‘What really matters,’ said Alexander Beckett as he stood in his office on the Caliburn, the burning hulks of Avalon Fleet Yards in the aftermath of Frontier Day visible through the window, ‘is that I was right.’

Rourke shifted his feet. ‘You said Dahlgren was the Changeling. Not Marshal-Bennett.’

Beckett glowered at him. ‘I also said that I expected you to be there in case of emergency, Matt. What happened?’

‘I couldn’t get to the observation lounge,’ Rourke lied effortlessly.

‘And yet you made it to Auditorium B.’ Beckett visibly gnashed his teeth. ‘Ambassador Krayteen is… hugely impressed.’

‘That’s… nice?’ Rourke tried to not sound indifferent. The ambassador had been a complete pain in his neck as he’d tried to evacuate the dignitaries, complaining the whole time. But it was probably for the best that a high-ranking member of the Diplomatic Corps had approved of his rescue mission.

‘It is nice, isn’t it, Matt?’ Beckett was inches away from sneering. ‘Regardless. Frontier Day at Avalon could have been considerably worse. Very few losses among essential personnel.’

‘Quite a few among personnel someone considers essential,’ Rourke rumbled.

Beckett’s eyes narrowed. ‘You’re not making this easy.’

Rourke shrugged. ‘I’m expecting a summary judgement now that Marshal-Bennett was, it turned out, a bloody Changeling. Those don’t tend to go well for the defendant. I just survived the Borg trying to kill or capture everyone. Diplomacy kind of fell off my To Do list today.’

‘Well.’ Beckett shuffled things about on his desk. ‘That’s going to need to change.’

‘I’m not really interested in begging for my job -’

‘Avalon did not suffer egregious losses, but Earth did,’ Beckett pressed on, louder. ‘The Fleet Formation system meant ships were powerless to resist, and the Borg’s instructions there were to kill everyone. You know who was at Earth. Almost every command-level officer is dead.’

That had been suspected in the twenty-four hours since the Borg Collective had lost their control over the young officers. But the confirmation roiled in Rourke’s gut as his mind went to officers he’d met, worked with, served under throughout his career. There would be a lot of familiar names on the casualty list. But he heard Beckett’s implication, and swallowed. ‘You took away my ship.’

‘As if I’m sending you back to Endeavour,’ came the scoffing reply, and Rourke almost swore at him and walked out the room before he pressed on, ‘when you’re now one of the most experienced commanders left in the goddamn fleet.’

Rourke’s brow furrowed with confusion. ‘Admiral?’

Beckett rolled his eyes. ‘You’re very stupid sometimes, Matt, you know that? Jericho’s taking the hit for everything. He came to me this morning; said I could make any kind of example I wanted.’ The crisis had, it seemed, torn down any sense of propriety that had kept him from intervening in the situation with Endeavour Squadron. Jericho’s benefactors, the ones who had put him in charge of the squadron to begin with, were surely dead. And if Marshal-Bennett had been a Changeling and overseen the inquiry, it was likely he who had kept Beckett out of things so far. In the midst of chaos, nobody was here to stop a Vice Admiral from resolving a personnel and disciplinary crisis in his backyard. Not when Starfleet was about to need all experienced hands on deck.

‘I hope he keeps his uniform,’ Rourke found himself saying.

‘He will. But not his ship. He’ll probably never sit a command chair again.’ Beckett sobered and drummed his fingers on the desk. ‘You know where he was yesterday? Sealed himself in an observation lounge with everyone there, including his daughters. He likely saved them all.’

‘That’s not bad,’ Rourke said softly, ‘for a man who worked at Utopia Planitia and was away from home when his wife died in the attack.’

‘Not bad at all,’ mused Beckett, and the two men – both of them terrible husbands, both of them fathers and not especially good at that, either – were silent for a moment. ‘I expect he’ll return to Earth. But that’s beside the point.’ He straightened and looked Rourke in the eye. ‘I have a new offer for you, Matt. It’s a change. And you’ll hate it. But this is the world we’re about to live in, and I need you to step up.’

As a ranking member of the Diplomatic Corps, Sophia Hale’s guest quarters on Brahms Station were large, comfortable, and painfully generic. Nevertheless, that was how she had lived her life for as long as Rourke had known her, moving from place to place and never leaving a personal mark on any of it.

‘How did it go?’ she asked as she stepped back from the door and let him in, at once going to the replicator. ‘Are we having drinks? Is it hard liquor or champagne?’

‘I think that depends,’ Rourke said, stepping further into the room, his heart thudding in his chest. ‘Sophia… we need to talk.’

Hale paused at the replicator. ‘Scotch it is.’ When she turned with the glasses and saw his face, her eyebrows raised. ‘You’ll drink replicated scotch for this? That’s really bad.’

He didn’t answer that, merely advanced and took the glass. ‘I heard you were offered a new post. At the embassy on New Romulus.’

She winced the wince of someone graced with good luck while those around her struggled. ‘It’s really a reflection of the work we’ve been doing this past year and a half, Matthew.’

‘Have you taken it?’

‘Not yet.’ Hale faltered. ‘What’s going on?’

Rourke drew a shuddering breath. ‘I’d like you to turn down the offer.’

Her lips set. ‘You’re talking in riddles. What did Beckett say?’

‘He said…’ A slow exhale. ‘He said he’s promoting me to Commodore. That he wants me to take over Starbase 23, reform the squadron with Endeavour, the station, two more ships. To take on the Midgard Sector and help everyone out there – everyone stuck in the old Neutral Zone, everyone in territory the Star Empire used to hold. Build bridges with them. With the Republic. And get back out there, explore this territory nobody else has been to.’

‘That’s…’ Hale’s eyes widened. ‘Matthew, that’s wonderful –’

‘And I want you,’ he pressed on in a rush, ‘to turn down the embassy position and come with me to SB-23. We’ll need a diplomatic team, there’s work to be done with the Republic, with the independent factions; it’s continuing everything we’ve done and I know it’s not being a heartbeat away from Ambassador to the Romulan Republic but…’

‘And I’d probably have the role itself,’ Hale said softly, expressionless beyond that faint widening of the eyes, ‘in a year or so. But not if I went to 23.’

She wasn’t saying no. She was laying out the facts. He knew that tone, and still his insides roiled, and still he had to press on. ‘And I want you,’ he said, feeling the floor drop out from under him. ‘I’m not going to pretend I’m asking you to come with me for purely professional reasons, though we make a great team. I want you to come with me. I want you to be with me. I know you’d sacrifice a lot, something you’ve worked half your life for, but -’

He didn’t get any further, though he had several compelling points on both a professional and personal level to make. But it was difficult to be persuasive when she was kissing him.

When they broke apart, she stayed close, and he rested his forehead against hers. For long, thudding heartbeats, neither of them said anything until he managed, at last, falteringly, ‘Is that a yes?’

‘It would be rude for it to be a no,’ Hale murmured, running her fingers up his arm. ‘Considering what you did for me yesterday.’

‘You’re assuming,’ Rourke rumbled, ‘I didn’t come to rescue Ambassador Krayteen -’

She cut him off again with another, more indignant kiss, but he had to pull back after a moment, sputtering and making a small noise of protest. ‘Hang on, hang on, this isn’t right…’

‘What,’ Hale said flatly, ‘on Earth could possibly be the problem now? After everything?’

‘This isn’t right,’ said Rourke, setting down his glass down on the coffee table, ‘because there is no way we’re celebrating this with replicated scotch.’