Bib paused his spork a few inches from his lips, the thick tomato sauce slowly coalescing beneath a large meatball, its weight creating a bulbous drip that threatened to fall back into the almost empty tray. “Sit rep please.” He instructed the assembled staff, who looked back from the ring of chairs they had drawn into a semi-circle around the booth that was their temporary conference table in the forward lounge. 

“Would you like for us to wait until you’ve finished sir?” Bahir offered from his right side, the Saurian’s frustrated brows barely hidden behind his civility. Ever the stickler for protocol he was annoyed enough already to be undertaking a meeting in the lounge, let alone whilst the Commander shovelled food into his mouth with all the grace of a targ. 

“We’re all friends here Bahir.” Bib smiled in the coral-skinned officer’s direction, a large red streak of tomato sauce rolling down his chin. 

“Cap’n…” Ashra caught his attention, motioning to her own delicate chin. A subtle reminder not only of courtesy but also of his current role aboard the vessel. 

Suitably chastised by the experienced officer, Bib lifted a napkin to his chin and wiped away the offending sauce before continuing. “Everyone in one piece Doctor Ashra?”

“We were lucky, mostly bumps and scrapes. Oshira suffered some damage to her respirators, so I’ve isolated her to quarters where we’ve been able to make some environmental modifications thanks to Oyvo.” She nodded appreciatively towards the young Xindi woman who sat a few seats away. “Other than that, everyone aboard is back at their stations.” 

There was a knowing silence as all present waited to see how the Doctor would phrase their final statement.

“We have 1 MIA with Helena” she concluded, a cool and professional tone masking whatever worries bubbled beneath the surface. 

Bib knew the nature of Helena’s absence, despite the recall she hadn’t made it back to the safety of Helios before the transit. They continue to be unable to find her. Bib clung to the fact they hadn’t found any wreckage either. Deciding it would be of no help to dwell at this time he forged onward. “Understood. Nikashri?”

“Helios hasn’t fared quite as well. We’ve managed to reignite and modify the fusion reactors to power main systems, but we’re having trouble establishing a stable Matter Antimatter reaction.” the Kelpian engineer sighed deeply. “It means we’ve got little more than emergency power, we’re not going to run dry but anything more than the basics is a big ask.” She motioned to the Commander’s tin that now rested on the table. “Hence the field rations. Sorry, everyone.”

“Don’t apologise Commander, I’d forgotten how much I liked dehydrated meatballs.” Bib offered a comforting smile across the table, receiving a slight upturn of the engineer’s lips in return. He lifted the meat-laden spork to his mouth again, pausing just long enough to ask a question, “Any ideas about the core?”

“Gremlins.” Nikashri offered, with a slight shrug. “Oyvo and I have been looking at a couple of options but there seems to be an unusual electromagnetic polarisation to a number of the arrays. It means we can’t generate a stable reaction.” She slid a padd across the small table, several waveforms dancing the tarantella across the screen. “We suspect it’s from the high gravimetric radiation we experienced coming through the anomaly, it’s done something…” she paused, her eyes narrowing as she searched for the right word. “Hinky.”

“Hinky Gremlins?” Bahir muttered in exasperation. 

“Yes,” she replied, narrowing her eyes further towards the coral-skinned officer currently serving as XO in the absence of Captain Tanek, “Hinky Gremlins.” She returned her attention to their Andorian leader as he wiped his mouth once again, before putting the napkin in the small grey tin. “Until we get further away from the anomaly and we can discharge the components, I don’t think we’ll be getting the warp core online.”

“And how far would that be?”

“A million kilometres at least.” David leant forward, leaning one elbow on the table as he ran the other hand through his mess of dark hair. “It appears to be a subspace aperture, a pretty unstable one at that.” the young man reached forward, placing a second padd on the table, a digital diagram of the offending phenomena outlined on its screen. 

“Wormhole?” Bib asked, a tension barely perceptible in his voice. A wormhole could mean they were anywhere and that was a dangerous place to be. 

“No. I’ve taken a look back through the archives for similar phenomena.” He offered another padd onto the growing pile. “In 2376 Voyager encountered a network of subspace tunnels that connected vastly distant regions, the Turei called it Underspace.” The padd scrolled with summary information, logs from Captain Janeway and archive information. “It’s how they first met the Vaadwaur, at one time they operated throughout the network of tunnels, now the Turei are the major stakeholders. And they are extremely protective of it.”

“So it is wormholes?” Bahir asked, his reptilian tongue skimming across his thin lips as he struggled to understand. 

“Not really, a wormhole connects A to B. This connects A to B, and C, with stops at D & E.” David summoned a map to the padd’s screen. “I’d say it’s more like the Borg’s transwarp network than wormholes. It’s barely mapped, Starfleet has been trying to work with the Turei but they are reluctant to let anyone access what is a huge asset.”

“You’re sure?” Bib asked, pushing the food tin aside as he drew the map from the small stack of padds. “We were in the Badlands, could it reach that far?”

David shrugged before leaning against the side of the booth his chair was pushed up against, “Entirely possible. We know extraordinarily little about the Underspace, but all the sensor data we’ve managed to collate indicates that’s what we travelled through.”

A heavy silence hung across the makeshift conference table, the quiet chattering of crew members at not-too-distant sofas buzzing in the background, accentuating the question that now lay on everyone’s lips. 

“Does that sensor data include where we’ve travelled to?” Bib whispered, suddenly acutely aware of their possible spectators. 

“At the moment?” David clenched his jaw, his tone becoming similarly muted, “No. Main sensor arrays are suffering a similar issue to the warp core.” He stood, reaching across the table to open another page on the padd in front of Bib. “The main sensor palettes were offline for the test. We’re struggling to bring them back online as key components are hinky.” He leant back against the booth, aware that the tone of the meeting had quickly plumetted thanks to his update. “We’ve managed to gain some passive data, enough to establish a direction away from the anomaly and towards a nearby planetoid, but we are pretty blind.”

“Literally.” Ashra motioned to the darkened windows that lined the rectangular room, normally they offered a wide vista of the space ahead of the ship, today they were offered a view of only a black void. 

“The ship is being bombarded with elevated levels of UV radiation, we suspect from an overactive star but we can’t be sure. With deflectors barely working the black out windows are a safety precaution.” Oyvo answered, “Once we get some more power to deflectors we should be able to remove it.”

“And that’ll complicate repairs if…” Nikashri began.

“…when…” Bib corrected.

“… when we get away from the anomaly. We’ll probably need some EVA or at the very least some workbee operations which are dangerous under all the radiation.” Nikashri finished, her signature smile barely hanging on. 

“You said there was a planetoid?” Bahir asked, his long-clawed fingers drawing the padd across the table towards him. 

“Yes. We can’t see much but we can see the sensor shadow.” David sighed from the corner. 

“Perhaps we can utilise that.” Bahir’s attention was laser on the grey surface of the table between the padd and the Commander’s discarded food tin. He pulled the two around each other, his mind simulating imaginary stellar cartography with the tactician’s skill. “If we place the planetoid between us and the source of the star then it may provide us with the protection we need to make repairs.” He drew the tin around the padd as an example of his proposal. “We would be sheltered in the shadow.”

“I’m hesitant to start flying through space with little to no sensors.” Bib furrowed his brow. 

“We can help there.” Astris spoke up for the first time, the older human woman holding the seat normally occupied by the Heliades Flight Commander. “The Valkyries seem to be operating. I suspect the extra shielding and their storage location at the centre of the ship may have protected them. We can fly a recon ahead of Helios and relay sensor data.” Astris held her breath, her thought unfinished. “It would also allow us to mount a search and rescue for Helena.” Despite being a veteran of several decades worth of space travel both in and out of Starfleet, her voice quivered with worry, the women of the ship’s elite flight squadron were a close sisterhood. 

“Is it safe?” Bib looked to the assembled group for any objections. The silence was interrupted by some shrugs and wide eyes but no one outright objected. “Very well, make suitable preparation, we’ll move when everyone is ready.” A chorus of ayes spread across the table as the senior staff returned their chairs to their customary homes throughout the lounge. “Don’t forget your padds!” Bib called after the group as they trailed off through the doors. Sighing he began to collect the devices and his empty food tin for recycling. 

“You know this would have been easier in the conference room.” The velvet tones of Doctor Ashra hovered in the booth, her insightful eyes perceiving all. 

“I was working in Engineering with Oyvo, I needed to eat. It made the most sense.” Bib replied, busying himself with the food tin, unable to meet her eyes and sell the lie. 

“We both know that’s only part of the truth.” the Deltan woman rose and pushed her seat under the table. “What is it you’re scared of?”

Bib’s breath caught in his throat, it was a question he had asked himself more than once in the last few days since Captain Tanek departed for his leave. “The Captain…” It had been a simple assignment, ‘don’t drop her’ he had joked as the transporter beam took him. Yet here they were, gods knew where with a broken ship and missing crew.

“The Captain…” Ashra leant across the table taking the man’s face in her hands and lifting it to meet her warm and comforting face. “Is you Biban Th’erhilnon.” She smiled, a vision of maternal belief and blind faith. “Be the Captain.”

He nodded, her slender hands alleviating a surprising portion of his weighty responsibility. 

“Sit in the chair Bib.” she squeezed his cheeks and left him alone. Captain of a blind ship on distant shores.