‘We’ve picked up what we’re confident is the warp trail of the Rotarran,’ said Airex, reading off a PADD as he reported to Valance in her ready room. ‘So far, the route hasn’t deviated either from the registered flight plan or what the investigations the High Command issued turned up.’

‘All that means,’ mused Valance, sat behind her desk, ‘is that we haven’t yet found where something went wrong. I assume you’ve analysed the warp trail.’

‘Thawn and I have been over it. There’s nothing about our readings which suggest there was anything unusual about the Rotarran. But that gives us insights into their warp engines, at best, and the trail is quite degraded by now. I’d be surprised, at this point, if we found anything the Klingons didn’t.’

‘Assuming they were looking very closely,’ Valance pointed out. ‘Thank you, Commander.’

He nodded, but didn’t leave, pausing for a moment to drum his fingers on the edge of the PADD. ‘Thawn seems to be settling in well in engineering. I think she’ll thrive in a position with less direct oversight. And I think it’ll be good for her.’

‘This is only temporary,’ Valance reminded him. ‘The next time Endeavour is deployed, Perrek will be back. And I admit, I have concerns about that lack of oversight. For all of Lieutenant Thawn’s strengths, initiative isn’t one of them.’

‘Then perhaps this is a chance for her to learn.’

I know that, Valance thought with uncharitable irritation which she bit back. Airex didn’t deserve that from her. ‘You’ve shown more interest lately in the development of our younger senior staff.’

He looked a little bashful. ‘It’s something I neglected in the past. And it’s all the more important as the senior science officer when it comes to our officers with a less… assertive career path.’

Her brow furrowed. ‘You think Kharth and I neglect the likes of Thawn?’

‘I think that I have insights into different ways of being an officer,’ Airex said diplomatically. ‘Just as the two of you have different ideas to each other.’

Valance sighed and rubbed her temple with a long finger. ‘Who the hell on this ship is going to be the fluffy one.’

It was Airex’s turn to frown. ‘Did we ever have a fluffy one?’

‘Captain – Commodore Rourke -’

‘Is brash. Bold. Affable, but not approachable.’ Still frowning, Airex shook his head. ‘Rourke’s geniality is all surface-level. He’s an excellent manager of people, but it’s exactly that – he manages them. Just because he can have a beer with his subordinates doesn’t mean he’s one of them. And it’s not just because of rank. You’ve seen how he changes masks more often than he changes socks. Those masks help him handle his crew, but they don’t forge sincere and close bonds.’

‘The crew all liked and respected him -’

‘I’m not saying they didn’t. But they didn’t bear their souls to him. Bring personal problems to him. Get much direct mentoring from him. Don’t misunderstand me, Karana, I’m not criticising the man. But you seem to have put him on a pedestal somewhere along the way.’

‘Rourke? On a pedestal?’ Valance made a face, looking out the window. Stars streaked past on their endless hunt to a prize she wasn’t sure they’d find, or a truth she wasn’t sure they’d want. ‘Or perhaps I’m throwing myself in the ditch so when I look up, I see him.’

‘The crew like and respect you. I know you think of yourself as distant, emotionally detached. I know you worry if you can connect with your crew. Perhaps you do have fewer superficial socialisations with them than Rourke did. But if you have a connection with one of them, it has something Rourke often lacks: sincerity.’ Airex shrugged. ‘It’s not better or worse. It’s different. You need to give yourself a little grace.’

She didn’t have an argument, but did give an apprehensive grimace when she looked back at him. ‘I worry who there is in the command staff they can turn to. It’s not like Kharth is any warmer than me.’

‘First, you should give your crew a little more credit. They’re more observant than you think. I think you both do, yes, intimidate them a bit. But I think they all know that you’re committed to them. That you might seem detached, but you’ll put everything on the line for them. That Kharth might seem bitter, but she’s fiercely loyal.’ He shook his head. ‘The chain of command won’t break down just because the CO or XO doesn’t have a beer with the crew. Besides, you have Logan for that.’

Valance winced. ‘The ex-Borg.’

‘A year ago, I’d have worried about that, too. Right now? Half of them are ex-Borg.’

‘It’s different.’

‘It is,’ Airex allowed. ‘But it’s similar enough.’

‘We’ll see.’ She glanced away, and he looked like he knew this was her ending the conversation without having to win or concede the argument. ‘This is all something we can worry about in the future, anyway. In the meantime, we need to get back to the hunt.’

The hunt dragged on for days more. Valance found herself teetering on the edge of tension as Airex insisted that a thorough enough scan to pick up anything in Martok’s warp trail the Empire wouldn’t have detected necessitated a slower pace. Thawn, in turn, argued that the longer they waited, the more the warp trail would dissipate. It was unusual for Thawn to be the one to urge haste, but Valance knew this came not from a sudden forthrightness on her behalf, but a much more common pessimism.

And still, as Airex pulled long shifts and dragged Turak into the stellar sciences labs for analysis on top of analysis, as every inch of the ship’s mighty scientific facilities were brought to bear to solve a mystery that might change the motion of the galaxy, they found nothing.

At length, stood at his post on the bridge, Airex sagged against the console, sighed, and said, ‘We’re reaching the end of the detectable warp trail, Captain. This matches up with the Empire’s records on where the Rotarran was last sighted.’

Valance, sat in the command chair, looked back at him. ‘Has the trail degraded beyond detection? Or does it just stop?’

‘A rapid degradation,’ said Airex. ‘Which matches up with a sudden deceleration. The subspace disruptions are much weaker at a lower warp speed.’

‘So the Rotarran could have dropped to Warp 4,’ said Valance, ‘and effectively vanished.’

‘Or cloaked,’ said Kharth, jaw tight. ‘We’re dealing with a ship literally designed to disappear.’

Valance rubbed her temples. ‘Why would they slow down? Or cloak.’

‘Could be any reason -’

‘I’m running through options, Commander,’ she told Kharth, sharper than she meant to. ‘Not being fatalistic. You’re heading to your destination. It’s not time-sensitive. Suddenly, you slow down. Why would that happen?’

Kharth looked rather irate at being snapped at on the bridge, but huffed and thought. ‘Again, to cloak. You cloak to not be detected. Perhaps they spotted a threat.’

‘You’d slow down to change heading,’ Airex offered.

‘We can’t possibly know if Martok had plans besides going to Boreth. The monks have insisted they know nothing – let’s not press them unless we have to. So let’s assume for the moment that something changed. They detected something that made them investigate or try to shroud themselves.’

‘The route has been picked over extensively by the Empire,’ said Airex, ‘and there’s been no sign of any combat engagement. It wouldn’t take our sensors to pick something like that up.’

‘So if they detected a threat and tried to avoid it,’ said Valance, ‘then they didn’t get caught. Something else happened. Or, again, they detected something else of interest. What’s nearby, Airex?’

‘Nearby is going to have to do some generous work,’ the science officer mused as he studied his sensors. ‘No stellar phenomena, nothing you’d want to use to lose a tail. But there is a star system a few light-years out. Uninhabited.’

‘That’s not exactly close enough to run to,’ said Kharth.

‘But cloaking and hiding in the gravity well of a moon is still a valid tactic. Or, again, maybe something caught their attention,’ said Valance. ‘Let’s take a look.’

Even Endeavour took some hours to cross the distance, and it felt even longer before they eased out of warp at the periphery of the gravitic pull of a class G star and its seven planets of varying composition but consistent degrees of lifelessness.

‘The Empire did investigate this system,’ said Airex, ‘but this is also the exact circumstances where our superior sensors may come into play.’

Valance turned to Kharth, knowing she needed to mollify her first officer a little. ‘Let’s assume the tactical scenario. You’re commanding a cloaked ship. You’re trying to lose a tail, or wait for a threat to pass, and you come to this system. Where do you go?’

Kharth took a moment, studying the scans as they came in, examining the composition of the system. At length, she tapped on her armrest display the dot of the fourth planet. ‘That gas giant. An atmosphere to hide in, a strong gravity to disrupt sensors, a lot of moons to play hide-and-seek in.’

‘Agreed,’ said Valance. ‘Take us in, Ensign Fox.’

‘I’m comparing our findings to the Klingon scans of the system as we go,’ said Airex, the deck humming underneath as Endeavour manoeuvred through the greater gravitic pull of the nearby sun instead of the smoothness of deep space. ‘It’s not giving us any clues, but there is a plethora of unrelated readings we’re picking up that they didn’t.’

Kharth frowned at him. ‘We’re not here to marvel at the scientific delights of this system, Commander.’

‘No,’ said Airex, gentler than Valance would have been, ‘but now I know what we’re seeing that the Empire didn’t. This gives us a much better estimation of the limitations of their records.’

Valance sighed, leaning back in the command chair. ‘We have extensive records about the Rotarran and her construction. We should be able to calibrate our sensors to detect the tritanium or duranium alloys or the polymers in the hull?’

‘If it’s there to be found.’

They settled in orbit of the gas giant, and still, hours passed with little to show for their efforts. Valance was about to give up when Kharth sat up.

‘We’re still looking for signs that the Rotarran’s here,’ she said. ‘Not for signs she came this way. What about plasma trails from the engines? Energy emissions from their coolant systems?’

Airex grimaced. ‘We’d need a very focused sweep to even hope to detect that.’

‘So we need to know where to start. We’re already wondering where they would hide.’ Kharth stabbed a command on the armrest controls, and the viewscreen’s display of the system map zoomed in beyond just the orbit of the gas giant, and towards one specific moon. ‘Moon 6. Atmosphere of primarily ionised hydrogen and helium that scatters and absorbs sensor signals. Particularly reduces the effectiveness of the sort of long-range sensors we know the Klingons aren’t as good at building as us. Not just the sort of place a search party might miss a clue in – a good place to hide from Klingon ships in.’

Airex was already at work, and at his instruction, Fox brought Endeavour closer to the moon. Valance was settled down to wait another while as he studied the area, but a mere ten minutes had passed before there was a promising chirrup from his sensors. ‘Hello…’

‘Commander?’

‘I’m picking up a very faint localised energy field in the moon’s atmosphere that shouldn’t be there. It would match the interaction of Klingon manoeuvring thrusters with the ionised gases. But…’ Airex winced. ‘It’s incredibly faint. I don’t just mean degraded, I mean that I’m not convinced this is from the engines of a bird-of-prey.’

‘Follow the trail anyway,’ said Valance.

‘On it. It’s a downward trajectory… Captain, this looks like something landed on the surface of the moon. Or crashed. I’m not convinced it’s the Rotarran.’

‘A shuttle?’

‘Could be.’ He looked up. ‘Recommend we take the Excalibur down to find out.’

Valance nodded. ‘Take point, Airex. Fox, you’re flying.’ She considered sending Kharth, then considered how depleted her bridge crew was, and remained unsure who she could even send along with Airex. ‘Do you want an engineer?’ she asked him.

She watched his eyes flicker to Ops, consider and then reject taking Athaka, the last person on Endeavour’s bridge who could work magic with their sensors if they needed to. She knew he was considering asking for Thawn, and was surprised when he said, ‘I’ll take Seeley.’ At her look, he shrugged. ‘She knows hardware.’

‘Take Jain with you,’ Kharth said, clearly torn on her remaining on the bridge. ‘Just in case you find a shuttle full of pissed-off Klingons.’

We’ll have Yeoman Nestari pitching in on an away team at this rate, Valance thought, but nodded and let them work.

Excalibur was reported underway by Ensign Shiera, the Vulcan pilot who’d taken over helm from Fox, by the time Kharth shifted in her chair towards Valance and said, ‘You know we’re running on a lot of supposition here,’ in a low voice.

‘If this digs up nothing,’ Valance murmured in reply, ‘we’ll tear this system apart if we have to.’

‘We have literally no reason to suspect that the Rotarran came here except that it’s nearby.’

‘Nearby, and the sort of area where if there’s anything to be found, the Empire might not find it and we might.’ Valance still looked at her XO with a more permissive expression. ‘I know we’re out on a limb. But we have to find the truth.’

‘No,’ said Kharth. ‘We have to find Martok. Anything short of that, and we should be preparing for war.’

Valance didn’t know how to answer that, and didn’t try.

It took a while before she was granted a reprieve when Kally patched comms from the Excalibur through to the bridge.

‘We’ve found something, Captain,’ came Airex’s slightly excitable voice. ‘An escape pod hit the surface. It’s from the Rotarran.’

Valance sat up. ‘Life signs?’

‘None. Nor any indication of bodies aboard. We’re running scans from here and Seeley’s disembarked to take a look at the systems, extract anything from its records she can. Then we’re going to tractor it up. It’s utterly inhospitable here, Captain; she’s in an EV suit and anyone landing here wouldn’t have been better off than in space. Worse, with this atmospheric pressure.’

‘That sounds to me,’ mused Kharth, ‘like a decoy. Why else launch an empty escape pod?’

Valance wasn’t sure she disagreed, but the evidence that the Rotarran had been here, that Martok had been here, was enough to set her hearts thudding so fast she had to stay silent. They had to progress one step at a time now they had a solid lead. The time for intuition and experimentation was over.

It was another twenty minutes before the Excalibur reported back in. ‘We’re returning now, Captain,’ came Airex’s voice. ‘We’ll tractor the pod up with us. Nothing striking on the initial data, but we’re transmitting it to you now, and we can go over it when back aboard.’

‘Understood, Commander. Good work. See you in five.’

Still, Valance stood and could not help but pace as she waited, as she watched the greyish hues of the thick atmosphere of the moon on the viewscreen. Even when the tiny dot of the Excalibur appeared and grew, even when she could see the shine of the tractor beam as it hauled its finding up, she could not relax.

‘It seems your theory has a good chance of bring right,’ she told Kharth at length, just to have something to say. ‘Maybe they ran here, tried to hide here, dumped a decoy.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Kharth, now considerably more conservative. ‘We’ll have to see. I don’t-’

There was a sharp blat from Tactical, and Lieutenant Qadir sat up. ‘Captain!’ His voice was urgent. ‘Klingon bird-of-prey decloaking off our port side!’

For one irrational second, Valance thought it might be the Rotarran. That Martok might hail them, pop up on their screen and say, ‘you found me, well done.’ That they’d won. That all was well.

Then the viewscreen was filled with the streak of torpedoes thundering towards Endeavour, and the disruptor cannons taking the unshielded Excalibur in the side.