The next proper interview with Rivera was at her hotel again, down in the bar. It was morning, with the sun low and fat as it crawled across a sky of frosty, arctic blue. Strong and powerful as it was this time of year, Ymir remained in the icy grip of this latitude of Alfheim.

Conversations started out simple enough with questions about her background. Cantelle Colony wasn’t all too different to Alfheim – smaller, less prestigious, warmer, but still with that colonial sense of independence and self-sufficiency. Valance was accustomed the usual questions, though Rivera made them gentler inferences: what was it like growing up as a half-Klingon in a primarily human colony, why did she move to the Empire in her teenaged years, what led her to Starfleet. Valance felt she gave rote, practiced answers, but Rivera, to her surprise, didn’t push.

‘The Academy, then,’ said Rivera as they moved forward. ‘You were classmates with Cassia Aquila, late captain of the Odysseus.’

Valance paused, then reached for her coffee to give a delayed cover to her hesitation. ‘You did your homework.’

‘It came up when I checked out your commendation for your actions during the Century Storm last year.’

‘Yes,’ said Valance after a beat. ‘Cassia and I were classmates. That’s not a question.’

‘Just classmates? Friends?’

Valance frowned. ‘I don’t see the relevance.’

‘This isn’t an interrogation, Captain, it’s an interview,’ Rivera said first, then sighed. ‘I’m trying to understand people who’ve influenced your career. You mentioned Captain MacCallister, and him supporting your application to the Academy. I’m curious about people who influenced you at the Academy.’

Valance gulped on her coffee, again buying time. ‘Cassia and I were friends. We were close. But we were rivals, too,’ she said, a little more clipped. She had not let herself think much about Aquila since her death. ‘We both wanted to be the best, so we pushed each other as hard as ourselves.’

‘That’s shone through in your early career records,’ Rivera said with a nod. ‘You going above and beyond to succeed, over and over.’

If Valance didn’t want to talk about Aquila, she really didn’t want to talk about the Derby. ‘You’re going to ask me about Plutarch.’

‘I can look at a dozen records that tell me what happened at Plutarch. Including testimony of officers who were there. Some paint you the villain. Some paint you a hero – messy, but a hero.’

‘The truth is usually somewhere in between.’

‘The truth in things like this is usually a matter of perspective. I’m curious on your perspective. Dissidents had abducted officers, including your captain. You took command, just a lieutenant, because of injuries. And went hell-bent-for-leather instead of negotiating.’

Valance shifted her weight. ‘I could have negotiated.’

‘Why didn’t you?’ Rivera spoke slowly, softly, but it still to Valance’s ears sounded like a whip-crack of a demand.

‘I thought… I thought capitulating would embolden the dissidents. Make it harder for Plutarch to deal with them after we left. Get our people back safely, for the price of leaving the place messier than we found it.’ Valance hesitated. ‘And there was pride, too. Of the “you don’t mess with Starfleet,” kind.’

Rivera was silent for a moment. ‘You don’t seem convinced by your own reasons.’

Plutarch ruined my career, banished me to the hinterlands until MacCallister brought me to Endeavour. What am I supposed to think?

‘I made a calculation. I was wrong. People died.’

Rivera glanced at her notes. ‘No black mark was put against your record. No formal reprimand.’

‘People died. Civilians died.’

A beat. Rivera adjusted her posture. ‘What advice would you give your former self, knowing what you do now?’

Valance frowned. ‘You mean, what would I do if I was back -’

‘I mean, if there was an officer in your shoes on that day, and you could advise them. What would you say?’

Valance hesitated. She’d been gently out-manoeuvred, and knew it. It was easy enough to castigate herself for past mistakes. Harder to think what to say if she removed herself from the situation, thought about it in the context of advice to someone else.

She put down her coffee cup carefully. ‘I’d tell them to trust the officers around them. Listen to their assessments. And remember that the priority is the preservation of life. But my mistake wasn’t simply gambling with people’s lives to try to win big, rather than accepting a messier but safer solution and then trying to deal with that consequence. It was that I didn’t listen to my crew.’

‘You were in command.’

‘I was just a lieutenant. And even an admiral needs to surround themselves with people they trust, they can rely on, and then listen to them.’ Valance had grown more emphatic as she spoke, pressing a finger to the white linen tablecloth.

Rivera listened for a moment. Nodded. Then said, ‘Is that what you’ve done on Endeavour? Gathered people you can trust?’

‘I didn’t build this crew,’ Valance said with a hint of dogged loyalty. ‘Matt Rourke built this crew.’

‘I… on the contrary, Captain, a good third of the crew didn’t serve under Matt Rourke. Almost none of your senior staff are the same people in the same posts as those serving under Matt Rourke. You’ve brought in fresh blood from the Pathfinder, elevated officers like Nathaniel Beckett, and given officers like Elsa Lindgren and Saeihr Kharth – a Romulan – much, much more responsibility than they ever had under Rourke. You’ve transformed your senior staff to be your own.’

It had happened so gradually that Valance hadn’t noticed. Pointing out that Rourke had trusted Beckett with acting senior staff roles, or that he’d made Kharth second officer originally, felt a bit empty. In the end, she said, ‘Commander Kharth is a good officer.’

‘The kind of person who’ll give you the advice you need to hear in a tough spot?’

‘All of my senior staff are the kind of people who give me the advice I need to hear in a tough spot,’ Valance said doggedly. Some doors weren’t being opened. The acrimony between her and Kharth didn’t need to make Galaxy Weekly.

Rivera paused. Nodded. ‘I know we skipped ahead a bit, Captain. Jumping from Plutarch to your command. Like I said, I’m trying to get a feel for who’s influenced you. I know Captain MacCallister brought you to the USS Endeavour – the old one – after you served with the Empire. I know you stayed with Captain Rourke for a while when you could have moved to your own command sooner.’

‘What you’re recognising, Ms Rivera,’ said Valance, trying to not be as cold as she felt, ‘is that there’s no such thing as the story of one officer. There’s never one decision-maker, one hero, one single, irreplaceable person.’

‘There is that,’ Rivera said. ‘But you’re still the captain. You’ve been a key figure in multiple recent events. And the people around you change.’

Valance stiffened. ‘That’s life.’

‘My point is that there is a constant thread in this story: you. The people around you may be excellent, but they come in and out. Captain MacCallister led you to the Academy, led you back to Starfleet service on Endeavour, but he’s retired now. Captain Rourke has moved on. And then there’ve been new people.’

Not always. ‘We’re lapsing into philosophy here.’

‘Maybe.’ Rivera watched her a moment, then shrugged. ‘When you’re making decisions now as Endeavour’s captain, who do you rely on?’

Valance quirked an eyebrow. ‘Whoever’s expertise is relevant.’

A flash of frustration finally tugged at her expression. ‘You do know this isn’t a trap or a test, right? That I’m not fishing for fuel for a headline of “Starfleet Captain Has Secret Feud with Senior Staff,” right? Because I write for Galaxy Weekly, not a gossip rag, and if I did write for a gossip rag, you wouldn’t be newsworthy.’

This was all delivered with a sufficiently light tone, a tease to the aggravation, to soften the criticism enough to make Valance snort gently.

‘Alright,’ she said, hands raising in acquiescence. ‘But I want to be clear I hold all of my staff in the highest regard.’

‘Noted,’ Rivera said, scribbling something with her PADD stylus with a flourish so performative Valance suspected it was nonsense.

‘Any captain has to rely on their first officer,’ Valance said after a moment’s hesitation. ‘Commander Kharth and I come from different backgrounds and have different approaches, but that’s invaluable. I trust her to give me her unvarnished opinion, to challenge me when she thinks I’m wrong.’

Rivera was smart enough to read between the lines. ‘How do you keep that from being fraught?’

‘We’ve been through enough together to trust each other. This is what I mean when I talk about the importance of people around us – Captain Rourke trusted her, made her Security Chief, made her second officer, when at that point in my career I might not have. So I had to work closely with someone who wouldn’t have been my choice. I learnt a lot from that. A lot from him, a lot from her.’

‘And what about personally?’ Rivera watched her closely. ‘Is there room for that level of support when you’re a captain?’

‘Obviously, a captain has to have a certain amount of distance from their crew. You can’t be drinking buddies with someone one day and then give them an order they don’t want to hear the next. Professional distance protects both sides.’ Seeing Rivera gearing up to tighten the thumbscrews, Valance gave a light sigh. ‘Commander Airex and I have been friends for a long time.’

‘You can talk to him like you might not talk to Kharth, or someone else?’

‘To an extent. But yes.’

Rivera’s eyes didn’t leave her. At length she said, more gentle than probing, ‘That sounds quite lonely.’

‘Lonely?’

‘You’ve outlined a lot of responsibilities that are on you. And professional support structures. But not much else. Some captains have families, friends elsewhere…’

‘I have friends from across my service,’ said Valance quickly. ‘Including some on Gateway Station, and it’s a benefit of this assignment that we spend so much time at the station.’ It was half a lie. She wasn’t sure who she could have a drink with on Gateway who wouldn’t spend the whole time calling her sir. Dashell?

Rivera looked like she knew this was a prod too far. Not looking convinced, she gave a tight smile. ‘I’m glad. Because it sounds difficult.’

There was no world Valance would discuss a collapsed relationship, the untethering that had come from moving to Pathfinder, the reconnection of returning to Endeavour that felt incomplete.

So all she did was sip her coffee and say, neutrally, ‘I muddle through. Every captain does.’