‘They’re so close.’ Lindgren spoke in a hushed, appalled tone. The main viewscreen showed the tactical sensor feed. Endeavour was the big green dot in the middle, surrounded by the suffused field of purple of the particle cloud, motionless. But second by second, heartbeat by heartbeat, the red dot of the Hirogen ship prowled nearer.

Kharth lifted a hand. ‘If they could see us, they’d be rushing us.’

‘They got a full-power, active scan going,’ Logan confirmed, reading from his panel.

‘Then keep us on emergency power levels,’ Kharth said to Caede.

The Romulan grimaced, but nodded. ‘Ready to light up if they so much as sniff us.’

‘They won’t.’ Kharth didn’t know where the confidence came from. It wasn’t insincere or even performative; something about the captain’s chair demanded she be convinced. Had she been sat at Tactical, or even in the right-hand chair, she wasn’t sure she’d feel so certain.

But indeed, the red dot swept past Endeavour without breaking stride, without seeming to notice them. Kharth leaned forwards, lip curling. ‘Not a clue. Alright. Go.’

Endeavour rumbled to life underfoot, the lights brightening and engines roaring through the decks, and forwards they surged. Like a waking beast nestled in the undergrowth, the ship burst from the particle cloud, systems and shields and weapons charging; claws unsheathed and teeth bared.

‘Anything you can do, I can do better,’ said Logan in a sing-song voice. ‘Weapons locked on the Hirogen. Engines targeted.’

‘Fire!’

As if from nowhere, into the field of battle they arrived. The Hirogen had slipped past their hiding place, their inferior sensors unable to pierce the particle cloud. Now, Endeavour’s arrival took them unawares. Phaser blasts hammered the hunters’ shields, calibrated for navigation rather than combat. A single torpedo streaked away from Endeavour’s launcher, thudding into the Hirogen’s hull like a hammer.

‘Full speed!’ Kharth barked. ‘Airex, what’s our heading?’

‘Course transmitted to Helm!’ His hands raced over the controls. ‘Taking us closer to the protostar. They shouldn’t be able to follow.’

The deck shuddered as the Hirogen returned fire, but Logan’s voice was confident. ‘Shields down to sixty percent, but they can take it.’

‘Get us out of here,’ ordered Kharth. ‘We can’t go toe-to-toe with them yet.’ A second round of Hirogen weapons fire wracked the ship, but then she felt the surge of acceleration, and then they were gone.

‘They’re venting plasma,’ Logan reported as the ship soared away from the Hirogen. ‘They ain’t chasing.’

‘Let them lick their wounds for a change.’ Kharth closed her eyes as she slumped back in the captain’s chair. Soon enough, she felt the rumble of the deck as Endeavour eased into a fresh particle cloud in proximity to the protostar. Like a blanket, the turbulence of the stellar nursery fell upon them, shrouding them from sight – but threatening to smother if they put a foot wrong.

‘We’re clear,’ said Airex a minute later.

‘Right.’ Kharth leaned forwards, rubbing her eyes. ‘Airex, Logan, ready room. Lindgren, you have the bridge. Kally, send Thawn and Beckett up to join us.’ There were too many options ahead for her to tolerate hearing the opinions of the full senior staff. A smaller circle, she was finding, kept things manageable.

Unfortunately, it did not keep things headache free.

‘That little hit-and-run placed significant strain on our power systems,’ Thawn reported ten minutes later, arms folded across her chest. ‘We can’t keep up combat engagements while we need our navigational deflectors working at this level to stay alive in the nursery. I need several hours for maintenance.’

Kharth knew it was farcical that she stood with her back to Valance’s desk, leaning against it, while the other four stood before her. Sitting at the desk was not an option, however. ‘If we take several hours to repair, they get several hours to repair.’

‘The alternative,’ said Thawn crisply, ‘is that we try something like this again and our shields collapse at their first volley.’

Kharth opened her mouth to point out that put them in a cycle that wouldn’t end, then shut it. It wouldn’t help. She looked to Beckett. ‘The Hirogen. What does your research say?’

Normally, Nate Beckett would jump at the chance to give his opinion or report his findings, but he didn’t look thrilled at being brought in. He cleared his throat. ‘We’re definitely the biggest catch. They prefer sapient targets and challenging targets. So far, that puts us above Skippy in the priority order.’

Logan nodded. ‘Guess that keeps Skippy safe.’

‘Except they bothered chasing him,’ said Beckett. ‘Which suggests that Skippy is actually rare. A worthwhile target in his own right.’

‘Less appealing than us,’ mused Kharth, ‘but appealing enough that if we slipped away, they might go back to chasing him?’

‘There’s also,’ said Airex, ‘a high chance the rest of the herd is somewhere in the stellar nursery. Which might be a target.’

‘For sure,’ said Beckett. ‘If we don’t keep their attention, then I reckon they’ll move on. But that’ll be here. However!’ He took a step back, pulling out his PADD. ‘I’ve been studying what we have about the leadership dynamics within a hunting pack. Once the Alpha has determined a target, they’re unlikely to stop. But if we can consistently thwart them enough to frustrate and undermine him, we can perhaps trigger a breakdown in the hierarchy…’

It sounded like the kind of thing Valance would go for, or especially Rourke; figure out how to get under their enemy’s skin and tear them apart from the inside.

Kharth said, ‘Actually, I was planning on killing them.’

Silence met her. At length, Thawn said, ‘Um,’ and then nothing.

‘They’re trying to kill us,’ Kharth said flatly. ‘If we slip past them, they’ll target these cosmozoans and kill or capture at least some of them. We’re in no position to incarcerate the Hirogen, de-fang them, whatever. If we leave, we’ve cowardly abandoned anyone out here in need of protecting.’

Beckett lowered his PADD as if he were drooping. ‘But their internal hierarchy -’

‘I don’t have weeks to wage psychological war against people who are trying to kill us, just so we can spare their lives and they can go on to hunt and torment someone else.’ Kharth gave a brusque shrug. ‘I’m not condemning them, I’m not judging. I don’t care. But I’m not going to spare them. Report me to Command when we get back if you don’t like it.’

Airex spoke first after the long pause. ‘So how do we kill them?’

‘I know how to hit-and-run for… maybe forever.’ Kharth shrugged and looked between him and Thawn. ‘So you two geniuses are going to cook up something better.’

Thawn’s jaw dropped. ‘I’m trying to keep this ship in one piece -’

‘And so are they, right? Facing the same sort of challenges as us, but they don’t have our technological advances or expertise? Or understanding of this phenomenon. So…’ Kharth waved her index finger in a circle. ‘Figure out how we make this a bigger problem for them than it is for us.’

Thawn and Airex exchanged looks, then the Trill sighed. ‘I’ll get on it,’ he said, ‘while Commander Thawn begins on repairs?’

‘Good.’ Kharth turned to Beckett. ‘Screw research into their society. I want to know how they fight.’

Beckett drooped. ‘They’re a really fascinating culture. They have to go deeper than just being hunters.’

‘And not all Klingons are soldiers, but if a warship’s coming at me, I’m not going to engage them on, I don’t know, how honour intersects with inter-House politics. We deal with who we’re dealing with.’ Kharth waved a sharp hand. ‘Dismissed.’

Logan lingered, and she braced herself as the others trooped out. Once the door shut, before he could open his mouth, she spoke.

‘You disagree,’ she said. ‘You were quiet throughout all of that. I don’t need you to lecture me about killing -’

‘Nope,’ said Logan. ‘I was gonna say you’re looking… better.’

Kharth stopped. ‘Better.’

‘Relaxed. Confident.’

‘Why wouldn’t I?’ she said wryly. ‘We’re in a fight against people who want to kill us. This is where I thrive.’

‘Trusting Airex to get us through. Trusting Thawn. You’re…’ He sighed. ‘Setting out the big picture and trusting other folks to get through the little one.’

She paused, not sure if she should take this as a compliment. ‘Are you going to go back and tell them that? Manage this relationship between me and the crew? Because I know you’re -’

‘Sticking up for you?’ Logan tilted his head with a challenging smirk. ‘Making sure folks listen to what you’re trying to say instead of hearing what they’re afraid you’re saying?’

‘I’ve stranded us here to save a space dog,’ she snapped. ‘If they think I’m just Kharth, who fights for herself and doesn’t give a damn about other people, then they’re not paying attention.’

That made him stop. ‘Nobody thinks that,’ he said at length. ‘What they fear is that you don’t trust them.’

‘I know.’ She ground her teeth together. ‘I had to go ten rounds with Thawn. And I give her a long leash and this is how she reacts – like I’m putting too much on her.’ She pushed off the desk, breaking into a frustrated pace. ‘Do they want me to rely on them? Or do they want me to tell them what to do?’

‘Woah, easy. That weren’t meant to set you off. I was just saying you’re doing good.’

‘Am I? We could be home by now. Except…’

She fell silent, and Logan cocked his head again. ‘Except?’

‘…except they were talking about people back home who needed us.’ Kharth wanted to stare at nothing, but found her eyes landing on the painting. She swallowed. ‘Except there’s nobody back home who needs me. There’s just this crew. Who I’ve stranded here.’

For a while, Logan didn’t say anything. When he did speak, his voice was low. ‘Everyone’s got your back on this. We’re doing the right thing.’

‘It doesn’t matter if they’ve got my back, they follow -’

‘And I don’t got nobody waiting for me, either.’ That admission came quieter. Not like a contest. Like a warm hand on her shoulder, even if he didn’t move. ‘And I’m proud of what we’re doing. Sticking up for the little guy. I’m proud to follow your orders.’

It took some effort to drag her eyes from the painting to him, and she found his honest eyes almost too bright to look at directly. ‘I…’

‘Bridge to Commander Kharth.’ Kally’s voice came too loud over comms. ‘Uh, we need you.’

In a flash, they were professional again. In a flash, they were back on the bridge, storming back to business. ‘What do we have?’

Kally looked a little hunted, like she was worried she was about to be shouted at. ‘We’re picking up a signal. It looks like the Hirogen have dropped a comms buoy and are bouncing a message through it. Audio only.’

Kharth frowned, then turned to the front of the bridge. ‘Put it through.’

‘Kharth.’ The voice of Venor, the Hirogen Alpha, rumbled through the chamber, low and confident. ‘You have won the latest round. Know that with each encounter, my regard for you only grows. Sagas will be woven of this hunt. Far you have travelled, through the black of space, for us to come together in the birthplace of stars…’

She made a face as he spoke on. ‘Are they using this to track us? Can we use this to track them?’

Beckett hadn’t left the bridge, joining Airex at Science. ‘This is a known tactic,’ he said. ‘But not to flush us out. They use these buoys to bounce their message so they can contact prey without being identified – but it can go both ways. Some Alphas think it enriches the hunt, the more they know their target.’

‘…never before have I known a warrior of your prowess stand for one so small. If only your ship were at her finest, instead of a wounded beast. Then, truly, we could have contested our wits and strength against one another. Never in my life have I had a hunt so grand, and I expect never…’

‘That’s enough.’ Kharth rolled her eyes. ‘I don’t need to hear him using me to massage his ego.’ She turned to Kally. ‘They might be accustomed to using this without being traced – but this guy’s made it clear he’s never faced Starfleet before. Let’s see if we’re not smarter than him.’

Caede gave a low chuckle. ‘He uses this to send us his regards, and you use this to flush him out?’

‘What can I say?’ Kharth settled into the central chair. ‘I hate blowhards.’