Bean Me Up was the café on Gateway’s Arcade most favoured by Starfleet officers first thing in the morning, and was wholly too brightly lit, colourful, and cheerful for Valance to enjoy it at 0700 hours. She still preferred to go there with Rivera for the morning’s first cup of coffee than to linger in Rivera’s quarters on the station for breakfast. That felt like its own kind of statement.

‘Did you tell Morgan that I’m not his stenographer?’ Rivera said as they slid onto stools at one of the café’s tall tables. ‘That he’s not my boss, and he doesn’t get to assign me stories?’

‘I neglected to speak that way to the commander of Midgard Sector operations.’ Valance blew on her raktajino before she had a sip. Despite herself, her eyes darted to the café doors every time there was movement, as if someone would catch them in the act of being seen together. But they’d been seen together for weeks so far.

‘I’m here as the correspondent on this border. I’m here to report the news. Not write a puff-piece for Starfleet’s latest PR stunt to prove they’re not prioritising Romulan refugees over Federation citizens.’

‘It’s a solar flare threatening one of the biggest facilities in the sector,’ Valance reminded her. ‘Thousands of lives and billions of tonnes of equipment are at stake. Not to mention an operation harvesting more boromite than three sectors put together.’

‘You think it’s a stunt to send Endeavour, though.’ Rivera’s gaze went beady as she watched her, and Valance tensed. They were still navigating their boundaries, figuring out the lines between working together as journalist and officer, and… whatever everything else was. The nebulous nature of ‘everything else’ didn’t make the boundaries between professional and informal more firm, both of them routinely running to work to keep the personal at bay whenever it suited. ‘Send Constantinople, send Asger –’

‘That’s two ships who can cover more ground. Endeavour can do the job alone.’ They were due to depart at 0900 hours, after taking the night to load up on the vast supplies that would be necessary to pull off a relief operation of this scale. That was another advantage her ship had over the two older vessels: they could use this time to prepare, and then hit a far higher top speed to reach Scarix within a matter of hours, not days. Valance fiddled with the sachets of sugar, even though she didn’t want sweetener in her coffee. ‘You’re right. Morgan can’t assign you. You don’t have to come.’

‘And miss a relief effort at the sector’s biggest humanitarian crisis?’ Rivera said, stricken. ‘No, I’m mad on principle.’

‘Some might say the Teros refugee sanctuary is the sector’s biggest humanitarian crisis.’

‘Some might call that old news that’s being fixed. And don’t come at me with that.’ Rivera managed to tilt her nose in the air in a superior fashion and sup her cappuccino all at once. ‘I’ve been writing about conditions of under-funded frontiers for the last fifteen years, while Starfleet was busy shoving their fingers in their ears pretending those borderlands didn’t exist.’

‘Oh yeah? And what did that change?’ Valance swallowed a mouthful of coffee as she heard her own rebuttal, sobering. ‘Sorry. That was too far. You’re right – I don’t want this assignment. Off the record.’

She watched as Rivera’s expression shifted obviously through insult at Valance’s jibe, to wry amusement at the immediate dismount. ‘I think by now you can safely assume that “off the record” is the default.’

Can I? Speaking that question, however, opened up other doors. Like discussions about the nature of their increasingly regular hook-ups. And morning coffees, and dinners. If Rivera had any other job, Valance suspected they would both be calling this ‘dating.’ As it stood, it was convenient for them both to leave it unlabelled for as long as possible.

Valance set her coffee cup down with a sigh. ‘Endeavour was designed and built for deep-space exploration, but even when we’ve left Federation space, more often than not we’ve been dealing with one political crisis or another.’

‘Isn’t that just the nature of any modern ship in Starfleet?’ Rivera pointed out. ‘Either you’ve been jealously guarding Federation territory, or over-correcting for years of neglecting frontiers.’

‘And I want to do good. I want to help people. I didn’t join Starfleet to immediately leave the Federation, I joined Starfleet to make the Federation better. And that would be fine if I were in command of the Redemption, or the Swiftsure, or even the Tempest. But people see Endeavour, and they expect…’

‘A bit of boldly going?’ Rivera’s lips twitched. ‘I don’t know if anyone outside of Starfleet has such a romantic view. Or, I guess, the romantic view is of that ship showing up and making things better. Not that ship disappearing out of sight as quickly as possible. It’s not easy, though, being a symbol.’

Valance frowned. It was what she’d been saying, she realised, but Rivera put it into simple terms that made it more daunting, rather than more manageable. ‘My ship’s a symbol,’ she said at length. ‘I’m just here.’

‘Absolutely no such thing, but don’t worry, I’ll be ethical on this assignment,’ said Rivera, tone going lighter. ‘I promise I won’t make you the story. There are four hundred and ninety-nine other people on board to talk about.’

For a moment, the image of Kharth in front of a camera transmitting to the whole Federation flashed in front of Valance’s eyes. Years of practice at emotional repression kicked in fast, but that meant she couldn’t avoid the other pressing thought. She put the sweetener packet back in the dispensary on the table, and looked up to meet Rivera’s eyes. ‘What does your editor say?’

Rivera’s eyebrows raised a millimetre. ‘Ken thinks this story’s great.’

‘You know what I’m asking.’

‘My story on you is over, Handsome.’ She cupped her hands around her cappuccino, eyes twinkling as she sipped. ‘Until I have to publish a substantive word about you, I don’t see any reason to say anything else to Ken. Why, what did Morgan say? Or Rourke?’

Valance coughed as raktajino tried to go down the wrong way. ‘Point made,’ she choked, thumping her chest. Rivera had won that round of playing chicken with defining their Situation.

Then another thought occurred, and no talents at repression could banish this clear and present danger. Valance set her mug down and cleared her throat. ‘There’s one more thing,’ she croaked. ‘We’re bringing the SCE with us.’

‘That sounds like a good…’ The moment the penny dropped was nearly palpable. Rivera’s lips set for a moment. Then she gave an airy smile. ‘I look forward to meeting Commander Cortez properly. Who knows? Maybe she’s the story.’ Before Valance could protest, she’d finished her cappuccino and set it down. ‘Hey, we should get going. You’re going to want to inspect things before departure.’

Valance watched her for a moment, reluctantly draining her coffee and getting to her feet. Rivera was right; she did need to make sure everything was shipshape before they set off.

Increasingly, however, she feared she’d have to worry about the state of her personal life on this mission, not just her ship.