The bridge was so silent, it was like Kharth could feel the heartbeat of every crewmember reverberating through Endeavour’s decks as she stood before the viewscreen and watched the sensor feed. At the centre shone the green circle that was their ship. Concentric rings ebbed out, demarcating their diminished sensor range through the obfuscating dust clouds of the stellar nursery. Near the outermost ring was the small green dot of the probe the Merlin had left behind. Any sensor readings coming in from beyond that outer circle were being fed in from the probe, their eyes and ears poking out of their hiding space. Kharth had instructed Airex to keep a ready hand on the probe’s self-destruct command; if it looked for even an instant like it had been detected, he was to destroy any sign of its presence.

Logan turned on his chair away from the Tactical console. ‘There’s only so much intel on Hirogen hunting methods. But between records on Voyager an’ my best assessment, they’re definitely searching. And I’m pretty sure they ain’t seen us.’

‘If they’d seen us,’ murmured Kharth, ‘I expect they’d be on top of us.’

‘Yeah, that’s the bad news,’ said Logan. ‘Assuming they followed us, it’s taken them a while to pick up the trail. Days for them to trawl through Underspace and get here.’

‘Oh,’ said Kally, voice low. ‘They really, really want to kill us, huh?’

‘We’re probably the most novel thing they ever saw,’ said Kharth, hands on her hips. ‘Why would they stop chasing us, unless they found something more interesting?’ She turned to Airex. ‘Do you think we can make it to the aperture without them noticing?’

‘If they carry on their current search pattern? Maybe in a few hours. They’re drifting further and further in.’ He grimaced. ‘I still don’t have a route home.’

‘Prioritise that. I’ll take “best guess” through Underspace than cat-and-mouse with a relentless hunter. If we can slip into the aperture without them knowing we’ve doubled back, we can be safe and away.’ And maybe out of the frying pan and into the fire, was the thought she didn’t voice. Commanders were meant to be more optimistic than that.

It looked like Airex was going to point out all the issues she could see, so she turned towards the turbolift. ‘Commander Logan, you have the bridge.’ He didn’t have seniority, but she needed Airex worrying about getting them home.

They looked a little confused at her departure, but there was one perk of being in charge: she didn’t have to explain herself to anyone. Kharth stepped onto the turbolift and pulled out the PADD with the latest repair reports, rereading with a grimace as she was rushed through the belly of her ship to her destination.

Main Engineering was a different beast to what she was used to. Isa Cortez had run the place with an air of controlled chaos, inch-perfect in how long a leash to give her staff. Her successors had slid back and forth on the scale of organised to lax, but they had all been seasoned engineers with proven results. Under Rosara Thawn, the air was, to Kharth’s eye, like an expert playing a violin whose strings had been tightened a milimetre too far. The tempo was perfect, the fingerwork precise, and still everything came out with the hint of sharp discord.

Thawn was in the middle of the activity, the over-involved conductor, the insistently persistent metronome, and immediately lost the beat at the sight of Kharth. Stood at the pool table control panel, Forrester and other senior engineers – it said something when young Tes Forrester was now considered senior – at her side, her expression fell at once.

‘You have your orders,’ Thawn told her engineers a little crisply. ‘Report back at 1800 hours.’

‘You shouldn’t rush or interrupt your briefings,’ said Kharth as they left and she reached the far side of the pool table. ‘I just wanted an update.’

Thawn’s breath caught. ‘From the update I sent you three hours ago?’

‘Three hours ago, we were assessing the Hirogen’s movements. Now we’re planning our own move. Things change fast.’

‘I’m still stress-testing the new coils, and checking the integrity of our plasma relays. We can’t risk going to full power only for a conduit to blow -’

‘Is this how it’s going to be, Commander?’ Kharth’s grip on the edge of the console tightened. ‘Every time we take a step forward, you find another problem?’

Thawn’s chin tilted up a half-inch. ‘I never said our power issues were resolved. I said we’d finished replacing the coils.’

Kharth opened and shut her mouth. She glanced down towards the rest of engineering. ‘Let’s take this in your office, Commander.’

She knew Thawn’s life had undergone significant upheaval in recent weeks, months. Abandoning her marriage to Adamant Rhade, disappearing on a months-long mission, finally putting her foot down with a superior officer to demand her due as Chief Engineer. But Kharth had never expected the level of open, indignant anger she received the moment the door to the Chief Engineer’s office slid shut behind them.

‘If you want someone else as Chief Engineer,’ Thawn snapped, ‘then you’re just out of luck, Kharth.’

Kharth stopped in the middle of the office, turning to face her. ‘If I had someone else to be Chief Engineer, they’d already be in the post, Thawn. So if I don’t have someone else, I need you to be better.’

‘Better,’ Thawn scoffed. ‘I’m sorry that Cortez pulled the wool over your eyes to make you believe she’s an actual miracle worker, but I don’t know what magic trick you think anyone can do to fix Endeavour any faster.’

‘I need clearer communication,’ said Kharth, hands on her hips. ‘I need to know exactly what we can do, and exactly when it’s going to change.’

‘I’ve given you that -’

‘Except it changes every half-hour -’

‘It doesn’t change!’ Thawn threw her hands in the air. ‘You just don’t listen to me.’ The outburst was enough to shove Kharth into silence, on the back foot at such explicit outrage. When they’d met, Thawn would have rather thrown herself out an airlock than yell at a superior, let alone the captain. ‘What the hell did I do to you, Kharth?’

‘Do to you -’

‘I thought you respected me at first. You helped me! Back with the Wild Hunt, back when I wasn’t coping after losing Noah, I thought you were taking me under your wing. I’m not sure teaching me how to beat up a punching dummy was the best help, but I think you meant to help. Then…’ Thawn snapped her fingers. ‘It went. And you couldn’t give less of a shit about me.’

Kharth’s lip curled. ‘We’re in a crisis and you’re angry I’m not coddling you -’

‘After Elgatis. After the D’Ghor.’ Thawn swallowed hard. ‘After you called me a coward because I, the technical expert on that mission, wasn’t combat capable enough to keep Hazard Team members alive.’

That knocked Kharth back into silence. It wasn’t that she’d forgotten about the incident, more than two years old now. But it had been so baked into her bones that she’d not thought about the particulars for a while. She shifted her weight. ‘You don’t want to reopen that door.’

‘No? Because I’ve done everything you’ve ever asked of me since and it’s still not enough -’

‘Because I don’t question your technical expertise,’ Kharth snapped. ‘I question your nerve, Thawn. When your back’s against a wall, when you have to make the big, bold choices, I don’t know if you have the guts.’

‘That’s crap,’ said Thawn, and Kharth would have lashed out again for her dismissal of the criticism had she not waved a hand and said, with painfully effortless simplicity, ‘You don’t know if you have the guts.’

Kharth’s jaw clamped shut. ‘Stay out of my head.’

‘I don’t need to read your mind, Kharth, you’re not complicated,’ Thawn sneered. ‘I know why you’re riding me: because you feel bigger when you have someone else to blame, and I have always, always been the officer you felt you could pick on. You won’t do it to Airex or Logan, Elsa won’t stand for it, and you look like a prick if you do it to Kally. So that leaves me – and who gets mad if you pick on stuffy, uptight, un-fun Rosara Thawn? But I’m not the kid you met three years ago. I’m the Chief Engineer, I’m trying to keep this ship intact, and you need to either find a new whipping boy or sort your shit out.’

Kharth’s chest fluttered as she stared down those dark, Betazoid eyes, and found them as implacable as she ever had. Scuttlebutt had it that Thawn had finally turned and stood her ground against her family, that extensive political brood who’d dictated every inch of her life. Kharth was canny enough to know she couldn’t compete with opposition like that.

She gave another difficult swallow. ‘The moment the Hirogen pass us, we’re making a run for Underspace. Airex is going to find us a route home. You have to make sure we can get there quickly, and survive the journey.’

Thawn looked like she might keep fighting. Then she stopped and gave a short nod. ‘I need six hours.’

‘You asked for an update in -’

‘Six hours, Commander. Unless you want us ripped apart by the subspace tunnels.’

Kharth squared her shoulders. ‘Alright, Thawn. Six hours. That’s your deadline. Your chance to prove why I should have faith in you.’

‘I don’t need your faith,’ said Thawn as Kharth went to walk past her. ‘I have Captain Valance’s. She might be dead. But her belief is still worth more.’

The ironic thing, Kharth thought as she left, was that were Valance still around and Kharth were back as XO, she might have embraced that freedom to sock Thawn in the jaw.

But she was the acting commander. Which meant she didn’t know what to do except for take the rank insubordination she knew she’d stoked, and left the office.

Six hours. Six hours to run.

And then, soon, this could all be over.