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.’