They were the first Starfleet ship to cover these scores of light-years, fresh off the study of a unique stellar nursery, and their exo-geology department had enough mineral samples from a distant asteroid field to keep them busy for a year. But all of these achievements, opportunities, and excitements faded for Captain Karana Valance any morning she woke up with Isa Cortez next to her.

Once, she’d have rolled out of bed at once and grabbed her gym gear, headed for her morning workout confident that Cortez would be there when she got back, breakfast and coffee ready. Confident that there would be a hundred more mornings like this. Now, she merely rolled over to kiss Cortez’s bare shoulder, slip an arm around her waist, and did not rise.

Cortez being Cortez, she greeted the disturbance at 0630 hours with nothing more than a sleepy grumble. ‘It’s too early. I’m not working out with you.’

‘I can work out after my shift,’ mumbled Valance into her shoulder.

That provoked a response, Cortez rolling over groggily and squinting at her. ‘Who are you, and what have you done with Karana Valance?’

Valance gave a tight smile, gaze distant and thoughtful as she trailed her fingers down Cortez’s arm. ‘I wanted to enjoy the morning.’

‘Oh yeah,’ said Cortez in sleepy confusion. ‘That blissful morning before we both go to work. Truly the most gentle and peaceful of times.’

‘I didn’t want to hit the gym and for you to be gone when I was back.’

Cortez gave a groggy blink. In a crisis, she went from unconscious to active, the engineer launching into readiness in any emergency. Outside of that, she was never what anyone might call a morning person. ‘I don’t have anything pressing with Perrek today. The recalibrations are done. No early start. You can go. I’ll be here.’

Valance hesitated. ‘It feels like a waste.’

‘Hey, I appreciate our time together, but I also appreciate the time you spend at the gym, or rather, the benefits of it…’

Despite herself, Valance gave a low laugh. ‘I mean, we might be back in as little as a week. I’m making the most of this. Of you being aboard.’

The corners of Cortez’s eyes creased as consciousness fired her brain slowly into action. ‘Are you trying to have that future talk now? Before coffee?’

‘We’ve been very bad at having it,’ Valance pointed out.

Slowly, Cortez sat up and rubbed her eyes. ‘It’s not my fault we keep being distracted when we have dinner together.’

‘I think you’re at least partly responsible.’

At last, there was the flash of a grin from Cortez, impish and unrepentant. ‘Okay. It is my fault. It’s just… we had all the repairs to get on with if we wanted to hit max speed again, Perrek could get it done quicker if he had me and the SCE Team…’

‘It makes sense,’ Valance allowed, propping herself up on her pillows. Most quarters on Endeavour were single-room, sharing a living and sleeping area, and for most of the time since the ship’s launch she’d enjoyed that lifestyle as XO. It had given everything a more rough-and-ready veneer, a sense that she might need to leap into action at any moment. But as captain, she had her own separate bedroom, her own space.

Cortez followed her gaze. ‘Yeah, I’m gonna say it: it’s weird being in here. I feel like at any moment Rourke’s gonna come out of the bathroom and tell us to get out.’

Valance made a face. ‘Now I’m going to struggle to not think of the Commodore watching us when we have sex. ‘Thanks.’

‘Oh.’ Cortez rolled over, hand sliding under the covers. ‘I’ll have to make sure I keep your attention, then.’

Lips twisting to fight amusement, Valance caught her wrist. ‘We’re very bad at having this conversation.’

‘Alright, alright!’ Cortez flopped back with a faint laugh. ‘I’ve got drinks with Sae tonight. Tomorrow? Shall I pick a time? Slot it into your schedule.’

‘Actually,’ said Valance in a self-mockingly prim voice, ‘I would find it helpful if you booked a time slot with my yeoman.’

‘Like hell. Nesteri’ll interrogate me first, then spread gossip about.’ Cortez sat up, stretching. ‘Crap. I’m awake. I’m heading back to mine; I need some stuff before my shift.’ She leaned over to kiss Valance on the cheek, then sprang out of bed. ‘Gives you time to get to the gym.’

Valance didn’t stop her, but her eyes followed her around the room as Cortez dressed and left. They had gone from the implication they’d stay in bed for another hour or so to this abrupt departure, and she was left with the sneaking feeling that trying to pin her down for a conversation had caused that.

It was long weeks since Endeavour had catapulted herself across the length of the territory of the old Romulan Star Empire by transwarp, chasing the Borg probe that had absconded with several of their crew – including Cortez. Unable to reopen a transwarp conduit for their return journey, they were making their way back to Federation space by warp. Rather than burn their engines as hot as they could, Valance had insisted they seize this opportunity as the first Starfleet ship to ever venture to these depths of the Beta Quadrant. They’d thus spent the past nine days not hurtling at top speed on a direct course for Midgard, but jumping from point of interest to point of interest like frogs to lily pads.

But yesterday, they’d finally crossed the old border into the Empire, and while this was still an opportunity for exploration, it also necessitated more caution. Which was why, denied a chance to litigate her relationship with her ex-girlfriend, Valance worked out her frustration in her morning exercise and was still on the bridge fifteen minutes before her duty shift.

A sleepy-eyed Commander Shepherd watched her arrive and stood to surrender the command chair. ‘All quiet on the eastern front, Cap.’

Valance narrowed her eyes but said nothing until she’d joined Shepherd at the central dais, and dropped her voice. ‘You look tired, Commander.’

Shepherd shrugged. ‘Everyone else went out after their duty shift last night. I went out before.’ She raised her hands sharply at Valance’s narrowing eyes. ‘Of course I didn’t drink. But that’s perils of the night shift if you want to see people, isn’t it?’

Valance, who in her days as a senior officer had taken the gamma shift and been delighted at the excuse to not socialise, did not change her expression. ‘I know that us taking the long way home hasn’t been ideal for you…’

Shepherd, who was doubtless looking to move on to something more challenging than third-in-command of Endeavour once they returned to the Midgard Sector, shook her head. ‘You kidding? This whole expedition’s a feather in my cap. Nobody’s going to say I don’t have the exploration experience after this.’

It was hardly a five-year mission, Valance thought. But it was a chance to be first at something. ‘All quiet, you said?’

‘Some signs of marker buoys, they’re all old. We reckon this would have been a pretty wild frontier even at the height of the Empire’s power. It’s like…’ Shepherd wrinkled her nose. ‘Running in past the Talvath Cluster in the Federation. Not exactly densely populated. But at this speed, I’d expect us to see signs of life today.’ Around them as she reported, the alpha shift began to slip onto the bridge for the handover from the more junior officers who had stood watch. Night and day were mere constructions, especially for a starship venturing into one of the deepest and oldest unknowns Starfleet could claim, which was why Valance had assigned watch to Shepherd and not a young lieutenant like she might if they were in Federation territory.

Kharth was one of the first to arrive with that wave, looking not much more awake than Shepherd as she shuffled from the turbolift to join them, coffee in hand. ‘I see we’ve not been attacked by a pack of D’Deridex warbirds.’

Valance looked between them. ‘Was there a rager going on in the Safe House that I didn’t know about?’

‘No,’ said both suspiciously quickly. Shepherd broke first with a wicked grin. ‘It was in Cargo Bay 2. More space to dance.’ At Valance’s confused look, she shrugged again. ‘People needed to blow off steam, Cap.’

‘We didn’t think it was your scene,’ said Kharth, unapologetic and punctuating her exhaustion with a huge gulp of coffee.

‘It’s not,’ said Valance easily, swallowing her troubled expression. It hadn’t stemmed from social exclusion. But Cortez hadn’t mentioned it – had come to see her instead. Was this a sign she was serious about recommitting? Or an indication their time together was indeed fleeting and needed making the most of?

She was saved from this intrusive thought by a chirrup from Comms, and Ensign Kally, newly settled in at her post, turned with a finger to her earpiece. ‘Captain? We’ve intercepted some local communications traffic from a star system a light-year away.’ Her eyes had brightened with curiosity, excitement.

Valance looked expectant for a moment, then remembered she’d tried to train the ensign out of blathering every little thing she found interesting. Direct questions were the way. ‘What manner of communications?’

Kally looked even happier at being asked, which was a lot for everyone this long morning. If she’d been out pounding dance moves onto the deck of Cargo Bay 2 until 0200 hours, the superpowers of youth kept her going. ‘Hailing of ships coming and going. Requests for orbital docking solutions. It just sounds like… civilian chatter, Captain.’ There was more, and the ensign squirmed with delight when Valance gave an encouraging nod. ‘The universal translator isn’t picking up all of it. It’s a lot of Romulan tongue, but something else we don’t know! And they’re talking to each other!’

Valance looked at Kharth. ‘Old Imperial holding using Romulan language and some indigenous ones?’

Kharth shrugged. ‘Remember that I had, what, middle school education? This was the wilderness where we brought civilisation to the barbaric locals. How much did you know about, I don’t know, Deneb in middle school?’

‘I did a presentation on Garth of Izar when I was twelve,’ ventured Shepherd.

‘I’m sure that was cheerful,’ muttered Valance, and turned to Tactical. ‘Commander Logan, any sign of local defences?’

He didn’t need to check his sensors, anticipating her question. ‘Some light scouts and escorts. Nothing we can’t handle if they want to start trouble.’ He tilted his head this way and that as he thought. ‘Nothing screaming “warlords” to me.’

That was what Valance had wanted to know. She turned to Kally. ‘Send them a hail, Ensign. We’re the Federation starship Endeavour, we’re passing through, and we would be delighted to make contact.’

‘We come in peace,’ added Shepherd brightly.

‘Meanwhile, change course, Lieutenant.’ Valance nodded to Lindgren at helm. ‘Let’s head that way. Bring us to a halt a non-threatening distance from their operations until we hear more.’

Endeavour swung into action, the bridge crew descending into bustling activity as the mighty ship changed course. Valance sank into the central chair, Kharth beside her, and Shepherd lingered in the tertiary seat, clearly disinclined to retire until she knew what their next move was. Under the circumstances, Valance couldn’t blame her.

After some minutes, Kally gave a small noise of excitement, and turned to them. ‘I’ve made contact, Captain! Their communications officer had to swap to Romulan so we could talk.’

‘What did they say?’ said Valance.

‘Oh!’ Kally paused. ‘They’re going to fetch a colleague to talk to me properly.’

‘I’m glad she’s having fun,’ muttered Kharth as the communications officer focused back on her work.

The turbolift doors slid open, and in walked Beckett, looking even more sleep-deprived than the rest. ‘I hear we’ve made contact with Imperial hill-billies.’

‘Pretty much,’ said Kharth.

Valance glared at them both. ‘We’ve made contact with a former world of the Star Empire and want to learn more about a region with which Starfleet is completely unfamiliar.’ She looked at Airex with a hint of pleading. ‘Tell me you have something on long-range sensors.’

‘Some,’ he allowed. ‘I was hoping for more for a report. K-class star, nine worlds, signs of infrastructure across most of the system. Fourth planet is M-class, that’s got the bulk of infrastructure and traffic. I’m estimating a population of only about a billion scattered across the system. Definite signs of Star Empire technology in ships, orbital platforms, all that. Looks comparable to any remote border world. Still no signs of serious military infrastructure.’

‘Right!’ Kally said brightly, turning back to them. ‘We’ve made contact. The system’s name is Val’Tara, and they absolutely don’t want us to bring Endeavour in.’

Valance stared as this rejection was delivered with such delight. ‘Can you assure them our intentions are peaceful?’

‘I did! No warships are permitted within the bounds of the star system. This is a planet of trade.’

‘It must be a regional hub,’ mused Kharth. ‘Self-defence through being too damned economically important to too many different factions. We saw it all the time on the Neutral Zone.’

Kally nodded. ‘They’ll let us send in envoys by shuttle, though. They’re very eager to meet us.’

Valance frowned. ‘You should lead with that next time, Ensign. They’ll receive us?’

As Kally nodded again, Airex leaned across the science console so quickly Valance thought he might strain something. ‘This is an unprecedented opportunity to understand what’s taken place in this region for the last fifteen years -’

‘You’re on the team, Commander, don’t worry.’ Valance lifted a hand, then turned to Kharth. ‘You’re with me, too, Commander.’

Airex, Kharth, and Shepherd all made the exact same face at the exact same time. ‘With you?’ echoed Kharth. ‘You’re -’

‘Not about to hear it,’ said Valance, standing and straightening her uniform. ‘Commander Shepherd will assume command during our absence. Commander Logan, you’re staying with her. If they have hostile intentions, bringing you with us won’t help, but keeping you here will.’ At their continued flat looks, she shrugged. ‘It would be ridiculous for me to not send Commander Kharth to make contact with a Romulan frontier world. But this is, for all intents and purposes, a first-contact mission. I’m going.’ She didn’t voice her second thought – that just because the locals spoke the Romulan language didn’t mean they would receive a Romulan Starfleet officer well. Kharth’s knowledge could be invaluable, but her presence might also be inflammatory.

Beckett drummed his fingers on the railing. ‘I’d like to go, too, Captain. This is the sort of information Starfleet Intelligence will want their own report on, and you don’t want me badgering you all with a list of information to dig out for me.’

Valance resisted the urge to roll her eyes. ‘Granted, Lieutenant.’

‘I also recommend,’ he pressed, ‘we bring Doctor Winters. If this is a new vassal species of the Star Empire, you have two anthropologists, but you could do worse than an expert in xeno-medicine.’

‘That’s good thinking,’ Valance allowed, surprised at the suggestion. She looked to the fore. ‘Lieutenant Lindgren, you’re up. We’ll take the Excalibur.’

Lindgren hopped to her feet eagerly. ‘Yes, Captain!’

‘Ensign Kally.’ Valance braced herself as she turned to the hopeful gaze of the communications officer. ‘I’d like you to stay here.’ She raised a hand at the rising disappointment. ‘We have Lieutenant Lindgren to help us with any face-to-face linguistic challenges. I want you to stay here, monitor comms, and try to get our universal translator tackling these new languages.’ As she watched, Kally’s gaze turned from disappointment to fresh excitement. It was not all the young ensign would have wanted, but it was still a whole new challenge.

‘You got it, Captain!’

Lindgren grinned at Kally. ‘Go right ahead and make me redundant as anything more than a bus driver.’

Valance turned to Shepherd. ‘As I say, you have command while we’re gone, Commander. So I need you to do something for me.’

Shepherd straightened. ‘Cap?’

‘Let Commander Logan sit in the centre chair for a bit.’ Valance’s gaze turned pointed. ‘If this goes sideways, we’ve probably got a few hours before it goes wrong. I want you, Shep, to get some sleep.’

The mansion of the former Imperial governor was centuries old, looming over the sandy capital city of Val’Tara as a shining beacon, old Romulan dominance etched into ice-white granite. From the upper balcony, the former ruler could stand and behold his colonial holdings, master of all he surveyed, Romulus’s envoy in this chaos-struck frontier. Now, Valance stood with the representatives of the Val’Tara Commune, a mixture of Romulans and species indigenous to this and other nearby worlds Starfleet had never met before, and sipped a cool, thick, sickly sweet drink made of some local plant as they explained their new way of life.

‘After the supernova, we were part of the Star Empire in name only,’ explained Kevris, the last-but-one Imperial Governor of Val’Tara. While the Romulan man held the bearing of one born and raised in the heart of power, he now wore simple, hard-wearing clothes, and had so far let others do the talking until it was his turn to explain. ‘Rator gave us no support. No protection. Only mandates and demands for resources. It was impossible to meet their demands, so things around here had to change. I had to work with the Taren to make this planet prosperous, or put them under the boot. And I’d spent too many decades of my life out here to stamp Val’Tara to death for the sake of Rator.’

There was a measured look in the eye of G’sset, the Taren native of Val’Tara who spoke for her species in the Commune, as she nodded. ‘Kevris and I worked together for a decade. Tarens and Romulans worked together,’ she elaborated in slightly halting Romulan. Starfleet’s universal translator had not yet caught up on the Taren tongue. ‘Power changed. Not one above the other. Equals.’

‘By necessity,’ Kevris accepted. ‘But survival is quite the motivator. Old power structures were less relevant when the empire’s grasp barely reached out here.’

Kharth had looked deeply suspicious throughout the tale of imperial dominance turned to natural equality the moment the seat of power was too distant for its reach to be felt. ‘You said you weren’t the last governor, Kevris.’

‘No. Four years ago, Rator learnt of the changes here. They sent someone to succeed me. She ruled with an iron fist, or tried to, as if nothing had changed, as if Romulus had never been destroyed. No matter how bad it was for the people. No matter how ineffective it was for anyone.’ Kevris shrugged. ‘I stayed, and I tried to advocate on behalf of the Tarens, and on behalf of Romulans who had become naturalised here.’

‘Then Rator fell last year,’ said G’sset, and her beady eyes narrowed. ‘We removed the governor.’ The Taren species were humanoid, with long, horse-like faces and flat noses. They put Valance in the mind of peaceful herbivores, but when implication lingered of what must have been a bloody uprising to remove the last governor of Val’Tara, there was little peaceful in G’sset’s gaze.

‘Since then,’ said Kevris, ‘we work together. Representatives chosen by the people, running Val’Tara for all. Not everywhere on this frontier had anything like as smooth a transition to independence, but we’ve made ourselves a hub of commerce and diplomacy.’

‘Many worlds fall to warlords,’ said G’sset. ‘They fight. They expand territory. We are place they can all come. Buy. Sell. Talk. You lucky you find us first.’

‘We gave,’ said Valance carefully, ‘any warships on our long-range sensors a wide berth.’ They were here to explore. That did not mean inviting trouble from any warlord who sought to rule the furthest reaches of the old empire. ‘I’m grateful you’ve received us.’

‘I apologise for keeping your vessel so far away,’ said Kevris. ‘But it is our policy.’ He glanced back into the looming mansion. ‘If your people can come to a good price for our records, this meeting is still a boon for both of us.’

‘I’ve no doubt that Commander Airex and Lieutenant Lindgren can assess your data and come up with a deal that benefits everyone.’ At once, imperially-educated Kevris had realised how ignorant Starfleet was of these reaches of the galaxy. Endeavour carried goods that could make life a lot easier for Val’Tara, such as deuterium reserves to keep the local power grid operating at a higher level of efficiency. Valance smarted a little at the idea that he was offering only simple star charts and government records in return, but even these were a scientific gold mine for shedding light on this unknown expanse. It could also highlight a safer route home for them.

‘I agree,’ said Kharth, padding across the balcony to peer down at the city below. ‘But are you sure Beckett and Winters are safe hitting the streets?’

G’sset gave a low hiss like a cat, and only the lack of reaction from Kevris stopped Valance from tensing. On this new alien, the sound could have been a laugh or a light scoff, but it did not, from the Romulan’s reaction, appear to be a mark of offence. ‘This is the new Val’Tara, Commander Kharth,’ said the Taren representative. ‘All are welcome if they behave.’

‘That,’ said Kharth dryly, ‘is what I’m afraid of.’

‘Do we really need to do this sort of mingling to understand the locals?’ said Ed Winters with a tone of light alarm as he followed Beckett through the winding market road in the heart of the Val’Taren capital.

‘We could sit around like background ornaments as Airex negotiates for records we can read later or Valance does diplomacy,’ Beckett pointed out, ducking under a sign. Their boots scraped over ancient cobbles as they wound between sandstone buildings in soft browns and clays, while market stall after market stall shone with brightly-coloured displays. Whether they were Taren locals pushing rustic-looking produce on rickety wooden tables or off-world visitors behind metal tables beamed down from freighters, on the dusty world of Val’Tara, they seemed to value colour. Everything was splashed with a bright accent or had been painted or dyed or stained with a dozen hues, regardless of matching or clashing. Beckett had been to a hundred sandy worlds with settlements that brought colour to the myriad hues of brown that dominated the landscape, and none had been as haphazardly decorated as this.

‘And instead, be the first people to get lost in this new world?’ Winters pressed, moving to catch up as the road widened. It was harder for them to speak if they were forced apart by crowds or the size of the street, dozens of different voices racing over each other in a cacophony, with rambling tongues their universal translator still did not recognise.

‘And find new things!’ Beckett stopped and slung an arm around Winters’s shoulder. ‘Look at this. What does it tell you at a glance?’

The doctor hesitated. ‘I’d assumed at first that the Tarens have a very different sense of aesthetics to humans, but I’m starting to suspect they see a wider range of colours on the electromagnetic spectrum. That there’s more going on to this than we think.’

‘See, this is why you’re here!’ Beckett smacked him enthusiastically on the chest before pressing forward. ‘I was wondering if colours had more cultural meaning, and maybe they do! But perhaps it’s not that we don’t understand the cultural meaning of orange to the Taren, it’s that we don’t understand the cultural meaning of… blorble.’

‘Blorble?’

‘It’s my working title for a hypothetical colour I can’t perceive and can’t describe.’ Beckett paused at one of the stalls, examining an elaborate wooden carving. ‘Do you think that’s pretty?’

Winters blinked. ‘Do you mean pretty or do you mean has cultural value?’

‘I mean “aesthetically pleasing,” smart-arse,’ Beckett retorted. The Taren woman whose stall it was watched them, beady eyes blinking slowly in apparent bemusement at these two off-worlders babbling at each other in an unknown language but made no move to intercede.

‘I suppose. The swirls are nice?’ Winters shrugged, clearly unsure what he was being asked to say. Then he frowned. ‘Have you upset Lieutenant Thawn?’

‘When haven’t I upset Lieutenant Thawn,’ Beckett muttered, and straightened. For a moment, he stared into the middle distance. ‘No, it’s not me. But she’s finalising the divorce.’

‘Isn’t that a good thing? She left Commander Rhade months ago. I thought this would be a relief.’

‘It is for me. But she’s… I don’t know. It’s a big deal. She’s kind of down about it. I wanted to cheer her up.’ Beckett sighed, then shook his head. ‘It’s a nice trinket. But I probably shouldn’t gamble on something when I’ve no clue of its cultural significance.’

‘On the one hand, it would be a unique gift from a hitherto unknown culture, which no other Starfleet officer will have a chance to acquire for a long, long time,’ said Winters. ‘On the other, we have no currency to buy anything down here.’

Beckett snapped his fingers, gave the trader a polite nod, and turned away. ‘Good point.’ As they continued sauntering down the road, he gave a deeper sigh. ‘Sorry, Ed. I know we should be focusing.’

Winters hesitated. He had not known either Beckett or Thawn for very long, meeting them only earlier that year when they had all been briefly assigned to the USS Pathfinder. But for all of their roiling arguing, conflict, coming apart and then together, even the young doctor did not think the situation was very complex. He and Beckett had spent enough time together that he knew when he could or couldn’t speak his mind, but this new dynamic since the couple had returned from their excursion into the Synnef Nebula with the Khalagu people was unmarked territory for anyone, let alone a would-be do-gooder trying to offer advice. And Winters was not terribly sure about romantic advice at the best of times.

He drew an uncertain breath. ‘Yes. But it’s on your mind. Have you tried, uh, talking to her about it?’

‘No,’ Beckett grumbled, reminding Winters that even a novice at giving romantic advice was still a fair match in this scenario. ‘She gets all… closed down about it. Says it’s done, but she’s still sad.’ He waved a dismissive hand. ‘Anyway, I got us – you and me – some holodeck time in a couple days. Finally, our slot rolled around.’ On this deep space expedition, social holodeck time had been like gold dust for the crew. ‘What were you thinking?’

Now Winters’s hesitation was more self-conscious. ‘I know we did those late-twenty-first century music gigs. But I was thinking something more interactive.’

Beckett brightened. ‘Awesome, yeah. Do you sail? I’ve got a boat-racing program. Or an old car-racing program. Or a shuttle-racing…’

‘I wasn’t thinking sports. I was thinking holonovel.’ Winters took a slow, cautious breath at Beckett’s curious look. Normally, he took a little longer gauging his holodeck friends’ tastes before venturing this far. But time was of the essence on this expedition. ‘Have you ever played a Dragon Adventure holonovel?’

For a moment, Beckett’s expression was level. Then his eyes lit up. ‘Do I get a sword?’

‘If, uh, you want a sword -’

‘Oh, hell, yes.’ Beckett went to give him a high five, though Winters misread it. In the end, they stood in the middle of an alien street no Starfleet officer had ever visited before, smacking each other gently on the arm as they discussed a fantasy adventure holodeck program. It was not, Winters thought, his finest moment. ‘I always wanted to play one of those.’

Winters sighed with deep relief at the confirmation that Nate Beckett – cocky, self-assured, and a little bit ridiculous – was as much of a loser as him deep down. ‘There’s a whole new world one of the best writers in the business has released chapters for…’ But his voice trailed off as he realised Beckett’s attention had shifted, and he winced. ‘I mean, if you want to -’

‘Ed.’ Beckett walked straight past him and stalked to one of the market stalls. This one was set up on a metal table, with a Romulan behind it, though he was deep in conversation with another potential customer and paid the Starfleet officers approaching no mind. ‘Is that what I think it is?’

Wondering if there was another ill-advised gift on the horizon, Winters approached cautiously, only for his stomach to turn to knots as he saw what Beckett had found. As long as his forearm, the metal pylon device looked like it had been disconnected from something, but it was neither the shape nor its technological features that caught their attention. His eye fell instead on the plaque on the base, and the etching – lettering – upon it.

‘That’s…’ Winters swallowed. ‘That’s surely not possible.’

‘It’s absolutely possible,’ said Beckett in a hushed voice. ‘And that is absolutely, definitely, Vorkasi tech.’

‘This far out?’

‘It’s a super-advanced civilisation that managed to meld telepathy and technology and died out tens of thousands of years ago,’ Beckett continued in that same low voice. ‘But you make a damned good point. Who knew they could be found here? On the other side of the Star Empire?’

Winters took a moment to consider the implications, having been nowhere near as involved in the Pathfinder’s research into that long-dead civilisation. Then something else occurred, and he made a face. ‘Oh, no,’ he sighed. ‘Does that mean…’

‘Yep,’ said Beckett, clicking his tongue. ‘Now we gotta haggle.’

‘What,’ said Kharth, arms folded across her chest, ‘are the Vorkasi?’

Before Valance could answer, Beckett had sprung to his feet and advanced to the display on the wall of her ready room, fairly buzzing with excitement. ‘A civilisation who lived in the territory of the former Romulan Star Empire approximately fifteen thousand years ago. We don’t know much about them, but we found ruins of one of their outposts on the pre-warp planet Drapice earlier this year.’

‘We?’ pressed Kharth. On Beckett’s report, Valance had gathered him and Thawn for their experience from Pathfinder, then invited Kharth and Airex.

‘The Pathfinder, when we served aboard under Captain Valance.’ Beckett waved a hand like that was insignificant. ‘The mission itself doesn’t really matter. What matters is there was an underground bunker the Vorkasi had built which housed their technology, which they’d built and designed to try to passively influence the indigenous culture of Drapice as it developed. Steer them on a course to make them easier to conquer or assimilate – we’re not sure.’

‘It’s telepathic technology,’ butted in Thawn, with a hint of long-suffering as Beckett buried the lede. ‘The Vorkasi must have been powerful telepaths, but their technology is capable of harnessing psychic energy and influencing minds. What we found on Drapice was absorbing the thoughts and knowledge of an entire planet, and could directly control the minds of individuals.’

‘We didn’t know they reached this far out!’ Beckett gushed, opening his hands to the crew as if flourishing for a grand reveal. ‘We’re a hundred light-years from Drapice, and haven’t found a confirmed site of Vorkasi civilisation since. I know it’s not that crazy, because they’re clearly more advanced than us or the Romulans and the Romulans got this far, but this is amazing!’

Airex sucked his teeth. ‘Remember that we are in old Romulan territory, Lieutenant. Starfleet cannot have been the first to discover remnants of the Vorkasi; it’s likely the Star Empire knew about them, too, if only a little. You picked up this device in a market on a border world; who’s to say it hadn’t been transported out here over the years?’

‘The trader – once we established contact – said she’d picked it up from a salvager. Not a trader.’ Beckett rounded on Valance, gaze entreating. ‘Captain, you said this journey is an opportunity to really go where we’ve never been before. We can’t pass on a chance to learn more about the Vorkasi. Not when there’s a risk their technology could be influencing cultures right on our front door in Midgard!’

Valance raised a hand to calm him down. ‘What do you think this device is?’ Beckett had bought it then brought it aboard to be kept in a safe storage containment. After their encounters with blood dilithium, Endeavour was no stranger to protecting against potentially psychically dangerous artifacts aboard.

He hesitated. ‘Early to say. I’d want to go over it more with the help of Commander Airex and R- Lieutenant Thawn.’

‘So nice to know,’ mumbled Airex, ‘that you want my help in my science labs.’

Beckett’s cheeks flushed. ‘Sorry, sir. I mean I’d like to help – I do know more about the Vorkasi than anyone aboard.’ He turned back to Valance. ‘All I have is a tricorder scan, but there are components similar to what we found at the control site for the Crown on Drapice. I think that out there somewhere is a major psychic storage bank, and this device plays some part in that.’

Valance exhaled slowly. ‘Are we just about to find another poor pre-warp civilisation whose culture is being absorbed and recorded by the Vorkasi for later manipulation?’

‘If we are,’ said Beckett staunchly, ‘isn’t it our duty to free them from possible external influence?’ At her hesitation, he went for the kill. ‘I have a name and ship ID for the scavenger. They left Val’Tara only a day ago, and we already got sensor readings of their warp signature from the traffic buoy in orbit. We have a heading.’

Valance gave Thawn a gently accusatory look. ‘You picked up the trail, Lieutenant?’

Thawn squirmed as she always did at the possibility a superior officer was displeased with her. ‘Elsa helped.’

Kharth rolled her eyes. ‘Great loyalty there, Lieutenant.’

Valance rubbed her temples. ‘You really wanted to leave me with no possible objections before you put this mission to me, hm, Lieutenant?’ she said to Beckett.

He gave his sparkling, self-effacing grin. ‘It’s the truly professional move a hair’s breadth away from “better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.”’

There was a pause as the captain thought, planting her hands on her desk. Then she sighed. ‘Commander Kharth, report to the bridge and get us underway following this warp trail. If I don’t have a substantial report in six hours, I’m pulling the plug.’ Kharth paused, looking clearly dubious, and Valance swallowed the flash of irritation at this hesitation. Just because she wasn’t voicing her disagreement didn’t stop this from being discontent from her XO in front of other officers. ‘I’ve seen what Vorkasi technology can do. It almost completely derailed Drapician society before my eyes. We’ll look into this.’

‘And at the least,’ offered Airex, ‘we can maybe find a trader who knows more about the spinward-trailing flow of goods in the old Empire. Or remains.’

‘Exactly. This is what missions of exploration are like.’ Valance straightened. ‘We take leads. Sometimes nothing comes of it. Airex, Beckett, Thawn – I want you finding out more about this device.’

‘Couldn’t stop me if you wanted to, Captain!’ Beckett gushed.

Valance’s eyes fell on Airex. ‘This is possibly telepathic technology. The Crown on Drapice was incredibly dangerous. Don’t be complacent.’

‘It’s inert,’ Thawn ventured, quiet since her earlier chiding. ‘I’ve been paying attention to it the second Nate – Lieutenant Beckett – brought it up. If it so much as whispers, I’ll raise the alarm.’

Thawn had been instrumental on Drapice in finding and understanding the technology of the Vorkasi. Her attentive commitment did ease the tension in Valance’s gut, the fear they had – not for the first time – welcomed aboard a danger. ‘Thank you, Lieutenant.’

‘This isn’t the Crown,’ Beckett insisted. ‘I think this device is more like the psychic equivalent of the capacitors in our volatile memory banks.’

To Valance’s relief, Thawn gave him one of her usual curt, dismissive looks. ‘You’re an expert in how telepathy works now, let alone telepathic technology none of us understand?’

‘We’ll assess,’ said Airex, raising his voice to cut over the burgeoning bicker. Valance was dimly reassured that the couple had not stopped biting each other’s heads off just because they were now involved. ‘And your assistance, Lieutenant Beckett, is welcome.’

The trio left, and only then did Valance realise Kharth had not headed for the bridge. She straightened with a sound of frustration. ‘This isn’t a wild goose chase -’

‘That wasn’t my apprehension.’ Kharth looked at least a little abashed for her public hesitation. ‘We’re leaving Val’Tara? This is the first world of Romulans on the trailing frontier we’ve found, that Starfleet has found. They’re a whole hub for the local region.’

Valance tilted her head. ‘We have the records we’ve purchased. And we might come back.’

‘We won’t.’

Kharth had always maintained an appearance of detachment from Romulan governments, insistent she owed none of them her loyalty or regard. So many of them had left her to rot and ruin on Teros, after all. Valance realised she had begun to interpret that as Kharth’s disinterest in Romulan space as a whole. ‘They don’t need us,’ she said carefully. ‘This is a peaceful region. I wouldn’t spend more than a day here anyway. But the Vorkasi…’

‘Could be bending the brains of people out here. I get it.’ Kharth shrugged. ‘Just wanted to explain. That was why I paused. I think we’re leaving prematurely. It bugs me.’

How about you show this engagement and outreach with the Romulan people in Midgard, Commander? But Valance knew she’d be snapped at for saying that, and could invite accusations of hypocrisy about her lack of engagement with the Klingon Empire’s involvement to boot. Engaging in Midgard meant engaging with people you then had to live with. Out here, Kharth would never have to see them again.

Valance swallowed. ‘Your bugging is noted, Commander. There’ll be more opportunities.’

‘That’s true.’ Kharth shrugged. ‘It’s not huge. That was my reaction. I suppose this operation. I’ll get us underway.’

Valance drummed her fingers on the desk as she left. She wasn’t lying; they wouldn’t have spent much longer at Val’Tara, without anything new coming to light. But this investigation of the Vorkasi could add days to their return journey. In so many ways, they were not in a rush; they were, all of them, Starfleet officers accustomed to at least the idea of being away for months at a time. But some of them were supposed to be aboard only temporarily, had lives and jobs to return to, and here she was, delaying that return for what was at this point little more than intellectual curiosity.

And even Valance was aware that every time she as captain indulged her intellectual curiosity, it delayed the moment Isa Cortez had to disembark.

‘This is pretty cool.’ Beckett rolled up his sleeves as Airex lowered the forcefield around the Vorkasi component, sat behind protective shields in Endeavour’s main archeology lab. ‘We moved on pretty fast from Drapice with Pathfinder; other people got to poke the details. So seeing what actual components we’re dealing with…’

‘All in good time,’ Airex chided gently. ‘After blood dilithium, we’ll be progressing very carefully indeed with our analysis of telepathic technology. Lessons were learnt, and the stakes are considerably lower right now.’

‘We don’t know what the stakes are,’ Beckett pointed out. ‘And this is why Lieutenant Thawn is here. To check if it starts frying our brain.’

Thawn, stood at a control bank studying the readings, looked like she hadn’t wanted to be brought into this. ‘…Commander Airex is right,’ she said after a moment. ‘Blood dilithium was bad enough. The Vorkasi developed technology specifically to bend entire civilisations to their will. We should be careful.’

Beckett gave her a look of betrayal but, unprepared to make a personal accusation in front of Airex, his only eventual protest was, ‘Blood dilithium was ghosts.’

Airex let out a slow sigh. ‘I think I preferred it when you two fought directly,’ he mused, visibly fighting a smile. ‘But we are going to get to the bottom of this. We’ll just be scanning everything before we even touch it.’

‘I touched it,’ grumbled Beckett.

‘You were abducted by Devore for touching too many things,’ Thawn countered sharply.

‘That’s not why they abducted me!’

‘Ah,’ sighed Airex. ‘Much better.’ He leaned over the controls to continue his calibrations of the full-spectrum analysis of the component, adjusting to detect any indication of the manipulation of psychic energy. Beckett hoped. This was still a developing field. His brow furrowed as he worked. ‘Lieutenant Beckett, you seem like you’re settling into your position in Intelligence?’

Beckett hesitated. This was either small talk or a trap. ‘I still have time to work on something like this in Science. There’s only so much to do in StratOps right now…’

‘I think there’s plenty for you to do in StratOps considering the data bundle we picked up from Val’Tara,’ mused Airex. ‘But that wasn’t my point. Between blood dilithium, your experiences with the Vorkasi at Drapice, and now this, I think we have quite a lot of data between the two of us on psychic energy. We should consider publication.’

Beckett’s eyes lit up. ‘I have time for that, too. Especially if we’ve got a few more weeks heading back.’

‘I hoped so. It keeps the door open for you for any eventual return to a science department, which is surely where your future will lie for starship life. Assuming that’s what you want.’

‘I… maybe eventually? I’m happy where I am right now.’

Airex gave him a cautious look, then turned to Thawn. ‘Your technical expertise would be particularly welcome as well, Lieutenant.’

She looked more guarded, perhaps distracted by Beckett’s prevarication. ‘That’s kind of you, sir. I’d be very interested.’

‘Good.’ Airex finished the calibration with a flourish. ‘I’ve been neglectful of the upward career trajectory of some of our more promising minds aboard. I think that’s something to rectify, and a mission as promising as this is a grand opportunity.’

After everything that had happened, Beckett suspected it would be a long time, if ever, before he could return to a blue uniform. Still, he forced a nod like he was trying to swallow enthusiasm, not summon it. ‘Most ships don’t really cater to my anthropological expertise very much,’ he said at Airex’s confused look. ‘So Intel lets me get stuck in with people and problems. It’s not that I don’t want to go back to science.’

Airex nodded and looked to Thawn. ‘And you, Lieutenant? You seem at the cusp of choosing your path.’

‘My… path?’

‘Of course. Operations stands at a fork in the road: command, or a scientific speciality? You’re one of the most adept hands at starship systems management, and could make the transition easily to engineering or even the science department of a ship with a more technologically-focused mission. Not that you wouldn’t make an excellent command officer some day.’ Airex waved a hand as if painting his way through Thawn’s future was as simple as a matter of brush strokes, but seemed to at last realise he might have been over-stepping bounds and smiled apologetically. ‘Not meaning to pry. Simply that I’m here, Lieutenants, and I want to do a better job of supporting your careers than I have.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Thawn primly, because she’d never voice criticism of a superior officer overreaching.

Visibly a little abashed, Airex clapped his hands together. ‘That scan has begun. I’ll let you two supervise it for a bit, shall I? And check in Kally about that translation work, perhaps. Let me know if anything interesting comes up.’

The moment the doors had slid shut behind him, Thawn turned and burst, ‘What was that about? Does he think I’m not advancing enough?’

Beckett blinked. ‘Uhh…’

‘I’ve been a lieutenant for only a little over eighteen months, but I’m hitting all expected benchmarks for development and progression! Or is there something I’m missing?’

Beckett had worried she would take her inclusion as an afterthought. This was much worse. ‘I don’t think he was judging you,’ he said after a beat, then admitted, ‘I thought he was judging me.’

‘You? He can’t judge you; he went to work in intelligence for a few years, and anyway, so long as he’s Chief Science Officer, you can’t be expected to progress.’

‘I did, though. I was Chief Science on the Pathfinder.’

‘Yes, but you had Dashell there.’

She was stressed, he told himself. Stressed and not entirely wrong; Valance would have never made him a department head without someone looking over his shoulder. But times had changed in just those few short months. ‘I could get a science chief job if I wanted it. Vhalis is Chief on the Ranger and he’s about twelve.’

‘Vhalis has a masters’ degree.’

‘Then fuck me, I guess!’ The outburst echoed through the lab, breaking over the gentle chirrup of the scanning systems updating with every process completed, but it was enough to startle Thawn into silence. Beckett winced. ‘Okay. That was a bit much. I know you’ve been stressed lately.’

Her expression flickered, a mixture of guilt and a scrabble to restore a mask. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to demean you there – but I’m fine –’

‘You can, actually, talk to me about the divorce,’ he ventured. ‘It’s okay for you to have complicated feelings about it and talk to me. I won’t explode.’

She twisted her fingers together, the most transparent sign of nerves. ‘I don’t…’ She faltered, hesitated, then tried again. ‘I don’t want you to think I regret leaving. But it’s a lot. And I still haven’t talked to my family with… with being in the Synnef Nebula, then the Borg hunt, then this. I didn’t actually expect Adamant to start the paperwork.’

But then, he’s the one who was left behind while you’ve been running away from your life for two months. ‘I tell my father I hate him at least once a month,’ Beckett said carefully, ‘and it still hurts every time I snub him. I get things being difficult with family. And you like your family.’

She gave a short, humourless laugh. ‘Like isn’t really very important. But I’m fine, I really am. I’m sorry for taking things out on you.’

‘But there’s nobody else you feel comfortable yelling at?’ He offered a lopsided smile to take a sting out of the comment and crossed the lab, not towards her but to one of the other containment lockers. ‘Hey, I’m okay being a punching bag. I just need to know that this is a sparring match, right?’ Before she could reply, he’d opened the locker and reached inside. ‘Anyway, the Vorkasi mind-melting rod wasn’t the only thing I bought from Val’Tara.’

Her eyebrows shot up. ‘What did you do?’

He turned, brandishing the carved wooden figurine with a beam. ‘I got you a gift! I made sure it was properly scanned and checked and, uh, triple-checked because, you know, weird alien planet and they just had the Vorkasi mind-melting rod lying around, but I’m pretty sure it’s just a sculpture.’ He offered it, realising he was brandishing this like a cat who’d brought in something dead for their owner.

‘What… is it?’ She approached, beady-eyed in caution.

‘I dunno. Didn’t speak the lingo. But it’s pretty, right?’

‘It could be anything! Something of massive religious significance, or a portent of death!’

‘Maybe. But it was sitting on a market knick-knack stall.’ His heart sunk. ‘You don’t like it?’

‘No, it’s not that, it’s just…’ Abashed, Thawn stepped forward and reached out gingerly for the small wooden sculpture. ‘You went on a first contact mission, and you stopped to buy me a gift?’

Behind the accusation was a definite bashfulness. ‘What,’ he said, grin broadening. ‘Nobody did that before?’ He cocked his head. ‘Nobody brought you a gift just to flirt with you?’

‘Oh,’ said Thawn in a light voice. ‘Is that what you’re doing?’

‘I’m trying to cheer you up. Because I know you’re in a bit of a… I don’t know. Liminal space right now. Left your life but haven’t finished leaving it. Jumped off the cliff but haven’t landed yet. You can’t make it a clean break.’

She bit her lip, eyes on the sculpture as she turned it over in her hands. ‘Because I’m so good at being that decisive. You’d think I’d love getting to turn my life upside-down by degrees.’

‘You’re bad at making the decision. You’re not bad at acting on it when it’s done. We’ll be back in a few weeks, and then you can put this all to bed.’

‘I can’t wait,’ Thawn said wryly, shoulders dropping.

‘Hey.’ He tilted his head, caught her eye, then offered a smaller smile. ‘Watch this. Computer, light setting 3.’

The lab sank into a dim but not complete darkness, the lights themselves giving some illumination, as well as the shining controls of the panels. But the most notable light came from the curved sculpture, along whose surface was a spiralling line of etchings that glowed in a way they had not under the normal light.

Thawn straightened. ‘What…’

‘There are two layers of wood to the sculpture. Underneath the first is a hardwood, which glows when exposed to specific wavelengths of the ultraviolet spectrum,’ Beckett explained softly. ‘Specifically, we’re within the 320-400 nm region. The surface is carved with – we think it’s lettering, we’re hoping the universal translator will crack it – so it glows from the second layer under this.’

She lifted it up, eyes brighter than ever before in the reflection of the carving. ‘This is… wow…there must be compounds in the wood which release photons when energised by the UV light…’

He couldn’t help but grin more as her captivation proved perhaps more scientific than aesthetic. ‘I didn’t know that when I bought it. But I’ll take credit.’

‘Nate… thank you.’ When she turned to him again, he thought she was going to kiss him. Perhaps she would have if they weren’t in a science lab, technically on duty, technically charged by Airex to oversee the scanning of an ancient, dangerous artifact. And perhaps he was just imagining that sense of her brushing against him in his mind, because he still didn’t know how telepathy really worked, and even normal intimacy could conjure that sense of connection.

But even though she pulled away a moment later, brushing her hair behind an ear, going to restore the lighting and return to work, there were enough perhapses to make the moment as potent as if she had. And enough distance for them to slip back to duty in the blink of an eye, away from the gift, away from her need to emotionally spar, away from her divorce.

It was for the best, Beckett thought, and not just because he’d loosened the tension in her shoulders, brought the smile back – in as much as Rosara Thawn smiled. It was for the best, because someday, she was going to have to finish running away from her family, her former fiancé, her life, and face them, and he didn’t want that day to come any soon.

After all, it was when he’d find out if the dream that had been these few months could last into everyday living, or if they’d be nothing more than a brief gleam in a dark, private moment, vanishing the second the harsh light of reality came back.

It began like every dream: in the middle, like it was the most ordinary thing in the world. The most ordinary thing to be running through the woods, feeling like his heart was pounding out of his chest and every breath burnt in his lungs. Running through the woods like he was being chased. Or was he running towards something?

Branches whipping at his face, undergrowth tangling underfoot, he ran and ran until the trees began to thin before him. In an instant he was out of the woods, stood at the top of a cliff, a precipice, with the world burning before him. The sky roiled with fire, raining down with the tell-tale flares of torpedoes and energy weapons fired from orbit. Below him sprawled a city, his home and yet not – when had he ever named any specific place ‘home,’ much less a city? – helpless before the onslaught.

Helpless, yet not passive. Helpless, yet even from here he could see people weren’t cowering, hiding, running. Instead they turned on each other, bursting into the streets to bear down with fists and weapons, not on their attackers but themselves. As everything burnt, all they knew was hate.

Footsteps came thudding up behind him, and though he turned, tried to dart away, it was too late. Heavy hands grabbed him, pushed him, and then he was falling, falling. The ground rose up to swallow him, and though he flailed, the invisible grasp on him only tightened. Every muscle in his body coiled at the impending impact, only for it to bring not a halt, but darkness. Darkness, and chains lashing around him, choking and restraining and trapping him, and writhe as he tried, he could not escape. And somewhere beyond the darkness, everything burned.

Follow me. Find me. Free me.

Nate Beckett woke choking, clawing at his chest, at his throat. When he felt warm hands at his back, the sense of restraint sank back in, and he flailed away, got caught up in the sheets, and tumbled out of bed to hit the deck.

The impact, at least, jolted him back to reality, and for a moment he sat there, chest heaving, feeling himself, alive, free, and sore.

A moment later, a shadow moved above him, and Thawn’s tentative voice reached him. ‘…Nate?’

He grunted and pulled himself back up. ‘I’m okay. That was… I don’t know what that was.’

‘A bad dream?’ She was more cautious when she reached for him this time. This time, he didn’t pull back, her closeness helping to centre him, bring him back to the now. He wondered if she was reaching out telepathically at all, and swallowed the apprehension. Now was not the time to let his spiking adrenaline push him to paranoia.

Swallowing that down, however, forced him to stop. Think. Reflect. Then he was out of bed again, on his feet this time, and heading for the chair in Thawn’s quarters where he’d ditched his uniform. ‘No,’ he said at her confused, groggy look. ‘Not a dream.’

Thawn slid across to the end of her side of the bed. ‘Nate, it’s 0430.’

‘You’re right.’ He hopped as he pulled on his trousers. ‘We gotta bring in Airex as well.’

‘To bed?’ Her apprehension visibly grew at this hitherto unexplored vista of late-night interests.

‘To the lab!’

She stood, but reached for a dressing gown instead of her clothes. ‘Surely a breakthrough in the middle of the night can wait until morning.’

Frustrated, he rounded on her, shirt in hand. ‘I’m not sure it can.’

‘It’s that urgent -’

‘It’s not time-sensitive. I just need to know if I’m right.’ At her dubious look, he scoffed. ‘Fine. Go back to bed. I’ll see you later.’ Her expression was hidden from view as he pulled his shirt over his head, then he turned away to find his jacket, fishing around in the dark.

Then the lights lit to a low glow and his jacket became visible, fallen under the chair by the dresser. He rose and turned to see Thawn by the wall controls, her confused expression settling to one of grumpy acceptance.

‘It didn’t end well last time I let you play with an ancient Vorkasi artifact unattended,’ she said. ‘But you’re waking up Airex.’

That part turned out to be easier and less-dangerous than Beckett had feared. The science officer replied to comms almost immediately, sounding much more awake than he felt anyone had the right to be this time of night. They had not been in the lab for more than a minute, loading up their project files for the artifact, before the tall Trill all but bounded in, clutching a large, steaming mug of coffee.

‘We’ve had a middle-of-the-night breakthrough?’ Airex asked far too eagerly.

‘Maybe,’ said Beckett as he checked their scans of the artifact, less sure of himself now he was under the bright laboratory lights. The hazy dream felt murkier and murkier the more his conscious self took over body and brain. ‘I want to check something.’

‘If this was a dream…’ muttered Thawn, clearly only able to go so far in being supportive on what might be a fool’s errand.

‘I’ve had some of my best inspiration strike from dreams,’ said Airex, sipping coffee and rocking on his heels. ‘Follow your gut, Lieutenant.’

‘There it is,’ Beckett murmured as the scan record flashed up. ‘We’ve been working on the principle that this is part of a system of data storage, right? Specifically, a Vorkasi library or database. Likely telepathically accessible, as that seems to be the Vorkasi’s jam.’

‘That’s our theory.’

‘Okay, so we seem to think that these components here are some sort of resonance emitters that operate on psychic energy. Interfacing with telepathic minds?’ Beckett brought up the holographic projection of the scans, including a projection of the artifact itself – still locked in storage – and gestured at a small row of devices.

‘Theoretically. They share some similarity with some of the principles on the subspace trumpet we designed in the Delta Quadrant,’ said Airex, patient and audibly letting Beckett work through his suspicion.

‘I think it’s even more similar than that. I do think that this is a system which allows people to psychically access some form of storage device. But I don’t think it’s a library. I think the telepathic elements go both ways.’

Airex cocked his head. ‘Not minds accessing data. Minds accessing… a mind? Minds?’

Thawn’s brow furrowed. ‘A telepathic library?’

‘No.’ Beckett’s throat tightened as he straightened up. ‘A telepathic prison. The Vorkasi trapped something telepathic and powerful – or at least its mind.’

In the silence that followed, Airex advanced on the projector. He didn’t say anything for a while, sipping his coffee and reading. At length he said, ‘That’s a little bit of a leap based off these readings.’

But Thawn was looking at Beckett, guarded. ‘You didn’t have a dream. You think that whatever was trapped is trapped and communicated with you?’

Airex turned to him. ‘Explain.’

The more Beckett was awake, the less he wanted to do that. He planted his hands on the console, feeling the cool metal calm and ground him. ‘Don’t call me crazy. I know what it feels like when a telepathic being is directly trying to affect my mind.’ He glanced at Thawn. ‘I felt it aboard the Devore ship.’ It had to be something powerful, he thought. He couldn’t tell when Thawn simply read his thoughts. But in the Delta Quadrant, she’d been working alongside the subspace trumpet, the subspace echoes of the murdered Brenari. This was something more, something communicating directly.

Haltingly, he explained the vision. Airex’s frown remained intact as he listened, but Thawn shuffled half a step closer to him, as if their superior officer would notice and judge if she dared do more, dared express any further efforts of comforting him.

Eventually, he finished, ‘The Vorkasi are bad news, right? Trying to conquer worlds. I don’t know if what I saw was a memory or a warning, but I felt the despair and suffering they were inflicting on this place. Then I felt them trap me. They were powerful telepaths who’d mastered telepathic technology; is it that outrageous that if they came up against a powerful telepathic entity, they might try to stop it?’

Airex drummed his fingers on the side of his coffee mug. ‘You say it spoke to you.’

‘It wants to be found. It wants to be freed.’ Beckett nodded at the projection of the component. ‘I think this is a bit of its prison. I think that’s what we’ll find if we track down wherever it came from. Something that was powerful enough to stand up to them, so they locked it away.’

‘That means,’ ventured Thawn carefully, ‘we’re dealing with a telepathic entity – that may or may not have ever existed in physical form – that’s endured for thousands of years while trapped. That sounds like a lot of hypotheticals.’

‘There are plenty of records of entities that exist outside of our common understanding of life,’ mused Airex. ‘Or even our dimension. A being of pure psychic energy? It would be fascinating and improbable, but far from impossible.’

‘Or it’s just, like, one telepathic alien guy whose brain’s been trapped in a box for a few thousand years,’ said Beckett with a shrug. ‘Either way… psychic or not, doesn’t this count as a distress call?’

The ghost of a smile at last tugged at Airex’s lips. ‘I’m not sure policy would agree it fits the definition. But, nevertheless, we’re Starfleet. Starfleet answers distress calls.’

‘We just want to talk.’ Valance sounded like her patience was running thin as she stood in the centre of the bridge and regarded the freighter captain on the viewscreen. Logan had thought finding the scavenger who’d brought the Vorkasi artifact to Val’Tara was the hard part. It turned out that stopping him from running long enough to give them answers was considerably tougher.

The Romulan captain was pale, sloping forehead giving his eyes a deep-set quality. Sat on his dingey bridge, he leaned towards the screen, eyes narrowing to beady depths. ‘You want my ship.’

‘I don’t -’

‘You’re Starfleet. It starts with niceties. Then you take all we have. This frontier doesn’t need you, you hear? We shrugged off the Empire. We’ll push you back, too.’

Valance lifted her hands in a placating manner that didn’t fully smother her obvious irritation. ‘We’ll be more easily pushed back if you just answer our question -’

‘So you can drain my sources dry?’

Logan raised his eyebrow as his sensor feed changed. In a low voice, he reported, ‘Captain, he’s powering up his engines. Reckon he’s gonna make a run for it.’

Valance’s breath caught, but before she could continue this losing battle, Kharth stood up and stepped in. She’d stayed back so far, letting Valance do the talking, as ever unsure how Romulans this far out would take to one of their own in a Starfleet uniform.

‘We’re not after old shipyards, or stations, or research institutions. Nothing like that. We want one location.’ The scavenger didn’t look very mollified, but Kharth wasn’t done, padding over to Logan’s console. Anticipating her, he dragged his fingers across the screen to bring up several key sensor displays. ‘And you could do with additional radiation shielding around your singularity drive.’

The scavenger hesitated. ‘A trade.’

‘I don’t want your secrets.’ Kharth turned back to him. ‘We have our own to chase. You go into your darkness, and we’ll go into ours. All I ask for is a light, and I don’t ask you to give it freely.’ 

Logan exchanged a slightly confused glance with Valance at that exchange, but the scavenger seemed to be taking it seriously.

At length, he nodded. ‘I’ll go into my darkness, and you go into yours. For a price. What salvage are you asking about?’

‘Transmitting pictures now.’ As they did so, Kharth looked to Thawn. ‘Figure out what we can give him to reinforce his radiation shielding. Something that’ll stop him and his crew cooking in under a year.’

But on the screen, the scavenger had blanched at the transmitted pictures. ‘You want none of this.’

‘I have it,’ Kharth said with unusual patience. ‘I want to know where -’

‘This frontier lurches between freedom and oblivion. You have no idea, Starfleet, no idea of the death and desolation we have seen. Where I found this? The brink of oblivion.’ He was reaching for his controls again, shaking his head. ‘Save your upgrades, your systems. You’ll need them.’

‘I don’t -’

‘Go into your own darkness.’

The screen winked out, and Logan gritted his teeth. ‘He’s gunning his engines. Making a run for it.’

Valance gave a noisy sigh. ‘Follow. We’re not done.’

‘Captain?’ Kally turned from comms with some confusion. ‘He’s sent us one last message. It’s coordinates – they map onto a star not far from here.’

Valance looked to Kharth. ‘He gave us our heading for free?’

‘Not exactly,’ said Kharth, frowning. ‘Something about the artifact or the location has him so badly spooked, he thinks we’re the ones in need of help. That the secrets we’re seeking are so dangerous we need… think of it as community-minded charity.’

‘That’s not at all reassuring.’ The captain nevertheless sank back onto her chair. ‘Lay in a course and get us underway, Lindgren. Commander Airex, make sure we’re running long-range scans of our destination as soon as possible.’

‘Course laid in,’ Lindgren confirmed a moment later. ‘We’re about fifty-four hours out.’

‘More time for research,’ said Airex, far too happily, and the bridge crew settled into the long wait for the rest of their shift. Some had to keep their eyes on what lay ahead of them, on the investigation they had embarked on, but for Logan, his attention needed to be everywhere. They were still giving so much as a whisper of a warlord a wide berth, and his only reassurance so far was that any ship possibly matching such a profile seemed inclined to return the courtesy. At Val’Tara, they had been assured there were few major factions, which made the region unpredictable but less territorial. For now, they could travel in safety, unassailed.

‘You didn’t just want answers out of him,’ said Logan when the shift finished, and he and Kharth stepped into the same turbolift. ‘You wanted to help him. Didn’t you?’

Her gaze fixed on the door for a moment, wrong-footed by his openness. He didn’t let himself feel bad about daring to make an observation, a connection, and after a beat, she shrugged. ‘You’ve been on the old Neutral Zone for years. Does anyone help people out there?’

‘By “people” you mean Romulans,’ he said.

‘The people who lost everything. Yes.’

‘And specifically… the little guy. Free State looks after some. Republic looks after others. Nobody looks after nobody in the old Rator holdings – not here, not back in Midgard. At least they got you.’

That made her grimace. ‘They don’t got me. I’m a Romulan in Starfleet. I never worry where my next meal comes from. I was only a kid when we left the homeworld.’

Logan cocked his head. ‘So you think you ain’t one of them properly.’ He considered pointing out that he could relate, but her flicker of a glance suggested both she’d figured that out and wouldn’t appreciate the proximity. Instead, he said, ‘I think at the best of times you’d get a thousand different answers on what being “a proper Romulan” means. And these might just be the worst of times.’

The turbolift slowed, a short hop down to the section housing officers’ quarters. ‘This isn’t about the fate of the Romulan people or my relationship with them, Logan. This was just about one guy.’

‘Yeah, but in the moment, it’s always just about one guy.’ He had to step out with her because their rooms weren’t that far apart, taking them for now down the same corridor.

‘I…’ She rubbed the back of her neck as they walked. ‘It’s been a long day. I don’t want to be psycho-analysed.’

He raised his hands. ‘Consider my observations done. So. It’s been a long day. What’re you doing to unwind at the end of it?’

Again, she faltered, looking like she knew she’d set herself up in a trap – if personal conversations constituted a trap. ‘Reading.’

‘Tell me it ain’t reports.’ She was silent, and he offered a toothy grin. ‘We got the latest Parrises Squares game recordings in the last transmission dump. Centurions against the Rangers in the quarter-finals, and the Centurions are gonna want payback for last year’s cup upset. I’m putting it on in the Safe House; we’re doing a sports night.’

‘I hated Parrises Squares at the Academy,’ Kharth said guardedly.

‘Good, ‘cos nobody’s more annoying to watch the pros with than someone whose Squares career peaked at twenty-two. Don’t tell Valance I said that.’ His grin widened. ‘C’mon. 1900 hours. We’ll have a beer. There’ll be loads of people.’

‘You mean it’s not just you and me.’

It was forward for her to admit she’d even noticed what he was doing. He considered agreeing to brush it off, but a surge in his gut made him stand his ground. ‘Sure. But I am asking you.’

They were at the door to her quarters by now, and she stopped, hesitating. ‘It’s good for the crew that you’re organising social events like this. This far out, they need them.’

‘I like doing it,’ he said, letting her evasion slide for the moment. ‘Brings us together. An’ someone’s gotta do it.’ But rather than let things stay superficial, he dipped his toe into the waters of vulnerability. ‘On this ship, after Frontier Day, after everything, the crew don’t look at me as… just Borg. I want to repay that.’ I want to keep that, came the treacherous thought he did not voice.

Faltering, she met his gaze. ‘You’re not just Borg to them. You’ve been… glue these past months, Logan. Someone the young officers look up to and respect, that they don’t have to feel guilt around, who knows what they’ve been through. I might not be Commander Fluffy with them, but I see what it means to them.’

‘I think they’d like it if Commander Fluffy came down to the Parrises Squares game,’ he said, then drew a sharp breath. ‘But I’m asking for me. C’mon. Let’s be with the crew, but also let’s grab a beer, you and me, and watch the game, and do things people do.’

The upfront approach worked in that it pinned her in place, unable to slip away. As she hesitated, he wondered if she’d just break free until she spoke, apprehensive. ‘Is this a date?’

Now was the moment for care. Tighten his grip, and she’d snap his fingers. ‘I reckon,’ said Logan cautiously, ‘that’s your call.’

Kharth swallowed, averting her gaze for a second, before she said, ‘It’s not a date.’ His heart sank a little, but then she met his gaze and added, ‘But alright; let’s… do things people do. You and me.’

‘You and me.’ His mouth was a little dry. ‘1900 hours.’ She stepped into her quarters, the door sliding shut behind her, and he paused a moment, contemplating, before he turned to head back to his room. It was impossible to walk without a spring in his step.

Yeah. Yeah, that went alright.

When they’d first gotten together, Valance had never known where the right place was to meet Cortez for a date. Meeting in someone’s quarters felt too intimate at such early stages, but in the lounge, she’d felt like all eyes were on her, crewmembers watching and judging the ice queen XO as the new chief engineer tried to defrost her. She knew this was a baseless suspicion; knew people largely didn’t care. But it had taken her some time before she’d met up with Cortez in public without thinking twice about it.

Years later, after a breakup that had been inevitably a matter of public gossip, she again felt self-conscious sliding into a booth in the Safe House to meet Cortez for lunch. ‘You didn’t want the Round Table?’

‘The Round Table’s dead during the day,’ Cortez pointed out. She already had a club sandwich, digging in while Valance poked at her pasta salad. ‘I wanted a bit of hustle and bustle.’

So it wouldn’t be too claustrophobic if we were alone? ‘I don’t have too long. We’ll reach our destination soon.’

‘And then we’ll be super busy, so I figured we snatch a moment first.’ Cortez nibbled on a potato chip. ‘We anywhere on Beckett’s “there’s a brain in a jar” theory?’

‘Dav thinks it holds up. There’s definitely a telepathic component to the container this device is a part of. Taking a second look, he also thinks one of the components is a collector for psychic energy.’

‘A collector. Like on a battery?’ Cortez’s eyebrows shot up. ‘We think this thing talking in Beckett’s head isn’t just a prisoner but a power source?’

‘The Vorkasi left devices on pre-warp worlds to indoctrinate them over centuries to become more pliable for conquest. The idea they’d not just lock up a telepath, but use them as a battery, isn’t beyond belief.’

‘Or telepaths,’ Cortez mused, and shrugged at the look. ‘I don’t know, this entity just has to have been a big threat to the Vorkasi, or really tempting, you know?’

‘I know. Either way, we’re here to help.’

‘And the creepy behaviour of the scavenger? I heard he seemed really spooked once he learnt what we were looking for.’

‘Romulans on a frontier.’ Valance shrugged and hoped she didn’t come across too dismissive or judgemental. Once, she wouldn’t have worried about that in front of Cortez. ‘They have no reason to trust us. I think he realised what we were looking for doesn’t hold much interest to him and we’d leave him alone faster if he cooperated, but he had to be mysterious about it.’

‘Right. I hope so.’

They ate, falling into what would have once been a comfortable silence, only Valance could feel the apprehensive tingle in her chest at everything unspoken. Once she was through most of her salad, she cleared her throat. ‘I talked to Perrek.’

Cortez looked nonplussed. ‘Oh?’

‘He’s quite a way from his family right now. Quite a way from his family by serving on Endeavour.’

‘Yeah, well. It’s his turn to chase his career while his spouses look after the kids, isn’t it?’

‘I know. But I thought I’d test the waters.’

Cortez frowned. ‘Test the waters?’

‘On if he’d prefer a posting on Gateway, or in the SCE, or on one of the ships that stays closer to the Midgard system like the Swiftsure.’

There was a beat as Cortez deliberately put down her sandwich. ‘Did you just try to lever him out of the CEO job on Endeavour?’

‘Of course not! I was asking him how difficult it was to be here.’

‘Here is right now weeks away from the nearest Federation station -’

‘I mean in general -’

‘Karana, are you trying to get him out of his job so I can come back?’ Cortez sat bolt upright, eyes threatening to blaze, and only now did Valance realise that she had, somewhere down the line, grossly miscalculated.

‘Well, I… you couldn’t if we already have a chief engineer.’

Cortez planted a hand on the table and drew a slow, visibly calming breath. ‘Did you think to ask me first?’

‘I didn’t know if it was even possible –’

‘So you instead started to lever out a perfectly good engineer who could probably guess you were trying to remove him to put your ex-girlfriend in place?’

The ‘ex’ rang loud. Valance swallowed. ‘I did no such thing. I know what I’m doing, Isa.’

‘Except, apparently, when it comes to knowing what I want. Did I ever say I wanted to transfer back to Endeavour?’

‘You didn’t want to leave. Jericho did that.’

‘And now I lead the squadron’s SCE Unit and I…’ Cortez worked her jaw. ‘Did you think to ask if I like it, Kar?’

‘Like it?’

‘Yes! I didn’t want it, but more importantly, I didn’t want you to leave when we had a good thing going here. But that was over six months ago!’ Her chin tilted up defiantly. ‘You say I could walk back into the CEO job aboard. You know you could walk into the XO job on Gateway like that?’ She snapped her fingers. ‘Everard’s been dragged out of retirement. She’d happily go back. You could do that job.’

Valance’s brow furrowed. ‘Why would I do that?’

Now Cortez’s eyes did flash, but any flare-up was quashed by the chirrup of Valance’s combadge, with Kharth’s voice coming over.

‘Bridge to Captain Valance. We’re approaching our destination.’

Cautious, Valance stood, eyes on Cortez. ‘Come up with me,’ she ventured. ‘We might need your expertise.’

‘As SCE Leader?’ Cortez said coolly, also standing. ‘Aye, Captain.’

It was not the most relaxed turbolift journey.

‘We don’t have a name for the system.’ Airex was holding court from the Science station when they arrived on the bridge. ‘We’ve designated it Beacon-2401 for clarity.’

‘Not Valance-2401?’ offered Beckett, stood at the tertiary command seat with a faint smirk.

‘We didn’t discover this system; people have been here and probably lived here first,’ Valance said sharply, in no mood for any banter. ‘What do we have?’

‘No signs of ships in the system,’ said Kharth. ‘Eight planets, only one capable of sustaining life. We’re heading there now.’

Cortez frowned, settling into professionalism now they had to work. ‘There’s no reason to assume a technological prison like this needs to be on a life-sustaining world.’

‘I’m keeping an eye out across the system,’ Airex assured her. ‘But it’s a start.’

‘I don’t suppose,’ ventured Valance, ‘our records from Val’Tara have anything to say about this system?’ In the silence that followed, she sighed. ‘Carry on.’

They were minutes out from the fourth planet in the Beacon-2401 system, the one M-class orbiting the K-class star. As they approached orbit, Valance found herself looking to Beckett. ‘Lieutenant, if there is indeed an entity and not merely bad dreams or psychic hallucinations brought on by Vorkasi technology, it’s reached out to you. Can you feel anything?’

‘No.’ He grimaced and looked to Thawn at Ops. ‘Rosara?’

She had been focusing on her station but now glanced back at the cluster around the command chair a little bashfully. ‘I haven’t tried reaching out.’

Valance raised a hand. ‘Let’s first try in the way we understand. We know Vorkasi technology is powerful; I don’t want you to endanger yourself.’

‘I could trace the Crown on Drapice,’ she pointed out.

‘We were working in distances of hundreds of kilometres, not hundreds of millions of kilometres.’

‘Entering orbit of the fourth planet,’ Lindgren called out.

‘No sign of any communication networks that I can detect anywhere in this system,’ Kally reiterated.

All eyes fell on Airex as he ran his scans. After a moment, he clicked his tongue. ‘Interesting.’

‘I love it,’ drawled Cortez, ‘when you say that and don’t elaborate, Dav.’

‘I’m reading,’ he said with a hint of self-effacement. After a beat, he elaborated. ‘Life-signs on the surface. Not many – and I mean less than a hundred – all clustered around one location in a mountain range near the northern pole. There’s also a high degree of atmospheric ionisation around that region.’

‘And still,’ said Kally, double-checking her systems, ‘no indication of comms.’

Beckett groaned. ‘Not another pre-warp Vorkasi mess…’

Airex shook his head. ‘I think these are Romulan life-signs.’

‘So the scavenger sends us here,’ mused Valance, ‘to a planet with a handful of Romulans on it, with no signs they can travel or communicate off-world, and strange atmospheric interference.’

‘And let me guess,’ said Beckett. ‘Transporters won’t pierce it?’

‘It won’t be easy,’ said Airex.

Kharth harrumphed. ‘This could mean anything. What’s causing the ionisation?’

‘I have a theory,’ said Airex, ‘but this could well be looking for an explanation that suits me, rather than going where the evidence leads.’ He shrugged as eyes fell back on him. ‘Atmospheric ionisation increases the conductivity of the atmosphere for psychic energy. It allows this containment system to transmit and receive telepathic signals over greater distances.’

Now, everyone turned on Thawn, whose eyes widened. ‘It’s possible.’

Valance sighed. ‘Enough theorising. Time to take a closer look.’ Cortez’s dismissal of her decision to focus on this planet had bruised, along with a hint of shame at how wrong she had gotten things over lunch. Sitting and debating on the bridge didn’t hold its usual comfort, even though they were in no rush. She turned to Kharth. ‘Take the Excalibur; bring Airex, Thawn, Beckett, and Lindgren. Go see what’s down there.’

Kharth nodded, then glanced past her. ‘I want Logan, too. Might be trouble.’

‘Agreed.’

Cortez cleared her throat. ‘I’ll see if I can crack the interference from here. Get you some orbital support.’

This is why you’re an excellent Chief Engineer. Valance swallowed the argument; now was the last time to raise it. ‘Good thinking, Commander. We’ll investigate the rest of the system, too, sweep it with runabouts if we have to.’ She glanced to Kharth. ‘Once you make contact with the locals, they might have some clue how to re-establish contact.’

‘And if they’re down there without comms systems,’ said Lindgren, getting to her feet, ‘they might be in need of help.’

‘That’s possible,’ said Kharth, gesturing for her away team to follow her to the turbolift. ‘But aren’t we working on a specific theory about this place?’ At the nonplussed look of Lindgren, she glanced at Beckett, and the last thing Valance heard before the turbolift doors shut was Kharth’s blunt statement of, ‘This is a prison.’

Find me. Free me.

Beckett hadn’t realised the rattling of the Excalibur bursting through the atmosphere had lulled him to distraction until the words broke through his drifting attention. He jerked upright in the cockpit chair, and at the glances from the others, realised he’d made an unwitting noise. ‘Uh. Anyone else hear that?’

‘You’ve got to be more precise than that, Lieutenant,’ said Kharth, seated across from him. Lindgren was at the front, flying, with Thawn beside her as co-pilot, while they, Airex, and Logan sat at the stations behind them. Through the canopy, clouds were beginning to make way for frozen peaks before and below.

‘I’m picking up power signatures clustered near the life-signs,’ Airex read from his scans. ‘This must be it.’

‘By “it” you mean the only sign of life on a planet a scavenger sent us to?’ called Logan over the faint rattling of the ship around them. ‘We still don’t know what we’re looking for.’

At that, Thawn twisted in her chair and looked at Beckett. ‘What did you hear?’

He swallowed, mouth dry. ‘The voice, again. The call for help.’

‘Is there any chance this is your imagination?’ said Kharth sceptically.

‘You didn’t see the Vorkasi tech on Drapice.’ It was hard to keep a bite out of his voice at her doubt. ‘It was real. It was powerful. The captain saw it, she gets it. She believes.’

Thawn, more deferential in the face of command, looked at their XO. ‘I could sense it. It’s real.’ Rather than press the point, though, she turned back to the front, back to her duties helping Lindgren guide the runabout down.

Airex glanced at Kharth. ‘This is no weirder than blood dilithium.’

‘That was plenty weird enough for me,’ came the grumbling response, but nothing more.

‘We’ve got our destination,’ said Lindgren a couple of minutes later. By now they could make out individual mountain peaks poking up, and the Excalibur was headed for a valley between them. ‘There’s a cluster of structures halfway up one of these mountains. The only thing for thousands of klicks.’

Soon enough, they had descended below the peaks of the mountains, Lindgren winding them carefully between rock faces. They were not very far from the top when snow-capped stone buildings built into both a narrow ledge and the side of the cliff itself came into sight. The architecture, at least, was familiar to Beckett.

‘That’s Romulan design,’ he said.

‘To match the Romulan life-signs,’ pointed out Logan, leaning forward. ‘More importantly, can we even set this thing down?’

‘There’s a platform,’ said Thawn, nodding to a stone circle jutting out from the cliff face. Nothing but thin air dangled below it. ‘Don’t be fooled, sir; scans show that beneath the masonry is a reinforcement of tritanium.’

‘I think this is a monastery,’ said Beckett. ‘Like the Fae Diwan’s place. Old-fashioned construction methods but modern amenities. Considering these were all built by a spacefaring civilisation.’

Airex made a small, annoyed sound. ‘If the scavenger just stole something from a monastery museum, this could have all been an enormous waste of time.’

‘No,’ said Thawn. Her gaze had gone distant, locked on the canopy as Lindgren guided the Excalibur down to land. ‘No, there’s something here.’

Kharth looked at her. ‘Lieutenant?’

She shook her head. ‘A presence. I can’t say more. There’s something.’

Beckett gave a relieved smile. ‘Maybe I’m not just going crazy.’

Logan leaned over the tactical console. ‘Dozens of life-signs,’ he conceded. ‘Not sure where anyone is, though.’

There was still no sign of movement when the Excalibur set down on the landing platform. In deference to their anxiety, Lindgren kept the thrusters running an extra thirty seconds after setting down – not enough to keep the weight off the masonry, but enough to fire back into action if the platform gave way under them.

‘These sorts of people usually work with the rest of the galaxy,’ said Beckett, unbuckling his safety harness and standing. ‘People visit them. People with ships.’

‘Then where,’ said Kharth cautiously, ‘are their ships? We’re not going unarmed.’

A biting wind howled through the hatch the moment they popped it, and Beckett was glad of his cold-weather gear. It kept the slicing chill off his body, but it still stung his cheeks. Logan didn’t seem to feel it, descending the hatch first, phaser in hand, lowered but ready, and as one they followed.

Stone buildings rose before them in imposing, impassive grey, frost-tipped and unmoving against the wind and snow. Though the wind whistled as it swept down between the mountain peaks, and strong gusts were enough to make one mindful of the edge of the platforms and the long drop down, all was cold and still, frozen and unmoving.

Airex slid up beside Beckett. ‘Any guesses on this monastic order, Lieutenant?’

He opened his mouth to admit to ignorance, before his eyes swept towards the buildings and settled on a crest carved in stone above the lone door. ‘Oh,’ he said, breath catching. ‘That’s the Order of Ste’kor. You know, like Narien, back at Gateway.’

‘The Romulan monks who strove to maintain understanding of and connection to their people’s telepathy.’ Airex frowned and nodded. ‘That scans.’

They advanced with caution, Logan stepping ahead and denying anyone – not Kharth, not one of the curious scientists – to take the lead in unknown territory. The wind stole the sound of their footsteps as they approached the buildings, though it had at least swept most of the snow off the surface, and underfoot was dry, not icy.

Nobody was outside. It was only a narrow platform nestled against the side of the cliff and the buildings, and access inside was blocked by the single large, dark wooden doorway. Once Logan looked like he wasn’t going to body-check anyone approaching, Airex did, tricorder in hand, running scans.

Beckett popped up beside him. ‘Life signs? Power signatures?’

‘Yes to both,’ said Airex. ‘None near the door.’

‘Commander!’ Lindgren was a way off had to shout to be heard over the wind. It was unclear which commander she was addressing, but she caught everyone’s attention.

She’d been checking the rest of the walls, and found a small nook. In it was a body, Romulan, in hard-wearing clothes, frozen solid. She was already running scans. ‘It’s hard to tell in this climate. But I think he died weeks ago. Looks like exposure.’

‘The scavenger did warn us,’ muttered Kharth. ‘Why would be thrown out? Why wouldn’t they let him back in?’

‘The only way to know,’ said Airex, ‘is to ask. Let’s get those doors open.’

They were stuck fast, then Logan put his shoulder to them and they creaked open to show nothing but a stone corridor advancing into darkness. Walls were bare, surfaces were dusty, and there was no sign of movement or life.

Kharth looked at Lindgren. ‘Wait at the runabout. I don’t like this.’ The pilot looked like she might complain, but nodded and about-faced. The last thing they needed was to be cut off from their ride, and the sensors on the Excalibur could likely offer a lot of support on their investigation.

Beckett peered into the darkness. Something brushed against his senses, like a cold breath on his brain, and he shivered and stepped back. Help me. Free me. ‘This isn’t right.’

‘Thawn?’ said Kharth.

‘I need everyone to understand I don’t have telepathic sensors,’ said the Betazoid through gritted teeth. ‘I can read minds and sometimes communicate telepathically. The fact that I can feel anything as a presence out here means something very powerful is going on. But it could be Vorkasi technology.’

‘The library,’ said Airex brightly.

‘Or the prison,’ muttered Beckett.

‘There’s still,’ said Logan, grip on his phaser tight, ‘life-signs we detected but haven’t found. We gotta be careful.’

They shuffled inside and it stopped, at least, the howling of the wind and its chilling bite. Cold weather gear was still necessary, but Beckett’s cheeks stopped stinging as they stepped into the monastery and looked around.

People had lived here once. More than that, it was a better place to live than it initially looked, with control panels set into stone walls to control light and temperature, though the systems they commanded seemed dead. Thawn reported that everything had likely been functional until several months ago, perhaps a year, leading to dusty, uninhabited rooms where monks had clearly worked, lived, and slept.

‘A year ago,’ mused Logan, looking around, ‘the Star Empire collapses. What do you reckon these monks were reliant on someone else to get supplies or whatever, and then political turmoil screws all of that up? No more food or power sources or something, and this place gets run-down?’

‘If there’s no ship,’ said Beckett, nodding, ‘maybe a bunch of the monks left on it.’

‘But not all,’ said Kharth. ‘Not our frozen friend out there. Not the life-signs we still haven’t found.’

‘The Fae Diwan monastery had surface buildings that were very old, then an underground section with far more sophisticated living conditions. I wonder -’ Then there was the shuffle of footsteps from the next room, and they all spun around, phasers ready, words abandoned.

A shadow in the doorway. A dragging step. Then into the dim light of their torches, a figure shambled – Romulan, in similar garb to the frozen man outside, cheeks sunken and deep-set eyes blank, unseeing. ‘…we didn’t know.’

His voice echoed in the tension, but it sounded like he hadn’t used it in a while. Beckett wasn’t sure he was even directly addressing them.

Logan kept his grip on his phaser tight, but Kharth stepped up beside him, twisting her grip to hold hers loosely and in the monk’s sight, and spoke to him. ‘I’m Saeihr Kharth. We’re with Starfleet. This is a monastery of the Order of Ste’kor, right?’

‘A thousand years… we didn’t know…’

Beckett slid forward. ‘Something’s trapped here, isn’t it?’ he said, ignoring Kharth’s accusing look. ‘You found something the Vorkasi trapped.’

‘He can’t hear you,’ said Logan, shaking his head. ‘He’s got no idea what’s going on. Look at him.’

Beckett grimaced, the vacant look in the Romulan’s eyes supporting Logan’s point, but still he took a step forward. ‘Did you not know that it was an entity, a mind?’

‘Nate -’

‘We didn’t know what we had.’

The new voice wasn’t the shambling monk, but came from behind him, emerging from the darkness. This Romulan looked very similar – as pale and drawn, in the same garb, but sharper-eyed, straight-backed, tired but alert, conscious, alive. He raised his hands quickly at the startled look.

‘My apologies,’ said the alert monk. ‘Are you here to rescue us?’

‘Maybe,’ said Kharth, frowning. Again she introduced herself, then said, ‘What is this place? What happened here?’

The monk let out a slow breath, then glanced uncomfortably at his vacant colleague. ‘My name is Ibius. We are, yes, the Order of Ste’kor. We’ve been here since not long after the founding. A monastery centuries old, and then it all came undone in… a matter of months.’ He nodded at the other. ‘We were alive, well, conducting our research, responsible for this facility. Then the supplies stopped a year ago. Some of us left. Some of us stayed committed. We maintained some trade links to keep ourselves alive, keep the facility operating, though it got harder and harder. And then the others… became like this.’

Beckett looked between the two. ‘What happened to him?’

But it was Thawn who answered, her voice coiled like a snake that had spotted a threat. ‘Something’s affected his mind. This isn’t just malnutrition and stress. Something did this to him.’

The monk Ibius grimaced and nodded. ‘It’s a long story. There is… equipment here. We have maintained and controlled it, but something’s gone wrong. It did this to him. Him, and all the others.’

Airex’s brow furrowed. ‘Vorkasi technology.’

Ibius straightened. ‘You know of them.’

‘A little. Enough to know it’s powerful telepathic technology.’

‘It is. We found a facility here – ancient, powerful. Our sect dedicated ourselves to studying it and making sure something so dangerous and powerful was not misused. We thought we had an ancient civilisation’s archive of knowledge at our fingertips, but over the centuries we still barely scratched the surface of understanding it. Then in the last year, it’s… begun to break down. Perhaps this is a safety mechanism lashing out, perhaps something this powerful becomes dangerous when it doesn’t operate properly. Perfectly. My fellows were fine – tired, without resources, but fine. Then… they lost themselves.’

Beckett tilted his chin up. ‘This isn’t a library,’ he said, more confident the more he spoke. ‘This is a prison. The Vorkasi trapped something here. Their technology kept something locked up, and now it’s damaged the minds of all of you.’

Ibius’s eyebrows raised. ‘A prison?’ But he didn’t seem too shocked, too surprised. Beckett fancied he hadn’t known, but the idea was perhaps a notion he’d entertained. Ibius glanced about, back deeper into the depths of the monastery. He sighed, and said, ‘Perhaps you had best see for yourself.’

On the surface, the monastery of the Order of Ste’kor looked ancient and weathered, sturdy grey stone etched into the mountain and standing against time and the elements. Deeper in, led by Ibius, they found an altogether more technologically sophisticated setup. Stone passageways led to metal automated doors that creaked as they opened, showing a blackened corridor of metal construction that still, to Beckett, looked like Romulan architecture. All along the way, they passed other weakened, shambling, inchoate Romulan monks who barely acknowledged their existence.

‘You gotta tend to them?’ said Logan, in the lead alongside Ibius.

‘As best I can. Until supplies run out.’

Logan glanced back at Kharth, and Beckett didn’t need to be a telepath to hear the silent discussion. Could they bring Ibius with them? All of the monks? What happened to them next? Abandoning them was beyond contemplation.

‘I’ve had to conserve our power supplies,’ said Ibius, leading them down corridors of sealed doors. ‘These are labs and libraries, workspaces and research facilities. They’ve been locked off. There’s no point powering them. I’m hoping you have some of your Starfleet ingenuity ready, though. Because I’ve not been able to access the lower levels.’

‘We know how to handle Romulan systems,’ Thawn assured him.

‘I’m afraid that won’t help,’ said Ibius, and turned a corner.

The heavy doorway was not Romulan. Beckett’s breath caught as he recognised the inky-black metal, the etchings along what looked like a control panel set into the wall beside it. ‘Vorkasi.’

Airex frowned at the etchings. ‘Can you read the language?’

‘Some.’ Ibius shrugged. ‘Yes, that’s a label. What would you label something like that other than “access,” though?’

‘Good point.’ Airex turned to Beckett and Thawn. ‘Lieutenants, you’re up.’

‘I think it needs power,’ said Ibius. ‘We’ve accessed it in the past, and for a long time, I thought it ran off its own reserves. But as everything else here broke down, this doorway did, too. I’ve not had the facilities to conduct any repairs.’

‘Power,’ said Thawn, pulling out her tricorder, ‘we can do. Nate, help me with this panel.’

They had to detach it, and then Beckett mostly watched as Thawn fiddled with the interior. It was a stretch to say they knew what they were doing, but they’d seen more of Vorkasi systems than any of the others, and some principles – especially the principles of powering a door – would not diverge too greatly.

But after a few minutes’ work, Thawn frowned. ‘I’ve tapped it into my tricorder’s power reserve, which should be enough. But it’s not accessing it.’

Beckett glanced at her. ‘You think it needs a command? Maybe non-physical?’

‘Maybe,’ she said, and frowned with that tell-tale knot of concentration in the centre of her brow.

At the same time, Beckett again felt that chill on the back of his neck. With a rumble like rolling thunder, the door began to open.

‘Great work, Lieutenant!’ Airex said, beaming at Thawn.

She didn’t stop frowning. ‘I’m not sure that was me,’ she said. When she gave Beckett a cautious look, he said nothing.

‘Wonderous,’ breathed Ibius. ‘It’s been years since I was down here. We must hurry.’

The holding chamber for the Vorkasi telepathic circlet that would have bent the world of Drapice to its will had been carved into the mountain it was built in. This chamber on a distant world hundreds of light-years away was no different, with the chill settled deep into their bones as they set foot on metal plating surrounded by the rough-hewn stone of the mountain.

This was, if possible, bigger, but Beckett was relieved to see Romulan technological apparatus laid over the Vorkasi control banks and displays. After centuries down here, the monks had established some basic means of interfacing with the Vorkasi technology that Starfleet was barely beginning to comprehend. The banks made a circle in the middle of the dim, rough-hewn chamber, their light anaemic but present. Above them hovered an array of figures and digits, symbols Beckett only passingly recognised as the Vorkasi language, holographic projections likely showing some sort of status.

Ibius waved a hand at it. ‘This is where we accessed the Vorkasi library. Over centuries we barely scratched the surface. Telepathic technology seemed to identify us as intruders, no matter what we did to the computer systems. It took us years to access even a micron of a percentage of the records, and then the system would change itself, locking us out. It’s like a living security system in a living library.’

A hot indignation seared in Beckett’s chest as he advanced on the controls. ‘It’s not like a living system. It is living. This isn’t a library, it’s a prison.’ He knew as he advanced, more than ever, that he was right. ‘The Vorkasi were a bunch of authoritarian, conquering bastards, who locked up some telepathic entity that they probably couldn’t otherwise control or destroy. It’s likely been the power source to this whole damn place all along.’

Ibius looked bewildered. ‘We assumed this was a form of… telepathic artificial intelligence.’

‘You weren’t scholars for centuries, you were jailers, Ibius.’ Beckett looked at Kharth. ‘We should end this.’

She frowned. ‘Let’s not race into anything, Lieutenant. We came looking for Vorkasi technology in case it was being used to manipulate a world again. This is different. We’re still not sure what this is. Or if you’re right.’

Airex raised a hand at the blossoming tension. ‘Lieutenant Thawn, can you feel a consciousness? You have some experience of artificial telepathic constructs from your encounters with the Tkon.’

Thawn looked a little surprised at Airex’s mention of a mission he hadn’t been present for, but she nodded and stepped towards the control bank. She placed a ginger hand on the edge of the black metal surface of a panel, and closed her eyes to concentrate.

The wave of feeling hit Beckett enough to almost make him bend double. Find me. Free me. His vision blurred, the dim stone chamber illuminated by a flash of burning skies, and he staggered at the sense of metal chains wrapping tight around him. When his heart rate slowed and his vision cleared and his legs felt sturdy under him, the others looked shaken, but Thawn was on her knees, clutching at the panel for support.

‘Rosara!’ He rushed over, reaching to help her, but she was pulling herself to her feet, leaning on the panel, and was upright before he got there.

She turned, face pale and shining with sweat. Dark eyes flashed from him to the others. ‘I’ve never felt a mind like this.’ Her voice rasped, and she swallowed hard. ‘This is something else. More powerful. More alien. Whatever this is, I don’t think it knows existence as we do. I don’t think it has a corporeal form. It wants out. And it is furious.’

Kharth drew a sharp breath. Beckett couldn’t tell if she’d seen what he had, but she’d clearly experienced something. ‘All the more reason to not rush to liberate some sort of inter-dimensional telepathic demigod. Not if it’s pissed.’

‘You’d be pissed,’ said Beckett, ‘if you’d been locked up for thousands of years.’

Ibius was chewing on his bottom lip. ‘I didn’t know,’ he said, swaying. ‘It – it was a Vorkasi AI…’

‘It’s a being,’ said Thawn, and reached for the control panel. Set over the Vorkasi controls was a Romulan-constructed interface, a keyboard with symbols they could all recognise. As she hit a control, a new holographic screen came to life, showing what looked like a limited translation of the Vorkasi projection in the centre.

‘At some point, the Vorkasi systems containing it began to weaken,’ she said, tapping at the controls. ‘And it began to struggle against them. Which meant the Vorkasi system activated countermeasures.’ She pointed at the screen, and Beckett and Airex approached. ‘Look,’ said Thawn. ‘We don’t know much about Vorkasi tech, but those are power levels. The main power levels have been going down, but different systems have been spiking.’

‘How much of this have you picked up from that screen?’ said Kharth, still guarded. ‘And how much from the telepathic thing in a cage?’

‘The Vorkasi have technology that can influence minds.’ Thawn looked back at her. ‘As these countermeasures have tried to restore control of the prisoner, they’ve also affected everyone near these systems. What do you think drove the monks mad?’

‘The prisoner?’ pointed out Kharth. ‘I know you had a run-in with the Vorkasi before -’

‘And they were bad news,’ butted in Beckett. ‘If I’m this creature, and the monks think I’m an AI, and I’m starting to break free of my shackles, I try to communicate with them and talk my way out – not drive them so nuts the only people who could free me become incoherent. It has been asking for help. Asking us for help. Why would it have hurt the Romulans first?’

‘Revenge?’ said Kharth.

Ibius frowned. ‘Some of my comrades were having dreams as everything went wrong. Dreams of flying, falling. They talked of leaving, but that there was something they had to do first. Then, they lost their minds entirely. I assumed it was part of what drove them mad in the first place.’

‘Or,’ said Beckett, ‘the entity reached out to them, and the Vorkasi defence systems made sure they were in no condition to help.’

‘That would follow. I am of the Order of Ste’kor, but I have always been very… lacking in any telepathic aptitude.’ Ibius shrugged. ‘It’s been a boon in research, a great test in our experiments. But perhaps it left me unable to help this entity, and protected from the Vorkasi.’

Airex again had to lift his hands to try to cut the discussion off and move to action. ‘Let’s see if we can establish contact with this entity.’

But before he could join Thawn at the panel, the sound of a scream came echoing in from the door back the way they had come. It was long, drawn-out, varying in pitch, and sounded as maddened as it did pained. In the cavernous depths of the chamber, it reverberated almost as deep as the telepathic communication.

Kharth turned to the doorway. ‘What was that?’

‘One of my colleagues,’ said Ibius with a sharp inhale. ‘Something’s agitated them.’

‘Possibly,’ said Logan, phaser still in hand, ‘whatever’s been freaking us out down here. I’m gonna take a look.’

Kharth hesitated, then looked back at Airex. ‘Commander, you’ve got this better than me, anyway,’ she said, and drew her phaser. She looked at Logan. ‘After you.’

He looked like he might argue, but nodded, clearly knowing she wouldn’t let him go alone. As one, the two security-trained officers headed out of the chamber.

Beckett turned to Thawn and Airex, wincing. ‘What if that’s another bit of the Vorkasi system being pissed off?’

‘Then we should try to establish contact fast,’ said Airex. ‘Ibius, we could do with your assistance.’

The monk advanced and tried to usher Thawn away. ‘If I may?’ She moved, and he reached with quicker hands for the interface. ‘I can show you as much of what we’ve been able to access – the archives and records.’

‘What did it show you?’ asked Beckett.

‘History. We assumed historical records. It must have been… memory.’ Ibius shook his head. ‘The Vorkasi had a vast empire. This place was nothing more than an outpost, we assumed. It must have been built as a prison far from its main holdings. Otherwise, they turned planets to their will using their technology so they could be conquered. If they could not, they destroyed them.’

‘That sounds about right,’ Beckett mumbled.

‘This is what we’ve understood of the system,’ said Ibius, bringing up a fresh screen. Above the Romulan interface, the Vorkasi projection changed incomprehensibly.

Thawn read over Ibius’s shoulder. ‘If your people’s interfacing with these Vorkasi systems is correct… then part of this system is a telepathic suppression field. Not to completely nullify telepathic capabilities, but restrict them. It looks like it’s one of the things that’s been breaking down over the last few years.’

Airex looked at her. ‘If we powered that down, we could perhaps interact more directly.’

‘Or you free it,’ said Ibius, frowning at them. ‘Your commander didn’t want that to happen.’

‘She didn’t want to jump to conclusions,’ said Airex. ‘If this is indeed a Vorkasi prisoner who can be safely released, we should do so.’

Ibius’s breath caught. He gestured at the screen. ‘We’ve learnt so much and only scratched the surface of its knowledge.’

Beckett frowned. ‘Are you suggesting we keep this thing locked up?’

But before Ibius could reply, their combadges chirruped to life.

‘Kharth to away team! The monks here have lost it. One of them attacked Logan and we had to stun them. The rest are banding up and… coming.’

Beckett’s eyes widened. ‘Vorkasi protections. Ibius, the prison system has been destroying your friends, and you want to keep it up?’

Ibius winced. ‘I don’t know if it’s safe to tinker with these systems.’

‘They’ve not just been driven mad, they’re being influenced,’ decided Airex. ‘Lieutenant Thawn, power down that suppression field. If we can make contact, maybe we can turn off these Vorkasi systems.’

Thawn nodded, then hit a control. And stood stock still.

For a moment, Beckett irrationally thought time itself had stopped. Instead, all three of them had frozen as it felt like something cold had slipped down the back of his neck, but after a heartbeat, he, Ibius, and Airex in unison took unwitting steps away from the controls. Thawn did not.

When she turned, her eyes were not Betazoid-black, but a deep, vibrant purple. When she opened her mouth, the voice was not hers. It was the one he’d heard in his dreams.

‘Free me.’

In the distance, they heard another howling scream. And, more muffled, phaser blasts.

Beckett took a sharp step forward. ‘Is this really your only way to communicate?’ he snapped. ‘You chatted in my head fine.’

‘An influence.’ Thawn’s face was slack as her lips moved. ‘A mere brush of our minds. This is precise. But. Not much time.’ Another distant scream from whatever was going on with Logan, Kharth, and the monks. ‘The jailers’ shackles tighten. They feel my escape. I opposed them, and they could not defeat me. But they could trap me. Harness me. Use me. But if their grip tightens, these bonds will shatter me.’ A pause. ‘And this mind.’

Ice-cold fear snaked up Beckett’s chest. ‘How do we free you?’

Airex tensed. ‘Lieutenant –’

‘Sir, I saw this thing’s past. What the Vorkasi did, what it stood against. They couldn’t stop it, so they imprisoned it. Now they’ve got Rosara tied up in this, too.’ It was too much risk to her, too soon after the last disaster, and it made his head spin. His eyes locked on Thawn’s – or the entity’s. ‘How?’

‘Disconnect me from the power.’

Beckett looked at the controls, at the interface, and knew it would take hours, years to master it. He rounded on Ibius. ‘Do it.’

The monk slipped uncomfortably past Thawn to reach the panel. ‘Are you sure?’ His eyes flashed as they locked on to Beckett. ‘You don’t know what will happen.’

For a moment, Beckett thought that Airex would argue. Then came another howl of a monk from back the way they came, and the tall Trill winced. ‘Do as he says.’

It could have only taken seconds for the monk to manipulate the controls. But they felt like lifetimes, the Vorkasi holographic display overhead flashing wildly, from blues to urgent reds, one block of the display at a time. Then Ibius hit one final button, and everything went dead.

Thawn’s body shuddered, her head snapping back, eyes rolling up into her head. Her breath rattled from her slack, open mouth, as she gasped, ‘…at last.’ Then she fell, and Beckett had to lunge forward to catch her.

She was shivering as he held her, conscious but rattled. In the distance, over the sound of his own ragged breathing, Beckett realised the noises of far-off clashing had stopped.

After another moment, the combadge chirruped. ‘This is Kharth. The monks have… they just keeled over. Vor, I think they’re all dead.’

‘Rosara.’ Beckett helped her upright, hands coming to her face to turn it to his, and when her eyelids flickered open, they were black.

And turned quickly to horror. ‘You let it out.’

He stopped. ‘It needed to -’

‘No.’ She was on her feet in an instant, wild-eyed, wild-haired, looking not at the controls but all around. ‘No, this was – this was a trick.’

‘A trick?’ Airex stepped in, calmer, more level. ‘Lieutenant, slow down. Explain.’

She did not slow down as she rounded on them. ‘It stood against the Vorkasi, yes, they were expansionist and ruthless and conquering, and, yes, they imprisoned it and used it for power. But it’s not from this dimension.’ Her hands came up to bury themselves in her hair, her expression sinking with horrified realisation. ‘It feeds on suffering – on the emotions of suffering. And it stokes them – it manipulates minds, influences them, makes them do things, breaks them – then it feeds on them more, this cycle of causing horror and inflicting it. The Vorkasi drew its attention with their conquest, and it tried to bend them to its will. So they trapped it. For tens of thousands of years. When Romulus blew up and the Star Empire fell, that caused so much suffering, it empowered it. The Vorkasi defences didn’t drive the monks mad. It did. And now… now it’s out.’

Beckett stared, his mouth tasting of bitter ash. Then he turned to Ibius, and his eyes narrowed. ‘It didn’t drive all the monks mad.’

Ibius had been stood listening, at first shocked, then expressionless. As eyes fell on him, though, the shift in his face was something else. A smile. ‘Thank you,’ he said quietly. ‘I couldn’t do it on my own.’

‘He called it the Veilweaver.’ Airex looked tired as he stood before Valance’s desk, still in his away jacket. Next to him, Kharth was slumped in the chair, dusty and a little bruised, glaring at nothing.

‘He’s a weird cultist,’ she complained.

‘Yes,’ said Airex, ‘but it seems what he was worshipping was entirely real. Some sort of intra-dimensional, non-corporeal, telepathic entity. Not alive as we understand it, but certainly able to influence minds. Ibius said it feeds on emotions of despair and suffering, is empowered by them. The Vorkasi encountered it, could not defeat it, and locked it up both as a prisoner and an object of study and exploitation – as a power source.’

Valance drummed her fingers on the desk as she listened. ‘And the monks? The Order of Ste’kor?’

‘Discovered the place in the founding,’ grunted Kharth. ‘Studied it. Maybe they knew what they had, knew they needed to keep it captive? Ibius said they didn’t know, but he’s a liar. Anyway, if something is made stronger by dark emotions, I bet the state of the Romulan people the last twenty years has been an all-you-can-eat buffet.’

Airex made a noise of agreement. ‘That may have empowered it enough to partially overcome its bonds, and destroy the minds of the monks. Maybe it was trying to compel them to free it and it failed. Either way, only Ibius was in a cooperative state, and as the facility became more run-down without supplies, he couldn’t access the Veilweaver’s prison.’

‘Was he even a monk?’ asked Valance, and the silence that followed shone bright on the many unknowns before them. She sighed. ‘Very well – this thing’s out. What does that mean?’

‘I have no idea,’ admitted Airex. ‘We’ve no way to detect it, no way to measure it, no way to communicate with it.’

‘And Lieutenant Thawn?’

‘In Sickbay,’ said Kharth. ‘But she says she can’t sense anything any more. Maybe it ran off back to wherever it came from.’

‘Maybe.’ Airex didn’t sound convinced. ‘Captain, I’m concerned that this thing has been exerting its will on the crew since we picked up the original component of the prison.’

‘You mean Beckett’s dreams,’ said Valance.

‘I mean all of us.’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps this is hindsight and paranoia, but I felt more… relaxed and curious about this line of inquiry than I think I should have done this far out, knowing some of the dangers of Vorkasi technology. I should have been more cautious.’

‘Me too,’ mumbled Kharth, still glaring at nothing. ‘I think I let my guard down.’

And I, thought Valance bitterly, was perhaps too happy there was another reason to delay our return to Midgard.

She drew a deep breath. ‘What do we do with this facility?’

‘A day ago, I’d have wanted to spend weeks studying it,’ said Airex. ‘Now, I want to collapse the monastery and leave. But it’s possible further investigation will reveal more about the Vorkasi, about the Veilweaver.’

‘Or we stick around, and it tries to fry our brains,’ said Kharth. Still, she sighed. ‘He’s right. We leave now, and we know nothing. But we should be heading home soon.’

‘I agree,’ said Valance after a beat. ‘On both points. Airex, prepare the King Arthur for a full archaeological landing party to study the site further. You have forty-eight hours to take all the scans and records you want, and extract components worthy of study you think we can safely store. Then we’re going to collapse the monastery to block access to the prison.’

Kharth made a face. ‘That’s still a Romulan heritage site.’

‘I know. But someone already found their way in and out once with Vorkasi technology. I won’t let this stuff fall in the wrong hands.’

It would prove a long two days. Airex seemed dissatisfied with both how little time they had to study the site, and how long they were staying near it, but stayed rigorously on schedule, the King Arthur making its way back to Endeavour mere minutes shy of forty-eight hours. They had samples and scans enough to keep the science department busy for months. It was enough time for Shepherd and Lieutenant Qadir to oversee running Ibius back to Val’Tara on the Merlin, the only place they could leave him without abandoning him on a frozen rock. In the meantime, Cortez and Logan planned how to destroy the site, and the Excalibur deployed a targeted torpedo strike not long after the King Arthur left.

Valance watched it all from the bridge, pacing back and forth until Lindgren turned back from the helm controls and confirmed, ‘All craft back aboard.’

‘Good.’ Valance nodded, not feeling in the slightest satisfied. She sighed. ‘Set a course for the Midgard system, Lieutenant. Warp 9.’

They had gone at a slower pace, before, more efficient and letting long-range sensors soak up more readings. This was a brisk jog, a commitment to crossing former Romulan territories as quickly and safely as possible. From the mood on the bridge, it felt like a welcome decision.

She was back in her quarters not long after, finishing her duty shift with the hope she could lock herself away to read for an evening. But she had barely taken off her jacket and splashed water on her face before the doorchime sounded. She could not help but make her summons sound frustrated, and immediately regretted it when Cortez walked in.

‘Was I interrupting?’ Cortez winced.

‘No, I…’ Valance sighed and waved a dismissive hand. ‘I just got in. I thought you’d be Dav.’

‘Are you expecting Dav?’

‘It wouldn’t be surprising if he wanted to complain about the survey mission. I wasn’t much in the mood for it.’ Valance forced a smile, not because she didn’t mean it, but because she wanted to project some warmth. They had a lot to talk about. ‘I’m glad it’s you instead, is what I mean.’

Cortez didn’t return the smile. ‘We had a bit of a row.’

‘We did, and I understand that we’ve not been in a position to talk much the last few days. But now we can relax. Unwind.’

Cortez’s brow knotted. ‘That’s the last thing I expected you to say.’

‘You were tense -’

‘Oh. You didn’t hear a single goddamn word I said.’ Cortez’s shoulders sank. ‘I’m going to have to be crystal clear, aren’t I, because you’ve been seeing and hearing what you’ve wanted to see and hear for weeks: I’m not coming back to Endeavour. I like my job.’

This was not, despite Cortez’s accusation, a revelation. But it was certainly a thought Valance had not wanted to entertain. For days since their row, she’d been able to ignore the situation. Now it was in front of her, and it was enough to make her stomach drop out.

She worked her jaw. ‘I like my job. Here.’

‘I know.’ The corners of Cortez’s eyes creased. ‘And you’re damn good at it. You shouldn’t even imagine going to ride a desk at a starbase. Hell, Rourke shouldn’t have; it’s making him really mad. But that’s beside the point.’ She shook her head. ‘We’re just at different places in our lives right now.’

‘I don’t -’

‘And you think your place – your job – is more important than mine.’ Now there was a bite to the sadness, and Valance realised it had been there all along. She’d just been trying to get through this without letting it out.

‘That’s not true,’ Valance lied.

Cortez did her the kindness of not laughing. ‘I like my work. It’s important. I’ve been laying down foundations to make it easier for thousands – hundreds of thousands – of people to live better lives across a sector. It might not be commanding a starship, or even helping your starship run. But it matters.’

‘This work matters.’ Stubborn, Valance jabbed a finger at the deck. ‘All the things we’ve done on this ship. Whixby, Agarath, the Delta Quadrant, Deneb, those aren’t things you do with a team of engineers and a runabout, those change the fates of worlds -’

‘There it is!’ Cortez threw her hands in the air. ‘I pushback just a little and you show that deep down, you think there’s nothing better than what the one key starship does. You think I’m just pottering around making communication relays?’

‘I think,’ said Valance, trying to get some control back on the conversation, ‘that a lot of people can do what you do out there. Not many people can do what you do here.’

‘What,’ said Cortez, ‘play backstop to you?

‘That’s not fair.’

‘Nothing you’ve said about my work has been fair, Karana! Out there, I plan projects with impact across a sector, then implement them! I’m building up the infrastructure of a whole region that’s been neglected for decades. There are broken things, and I’m fixing them.’

‘It’s different -’

‘And I’m done trying to fix you!’

Valance rocked back like she’d been struck. Cortez shut her mouth the moment the words escaped, looking as if she regretted them, as if she’d take them back if she could, but said nothing more. The tension that followed felt like it had muzzled them both for a moment, forcing a smothering silence.

At last, not really wanting an answer, Valance said in a small voice, ‘Does that make me a broken thing?’

Cortez pressed a hand to her forehead. ‘That’s not what I mean.’

‘Or is this you again insisting you’re the one who’s done all the emotional heavy lifting?’ Valance ground her teeth. ‘Like you’re not still bringing your baggage about being second place in your relationships to the table?’

‘I didn’t want this to end up in a row,’ Cortez sighed.

‘Then you did a damn bad job of picking your words.’ Valance looked away. ‘I guess you’re right. We’re on different paths.’

‘This has been – the last few weeks – it’s been fun. It’s been wonderful. But this just demonstrates that it was temporary. That all of the reasons we split up haven’t gone away. I wish, I wish we could make things work, but neither one of us is about to walk away from our work, and…’

‘And if you’re right, and we really do lack this much respect for each other,’ said Valance, bitter rather than sincere, ‘then trying to keep up this relationship when we’re heading in different places sounds like a recipe for disaster.’

‘Karana…’

‘I think we’re done here.’ She’d thought it would be hard to steel herself against this. In the end, it came very easily. ‘I do have work to get on with. We’ll be back at Gateway within a fortnight, maybe even a week. You can get back to your work then, Commander.’

Cortez’s shoulders dropped, but she didn’t argue as she left. This would not be the last parting; they still had days ahead of them on the same ship, important staff members who’d end up crossing paths. But they’d done that before, when Cortez had first come back aboard. That only made it clearer this had been nothing more than a diversion. A dream.

There are broken things, and I’m fixing them.

I’m done trying to fix you.

Stars streamed past the window of the captain’s quarters of the USS Endeavour, giving Valance some diversion, some comfort as she turned away from the door through which Cortez had disappeared. Far-off pinpricks of light flashed by, each of them a star – a whole system, rich with worlds and maybe life. Life, and lives, all winking past, too numerous to count, all with their own victories and defeats, successes and sufferings.

And leaving behind them, as they disappeared, the dark between them, expansive and consuming and shrouding.

It was impossible to know what they’d done at the world they’d left behind. What they’d found. What they’d unleashed. But if this was an entity that feasted on suffering, Valance knew there was more than enough in the galaxy to indulge it for a thousand lifetimes.