‘They’re really struggling,’ said Logan as the bridge crew watched the tactical sensor feed on the main viewscreen. The distant red dot of the Hirogen ship drifted back and forth, sweeping through the stellar nursery like it aimed for a precise search pattern but had gotten drunk along the way.

‘My heart bleeds.’ Kharth rested her chin on her elbow, watching with a flat expression. ‘But they’re struggling further and further away from us, at least.’

‘And with perfect timing.’ Airex looked up from his controls. ‘If we’re going to make a run for the aperture, it should be now.’

Logan turned in his chair. ‘We have a route back?’

‘I have a guess back. In an ideal world, we’d conduct scans from the mouth of the aperture for as long as possible.’

Kharth swept a hand around the bridge. ‘Does this look like an ideal world?’

‘Which is why I’ve compromised,’ Airex replied a little tartly, which she silently admitted she probably deserved. ‘We have much more stable scans of the route we took from the last aperture to this one. At worst, I expect we can double back there, and make a more sophisticated plan there.’

‘I’d rather not,’ said Kharth. ‘The Hirogen might go back that way. Right now, I’ll take any random pocket of the galaxy where we can lick our wounds and you can study the aperture to your heart’s content.’

The operations console chirruped, and Caede checked his reading. ‘Engineering update in. Thawn says they’ve met the deadlines.’

‘I’ve plotted a route back to the aperture,’ said Lindgren. ‘We’ll move a little deeper into the nursery to get some distance on the Hirogen, then dash for the exit.’

‘Alright.’ Kharth settled back on the command chair. She had no excuses, in all of the waiting, to not sit down. Valance was taller than her, so the seat was always a couple of inches too high. She couldn’t bring herself to adjust it. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

Endeavour surged forward, stirring for the first time in days. They were still wounded, wearing the impact of their initial journey like a battle scar. A massive strike or sustained, serious pressure would challenge their damaged structural integrity field, but it would be enough. It had to be.

‘They’ve not seen us,’ Logan confirmed, watching his tactical readings as they eased away from their hiding place. ‘Their sensors must be a generation or two behind us.’

‘I’d hope so,’ Airex mused. ‘This is the most advanced sensor system in the galaxy. We’ll be able to see them for a good while longer.’ The repairs to the power systems had boosted their range tremendously, making Kharth feel less like they were dragging themselves through tar, blindfolded.

There was no need to be quiet. There was not a sound they could make that would light them up on the Hirogen’s sensors, and still they worked in silence for long minutes, the quiet disrupted only by the occasional sound from the bridge systems.

So when Logan sat up, Kharth almost jumped. ‘They’re on the move. Broken their route up.’

‘They spotted us?’

‘I – no.’ Logan took a beat to confirm, frowning. ‘They ain’t headed our way. But they look like they spotted something, they’re movin’ like it’s an intercept course.’

‘Ah.’ Airex’s sound of realisation could have cut glass. All eyes fell on him, and he winced. ‘I see what they’ve picked up. It’s Skippy.’

Kharth slumped back in the chair, throwing her hands in the air. She heard the distant sound of Kally’s distress, of Lindgren’s wince, even of Logan muttering an oath. ‘Oh, for Vor’s sake…’

Caede shook his head. ‘It would make a good prize for the Hirogen. That should keep them distracted.’

‘Distracted?’ Kally’s voice went up a pitch. ‘Are we going to let them hunt and kill Skippy as a prize?’

Despite how he’d sworn, Logan straightened, his voice going tense. ‘Ensign, we’re still in no condition for a direct engagement.’

‘We found him out here!’ Kally protested. ‘We patched him up! And now we’re going to leave him to die?’

‘They might not kill it,’ pointed out Caede. ‘Might just keep it in a cage somehow.’

‘It’s one cosmozoan,’ said Logan, shoulders squaring. ‘An’ this is a crew of five hundred souls trying to get home.’

Kally had shifted in her chair, clearly trying to catch Kharth’s gaze, even as the Romulan kept her eyes fixed on the sensor feed on the viewscreen. ‘What’s the point in getting back,’ Kally pressed, ‘and trying to do good there, if we’re not going to do good here?’

‘Doing good there,’ sneered Caede, ‘means doing good for the people you know and care about.’

‘Commander Airex.’ Kharth didn’t speak with enough force to fully cut off the argument, but she did manage to talk over Caede. ‘What’s their time to intercept the cosmozoan?’

Airex’s expression had gone flat in that way she thought of when she thought of Airex, the symbiont, the man he’d become; flat as it went when he was trying to shove his feelings deep inside. Flat as it went when he wasn’t being Dav any more.

‘Eight minutes.’

‘And our time to the aperture?’ Kharth looked to helm.

‘Twelve minutes,’ said Lindgren, in a particularly clipped voice. Then she added, like she’d weighed up saying something before making the deliberate choice to speak up, ‘So we have a few minutes of watching Skippy die.’

‘Can it,’ Kharth snapped. ‘Everyone, stop acting like this is a simple choice. Of course it’s not.’ That did shut them up, and she took a moment, scrubbing her face with her hand. ‘We’re responsible for this ship. We’re responsible for this crew. We have a duty to everyone on board, and the people back home who rely on us.’ She heard the shifting of Lindgren and Kally, even the slightest shuffle from Logan, clearly ready to support abandoning the cosmozoan even if he didn’t like it.

Rely on us for what?

She dragged her hand down her face. Straightened. And drew a deep breath. ‘But it’s not your choice. I’m in command. It’s my decision. My responsibility. And that cosmozoan is… just a lost and broken thing.’ She swallowed. ‘But so are we.’

It was like her words sent a ripple through the air, everyone straightening, everyone reeling as if struck by a force. Kharth lifted a finger. ‘Red alert. Helm, bring us about. Set a course for the Hirogen.’

‘Yes, sir!’ Lindgren’s beam could almost be heard as she reached for the controls, and the deck surged as Endeavour turned, picking up speed. They were going to need it if they were to get to the Hirogen before they got to their prey.

‘Bridge to Engineering.’ Kharth leaned on the armrest. ‘Change of plans, Thawn. We’re fighting the Hirogen.’

A pause. ‘We’re what?’

Ironically, Kharth thought, Thawn would have been one of the least sentimental about rescuing Skippy, had she been on the bridge. ‘It’s that or they kill Skippy and Kally never forgives me.’ Despite herself, she gave the comms officer a wry look, and the ensign sheepishly hung her head. ‘Anyway, I’m the boss, so you give me all the power you can for us to survive a scrap.’

‘I… I’ll do my best?’

‘I expect nothing less. Bridge out.’

Logan was watching her, jaw tight. ‘There ain’t no way we can get into a slugging match with them.’

‘I know,’ Kharth said simply. ‘Let’s start with getting there. We have better sensors than them; get a targeting solution as quickly as you can and open up with a salvo of torpedoes. I want them reeling before they even know we exist.’

It did not feel like five minutes before they got there. Five minutes of thundering through the gases and particles of this knot of stardust, this birthplace of suns, that with just the wrong swerve, the wrong miscalculation, would be their graveyard.

‘They’ve reached Skippy,’ said Airex, sooner than she was ready for. ‘They’ve opened fire. He’s fast; they’re not having an easy time targeting him.’

‘Good boy,’ Kharth breathed.

Logan’s systems lit up, and he said, ‘I got a lock. Firing.’

The clouds of purple and pink surged away at the trio of torpedoes flashing through them, their gleam refracting through the dust. For a heartbeat as they soared through the cosmos, they looked on the viewscreen not like weapons of war but fairy lights, casting their radiance through the fog. She couldn’t see the Hirogen ship through the dust. But she saw the impact, and beauty turned to chaos in an instant at the blossoming detonation.

‘Direct hit! Smacked their shields somethin’ good!’ Logan confirmed.

‘They’re coming about,’ said Lindgren. ‘Breaking off their run on Skippy.’

‘Good.’ Kharth leaned forward. ‘Hail them, Kally.’ Her chin tilted up as the viewscreen changed. ‘Hirogen ship, this is the starship Endeavour. Pick on someone your own size.’

The Alpha’s face was twisted with surprise and shock. In the background of the Hirogen bridge, hunters scrambled, clearly blindsided by the ambush. But within a heartbeat, Venor’s expression had settled into a wide smile. ‘I knew you were here. I didn’t know you’d come for the creature, though.’ He shook his head. ‘Magnificent. Even if you’re still clearly wounded.’

‘You might also realise we’re much better at seeing you in this place. You want us to be prey? You better be the best damn predator out there.’ Kharth waved a hand to Lindgren. ‘Helm, bring us about!’

Venor shook his head slowly, admiringly. His jaw dropped an inch, like he was tasting the air. ‘Courage and cunning. Sacrifice and secrecy. Oh, Kharth. I will need a special place in my cabinet for your skull.’

‘I like to be high up for a good view. Catch me if you can, kllhe. Endeavour out.’

Logan clicked his tongue as comms went dead. ‘They’re on our tail. Opening fire.’

Kharth gripped the armrests tight and felt the shudder of weapons fire hitting them. She knew by now the sense of impact on shields – but she also knew when deflectors were struggling. They were still a wounded ship.

Her gaze snapped to Airex. ‘We can’t stand our ground. We’ve got to hit and run. Find me a running spot.’

‘Already ahead of you,’ said Airex, exchanging a tight smile. ‘Lieutenant Lindgren, I’m sending you a heading. There’s a protostar ahead emitting strong stellar winds; our navigational sensors should be enough for us to get through without falling foul of the particle clouds, but they’ll struggle to keep up.’

‘Good news,’ Lindgren said as she adjusted their course. ‘We’re faster than them, too.’

‘Poppin’ off a few phaser shots to stop them ridin’ our tail,’ said Logan. ‘They’re letting us run a bit. I reckon they know this ain’t over in one round.’

‘No,’ Kharth agreed. ‘But we’re going to have to go for a KO at some point.’ The condition they were in, she wasn’t sure Endeavour could go the distance if it came to it.

‘Skippy’s away,’ Airex added. ‘Bolting at high speed.’

Logan chuckled. ‘Godspeed, little buddy.’

But at Ops, Caede shook his head, clearly not sharing the rest of the bridge’s sense of relief at the cosmozoan’s near-miss. He looked back at Kharth. ‘I hope the alien’s worth it.’

Despite herself – despite the chaos she’d signed them up for, the looming game of cat-and-mouse with the galaxy’s best hunters while they were still the walking wounded – Kharth met Caede’s gaze, and gave a tight smile.

‘If Starfleet only did good for the people they knew and cared about,’ she said lightly, ‘you and me would be dead.’