Captain Taes could design a two-year archaeological excavation on an alien world, but aligning her rank pips in a vertical orientation was escaping her. Horizontal rank pips had been the fashion for so long now that Taes could affix them in the dark. With her eyes closed.

On this day, she could see the befuddlement and the frustration in her own eyes, reflecting back at her from the holographic mirror. That mirror offered a perfect reflection of her body –from the top of her bald head down to her dress uniform– and yet the bottom pip landed askew on her collar. Her focus was fractured, and there was too little of her energy in the here and now.

“Kellin, I need you,” Taes called out.

Kellin Rayco lumbered into the bedroom of her guest quarters aboard Starbase Bravo, dipping his head slightly to avoid collision with the upper door frame. The speed with which Kellin entered belied the way he had been waiting for an order.

“With your speech?” Kellin offered.

“No, that’s well in hand,” Taes remarked, indicating the widescreen PADD abandoned on her bed. She shook her head slowly, examining how the pips looked from different angles.

“I need your grooming skills,” she clarified, now waggling her fingers at the pips as if they were scalding hot.

Taes couldn’t see his face until he walked through her holographic mirror, evaporating it. Without caution, Kellin began to pluck the pips off her collar, one by one. He looked down at her fondly. She could feel, empathically, his pleasure at the temporary role reversal between them. It should have warmed her, but it raised questions about why his self-esteem would still rely on such moments with her.

“How are the transfer requests coming along?” Taes asked, turning attention back to his role as her executive officer.

Squinting at her collar, Kellin measured it against the length of his thumb, and then he placed the first silver circle.

After a soft huff, Kellin said, “I got stumped on your relative priorities between career rotation, family requests, or personality clashes…”

Shaking her head, Taes reminded him, “My methods haven’t changed since we launched Constellation.”

Kellin’s shoulders rounded, and there was an uncomfortable hitch in his breathing. She could feel a pang in him.

“I wasn’t… here for the launch,” he said softly, apologetically.

Horrified by what she’d said, Taes closed her eyes and pressed her palm against Kellin’s chest. It had been months since the last time she’d lost track of her shared experiences with Kellin compared to what had been his Changeling imposter in the lead-up to the Frontier Day massacres.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

Kellin had always been incapable of bearing any tension between them, and today was no different. He breathed deeply, smiled, and affixed the next pip to Taes’s collar.

“My spies have more clues,” he said, deftly changing the subject, “about the orders you’re about to receive from Commodore Ekwueme.”

Allowing him to guide their conversation, Taes dropped her hands to her side and raised her chin to create more space for Kellin to attach her fourth pip. His hands felt steadier now as he put it in place.

Buoyantly, Taes said, “There was a gravitas to his voice when I last spoke with him. I haven’t heard that since he offered me command of a research squadron. Constellation Squadron would have a certain ring to it, no?”

Nodding at Taes eagerly, Kellin said, “The chief engineer of our old scout, USS Grus, and the tactical officer of the escort, USS Meridian, have confirmed both ships have orders to converge at Farpoint Station within the month.”

“That would position them advantageously,” Taes said, “to join Constellation on her next mission of exploration out past the Cygnus Reach.”

Kellin eagerly added, “And the Meridian has been primarily escorting the USS Almagest for the past six months.”

“Elbon’s ship,” Taes surmised. Taes’s previous first officer, and Kellin’s ex-husband, was in command of the Sutherland-class starship Almagest. She didn’t have to guess where Kellin had retrieved that intel.

“A research cruiser could round out Constellation Squadron nicely,” he said, but Taes had to wonder if Kellin meant the ship or if Kellin meant Elbon.  The three of them had been a mighty team in their day.

The neon glow of a holographic PADD flickered alight at Kellin’s chest height. As he tapped at the interface and began to scroll through the obvious alert, Taes took a step back to grant him a semblance of privacy. She reached for the PADD on the bed, taking another look at the speech she would deliver at the gala that night.

“Speaking of Captain Rattler,” Kellin said, half-distracted as he continued to read the communique, “the Meridian remains en route to Caelum Station, transporting the Kunhri Three Reman patients they pulled out of a disabled Antares-class hulk.”

Perching herself on the foot on the bed, Taes asked, “Has she been able to identify the K-7 cruiser that attacked the hulk?”

Kellin scrolled back up the message and shook his head. “No, it had Romulan markings, but it didn’t match anything on our Free State or Republic registries, neither the official nor unofficial ones.”

As if by rote, Taes murmured, “Probably one of the independent factions, given how poorly they’re resourced…” Then she cleared her throat and inclined her head. Meridian was rumoured to be forming into Constellation Squadron, but Taes didn’t have the orders in her hands just yet.

“So why is she informing you?” Taes asked.

“They’ve been interviewing the Reman survivors for the past few days,” Kellin said, then hesitated. “At least, the ones who are well enough to speak. Rattler’s crew has been trying to identify the boarding party from the D-7 cruiser that kidnapped five of the Reman patients. Again, none of the facial composites have matched any known Romulan agents or criminals.”

Kellin swallowed hard. “Until one of the Reman patients was revived from her coma today. She identified a member of the boarding party.”

He gripped the edges of his holo-PADD, and he spun it around.

Displayed in the centre of the PADD was a photograph of Flavia.

Taes got to her feet. There was a pang in her left knee as she did so.

“There will be time for re-supply and speeches later. Prepare Constellation for launch within the hour.”

The massive cylinder of Refinery 03G was carved deep into the crust of Kunhri III like a great syringe plunged to drain the lifeblood from the planet’s heart. It was at the same time a workplace and a home, a hospital and a playground, to the Remans who had claimed this world as their own. Like all the other refineries on the planet, it was their everything.

And if Flavia ir-Llantrisant wasn’t careful, it would be her grave.

She could hardly hear past the ferocious ringing in her head; she could hardly catch her breath from her wild panting; there was only one figure she could make out in the half-light of the cramped maintenance corridor. She was looking at herself, a perfect copy except for the eyes. Flavia was no naive child herself, but she could see the weariness of something ancient in the eyes of the creature before her.

“It’s you, isn’t it?” Flavia asked.

The other Flavia responded quickly, too quickly. She couldn’t read her lips except for a word here or there. It looked like she said “Starfleet” in one phrase and maybe “planetary” in another. Still panting, Flavia couldn’t control her panic reaction. The return of her tormentor and interrogator was distressing enough, and Flavia had lost track of the Starfleet security officers who were hunting her, too.

She couldn’t hear through the tinnitus and could hardly see through the gloom, but her legs were strong. Pressing her feet into the stone-hewn ground, she took some small bubbles of comfort from how ready she was to run.

Stabbing an index finger at the other Flavia, Flavia said, “My government paid you handsomely for my release…”

The other Flavia interrupted her, babbling again. She raised her hands in an open, pleading gesture as she took small steps towards Flavia. She only stopped speaking to raise a hand to her mouth and cough.

“That means nothing,” Flavia insisted, bluffing that she had any notion of what the other Flavia had said. She didn’t run. Not yet. She held her ground.

The other Flavia continued to cough; her body racked with extreme retching until she was spitting up brown bile. She doubled over and fell to her knees but wouldn’t look away. The other Flavia glared at her with a guttural fear Flavia had never seen in any living being before. Litres upon litres of congealed brown gunk expelled from the other Flavia’s mouth until she collapsed in a heap on the floor.

Flavia kept panting. She squinted her eyes and strained her ears, listening for any hint of approaching footsteps. Sooner than she wanted to, Flavia padded forward and kicked the other Flavia with the side of her boot. The body offered no resistance and made no reaction. She kicked the body again.  It lay still.  Inert.

Then she searched the body’s pockets for as long as her bravery would allow. As soon as her courage ran out, she started running again, away from where the Starfleeters had been searching for her. She made it through one door and then two, but she was running so recklessly she smashed into the open arms of two men. Two Romulans.

Immediately, she clocked that these weren’t members of her science team, and the Kunhri Remans had murdered all of the Romulans who had lived here under the Star Empire.

There wasn’t time for Flavia to ask the question in her heart when a transporter beam snatched her away.