‘Sir!’ The young security officer didn’t look like he much enjoyed having to step out to block Rourke’s path, but stood firm as he stormed through the infirmary reception towards the double doors at the rear.

If it were possible, Rourke’s anger would have made him double in size. He did stop, only to turn his venomous glower on the guard. ‘I’m the station commander, Petty Officer; what the hell do you think you’re doing to -’

‘It’s alright.’ The doors slid open, revealing the tired-looking figure of Aisha Sadek in rumpled scrubs. ‘You can step aside, Petty Officer. I’ve got this.’

‘Good,’ snarled Rourke, going to pass the security officer – but Sadek didn’t move from where she now blocked the doorway. ‘Aisha -’

‘Ambassador Hale received care aboard the Redemption before she was put on a runabout and returned to Gateway; do you honestly think Doctor V’Lenn didn’t take care of her, Matt?’ Sadek stood like a rock in the sea of murmuring waters that was the Infirmary. The convoy from Teros was not large, nor were the wounds serious; Redemption had the facilities to render all necessary emergency aid. But the high status of the patients and the high stakes of the situation had set the station’s medical centre into a buzz of anxiety above which Sadek seemed to have risen in wry serenity.

Rourke’s fists clenched by his side. ‘I want to see her.’

A nurse emerged through another door, passed Sadek a PADD, and fairly ran away. Sadek took her time reading the report, though in practice it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds before she said, ‘Visiting hours are at 0900.’

‘Aisha -’

Again she cut him off. ‘No. You don’t get to come down here and wave your pips around and bully my security officers and scare the hell out of my medical staff because you’re the station commander, Matt. You don’t need an official report, you have that: weirdo cultists blew up the aid station on Teros. You don’t need a serious update on the condition of the diplomatic envoy to the Midgard Sector, because if this materially impacted operations, you’d have it.’ Now she looked up and met his gaze. ‘This is wholly personal. You don’t get to use your rank to take it out on everyone else just because you’re afraid of your own feelings.’

Guilt, at last, swirled in him, but he did not unclench his fists. Perhaps she had a point, but he wasn’t ready to back down yet. At last he said, in a low rumble, ‘How is she?’

‘The Ambassador was seriously injured at Teros. Severe burns, internal injuries, traumatic shock,’ said Sadek in her cool, professional manner. ‘She was beamed immediately to the Redemption, where she received life-saving care from Doctor V’Lenn. She’s been received here because, while she was under medical supervision on the journey from Teros, the runabout’s facilities are less sophisticated. I wanted to give her a full examination to make sure she’s recovering as expected. She is.’

A muscle twitched in the corner of Rourke’s jaw. ‘Now you’ve demonstrated you’re God here, Aisha, can I please see her?’

‘Hang on.’ Sadek reached out for his hand. For a moment he thought this was a confusing, uncommonly overt expression of affection, only for her to tilt her grip and press her thumb on the inside of his wrist. After a moment, she said, ‘You can see her on one condition: you make an appointment with Greg when he’s back. Who’s fine, by the way; full recovery on the Redemption. I’m surprised you didn’t have a panic attack.’

No, Rourke thought. That came days ago, with the report that there’d been an explosion on Teros and her condition was critical, and there was nothing I could do. ‘I’ll talk to him.’

Perhaps realising her leverage was coming to an end, Sadek stepped past and gestured down the corridor. ‘Third door to your left. V’Lenn had to regrow her spleen and liver. It’s put her on a hell of a cocktail of drugs to provide essential nutrients, amino acids, supplements, and pain relief, and it’s a process I want to monitor closely until it’s complete. She’s awake, mobile, but a little weak and likely to tire. Don’t you dare explode your feelings all over her.’

That was a better warning than any other, and with a curt nod, Rourke pulled his hand free and headed to the door as directed, knowing it led to one of the private care rooms in Gateway’s infirmary.

To his surprise, Hale was not in the biobed, but sat in the comfortable armchair by the holographic window, a PADD in her hand, a stack of them on the table beside it. While her skin was pale, her hair a little lank, and he fancied he could see the faintest mottling along the side of her face from serious dermal regeneration that he knew would fade soon enough, she looked for all the world like she’d merely been under the weather, not had nearly died mere days ago. She’d been frowning in deep contemplation until she looked up and saw him, smiled, and went to rise. ‘Matt -’

He wanted to pull her up and wrap his arms around her, hold her as close as possible, but had to settle for closing the gap, putting a hand to her shoulder so she stayed in the chair, and coming down to one knee beside her. ‘You shouldn’t be moving around,’ he rumbled. ‘Doctor’s orders.’

‘I’m fine.’ Exasperation tinged her voice. ‘I want to read and walk ten feet, not run a marathon. Why does everyone assume I can’t be a good patient?’

‘Because these are Starfleet doctors, and Starfleet officers make terrible patients.’ Despite the wryness in his voice, he had her hand in both of his, his shoulders slumped, exhaustion at the ordeal his feelings had put him through sinking in at last. ‘What happened?’

Her expression flickered. ‘I’m sure you saw the reports. A group of locals on Teros we hadn’t been tracking and weren’t familiar with somehow mobilised, drove off the RRM, then took over the old aid station and blew it up. And anyone they’d lured nearby. It’s the aftermath I want to know about; I’ve not exactly been kept in the loop.’

Rourke sighed, closing his eyes a moment. ‘Redemption investigated as they deployed emergency aid. It looks like this group came out of nowhere to swarm the RRM at the aid station. Both sides took massive casualties before the RRM bugged out. Any surviving eye-witnesses say it was like the attackers just didn’t care how many they lost so long as they won. Then they made a big song and dance at the aid station, caught the attention of everyone in the Sanctuary District, and blew themselves up, like you saw. Sixteen dead civilians, but we think as many as twenty-one dead of this group, maybe ten dead RRM? It’s difficult to say.’

‘I’ve been at Teros for weeks. There was never so much as a whisper of locals arming themselves to fight the RRM. Certainly not suicidally.’

‘What few IDs we’ve been able to make, the locals are saying were some of the absolute dregs of the Sanctuary District. Even by their standards. Mostly old soldiers who didn’t want to work with the RRM for whatever reason but lacked the skills or were too psychologically damaged to do anything but fight. People the district had given up on. Then somehow they… get together weapons and organise and go on a suicidal rampage.’ It felt reductive to summarise it like that. Suicidal rampages were rarely so simple. But Rourke had no idea how to estimate the situation better.

‘An apocalyptic rampage,’ Hale sighed. ‘The speaker was chanting from texts of Romulan mythology before the explosion.’

‘I know.’ He winced. ‘Everyone knows. Now the locals think the Teros refugees are a violent, apocalpytic cult.’ Falteringly, he explained the murder. She didn’t need more on her plate, but what had seemed like a bump in the road to relocating the Teros refugees had become something much, much worse.

Hale’s expression sank. ‘Alfheim are using this to reject the settlement, aren’t they? We can’t let that happen.’

Those at the Alfheim Colony who resented the idea of settling Romulans on their planet, even on a part of the planet they didn’t live on, had wasted no time amplifying the crisis through the media to the population at large. On a frontier defined by the long watch of the cold Romulan border, then the xenophobic apprehension of the nearby Romulan collapse and crisis, any reason to distrust these refugees as chaotic and dangerous was like chum in the water.

‘The resettlement process is too far along to simply call it off,’ Rourke reassured her. ‘They’re here, on the station, after all. If they hadn’t yet left Teros, it might have been different. You can relax, I’m dealing with them.’

She did not look reassured. ‘I shouldn’t have brought John with me to Teros.’

‘I can be polite!’

‘You think they’re small-minded bumpkins who don’t just hate outsiders, but need the Romulans to be scary and dangerous to justify their sense of self-importance,’ she said, rather flatly summarising sentiments he had never directly expressed. ‘We won’t get anywhere if we don’t take their feelings seriously.’

Rourke bit his lip, then ran his thumb across the back of her hand. ‘We won’t get anywhere until you’re rested and recovered. Let my officers deal with the murder. Let Redemption continue to help at Teros. Let me deal with Alfheim Colony. And with you.’

At last she paused, and even that momentary falter opened the door for exhaustion to sink in. ‘I would very much like to argue with you…’

‘But I’m right.’

‘But I need rest.’ Her gaze flickered up to meet his. ‘Are you alright?’

‘I didn’t get blown up -’

‘And if you had, I think I’d be a complete mess.’ She raised a hand to brush her fingertips across his cheek. ‘I’m okay.’

‘I’m…’ Rourke felt his throat quiver, and in the end, the only word which came out was, ‘not.’ The admission was like scaffolding holding him up had begun to crumple, and he all but fell towards her, both of them wrapping their arms around each other. It took a few more moments before he rediscovered his voice for a muffled, ‘Station life was a stupid idea. I should have been on the ship. Not stuck back here.’

‘You couldn’t have stopped it,’ she murmured, stroking the back of his head.

‘I’d have been there when it happened. Dealing with the problem, not dealing with people trying to exploit it.’

There was a pause before she said, ‘Instead, you’re here while I’m elbow-deep in a crisis, and Endeavour is still so far from home?’

It was like she’d blown cold air on the back of his neck; like she’d exposed a wound he hadn’t known was there but had been bleeding him dry nonetheless. She was not the only one he felt helpless about. But she was the one he could do something about. The one who was here, the one he could wrap his arms around and hold close, and sit in silence with. Silence for mutual comfort, and silence so he didn’t correct her.

Because Endeavour wasn’t far from home. Endeavour was home, and she was far away.