‘You’re to be commended for your work,’ said Commodore Rourke, eyes drifting over the detailed report of the events at Tau Mervana. ‘You achieved something impressive under extremely difficult circumstances.’

Across the desk, the officer shifted, uncomfortable. ‘Was it enough?’

Rourke stopped reading. There was a moment where his expression shifted to betray frustration, but it was unclear at what. After a beat, he put the PADD down. ‘Getting aid to Tau Mervana, if only for a few days, was something Starfleet didn’t think was possible. This was a win, Captain.’

Captain Elara Galcyon found herself looking away, taking instead the details and comforts of the commodore’s office in the squadron’s operations centre on Gateway Station. She’d known this would be a brushing off the moment Rourke had invited her when the Liberty docked. This office was for conversations and coffees. If there was to be a serious discussion about long-term ramifications and options, they’d be in StratOps.

She didn’t even like coffee much. Slowing her breathing, she looked back. ‘It could have been for longer. It should have been. The ceasefire had days left on it. We could bear the brunt of the initial fighting so they didn’t just kill each other, but we had to pull out almost immediately after.’

Rourke’s expression creased. ‘Those factions have been at war for over ten years. It’s only because they can’t afford to level the city that there’s anything left. You negotiated a break and got absolutely critical supplies to the people living there. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, Captain.’

‘So I was right to be there?’

Rourke hesitated. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘I wasn’t sent, Commodore. We were following the trail on that data cache. We could have recovered it and left. Instead, I saw an opportunity to do good, even if Tau Mervana wasn’t my mission. Are you saying that was a good thing?’

‘It’s your judgement call in the field, Captain – yes. It was.’

‘Then why wasn’t I informed about the clandestine mission?’

In the silence, Rourke smacked his lips. ‘I can’t confirm -’

‘I didn’t come to this unit to play more games about the “greater good” of the Federation, sir.’ Despite herself, Galcyon found her voice shaking. ‘You don’t have to give me a full briefing if I don’t have clearance. But please don’t play innocent. Two missions collided. My mission was deemed less important.’

Rourke’s shoulders sank. ‘You make it sound like it was a considered choice, Captain. The right hand didn’t know what the left was doing. When a unit was sent to Tau Mervana, the Liberty’s presence wasn’t known. It’s a big galaxy. Nobody gave the order that this other mission trumped yours. You made the best call you could with the information you had.’

There was more. More discussion about the future of Tau Mervana, but it was all academic; Starfleet wasn’t about to send another ship in the middle of a fresh warzone with no clear plan. Galcyon couldn’t find it in herself to stay angry with Rourke; she’d been around for long enough to know when decisions were coming from elsewhere, and officers like him and her simply had to live with them. The Liberty could go back out soon, he assured her. Get back to exploring.

It was just as well she’d forced him to confirm there had been another mission on Tau Mervana, though, or it would have made the million-to-one-odds of finding the tall, gruff officer who’d run her blockade in the Gateway Station turbolift very awkward.

Galcyon froze as the doors opened to reveal him. He met her gaze, stone-faced but clearly stunned, then had the audacity to reach for the lift controls. That made her move, sticking her foot in the door to stop it closing before she slipped in.

‘Hello again, Commander.’ Her eyes fell on the rank insignia on his uniform – the field jacket, of course it was the field jacket – and she had to work hard to keep an accusatory snarl out of her voice.

The burly man looked down at her, impassive. ‘Captain. I’ve got a meeting.’

‘With Commodore Rourke?’

‘Yeah. With the commodore. About important business.’

It wasn’t like Elara Galcyon to be petty. So she wasn’t sure what compelled her to be the one to smack the lift controls, commanding it to plummet down to Section Indigo, and as the commander opened his mouth to protest, she snapped, ‘Computer, override command of this lift,’ and gave her codes.

His jaw dropped. ‘Are you – what is this, you kidnapping me now?’

‘Demanding a conversation.’ Galcyon’s jaw tightened as she glared up at him. ‘Your meeting with the commodore can wait for the time it takes us to cross half the station and come back. Who are you?’

‘I got work to do, darling, not a tantrum to indulge -’

‘Your name. Commander. And it’s “Captain,” not “darling;” I don’t care how big and tough you are, give me sexist condescension one more time and this situation gets worse.’

He rolled his eyes and looked away, but grunted, after a beat, ‘Cassidy. You can call me Cassidy.’

‘Don’t pretend I’ve not noticed that there’s a gulf between “my name is” and “you can call me,” but so be it, Cassidy. I just have one question for you.’

Cassidy’s nostrils flared. ‘No, I can’t tell you what my mission was. I can’t tell you if it was “worth it,” or more important than the lives of whoever died on Tau Mervana. All I can say is that it was my mission.’

‘That wasn’t my question.’

‘People died on Tau Mervana before you ever got there, they’d have kept dying after you left, regardless. Nobody was up in fucking arms about it two weeks ago. So I’m not going to take the blame for fighting breaking back out on a shithole world, when Starfleet’s finest weren’t lifting a finger to help until the situation was right in front of them.’

Galcyon swallowed indignation. ‘I don’t think I can fix all the galaxy’s ills, Cassidy, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fix what we can. And I’m not impressed with the implication that a potential hypocrisy on my part makes any morality of trying to help that world irrelevant. That still wasn’t my question.’

‘I’m not trying to impress you, Captain.’ Cassidy’s sneer paused. ‘What’s your question?’

‘Perhaps you couldn’t give me a full briefing. But how in the sky was running that roadblock and carrying on into that war-torn city without backup a better choice than asking for my help?’

He stopped at that, hands on his hips. After a beat, he said, ‘You would have demanded an explanation.’

‘I’d have demanded some sort of explanation. I wouldn’t have asked you to break regulations and give me information I didn’t have clearance for.’ When he scoffed, her jaw tightened. ‘You didn’t even try.’

‘I didn’t.’ To her surprise, he subsided a little, and elaborated, ‘I had an asset in the vehicle. Putting them among your crew risked a security breach.’

Her nose wrinkled. ‘Are you saying, Commander, you couldn’t trust the crew of a Starfleet ship?’

‘A Sagan-class has five hundred -’

‘Information is often contained to far fewer than that aboard my ship. There were all manner of options available to you, Commander, instead of running that blockade and exposing us to being overrun by local factions. I lost two crew that night!’

Worse, Cassidy inclined his head at that, and when she said, ‘I’m sorry,’ she believed his sincerity.

‘Not to mention the risk to the civilians, the damage to their homes. And the risk to you, your unit, and your asset. I can’t see how trusting a Starfleet captain is more dangerous.’

‘There are matters of security that in my sort of work -’

‘Don’t give me that,’ Galcyon sighed. ‘Don’t give me the line about how officers like me can’t possibly understand the danger, secrecy, and difficulty of your work; as if having hope in the galaxy makes me an idiot -’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘Then what are you saying?’

He stopped, eyes narrowing, chest heaving from blossoming frustration. ‘Less than a year ago, we found out that Changelings had infiltrated Starfleet at the highest level. Less than three years ago, we found out that the Romulans had infiltrated Starfleet at the highest level. But sure. Tell me more about trusting a Starfleet captain I never met before.’

That made her pause, blood humming with frustration at him and frustration at his point. At length, she said, ‘That may be so. But I just had Commodore Rourke trying to avoid confirming there even was an operation on Tau Mervana. You’re right to be worried about our institutions being compromised, Commander. But the answer to that is for more transparency and accountability; for people to have to explain themselves and for their actions to be scrutinised. There is a reason the Tal Shiar were able to infiltrate Starfleet Intelligence. If you go off-script on a mission, how many people do you have to explain yourself to?’

When he spat, ‘The people around me,’ it sounded more like a weaponised retort than something he believed, and from the look in his eye, she thought he knew it.

The universe did her one small kindness, the turbolift slowing as it finally reached its destination, and she straightened. ‘Then I hope they’re good people, Commander. People you can trust. Because it sounds exhausting, otherwise, not trusting anyone. I wouldn’t be able to sleep.’

‘I sleep with one eye open, but I get my rest,’ Cassidy snarled.

‘I sleep in a comfortable bed aboard a powerful starship where I can try to change the fate of a city, and even if I fail, I can make the darkness a little less bad, if only for a few days. And close both my eyes.’ She shook her head as the turbolift stopped and the doors slid open. ‘It was nice to meet you, Commander.’

She didn’t expect a reply. She was out in the bustling corridor of Gateway Station, and the turbolift doors slid shut a heartbeat after she heard his voice, taut and cautious but loud enough to follow her.

‘Stay safe out there, Captain.’

It did not sound mocking.

Elara Galcyon paused in the corridor, slowing her frustrated breathing. She had work to do, and her people did not deserve her irritation. After a beat, she tapped her combadge. ‘Galcyon to Dashell. Make us ready to be underway as soon as possible. Let’s get back out there.’