holo-emitter from under her mass. With a flick of one of her cilia, she activated a map of the vacuole-filled region which floated above her as she spoke.

“To answer your previous question, Captain, we didn’t miss the Jem’Hadar or Gomthree per se; they simply did not exist in this dimension until the moment they appeared on our sensors. They seem to have come out of the vacuoles themselves. If I overlay our sensor data onto the above map, you can see it for yourself.”

Another flick of her cilium and a small approximation of the Jem’Hadar fighter and Gomthree each appeared on the map, both seemingly popping into existence just outside adjacent vacuoles.

Anand furrowed his brow and crossed his arms. “I didn’t know they could do that.”

Szarka shrugged; she’d already been rolling the problem around in her mind for some time. “As long as they’re not traveling at warp when they make contact with the vacuole, why not?”

“Most of our information on subspace vacuoles comes from observations made by Voyager in the Delta Quadrant decades ago,” continued Qsshrr, “But we do have evidence of humanoids passing through vacuoles seemingly unharmed. However, the idea of a spaceship traveling through one seems incredibly risky. As it stands, we have no way of knowing where any one of these vacuoles may lead, whether into the atmosphere of a planet or to open space, or to a dimension where our laws of physics don’t even apply. Or nowhere at all.”

“I wonder if Gomthree can tell somehow,” said Anand, staring through the map that Szarka was fairly sure he still couldn’t see. “Or if it’s just so desperate to hide that it doesn’t care.”

“Surely the Jem’Hadar can’t tell,” said Bohkat, slightly too emphatic, as if trying to convince himself.

“I don’t think the Jem’Hadar care, as long as Gomthree might be in their reach,” Szarka offered.

Anand’s head jerked up. “So another fighter could pop out of one of these vacuoles again with no warning? Bohkat, we need to go to yellow alert.”

Bohkat nodded, and after a few keystrokes, the alert indicators in the lab changed. Szarka could hear the alarms trilling down the corridor.

“So,” said Anand, heaving a deep sigh, “We’ve now got to look not only around these hundreds of subspace vacuoles, but inside them as well?”

There was no answer to his rhetorical question and the lab was eerily still for a moment, the flashing yellow alert lights creating only the illusion of movement.

Suddenly he clapped his hands and straightened his back, looking around at the rest of the crew. “Good thing that’s exactly what this ship is built for! We’ve got a full complement of all kinds of probes.”

“Probes out the wazoo, sir!” yelled Szarka, eager to keep the energy flowing.

“Well, we’ll just send out everything we’ve got,” said Anand, waving his hands out before him. “Sync them up first, make sure they’re set up for direct communication with one another on multiple frequencies on the off chance that any of these subspace vacuoles connect up with one another.”

He glanced down at the Horta. “Qsshrr, if Ixabi is still up for it in light of this new information, I think your time would be best spent in training with her.”

“I’m still up for it!” said Ixabi, doing a little hop in place. “Who knows! Maybe thoughts can travel through vacuoles too? Only one way to find out!”

“Then I would be absolutely delighted to train with you, Lieutenant Ixabi,” said Qsshrr, shutting off her holo-emitter and tucking it back in among her cilia.

“Maybe your training could start in sickbay so I can get some more baseline scans?” said Ang, gesturing over his shoulder as Ixabi and Qsshrr joined him and followed him out of the lab.

“Bohkat,” said Anand, “If you could monitor the situation from tactical I think I’ll lend Szarka and her techs a hand with those probes.”

“How??” asked Szarka, unable to keep the incredulity out of her voice.

“I reconfigured so many probes when I was in ops and the JAG Safety Bureau,” said Anand, “I could do it even if I were completely blind.”

Bohkat nodded. “Aye, sir.”

“Yeah,” said Szarka, pointing with both hands at her sunglasses. “My ‘aye sir’-t, too.”

Bohkat stared at her blankly for a moment until the joke apparently clicked, and a choked sound that might have been a huff of laughter escaped. He shook his head as he barreled out the door, muttering, “Stupid…”

Anand gestured for Szarka to lead the way out of the lab, probably as much to do with his partial blindness as politeness. As they made their way down the corridor, he settled into step just behind her.

“You know,” he said, “When your previous captain offered me this posting, she said it was the most boring assignment she’d ever had.”

Szarka imagined Captain Banoub saying exactly that to Anand, and scoffed. “Is that what you wanted?” she asked.

“Not really,” he said hesitantly, “But it might have been nice for a few days. At least until I figured out where all the toilets are.”

“There,” said Anand as he sealed up the probe casing with a snkt. “The last lowly drone calibrated.”

Szarka approached as Anand and one of the technicians gave the drone a gentle nudge and sent it sliding along its track into the dispatch bay. “Good work, you two.”

The technician took a step back from Anand and glanced at Szarka, offering her the hint of a smirk. “Nah, that last one was all him.”

“‘One’ being the optimal word,” said Anand as he turned away from the workbench. “Thank you for your help on the rest.”

He leaned a bit to direct his line of sight and his voice over Szarka’s shoulder to the rest of the techs in the lab. “Great work! What’s the old saying? ‘Teamwork makes the multi-frequency communication protocols work’?”

Szarka grinned at the unrepentant corniness on display. Looking back at her service record, there was a definite positive correlation between tolerable commanding officers and intentional corniness. 

Which meant that she could almost certainly get away with reaching out and giving the forearm of his uniform a gentle tug as she redirected his attention.

“C’mere,” she said, jerking her head in the direction of the lab’s long, narrow window. “You gotta see this part. Or I guess I should say, I hope you can see this part.”

“I think I’m just about operational again,” said Anand as he followed her over. “Where am I looking?”

Szarka looked across the room to the control panel where a tech stood waiting for her order and nodded.

“Launching!” he announced.

She returned her focus to Anand and pointed up just as a twin jet of probes streaked past above them, scores of beacon lights all flashing in unison.

“Wow,” Anand said softly, entranced. He leaned his arm against the sill and inched closer to the glass.

Szarka hated to ruin the moment, but she couldn’t break tradition.

“Yes, FLY!” she shouted, and Anand jolted a bit. “Fly, my pretties! Bring me those ruby slippers!”

She twisted her fingers in the air and cackled until she could no longer ignore Anand’s perplexed face.

“Wizard of Oz?” she said, both an answer and a question. “It was a book and a play and several movies and a couple of holo-novels?”

“The name rings a bell,” he said hesitantly.

She waved her hand dismissively. “Eh, not that important. It’s just the ritual. Every nerd on this ship has a good luck ritual for launching probes. Ixabi sings them a little song, Bolen waves an honest-to-god handkerchief at them and pretends to cry. Even Qsshrr makes a funny little crunching noise that the translator doesn’t process. No idea what it means, and I’m afraid it would be bad luck to ask.”

Szarka poked him in the shoulder. “What about you? You never had any kind of thing you did when you launched a probe?”

“No,” said Anand, rubbing his shoulder absently. “Remember I mentioned the JAG Safety Bureau? I was a forensic inspector. Lots of mangled starships and corpses, not a lot of whimsy.”

“Oh,” said Szarka, offering the phoniest nonchalance she could muster. “Yeah, of course, that makes sense.”

“Yes, well.” Anand pushed himself off the window. “Time to get back to the bridge.”

He nodded, and after a beat of silence, Szarka realized he was waiting for her to lead the way again.

“What, you still can’t see properly after all?” she asked, heading for the door and gesturing for him to follow.

“No, I can. I’m just not sure how to find my way back from here.”

“So, where should we start, Lieutenant Ixabi?” asked Qsshrr.

‘Perhaps you could tell me about your, uh, childhood?’ Ixabi thought to Qsshrr, with one hand resting on the Horta’s side. The touch wasn’t necessary, but Ixabi thought it might make things easier.

Qsshrr’s response seemed to crash over her like a wave in low gravity, soaking in slowly, gradually, until it was all she could feel.

She was embraced, warm and safe. Every inch of her skin touched and… tasted? No, it read the world around her like braille. 

No, it definitely tasted. It tasted the electrical bonds of every molecule around her, tasted how much energy flowed along each of them, conductors and insulators. It felt the shape of the molecules. It felt the glancing edge of a fractal unfolding infinitely into the earth.

Earth? She was surrounded by earth, crystals and glass and metal and carbon. She tasted it and it dissolved away before her. She waded through.

Suddenly, lights danced across her vision like an aurora, flickering at wavelengths she couldn’t see and yet suddenly could see. Earth no longer surrounded her. Earth was below her. The lights were above her, perpetually flashing and moving. They didn’t form any shape she recognized, but she knew that every pulse and hue was a humanoid, or another Horta, or a place or a thing. A building. A computer terminal. There was so much around her to see, to learn, to do. She spent minutes, years, decades there. Everything moved so slowly.

No, it all moved too fast.

Ixabi blinked with her own eyes and saw sickbay take shape around her. For a second or two, she couldn’t remember why she was there.

“Are you alright?” asked Ang, hovering in her peripheral vision.

Suddenly, she was re-centered in her own body and mind, and she could answer, the sound of her own voice both surprising and reassuring. “Yes, yes, I think I’m okay. I just feel a little bit like…”

She tried to think of something to compare it to and rattled off the first thing that came to mind. “I feel like I was twirling around, and I suddenly stopped spinning, except I feel it in my brain instead of my inner ear. If that makes sense.”

Ang chuckled. “I don’t know if that makes sense, but I’m definitely documenting it. At any rate, I saw some fluctuations in the readings from your paracortex, but nothing outside the range of what Betazoid medical literature considers safe. What about you, Qsshrr? How are you feeling?”

A ripple seemed to travel the length of Qsshrr’s form before she replied. “I think I feel well, overall. The humanoid mind is indeed a bit– startling, I suppose, but it was also nice to be able to communicate without my translator. I think the two sensations balanced each other out.”

“Anand to sickbay.” The trio paused at the sound of their captain’s voice on the comm. “I think one of our probes may have located Gomthree. How’s training coming along?”

Ixabi was a little surprised at the calm tone of her own voice when she answered. “Well enough that I think we can take this act to the bridge. What do you think, Qsshrr?”

“If Lieutenant Ixabi is ready, then I am ready,” said Qsshrr, and she seemed to grow an inch taller as her cilia prepared to send her skittering out the door.

“We’re on our way!” Ixabi confirmed.

“Excellent! Anand out.”

Qsshrr darted out the door and Ang followed, calibrating his medical tricorder as he walked. Ixabi followed behind, gently nudging a distracted Ang away from the side of the corridor. She felt unusually collected.

She felt happy.

He heard the whoosh of the doors and Qsshrr’s voice. “Captain, any further updates from the probes?”

Anand turned to see her enter with Ixabi and Ang and… Zamora?

Zamora must have felt his eyes on her because she glanced up at him as she made a beeline for the helm.

“They’ve got things under control in engineering,” said Zamora. “Figured you could use someone with two good eyes up here.”

For a moment, the relief of seeing their best pilot on the bridge was so overwhelming that he forgot to reply. He just watched as Zamora tapped the junior flight control officer–still wearing her own pair of protective glasses–on the shoulder and slid into the immediately-vacated seat.

“Delighted to have you,” he said at last, and it was an understatement.

He turned his attention back to Qsshrr and answered, “Not yet,” before calling over to Szarka’s station, “Szarka, have you figured out which probe picked up those readings?”

There was a long pause before she answered with an enthusiastic affirmative. “Sure did. I’m sending the coordinates to the helm right now, though it doesn’t look like we’ll have to travel very far.”

The second she finished speaking, they heard the ping of a proximity alert.

“Sensors picking up a craft– or, lifeform? I guess?” called Ensign Bolen from ops. “It must have just emerged from one of the vacuoles; it’s already in visual range.”

“Onscreen,” called Anand, and on the viewer appear the same pip-shaped creature they’d seen before, with the same iridescent racing stripe running down either side of its otherwise dark hull. Anand couldn’t be completely sure it wasn’t because of the sunglasses he was still wearing, but that stripe of light did seem less luminous.

“Slow to one-quarter impulse,” said Anand. “Ixabi, how close do you have to be to make contact?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” said Ixabi. “Qsshrr, shall we find out?”

“Let’s!”

She and Qsshrr skirted around the front of the center seat. Anand nodded in response to the questioning look from Ixabi and gestured to the open space on the bridge between himself and the viewscreen.

Ixabi smiled and sat cross-legged directly on the floor next to Qsshrr, one hand on the Horta’s back. They both sat staring at the viewscreen for what felt like a long time.

After a moment or two, Anand grew tired of drumming his fingers on the armrest and let his curiosity lead him out of his seat and over to Ixabi’s side. She and Qsshrr were perfectly still. He glanced down at her face.

Her eyes were closed.

His attention was suddenly caught by the viewscreen as Gomthree turned its entire mass to face them head-on in one impossibly swift motion.

“HELLO”

Anand just barely kept himself from literally jumping away from Ixabi and Qsshrr. The word had come from them both in perfect unison. 

Ixabi’s eyes were open again, focused on an empty point of space in front of her.

“I HEAR YOU,” said Qsshrr.

“you are… panicking?” said Ixabi.

Every last body on the bridge leaned in towards the pair, watching with rapt attention. All the ambient noise, every last chirp and ping of the instruments, faded from Anand’s awareness as he listened to their conversation.

“AFRAID” said Qsshrr.

“afraid of me? my fault?” said Ixabi.

“MY FAULT. LEFT HOME”

“left home? where is home?”

“WHERE IS HOME? CAN’T FIND HOME”

“Captain,” Szarka whispered, the sound of her footsteps slowly and quietly coming up behind him. “We’re getting good data on its composition and energy signatures. It’s strikingly similar to what we have on file for Gomtuu.”

“So it’s the same species?” Anand whispered back.

“I can’t say for sure, but it seems likely.”

A console flashed behind him, and Szarka rushed back to her station. “An alert coming in from another probe,” she yelled. 

“It looks like… more Jem’Hadar.”

“The probe is picking up what appears to be a Jem’Hadar fighter,” said Szarka, her voice calm and detached. “Wait, make that fighters, plural.”

“Where?” asked Anand.

He tried not to count the number of times he clenched and unclenched his hands while he waited for the answer.

Finally, Szarka shook her head and growled. “Too much interference from all these damn holes in subspace. Still trying to triangulate it.”

Mentally bracing for the inevitable proximity alert, Anand turned his attention back to the interview with Gomthree that he was going to have to cut short. “Ixabi? Qsshrr?” he asked, his voice low. “Can you hear me?”

“YES.”

He managed to avoid flinching again as they answered simultaneously in flat, detached voices, but it was still rather unnerving.

“Well, we’ve detected more Jem’Hadar fighters somewhere inside one of these vacuoles,” he said, trying to calmly explain the situation to whoever was listening. Was Gomthree listening? “If they return to normal space, we will have to make a run for it.”

It occurred to him that the tone of voice he’d instinctively adopted was the same one he used with his four-year-old niece when telling her to look both ways and hold his hand while crossing the street. It was a non-threatening but authoritative persona that seemed appropriate when dealing with a skittish space-borne creature, or at least its proxy.

“Can you warn Gomthree for me?”

No response. They both sat in unmoving silence.

Anand glanced back at Ang, who shook his head as he approached.

“There have been no fluctuations in any of my readings since they first established contact,” said Ang, ticking through the various charts and screens on his tricorder.

“Captain,” said Szarka, finally looking up from her station, “The probe that picked up the Jem’Hadar is the one inside the vacuole directly over us.”

Anand wondered if anyone else’s insides had just turned to ice at that announcement. 

“Zamora,” he called, “Kindly put some distance between us and that vacuole without moving us any further away from Gomthree.”

“On it.”

The harsh tone of the proximity alert felt like an arrow through his chest, but he still managed to affect some degree of detached calm when he asked, “Is it the Jem’Hadar?”

“No sir,” said Ensign Bolen from ops. “It’s Gomthree. It seems to be– yes, it’s moving closer to us.”

“Okay, why?” Anand asked, too quietly for anyone to hear. He assumed.

“RUN,” said Ixabi and Qsshrr, speaking in unison again. Whatever conversation they were having with Gomthree was apparently one he wouldn’t be privy to.

“It’s, uh…” said Bolen, glancing rapidly from his console to the viewscreen to the console again. “It’s advancing towards us head-on. Collision in fifteen seconds.”

“Zamora?” Anand called out.

“Moving us outta the way, 0-mark-270,” she responded, though she sounded a bit dubious as she also flickered her gaze between the controls and the viewscreen.

“It’s shifting course towards us again,” said Bolen. He was beginning to sound more irritated than worried. “Five seconds to impact.”

“I’m trying to get us out of the way,” said Zamora through clenched teeth, tapping furiously at the controls.

“RUN,” said Ixabi and Qsshrr. “GO. FOLLOW ME.”

Gomthree emphasized the point by nudging the ship, shifting purposely to glance the dorsal hull even as Zamora continued accelerating downwards. There was a rippling of energy along the shields, and the bridge shook. Anand wobbled but managed to keep his footing.

“OW,” came the voices in unison.

“Shields holding,” said Bohkat. “No structural damage detected, and this is why you have a chair.”

“Right right right,” said Anand absently. He took a few steps back and gripped the armrest as he perched himself on the edge of the seat, a compromise between his need to be up and moving and his acknowledgement of Bohkat’s common sense.

“Gomthree is continuing on its course,” said Bolen, “Now moving away from us.”

“FOLLOW ME.”

Anand stared for a moment at the back of Ixabi and Qsshrr, neither of them moving or offering any further commentary. He sighed.

“Zamora,” he said, “Follow Gomthree so that it doesn’t attempt to ‘encourage’ us again.”

“Following,” acknowledged Zamora.

Again, the proximity alert cut through all other noise on the bridge, sharper still because there was no doubt as to what set it off.

“The Jem’Hadar fighters we ID-ed have just returned to normal space,” called Szarka. “Two of them.”

“Red alert,” called Anand, and though he’d aimed for ‘authoritative’ he thought it sounded more ‘resigned to an unfair fight’. “Zamora, keep us as close as you can to Gomthree. Bohkat, aft torpedoes if you’re quite sure you can make the shot; we haven’t got many to spare.”

“I am well aware,” Bohkat said mournfully.

Streaks of blue energy shot past and disappeared into nothing ahead of them once, twice, three times, and then the ship shuddered and shuddered again, and sure he wasn’t at risk of face-planting into the deck plating, but Anand hated how intensely he could feel it through the chair.

“Aft shields down twelve–” Bohkat was interrupted by another rumble. “Twenty percent.”

“FASTER.”

The single word from Ixabi and Qsshrr had Anand wondering when he’d have to try to pull them out of their conversation–they were too vulnerable like this–when Ensign Bolen shouted, “Gomthree is going to warp!”

“Should I match speed?” asked Zamora.

“Can you do it without hitting a vacuole?” asked Anand. “I don’t want to risk even sideswiping one.”

Zamora tilted her head to the right just so, projecting her voice while keeping her eyes on the controls. “Neither do I. Trust me, I can do it.”

Anand nodded to himself. “Then do it. Match speed.”

Another shudder. “Shields down fifty percent.” 

Then the stars on the viewscreen elongated. Another blue jet of energy raced alongside them, and they began to outpace it.

“The Jem’Hadar fighters have also gone to warp,” said Ensign Bolen.

“CAREFUL.”

The warning came just as Gomthree dropped out of warp. Zamora dropped to impulse right on its heels, as if she were the one in telepathic commune with the creature.

“Stay with it, Zamora,” called Anand as Gomthree flew straight into the distorted form of a subspace vacuole.

Three seconds later, the Babylon followed.

There was a flash of light.

“Still nothing?” Anand asked. They’d dropped into the vacuole a full sixty seconds ago, and the Jem’Hadar fighters had certainly not been that far behind them. They had the scorch marks to prove it.

“Nope,” answered Ensign Bolen.

“Nada,” confirmed Szarka.

“They might have hit the vacuole still traveling at warp,” offered Zamora. She punctuated her statement with a quiet explosion sound effect and a soft chuckle.

“Or they might be waiting on the other side for us to re-emerge,” said Bohkat.

Anand hummed his assent and drummed absently on his armrest for a brief moment before swiveling toward the rear of the bridge.

“Szarka,” he said, “Check our map and see if this is one of the vacuoles we sent a probe into. Maybe we can call it back to the ship and send it out the other side to take a peek for us.”

“Yeah, okay,” said Szarka, bobbing her head in approval and whistling a tune to herself as she went to work at her console.

Anand could appreciate her good mood; they’d shot right through the vacuole and hadn’t immediately pancaked against a solid planetoid or been annihilated in an antimatter collision. In fact, the space around them looked very much like the space they’d just left behind. Anand fancied that even some of the stars aligned the same.

“So maybe it does know where it’s going,” he said to no one in particular.

“Not exactly,” said Ixabi, popping up off the ground as if she’d only just sat down.

“Ixabi!” Anand said with relief as he propelled himself out of his chair. He glanced at Qsshrr, and she also stood up an inch taller and spun around to face him. “Qsshrr, are you both alright?”

“A bit disoriented, but otherwise fine,” said Qsshrr. “Lieutenant Ixabi?”

“Yeah, me too,” Ixabi said absently, nodding as she fidgeted her hands. Then, with more enthusiasm. “Captain, we did it! We spoke to Gomthree–me and Qsshrr–and it understood us and responded and everything!”

“You did?” Anand asked, crossing his arms. “You were both nearly catatonic until just this moment. Just speaking in unison in clipped phrases that seemed to be coming from Gomthree rather than from either of you.”

“It was not a very in-depth conversation,” Qsshrr conceded. “The disruption from the Jem’Hadar aside, Gomthree found the noise of the bridge to be quite distracting.”

The proximity alert blared again. “Gomthree approaching,” said Ensign Bolen. “More slowly this time,” he added in a dubious tone.

Anand inhaled deeply through his nose and pressed his palms together. “Can you,” he said, turning to Ixabi, “Ask it not to knock into us again?”

“Oh.” She glanced over her shoulder at Gomthree approaching on the viewscreen. “I don’t think it’s trying to get our attention this time. I think it’s just curious.”

Sure enough, the creature slowed gradually, halting once it was close enough to take up the entire viewscreen. It drifted there, rotating about its central axis but keeping its nose aligned with the ship.

“Huh,” said Anand. Now more than ever, it was definitely bringing to mind a whale of some kind.

“Captain,” said Ixabi, cutting through his reverie. “I think Gomthree wants to beam us aboard it.” She indicated herself and Qsshrr. “So that we can communicate more clearly. May I have permission to do so?”

Before he had a chance to answer, there was a tingling on his skin and he realized that he was dematerializing along with Ixabi and Qsshrr.

And as soon as he finished processing that thought, the three of them were standing in a dimly lit cave. Solid, Anand confirmed with a touch, but it looked eerily like skin stretched over an uneven frame. Pulses of light in varying hues shined through the wall, and he could hear distant rumbling and a sound that reminded him of whalesong.

He had a pretty fair idea of where they were.

“Well I didn’t even get a chance to say yes,” said Anand, looking around at the interior of Gomthree after their abrupt transport. He noted with some concern that the room they were in didn’t seem to have any exits.

“Ah, I’m sorry, that might be my fault,” said Ixabi, nervously glancing between Qsshrr and Anand. “Communication is still a bit tricky; it’s all images and ideas, and some of them I’m having trouble communicating without using words. But Qsshrr’s been a big help,” she added, beaming down at the Horta.

Anand tapped his combadge, hoping the signal would transmit through whatever Gomthree was made of. “Anand to Babylon, sorry for that abrupt departure. Ixabi and Qsshrr and I are aboard Gomthree.”

He was relieved to hear a grunt of displeasure in response. “Are the three of you safe? I have the transporter room attempting to get a lock on you.”

“We’re fine,” Anand reassured him. “No need to bring us home yet; just keep this channel open.”

“Affirmative.”

A sudden creaking noise rang out as the roof of their enclosed space lurched downward by half a meter. Anand’s hands reflexively shot up, and he found himself pressing them on the ceiling that was now just grazing his head.

“Ixabi?” he asked, concern in his voice.

Ixabi glanced curiously at the walls around them as she sat down next to Qsshrr and placed a hand on her. “I’ll find out what that was all about,” she assured him. “It’s already much easier to communicate now that we’re, um, aboard.”

She closed her eyes and sat in silent commune again.

Anand suddenly felt awkward looming over his officers in such a cramped space, so he carefully lowered himself to the floor and sat down cross-legged as he waited.

It was Qsshrr who spoke first. “Captain, perhaps the first thing you should know is that Gomthree is young. Very young. It’s hard to give a precise number of years, but I estimate it to be nearly the same age as Lieutenant Ixabi.”

‘That would qualify as “very young” to a Horta,’ thought Anand, which naturally fed into another thought. “So its species is very long-lived? How was it ‘born’, so to speak?”

There was more creaking and another lurch of the roof. Anand felt his heartbeat thrumming rapidly in his ears, but curiosity kept the panic at bay.

“I believe,” Qsshrr began. The voice from her translator was coming out soft and quiet in imitation of her low, hesitant rumblings. “It is the same species as Gomtuu. I believe it was born of Gomtuu.”

“Uh–” Anand was at a loss for words as he processed the information. All he could manage to croak out was, “How?”

Ixabi shook her head. “Captain, I don’t think I could describe it if I tried. I can hardly understand what I’m seeing here myself.”

“I am somewhat perplexed as well,” admitted Qsshrr. “It’s certainly not as straightforward as laying eggs.”

“Fair enough,” said Anand. “But then how did it become separated from Gomtuu?”

Ixabi’s response was immediate. “It left,” she spat, her brow furrowed in pain. She took a deep, shuddering breath and collected herself. “I’m sorry, I think Gomthree is very upset with itself. That’s one of the stronger emotions I’m feeling.”

“It grew frustrated with Gomtuu,” said Qsshrr. “It wanted to travel faster, explore further. It wanted a crew of its own just as Gomtuu had. Genetic memory from Gomtuu led it across the galaxy to where Gomtuu had found its first new crewmember, and then…”

Qsshrr trailed off.

In the silence, in between the panic and the wonder, Anand realized he was giggling. “It ran away from home,” he said quietly. “A living spaceship, an ancient species, and it still produces rebellious youth.”

“It became panicked,” said Ixabi, looking a little more collected. “It was disoriented, overwhelmed… it found its way here and took refuge among the vacuoles. It can sense which ones pass through to open space, but that’s all. I think it hoped that one might lead home, somehow. After a time it ventured out into the surrounding sector again, and then–”

Ixabi opened her eyes. “Well, we all read the reports.”

Her statement was punctuated by another dip in the ceiling. Anand could now reach up and touch it even while seated. “I take it Gomthree’s not got much practice at making rooms, then? Should we head back to the ship?”

Ixabi hummed and closed her eyes again, and after a minute slowly shook her head.

Qsshrr answered, “Gomthree was struggling before, but a chamber of this size doesn’t require effort. It won’t get any smaller.”

“I certainly hope not,” said Anand, one hand still braced against the ceiling.

They were all silent for a moment, listening to the creature’s reverberating tune.

“Well, can you attempt to communicate our mission to Gomthree?” asked Anand. “If we can get it safely out of this warzone, there may be some way to help it find its way home, so to speak.”

“I think we can,” said Qsshrr.

Ixabi nodded and closed her eyes again.

Anand sat quietly and drummed his fingers on his knee as he waited. As the minutes passed, he worried that the analogue whalesong would lull him to sleep. If only he had some coffee or tea on hand. Gomthree surely couldn’t– come to think of it, did Gomtuu have its own replicators?

His train of thought was interrupted when he noticed Ixabi stirring.

“I do believe that Gomthree understands, Captain,” said Qsshrr. “It will follow our ship out of the Deneb sector to a safe harbor.”

“Alright,” said Anand. “Make sure it knows that we’ll have to move quickly and carefully, that we can’t stand and fight against the kind of ships that attacked it, so we’ll have to avoid them or outrun them. Unless–”

Ixabi shook her head. Anand suspected she’d read his mind just now without even realizing it, and he tried to project reassurance just in case; he hardly expected her to keep her walls up under these circumstances.

“Gomthree used up a great deal of its defensive energy in its last attack against the Jem’Hadar,” said Ixabi, “And it’s not sure how much power it can muster for the next one.”

Anand nodded as his mind went back to the dimmed lights on Gomthree’s exterior. “I thought that might be the case.”

“Captain,” said Qsshrr, “I’d like to remain onboard Gomthree with Lieutenant Ixabi, at least until we are clear of the Deneb sector.”

Anand dithered for just a second, none too keen on the idea of leaving two of his officers behind on a juvenile living ship. He sighed. “As much as it seems to have improved your ability to communicate, I suppose that would be for the best. Permission granted.”

He uncrossed his legs and shifted as if to stand up before abruptly realizing that he no longer had room to do so. Kneeling awkwardly on one knee, he tapped his combadge.

“Anand to–”

He felt tingling on his skin again like static electricity, and before he could finish his sentence he was back on the bridge.

A bark of laughter from Szarka quickly transitioned into a cheerful “Welcome back!”

He wobbled and stood up, readjusting his uniform.

Bohkat–who’d taken up position in the center chair–quickly rose and stepped behind the seat, using one hand to swivel it towards Anand as if offering it back to him.

“Still no sign of the Jem’Hadar or other Dominion vessels on the long-range sensors,” said Bohkat. “Shields have fully regenerated. We’ve been using the short-range sensors to gather what data we can on this dimension, but have been unable to find any distinguishing qualities. At least, not in the immediate area.”

“Probably for the best,” said Anand as he took his seat. “I don’t think we need any more surprises at the moment. Speaking of which– Szarka, were you able to locate one of our probes?”

The amused look on Szarka’s face quickly faded, and she shook her head as she turned back to her console. “No… based on our initial dispersion map and our displacement in the chase with Gomthree, I don’t think any of them got this far. As it stands, we have no way of knowing what’s waiting for us on the other side of that vacuole.”

“Well, there’s only one way to find out then,” said Anand, though the tone of his voice didn’t match the certainty of his words. “Do we still have a channel open to Ixabi and Qsshrr?”

“Sure do.”

“Tell them we’re heading back, and that we don’t know what we might encounter upon return to normal space. Tell them to be prepared to run.”

There was a flash of light, and when it cleared they were greeted with familiar stars and the faint, distant shimmer of…

“I’m picking up debris,” said Ensign Bolen, his voice trailing off as he continued his scans.

Zamora cackled at the helm.

“Good news for us,” muttered Anand. Then, more clearly, “But is it debris from both Jem’Hadar ships or just one?”

His question was answered by the blaring of the proximity alert.

“Just one, then,” said Anand. “Red alert. Szarka, tell Ixabi to set Gomthree on the quickest path out of these vacuoles. Zamora, once again, follow and stay close.”

A chorus of affirmatives and a pulsing red light filled the bridge. On the viewscreen, Gomthree diminished to a tiny point of receding light with Babylon following right on its tail.

They were scarcely at warp for five seconds when they dropped to impulse again to veer out of the way of a subspace vacuole.

Streaks of blue light sailing past them into the distance showed that the Jem’Hadar fighter was not far behind.

Gomthree and Babylon jumped to warp again. One, two… just three seconds this time, then cutting the warp drive and changing direction again. More streaks of blue light, and a thundering noise from the aft of the ship.

“Shields down to 40 percent,” called Bohkat.

“In one shot??” said Anand. “What did they hit us with?”

It wasn’t exactly a rhetorical question, but neither did Anand expect an answer from Bohkat beyond his muttering and shaking his head at his console.

They jumped back to warp.

Ten whole seconds at warp this time. Enough time for the Jem’Hadar to fire weapons before scrambling to make a direction change. More thundering as one of the shots landed.

Back to impulse.

“Captain, aft shields are gone.” Bohkat’s tone of voice suggested that he was trying to shame the shields into functioning again.

Anand tapped his combadge. “Engineering–”

“The shields, I know,” came the voice from engineering. It sounded deeply familiar, but Anand recalled all the engineering crewmembers he’d met since he’d arrived, and yet he couldn’t put a name or a face to the voice. “This stop-and-go is disrupting our energy distribution. The outrigger’s empty right now so I’m rerouting life support from there to the shields. Just a sec–”

The channel cut off.

“Shields back up to 50 percent,” called Bohkat.

Anand breathed a sigh of relief and made a mental note to visit engineering when this was all over to give everyone there a hug, back pat, or respectful nod.

“Ixabi to Babylon: Gomthree is worried about you. It’s moving to position itself between you and the Jem’Hadar, and I think it wants to try using its weapon again.”

“Absolutely not!” The words came out of Anand’s mouth without forethought, and only after he spoke did his rational brain swoop in to provide reasoning. “It just told us it wasn’t sure how much energy it had left. I don’t want it making itself vulnerable going in to attack the Jem’Hadar with a weapon that might not even work. We’ve got things under control. Tell Gomthree to keep going.”

There was a pause, and Anand thought the matter was settled.

“Captain,” said Ixabi, in a tone that suggested the matter was very much not settled, “Qsshrr and I just communicated that to Gomthree, and I’m quite sure it understood us, but– I think it’s going to do what it wants to do regardless. I– I recommend you take evasive actions. Ixabi out!”

“Why do they all think they know what’s best at that age?” said Anand.

He turned to tactical. “Bohkat, give us a maneuver.”

Bohkat, who had finally stopped muttering at his console, squared his shoulders and set his jaw as he looked at Zamora, and said, “Pattern Kappa Five.”

Zamora nodded, and the second she turned back to her console they were off like a dart, rocketing past Gomthree…

…and then a sharp 90-degree turn up, up, still with the Jem’Hadar right behind.

“Gomthree is powering up,” Ensign Bolen called from ops.

“Everyone, close your eyes!” called Anand. “Except Zamora!”

“And hang on,” Zamora yelled.

There was a jolt, and the deep thrumming of the inertial dampeners reverberated through everyone’s bones as the Babylon made a sharp 180.

Anand ignored his own orders and kept one eye open, and watched them shoot past the disoriented Jem’Hadar fighter and past Gomthree.

He saw Gomthree glowing again and closed both his eyes.

When the glow faded from behind his eyelids, he opened his eyes and saw the Jem’Hadar fighter cartwheeling across the viewscreen.

“I think the weapon grazed one of the fighter’s nacelles,” said Ensign Bolen, and the careening fighter confirmed his statement in that instant with a cloud of flame and debris.

Anand stood and took a few steps toward the viewscreen. “Lifesigns?”

Zamora scoffed.

“Nothing in the direction of the Jem’Hadar vessel,” said Ensign Bolen.

Anand stepped down onto the helm’s recessed deck and put a hand on the back of Zamora’s seat. “How’s your vision?”

“Seems fine,” said Zamora, rubbing at one eye. “Bit of an afterimage when I blink, but otherwise… I don’t know what all the rest of you were complaining about.”

Anand smiled. He assumed the flash had been less intense in proportion to Gomthree’s lower energy. He also assumed that Zamora had assumed the same, but who was he to stand in the way of her bravado?

“Ixabi to Babylon! Are you alright??”

“It would seem so,” said Anand, heading back to his seat. “What about you three?”

“We are unharmed,” said Qsshrr, “Though Gomthree is now quite tired. I think– Captain, I believe it is requesting that you tow it via tractor beam.”

“Oh?” Anand fell back into his seat and again recalled holding his niece’s hand as they looked both ways and crossed the street. “Yes, that’s fine. Tell Gomthree that we can carry it home.”

“Zamora? How did you get down here so quickly?”

Anand stopped staring quizzically at Zamora’s back long enough to nod at the cluster of engineers he’d just finished thanking one by one, preceded by a speech about how their tenacity and quick thinking had probably saved the lives of everyone on board. They smiled or saluted, or murmured ‘thank yous’ as they dispersed, and Anand made the short journey across Main Engineering to where Zamora was hunched over a console.

As he approached, she glanced over her shoulder at him and shrugged.

“The speed of light is pretty darn fast,” she said.

Anand slowed his gait as if weighed down by puzzlement at her statement, but before he could ask what she’d meant, the main entrance swished open and Szarka came barrelling in.

With Zamora just behind her.

“Hey Cap! I’ve got that report about Gomthree’s response to Linguacode before versus after Ixabi made contact–”

Anand looked back and forth between the two Zamoras once. Twice. There was no acknowledgement from Szarka.

Finally, the two Zamoras gave curt nods to each other, and realization struck.

He turned towards the Szarka and her closest Zamora. “You didn’t…” he said, with the intonation of someone who already knew the answer to the unspoken question.

“I did… do this report I just mentioned,” said Szarka hesitantly. Then she looked away towards the ceiling as she spoke as if distracted by a particularly fascinating bulkhead. “I did also help Zamora reprogram the ship’s native Long-Term Engineering Hologram. Extensively.”

Zamora walked up to Holo-Zamora with the air of a proud mother, and the two bumped their fists together. “Taught her everything I know. With Szarka’s help.”

Anand waved a hand helplessly in Zamora’s direction for a moment before he found his words.

“Is that even legal?”

“Weren’t you in JAG?” asked Szarka.

“As I said, I was in forensics.”

“Well.” Szarka shrugged. “It’s not technically il-legal.”Anand continued gesturing wildly at the Zamoras. “I didn’t see anything in my briefing materials about this! Did your previous captain know about this?”

Szarka pursed her lips and seemed to be genuinely pondering the question. “I’m about 99% sure that she knew, but I think she ignored it because she didn’t want to deal with the reports. Captain Banoub got really good at pretending not to notice that there was more than one Zamora on the ship.”

Finally, Anand stopped gesturing and crossed his arms. “Well, I think you should write the report.”

“Sure!” she said.

“And forward it to Bohkat.”

Szarka’s face fell, but she quickly pretended to be intensely engrossed in her PADD as she muttered to herself. “Well Bohkat likes Zamora, I’m sure he’d be delighted to have two of them.”

“And,” said Anand, as he turned towards Holo-Zamora. He reached out to shake her hand, realized he wasn’t quite close enough, and inched forward just enough to take hold of it.

“Your tenacity and quick thinking during battle was remarkable,” he said, with hardly a breath between words, “And you saved many lives today. I’ll be noting it in your… file?”

Anand dropped her hand, and after a brief nod to the three of them, he made a beeline for the door, not fully hearing or processing what Szarka was shouting after him. “You do realize that you’re still–”

Despite receiving the initial injury reports, Anand wasn’t completely sure what he’d find when he entered sickbay.

The only crewmember he saw when he walked through the doors was Dr. Dvinak casually reading at her station.

“It is reassuringly quiet in here,” he said by way of greeting.

Dvinak glanced up from her reading only briefly to offer him a smile. “We were lucky. There were only minor injuries throughout the engagement with the Jem’Hadar. And we work fast.”

He heard soft footsteps from around the corner, and Dr. Ang stepped out of his office.

“Ah, Dr. Ang!” he said, with barely concealed excitement. “Just came to check on things, but as it’s so quiet in here I’d like to take the opportunity to ask a more personal question.”

Ang lifted his eyebrows in curiosity.

“Would you be interested in practicing guitar with me on the holodeck sometime?”

Ang’s eyebrows managed to shoot up even further. “You play guitar too?”

“Ah, no. Drums, actually,” said Anand. “I was a tassa cutter when I was in school.”

He scratched his chin and looked away slightly, still afraid that Ang would shoot down his idea.

“I only recently started practicing with a full kit. I’m not a great player by any means–”

“That’s great, neither am I!” said Ang. “Just let me know when you’re free and we’ll work something out!”

“Oh, fun! Can I watch?”

“Lieutenant Ixabi!” exclaimed Anand, taking a step back in surprise as she emerged from Dr. Ang’s office.

“Don’t worry, I’m just kidding,” she said with laughter in her voice. “I know that would probably make you anxious. We have enough anxiety on this ship as it is.”

Ixabi pointed to herself and Anand chuckled lightly, unsure of how to respond to the self-deprecation. She saved him the trouble by continuing.

“Which is why I’m starting therapy!” she said with jazz hands.

Anand haltingly imitated the motion and offered a weak, “Congratulations?”

“Thank you!” Ixabi said earnestly. “Dr. Ang was just outlining a plan for a combination of talk therapy and telepathic exercises. It sounds really clever!”

Ang shook his head at the compliment.

“I just nicked it from a Betazoid psychiatric publication. I’m still subscribed to a lot of those,” he said with a wistful sigh. “Psychiatry’s a bit like the mafia, I guess. Once you join up, you can never really leave.”

“Huh. Well.” Anand turned his full attention to Ixabi. “I am genuinely relieved to find you in such good spirits. I was especially worried about you and Qsshrr during this encounter.”“Thank you, captain,” Ixabi said with a soft smile. “I appreciate that. But I’m glad I did it.”

Anand returned her smile for a brief moment before pivoting back to business. “Speaking of Qsshrr, I ought to go talk to her next. I’ll see you both later.”

He marched out of Sickbay, and as he was leaving, he again heard faint words that grew fainter as he walked away. “Does he know he still has–?”

An unexpected sense of calm washed over Anand as he stepped onto the bridge. A sound like whale song was playing over comms, and soon he recognized it as one of the sounds he heard while aboard (inside?) Gomthree.

The center chair was empty, and Bohkat was instead hovering over Qsshrr’s science station, listening to her soft words as she used several cilia to manipulate a holographic representation of the creature.

“That sound is Gomthree, isn’t it?” he asked as he approached.

“Yessir,” said Qsshrr. “Gomthree allowed us to transport over some small recording devices. I believe the sound is a form of self-soothing during its state of rest and regeneration. Hortas create similar vibrations when they’re wounded to aid in healing!”

As Anand watched Qsshrr, he realized that she was in constant motion. She was rotating slightly, back and forth like a metronome, and every pebble on her back seemed to be popping in succession by the barest millimeter. It made her almost appear to be glittering.

He’d never seen an excited Horta before.

“Lieutenant Ixabi and I will certainly have a thorough report ready by the time we get to Starbase Bravo.”

“Wonderful,” said Anand. He wondered whether she could tell that he was smiling when he said it. “I look forward to reading it as well.

As he turned towards his ready room, Bohkat stood up and approached him. “Captain, if I may.”

Anand nodded and gestured for him to follow.

They both ducked into the small room and as Anand settled into the seat behind his desk he noticed that Bohkat had a PADD in his hands that he was scrutinizing intently.

Then he glanced up at Anand quite suddenly and said, “I don’t think we won your three-legged race.”

Anand furrowed his brow a moment, then recalled their first day on the ship. “Well, we completed our mission with no grievous injuries to personnel, no severe damage to the ship, and with a new friend in tow. Literally. That seems like a win to me.”

Bohkat took a deep breath. “The mission was a success due to the experience and tenacity of this ship’s crew. We were uncoordinated.”

“We were somewhat coordinated,” Anand said without much conviction.

“We need to be more than somewhat coordinated,” said Bohkat. He glanced down at his PADD again, apparently watching a video. “Perhaps this three-legged race would be a good form of training.”

Anand felt his eyebrows shoot up. “You mean as in an actual physical race?”

Bohkat nodded curtly.

“Here’s an alternate proposal,” said Anand, leaning forward at his desk and gazing up at the unseated Bohkat. “We could sit down and have an actual conversation. Get to know each other.”

Bohkat grunted. “You mean more ‘vocational speed dating’?”

Anand shrugged hesitantly. “Something more in-depth. This would be more like a vocational regular date.”

He sat back and furrowed his brow, perplexed by his own increasingly strained metaphor.

Bohkat also looked dubious and again focused his attention on what Anand could only assume was a video montage of three-legged races.

“Perhaps we could simply wait and reflect further in a week’s time,” Bohkat said finally.

“Or in two weeks!” Anand agreed enthusiastically. “It’ll take some time to get to Starbase Bravo, and then back to the Babylon’s interrupted survey. Things should be nice and quiet for a while. No rush.”

“Yes, agreed.”

They both looked around the small office for a moment as the awkwardness continued to seep in until Bohkat broke the silence.

“I’ll have updated personnel reports ready for you by end-of-shift tomorrow.”

“Very good. Thank you,” said Anand, and Bohkat swiftly took his leave.

Anand sighed and leaned back in his chair, picking up a random PADD with disinterest before dropping it back to the table.

Finally, he activated the comms display on his desk.

“Computer, send a call to Captain Sanjana Anand on her personal channel.”

“Connecting…”

A moment later, his sister’s face graced his ready room. She was still in uniform but appeared to be in her own quarters.

“Hello Captain Didi,” he said with a broad grin.

Sanjana put her hands to her chest and beamed back at him. “Captain Little Ray of Sunshine, my dear! I’m so glad you called!”

Her smile faltered, though, and was replaced with a look of mild confusion.

“Sanjiv… why are you wearing sunglasses?”