Thawn knew they were in orbit of a planetoid, knew they had taken one of her engineering department on an away mission, knew they were deep in the throes of an investigation, and she hated it. She was used to being on the bridge when this happened, or on the away team itself; in the heart of the action, one way or another. Instead she was in Main Engineering, where her job was to monitor the power grid as their mighty ship ran scan after scan.

‘If they’ve not found anything through sensors,’ she mused, looking at the bridge feed on one of the auxiliary consoles, ‘then either nothing’s there, or we need to compensate for interference. We could use the Empire’s own data to filter out noise -’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ Forrester’s voice was clipped and not a little pointed.

Thawn turned away from the console, abashed and trying not to be. Forrester wasn’t even the official deputy chief; that she was the ranking member of the department left with Perrek gone was more an indictment of how depleted the ranks were than a recommendation of her talents. And still she felt she had the authority to criticise her acting chief, however implicitly. And still Thawn felt the judgement sting.

Nevertheless, Thawn was the Chief Engineer. ‘Do you have any recommendations, Lieutenant?’ she asked sharply. Do you think there’s anything we should be doing while we twiddle our thumbs? Or are you just getting at me?

Forrester did hesitate at that. ‘We can use this time to get ahead on the maintenance operations.’

‘No,’ said Thawn. This was first a knee-jerk reaction, rejecting anything that Forrester might have suggested. But after a beat, a new thought occurred. ‘We make sure our power allocation is efficient. If something goes wrong while we’re piping reserves into our sensor array, we need to stay agile in response.’

It was almost a spurious instruction, borderline superfluous work. But it meant that when weapons fire hit Endeavour some ten minutes later, the ship was primed to respond.

‘It’s a Mat’Ha-class bird-of-prey!’ Qadir called, his voice holding the edge of apprehension that reminded Valance he hadn’t yet manned Endeavour’s bridge in a direct confrontation before. ‘They’ve opened fire on both us and the Excalibur.’

But then, neither had she since being made captain. ‘Red alert!’ Valance called.

At Comms, Kally turned to face her. ‘They’re hailing us.’

‘On screen.’

The Excalibur had been hit hard by the initial volley, and Valance’s throat tightened as the sight of it disappeared on the screen to show, instead, the bridge of a Klingon ship. She had not expected to recognise the face before her.

‘Torkath?’

‘Captain Valance.’ Torkath, son of K’Var, looked sombre. ‘I regret it’s come to this. I respect you greatly. I will make today a good day for you to die.’

‘What are you doing? We’ve just found an escape pod from the Rotarran, we’re trying to find the truth of what happened to Martok -’

‘Have you found Martok himself?’

‘No -’

‘Then Martok is gone.’ Somehow, he sounded regretful, even though he and his ship had burst from nowhere to open fire. ‘Do not expect this peace to last. And when the banners are raised, Matthew Rourke will have no choice but to face me once I have struck at his family – just as he struck at mine.’

Beside her, Valance heard Kharth utter a low, Romulan oath, but she kept her gaze on Torkath as she said, ‘The Empire’s on the precipice of disaster, and you’re happy to usher that along in the name of vengeance?’

Torkath gave a short, sharp nod as if this was all self-evident. ‘Let us see what you do for family, Captain Valance. Qapla’.’

The viewscreen went dead, but less than a heartbeat later, Qadir called out, ‘Bird-of-prey is locking on to the Excalibur again!’

‘Put us in between them!’ Kharth barked at Shiera at Helm, and the deck surged as the mighty ship tried to make herself a barrier between the embattled shuttle and the bird-of-prey bearing down on them.

But it was too little, too late. The Excalibur danced on the viewscreen, Ensign Fox banking her into evasive maneouvres. It was enough to avoid most of the bird-of-prey’s weapons fire – but not all. Disruptor fire blossomed off the shields before collapsing them, and as Valance watched, the blasts thudded into the hull.

Even as Endeavour was finally in position, facing off against the bird-of-prey, Valance knew it might not be enough.

Athaka confirmed this a moment later, his voice an anxious higher pitch. ‘Captain, the Excalibur’s hull has been breached and – there’s a power surge in the starboard engine!’

If that engine overloaded, that was the away team gone. Valance knew she only had seconds, but it felt like an ice age before finally she found the words. ‘Lock on transporters, Athaka – Qadir, lower shields once he’s ready to beam, then raise them at once. Quickly, people!’

Her orders weren’t even over before Kharth had smacked a control on her seat’s armrest. ‘All hands, brace for impact.’

‘I’ve got a lock!’

‘Lowering shields!’

‘Transporting now -’

And Endeavour bucked hard enough to send Valance flying to the deck as a fresh volley of torpedoes from Torkath’s ship hammered into their unshielded hull.

Thawn was accustomed to needing to rally after the ship had taken a serious hit. But normally, all she had to do was get to her feet and read the damage readout on her console, everything consolidated in one place. Now she was the one who had to do that consolidating.

She hauled herself back to her feet and clutched the edge of the pool table console. All around, Main Engineering was a cacophony of alarms and flashing lights. A mere glance at the main display told her of the damage to Endeavour’s hull, but there was more. Countless more problems she was going to have to absorb in just a heartbeat.

‘Forrester, status on power regulation! Vienen, systems update!’ Around her came the flurry of voices, engineers flying into action to understand how grievously wounded their ship was.

Within seconds that felt like lifetimes, Thawn was hammering a button to open a comms channel. ‘Engineering to Bridge! We’ve got hull breaches on decks eight and nine, I’m having to reroute emergency power to keep the shields back up, and the port manoeuvring thruster is only operating at about seventy-eight percent! I need you to not get us hit if we’re going to stay combat active!’

‘Understood, Engineering.’ Valance’s voice was clipped, distracted. ‘Can you repair that thruster?’

‘Sending teams now,’ said Thawn, hitting the command controls as she did so to deploy one of the damage repair teams. ‘I’m rerouting available power to the shields but one wrong hit and they collapse.’

Kharth answered next. ‘How are we supposed to avoid getting hammered on the shields if a thruster’s out?’

Tension wrapped around Thawn’s throat; Kharth was right. That was an untenable mixture. But she had no answers for her, and it took a heartbeat before she realised it wasn’t her job to. ‘That’s a tactical issue, Commander. I’ll get us fit as quickly as I can, but that’s my diagnosis. Engineering out.’

It wasn’t running away from an argument with her superiors. It was focusing on her job. Thawn rounded on Forrester. ‘I need you to draw power from everything to keep our shields up while the repair team gets to the thruster.’

‘Emergency power is going everywhere,’ said Forrester, jaw tight as Thawn fairly flew to the console beside her to read the deeply unwelcome feed. ‘We’ve got emergency forcefields up -’

‘Evacuate and seal off those sections,’ said Thawn sharply. ‘Lock them off, preserve power. In fact, redirect all personnel not at battle stations to emergency shelter locations and cut off power to those non-essential sections.’

‘That’s not a lot of power to free up.’

‘Athaka can make a miracle with a micron,’ said Thawn, her faith in her assistant surprising even her. ‘This is about getting us breathing room while shields recharge and we repair that thruster.’ She might not have been the best person for instantly figuring out which conduits to repair or how long the work on the thruster would take. But she knew exactly where to reroute power, knew exactly how to trim percentages off here and there. Forrester could tell her what the systems were doing, how badly Endeavour was bleeding, what she needed. Thawn knew exactly where the margins were, and how to play them.

‘Right,’ said Forrester, breathless from the urgency. ‘Evacuating personnel now.’

It wasn’t a miracle. It was a margin. But it would have to do.

‘Captain – Chief Zharek confirms the away team are all aboard and accounted for.’

It was a small aside from Kally, and not the most important thing happening right then. But since the Excalibur had exploded into a fireball and the bridge had been consumed with the ravages of combat, Valance had felt a knot somewhere deep in her tighten with the uncertainty. She’d just thrown her ship into a crucible to save them. It couldn’t be for nothing.

And now she had to make sure nobody died to save them. ‘Shiera, hit full speed and try to get some distance. Use the gravity of the moon to boost us. We can’t dodge and they’ll follow, but we can make them chase.’

Kharth rounded on Qadir. ‘Lock on them with aft torpedoes and fire intermittently; let’s force them into manoeuvres if they’re going to follow.’ The bird-of-prey was faster than them, but with the right burst of speed, they could get some distance for a breather.

Endeavour’s deck rumbled as Shiera pushed them faster, the ship hurtling forwards with her mighty engines to propel them away from the fight. Valance nodded with satisfaction as she saw the spray of torpedoes from their aft force Torkath’s ship to stage only a staggered hunt, forced to swerve to avoid taking a hit. Disruptor fire came back in response, and with their thrusters damaged, Shiera couldn’t avoid it. Shields stuttered – but held.

Kharth slid up beside Valance. ‘If we can get to warp, we can run completely.’

‘And lose all hope of getting that escape pod,’ Valance muttered.

‘Assuming it survive the Excalibur’s explosion. Or that Torkath won’t blow it up. Cover up the truth.’

‘He doesn’t need to be part of a plot against Martok to hate us. This is personal.’

‘Of course.’ Kharth managed to inject tremendous acid into a drawl. ‘Why wouldn’t they risk an entire treaty and the future of their Empire over a personal grievance against someone not even on this fucking ship?’

Valance heard the unspoken scoff of Klingons and chose to ignore it. She raised her voice. ‘Status on our repairs?’

‘Port thruster is up to ninety percent efficiency,’ Athaka said. ‘Lieutenant Thawn says that’s as much as she can get us at this point.’

Anything else would take major component replacement, Valance assumed. It was still not ideal. Ninety percent sounded good, but as a pilot she knew what a difference that ten percent could make.

She glanced at Kharth, grimaced, and nodded before looking forward. ‘Ensign Shiera, break us out of orbit. We’re going to make a run for it. We’re faster than them at warp.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Shiera in her clipped, Vulcan tones. ‘Moving to -’

‘Another bird-of-prey’s decloaking!’ Qadir’s shout cut through the optimism like a poisoned dagger. ‘They’re blocking our path and locking on weapons!’

‘Evasive action!’ Valance snapped, and grabbed her armrest as Endeavour swerved.

‘They anticipated an escape,’ Kharth growled. ‘Bastards.’

‘Lock on and fire all weapons,’ said Valance. ‘If we can stagger them, we can break through.’

But Qadir’s report moments later came with the exhausted sigh of a tactical officer who knew the force of their strike had been blunted by evasion and shields, and Valance thought her heart was going to settle into a fist of stone when yet another blip appeared on their sensors only seconds later. And another. And another.

‘Wow,’ said Kharth, dry and toneless. ‘They really hate us.’

‘Captain, the first and second birds-of-prey – Torkath’s ships – they’re breaking off!’

Valance rose to her feet, and watched as transponders on the three new Klingon ships send friendly IDs. More than that, IDs she recognised. Her jaw dropped. ‘Kally, hail the newcomers.’

Once again, she recognised the Klingon on the bridge before her. Once again, she hadn’t expected it. But this time, her heart soared with a relief she’d never thought she’d feel at the confirmed arrival of the House of A’trok. ‘Gov!’

Her half-brother wore a toothy, self-satisfied smile. ‘Karana. I hope you do not resent us denying you this battle.’

‘No, Gov, I’m not sorry you forced me to fight off two ships alone.’ She worked her jaw. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Our grandfather has seen fit to lend assistance to the House of Koloth. Through them, we received word that Torkath, son of K’Var, had left Qo’noS with his ships after you and might do something rash. I apologise for arriving late; we were keeping our distance lest we trigger an unnecessary confrontation, and lost track of him until we picked up signs of battle in this system. Has your hunt been successful?’

Valance’s shoulders sank, and again she looked down at the sensor feed of everything the Excalibur had pulled from the lone, empty, crashed escape pod from the Rotarran.

‘No,’ she decided. ‘No, we’ve only found questions, not answers.’ They could go over the records inch by inch. Perhaps there would be something there. But Valance knew in her heart that this was where the trail for Chancellor Martok went cold.

Mission concludes with the events of ‘The Death of Kings.’