‘She doesn’t like me, she’s never liked me.’ Thawn clearly needed to eat breakfast and drink her coffee quickly, and still had time to grouse.

There were several mess halls aboard Endeavour, and none were more utilitarian than the one nearest main engineering. Bulkheads were bare, decor was minimal, and Thawn and Lindgren sat at benches and a table screwed to the deck. At this time of the morning – however much ‘morning’ mattered in a crisis – the mess hall was full of jostling engineers trying to kick start yet another long day. Lindgren would have thought Thawn would look at odds with the rougher-and-readier underbelly of Endeavour, but she was somehow more at home. Thawn was always at her best under pressure, shoved to the very edge.

‘I’m not sure Kharth likes anyone,’ Lindgren pointed out carefully, sipping her latte.

‘Not even herself. She liked Cortez, though. She resents that I’m here and Cortez isn’t. She resents me.’ Thawn slugged back her coffee, black and strong and unlike her usual fare. There was a wild look in her eyes. ‘And here I am, trying to keep the ship together anyway.’

‘That is your job.’

‘She shouldn’t be in charge. Rourke made her second officer because she’s a decent advisor, I guess, and who else was he going to bump up at the time after Graelin ate a meteor of radiation?’ Thawn waved a hand, apparently forgetting – or not caring – that Lindgren was perhaps the only person aboard who’d mourned Petrias Graelin. ‘Valance certainly wouldn’t have made her XO if she’d thought this would happen.’

‘Being XO means taking over in a crisis. Captain Valance understood that.’

‘Airex should be in charge. He’s making all the big decisions anyway.’

Lindgren set her foot atop Thawn’s boot. Her smile became fixed. ‘Rosara, we’re in public.’ That stopped the other woman short, half-empty coffee mug in hand, expression freezing. ‘And we’re not the kids of the senior staff any more.’

It spoke to the severity of the situation that being reminded of her impropriety – being reminded that she was speaking ill of senior officers – did not immediately knock Thawn back in line, or perhaps into a spiral of self-doubt. The chief engineer did shut her mouth, but it was to subside into an air of grumpy resentment.

‘I suppose I’ll fix the damn ship,’ she said snootily, ‘and keep my opinions to myself.’

Lindgren left it there, making a mental note to check in with Beckett later. If possible, she’d delegate managing Thawn to him, but there was always the outside chance he was enabling her, outraged on her behalf. She didn’t need this fire stoking.

Thawn was off the moment her empty coffee cup hit the table, so Lindgren took her drink with her to the bridge. Even twenty seconds on a turbolift sounded like badly-needed alone time, so her heart sank when the doors opened to show someone in the lift cabin already.

And eased when she realised who it was. ‘Commander.’

Logan looked as tired as she felt, without the fronting. He ran a hand through rumbled hair. ‘Elsa. How’d it go?’

She slouched in and slumped against the cabin bulkhead. ‘I think she won’t start an engineers’ mutiny.’

‘Good. You got the hard part. Doc Winters just wants a quiet life. Kally’s stressed nobody’s getting on. But if Thawn’s our only malcontent, that ain’t too hard.’

‘You didn’t have breakfast with her, sir.’

‘When we’re conspirin’ to keep the crew together in a pinch, it’s definitely Jack,’ Logan said gently. ‘So how’s it going for you? Not, “how’d it go with Thawn” – where’s your head at?’

Lindgren was accustomed to fronting in such circumstances, not because she wasn’t in touch with her own feelings, but because she generally didn’t trust Endeavour’s crew to be much use with anyone’s emotions. But Logan sounded calm, collected, sincere. She grimaced. ‘I feel like we’re a powderkeg right now. The stakes are high, the cabin fever is real, and weirdly, I’m worried that if I have one bad day, I might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Isn’t that mad?’

‘Nah. The only thing we can control is ourselves, and that’s still a “sometimes” thing. You’re spinning a lot of plates. But you got this.’

‘Thanks.’ The gentle reassurance did help, and she offered a soft smile in return. ‘Has Commander Kharth said anything to you yet?’

‘Oh, she ain’t opening up.’ There was a wistful, guilty look in his eye. ‘Still ain’t sure how to approach her without her thinking it’s… I dunno. An attack? Condescension?’

‘I’ve known the commander a few years now. When I figure that out, you’ll be the first to know.’

He gave a tired smirk. ‘How about I take Nate off your plate?’

‘No. You have to handle Airex.’

‘Ain’t made no progress on that. Don’t think he likes me much. Who does he like?’

‘Valance,’ Lindgren sighed as the turbolift slowed, arriving at the bridge. ‘He listened to Valance.’

‘Shit,’ was Logan’s summary of their plot to stabilise the crew, and there was no more chance for debriefing.

Kharth looked like she might have slept in the captain’s chair, but her eyes brightened as her helm and tactical officers arrived. ‘You’re here – good. We’ve picked up something on sensors.’

‘Hirogen?’ asked Lindgren, rushing to her post. There had been little to do on the bridge but make sure Endeavour wasn’t being buffeted out of position by the gases of the stellar nursery. That was perhaps about to change, and she found herself more relieved than she’d expected to see Caede at Ops beside her.

‘I don’t think so,’ called Airex, looking like he, too, might have slept at his post. ‘It’s smaller, not as fast. But it’s heading our way.’

Once at Tactical, Logan leaned over his control panel with a thoughtful frown. ‘I’m reading some weird electromagnetic pulses comin’ off it.’

‘Thank you, Commander, I can see that,’ said Airex, a little sharply. ‘But can you discern if it is a ship with a tactical profile?’

‘I can barely discern if we’re a ship with a tactical profile, state of our sensors in here -’

‘Oh for -’ Kharth cut herself off. ‘Put it on screen.’

The viewscreen blipped to life, and to Lindgren’s lack of surprise, all they could see was the swirling maelstrom of the nursery. Then, winking in the depths…

‘Is that… a flashing light?’ she said.

‘Matching those electromagnetic pulses,’ Logan confirmed. ‘This thing ain’t big. Fifty metres or so. Must be a small ship -’

‘It’s not a ship,’ said Airex, sharp, but this time sounding like he knew something. ‘I’m getting readings matching a biomass, now. It’s some form of cosmozoan.’

‘A space-dwelling species,’ breathed Lindgren, and the shifting, pulsing shape moving through the gases towards them drifted through a dense cluster of particles and soared into view.

If it was small for a ship, it was mighty for a living creature; fifty metres long, with the silhouette of a vast, bioluminescent manta ray. As if drifting on the flows of the gases and dust, its wings dipped to steer it towards them in what looked like graceful flight through the vacuum of space. The translucent body shimmered with blue and green, shifting and pulsing to change in hue and intensity, and tendrils trailing behind gleamed like an echo in its wake.

Kharth sat up. ‘Is it coming at us?’ she asked quickly, and Lindgren had to resist the urge to roll her eyes.

‘It’s approaching us,’ said Logan with the hint of a rebuke. ‘Ain’t a direct course. Could be curious.’

‘Or it thinks we’re a threat, an intruder in its territory,’ said Caede.

Lindgren ignored them for a moment, focusing on the readings. ‘These pulses don’t seem anything to do with its movements; there’s no correlation between them and its acceleration, deceleration, turning.’

Kharth made a tired noise. ‘Tell me this thing isn’t going to latch onto us and try to eat our power or anything.’

‘Kally – can you record these pulses, and our footage of the changing lights, and store them for signal analysis?’ asked Lindgren, ignoring the acting captain’s paranoia and looking over to the young ensign at her old post at comms.

Kally’s eyes brightened. ‘I can do you one better, Lieutenant – I’ll start pitching it into the universal translator. This isn’t the first cosmozoan Starfleet’s met!’

Lindgren wasn’t as confident of the success of this; cosmozoans were so infamously rare and alien that that the diversity of experiences in encountering them did not provide a strong foundation. Not at this stage. But Kally’s enthusiasm helped, sweeping like a wave across the bridge, easing the paranoia of even the two Romulans.

When Airex looked up at Kharth, he sounded more hopeful of being listened to. ‘Captain, I suggest we go to low power.’

‘I thought we already were,’ Kharth muttered, but gave Caede the nod, and at the acting operations manager’s command, the lights began to dim. ‘Why?’

‘Because it’s clearly drawn to our power signature and we don’t want to look like a threat, or a treat,’ Airex continued smoothly. ‘Especially as I think it’s wounded; that’s liable to make any life-form more volatile.’

On the viewscreen, the entity slowed as Endeavour’s energy emissions diminished. But it was not deterred, swinging lazily about to draw closer – and then came to a relative halt. The pulsing of its hide slowed, violet hues shifting for gentler blues.

‘It’s calmer,’ Lindgren mused. ‘Its electromagnetic pulse emissions are reducing in frequency and intensity. Our electromagnetic emissions have gone down. I think we just… calmed it?’

‘I was hoping as much,’ said Airex. ‘I’ve been comparing our scans to our exobiological database. Thus far, this being doesn’t seem scientifically exceptional for a cosmozoan.’

‘Sure,’ said Kharth with initial disinterest – but to Lindgren’s surprise, the Romulan softened as she stood up. ‘But at least something out here seems pleased to see us. Based on these comparisons, Airex, do you think it should be alone?’

‘Likely not,’ he ventured. ‘Such creatures tend to move in herds. And with the state of our sensors, there could be hundreds of them a million kilometres away and we wouldn’t know.’

‘Can we…’ Kally hesitated. ‘Captain, may I try something? Just use our communications array to send out a controlled electromagnetic pulse?’

Kharth gave an exaggerated shrug. ‘Sure. We’re still only halfway through repairing our warp coils and haven’t finished ID-ing and replacing damaged SIF emitters, but let’s try experimental communication with a space creature that could wreck our shit.’ Silence followed, all eyes on her, and after a beat, she clicked her tongue. ‘That’s still permission, Ensign.’

It was the sort of comment, Lindgren thought, Kharth would have normally made as XO to Valance, or Tactical officer to Rourke – remind them of the risks of their more adventurous natures. With the buck stopping with her, the acting captain had clearly not internalised the more constructive tone a leader should take.

‘Attempting first contact with a whole new lifeform, Captain!’ Kally said with thinly veiled delight.

‘I sure hope we have enough power for weapons,’ mused Caede, ‘for when we try to hug this thing and it takes it as an attack.’ But his voice was quiet, low enough for only Lindgren to hear, and she could not help but give him a pleased, provocative smirk.

There was a pause, the silence on the bridge creaking only with the pings of reports hitting stations, as everyone waited with bated breath to see if they’d just made the situation worse. Then,

‘I don’t know if we actually said hello,’ said Kally, sounding like she might vibrate off her chair with enthusiasm, ‘but whatever we said, it said it back! Look!’

All they could see on the viewscreen was the entity, settled in beside Endeavour, shimmering a fresh, gentle pattern. And then, a heartbeat later, it drifted several metres closer to the ship, before halting again.

‘Oh good,’ drawled Caede. ‘I’m not the only lost and pathetic thing adopted by this ship.’

‘But you are the smallest,’ Lindgren reminded him.

‘Studying this entity,’ said Airex, looking towards the rather baffled Kharth, ‘may help us better understand the environment we’re in. It has to live here, after all.’

‘And you’re all going to yell at me if I don’t let you pat our new space-dog,’ said Kharth, rolling her eyes. ‘Fine. Whatever. We still have to fix the ship and find a way home. Don’t let this thing become a distraction.’

‘Skippy,’ said Kally, not a shred deterred in her enthusiasm by their captain’s seeming disinterest. ‘I’m calling it Skippy.’

A beat of silence passed as the bridge crew, lost tens of thousands of light-years away from home, nestled in the roiling heart of birthing stars that could kill them as easily as it could shelter them from harm, observed their newest encounter on the viewscreen.

‘Alright,’ said Kharth, even more defeated. ‘Hi, Skippy. Welcome to the team. We’re all screwed here.’