The light of Doctor Winters’s medical tricorder felt too bright, but if she said that, he’d probably take it as a sign something was amiss. So Kharth sat on the edge of the biobed, hands gripping the side tight, and waited for him to finish his check-up.

After minutes that felt like aeons, he snapped the tricorder shut. ‘All done.’

‘Done?’ She blinked. ‘What’re my marching orders?’

‘To not get hit in the head again.’

‘Doc…’

‘And to report back if you feel unwell. Because you see, Commander, I’ve dealt with this head injury with the effective application of medical care. That’s cured the concussion and prevented any long-term injury.’ Winters gave a tight smile. ‘Obviously, I’d like you to rest. Obviously, that’s not possible. So let me help you stay moving, by you telling me when something’s wrong.’

Kharth slid to her feet. ‘This whole pre-emptive compromise should be a terrible bargaining technique,’ she pointed out, then glanced about Sickbay. ‘How’s recovery progressing?’ Serious injuries had been limited, though some had fallen in key positions. Losing Athaka when they hadn’t formally replaced Thawn was potentially critical. The beds were not fully loaded, but Sickbay was a good deal more full than she’d seen it outside of complete catastrophe.

‘Slowly,’ Winters admitted. ‘Everyone I could patch up and send on their way, I have. Others need more serious help. Regrowing internal organs. Osteogenic regeneration. For all those medical marvels I’ve just raged about, few compete with time.’

‘Then I’ll try to give you more before we do something stupid again.’ Kharth turned away, the rest of Sickbay sweeping in to fill her vision. Injured officers were either beyond caring about her, or watching her. Yet again, their eyes felt heavy, a burden to weigh on her shoulders. There they were, wounded and helpless, and it was to her they looked. She did not meet their gazes as she left.

‘Kharth to Airex.’ Her hand was on her combadge the moment she was back in the corridor. ‘I need an update on our disappearing trick.’ The more they studied the nursery, the more they could do to shroud themselves from threats.

But there was no reply. Nor to her second attempt. When Kharth asked the computer for Airex’s location, she realised why.

It took her command codes to unlock the door to the captain’s quarters, and she stepped inside to find the only illumination crept in through the windows. Beyond the viewport, stars writhed and pulsed and fought to be born, brighter than distant specks, their light cascading through the gases and particle clouds to shine kaleidoscopic rays of purple and pink inside. It was enough to ease the gloom, but not banish the shadows.

Nothing could banish the shadows of this place.

Kharth’s eyes swept across Karana Valance’s rooms. After a beat of silence, she whispered, ‘Dav?’

‘…it’s you.’ His voice creaked from a shrouded corner, and she looked to find his silhouetted form in a chair facing the window. He had not turned to her. ‘I’m sorry, did you need me?’ The audible detachment was not cold, controlled. It sounded, instead, like he’d gone a very long way away.

Unsure of herself, Kharth took a few careful steps towards him. ‘I know you’ve been studying the phenomenon. I wanted an update on…’ It sounded pointless, suddenly. He would tell her if they were in danger. ‘Are you alright?’

A short, humourless laugh. ‘No. No, I don’t reckon so. But who is?’ She was beside him now, and he did look up. His eyes looked paler than ever before in the violet-dyed gloom. ‘Are you?’

She couldn’t help but ape his laugh, but hers came with a sharper edge. ‘We’re trapped in the depths of the Delta Quadrant – we think – we’re in the middle of a phenomenon that might hide us, might kill us; plenty of us are injured, the ship’s sorely damaged, we might be being hunted for sport, and Valance has gone and -’

‘And you have to deal with it all. Lead us through this.’

‘I didn’t ask to be a leader,’ Kharth spat before she could stop herself. ‘I stepped up because first Rourke asked me to, then Valance. I don’t inspire people, I don’t lead them. I watch their backs and I fight for them and it’s sometimes not pretty, but I’m behind them. Not leading the way. Not being a damned – a damned beacon.’ Blood roiled, and she had to break into a frustrated pace, sweeping an angry arm around the shrouded rooms. ‘This should be Valance. She’s the one who knows what people need to hear. She might be made of ice but she sees shit, stops to care about it. Finds a path. Finds what a situation need, people need.’

‘…found.’

Kharth stopped short and turned to face him. She realised now he was holding something – a picture frame, one in his grip, two in his lap.

‘Found,’ she whispered. ‘Was made of ice. What’re those?’

He did not stop her as she joined him, as she leaned over to see the pictures. One she recognised – the new year’s celebrations at the end of 2399, the senior staff in the ship’s lounge. Carraway must have taken it, by his absence, and faces shone back at her, some she hadn’t seen in a while. Dathan. Arys. Graelin. A young-looking Thawn, awkward next to Rhade, and her, Kharth, beside them. Rourke was in the middle, dominating the picture, arms wide, laughing, and to one side, quieter and more understated, stood Valance, her arm over Isa Cortez’s shoulder.

‘I thought if someone had to go through her things, it should be me,’ Airex mumbled. ‘This one was on the desk. This one… was shoved in a drawer.’ Awkwardly, he gestured to one in his lap. This time it was just Valance and Cortez, more carefree together than Kharth ever remembered seeing them. The beaches of Aeriaumi III stretched behind them. Cortez leaned up, probably on tip-toes, kissing Valance on the cheek.

‘Vor,’ Kharth swore.

‘And then there’s just this.’ The last was older and looked like it had been more hastily snapped and showed the old Endeavour’s mess hall. Some officers stood in the background, talking, not looking at the camera; people she’d never met, but she recognised the old crew, MacCallister’s crew. But front and centre, together at a table, giving rather tepid but – Kharth thought she could tell – sincere smiles for the camera, sat a younger Valance, and a younger Davir Airex.

Kharth swallowed. ‘I never thought of her as sentimental like this. To have and keep these.’

‘She was the first person to take me as just… as me, after I was Joined.’ Airex’s head was bowed over the picture. ‘I know you don’t owe me anything – sympathy, anything – about what happened. I know I wronged you…’

‘You don’t have to explain yourself to me right now.’

‘…but I don’t know how I do this without her.’ And he broke, a ragged sob escaping his throat, and Kharth watched with dawning horror as Davir Airex collapsed, face in his hands, and wept.

She’d felt the eyes of the bridge crew on her, the eyes of injured officers in Sickbay on her, the weight of expectation, and hadn’t known what to do. What words could make things better. It was like being in a nightmare where everything moved slowly, where she was expected to have answers and didn’t. This should have been the same, she thought; this man, whom she’d had such a long and complex relationship with, finally breaking down over a loss she didn’t feel equipped to process for herself, let alone someone else.

But before she knew it, Kharth had fallen to her knees before him, brought her hands to his, pressed her forehead to his. ‘You do,’ she whispered, fiercer and more certain than she’d been of anything since the first sensor alert had gone off. ‘You know how to cut through bullshit and find the answers, you know how to see more clearly than anyone else. You know how to keep going when it’s hard. You can do this, because…’ Her voice shook. ‘Dav, I can’t do this without you.’

That stilled him, slowing his breathing to more ragged gulps, and his grasp on her hands tightened. He did not open his eyes.

‘I need you with me,’ she whispered, and now he did look at her as they knelt there, a bundle together of grief and pain. They hadn’t been this close, this intertwined, in years – and yet it felt like it was as it should be. ‘If the wonders of the galaxy are trying to kill us, I need you to understand them for me. To tell me…’ She hesitated. ‘To tell me what to do.’

‘You don’t need that,’ he rumbled at last, regaining some composure. ‘I can tell you the lay of the land. You know what to do. You always have. You fight for this crew. You fight for your people.’

‘I’m a loaded gun who needs someone to point her -’

‘You’re the most tenacious person I’ve met in two hundred years.’ His hands now curled around hers, brought them to his chest, and his eyes shone brighter. ‘If you need me… then know I believe in you.’

Something stirred in her, something lodged in the spaces where he’d cracked her heart so many years ago. She did not know if it was something rotten, or something hopeful. She’d told him only months ago she didn’t trust him. It had felt true, then.

A lot had changed in those short months. In the last short days.

‘I’m not sure,’ she breathed, ‘if I know how to do anything but fight. We’re sat in the birthplace of stars and all I see is their danger. We meet someone new and all I can do is threaten. Even that Hirogen showed more fascination at us as something new than I did.’

‘He does want to kill us,’ Airex mused gently. ‘You sell yourself short. And you’re not alone, you know. Even without me. You have others. Logan.’

‘Logan wants me to emotionally connect to the crew. I need to get them out alive. Anything else is… Advanced Leadership.’

‘Even Karana knew she had to connect to them to lead them.’ Airex hesitated. ‘Maybe Logan has a point.’

She watched his pale eyes, saw the hesitation and pain in there, the thudding loneliness. ‘Maybe,’ Kharth murmured. But for now, she tightened her grip on his hands, and knelt in the dark with him to grieve a while longer.