‘Look at me.’ Pendeor’s voice came out in a low growl. ‘Do I seem like a guy who don’t get what he wants?’

The beleaguered Tellarite stared him down for a beat. Then seemed to think better of it and shook his head.

‘Exactly.’ Pendoer jabbed an assertive finger. ‘So when I say I want more sauce, you give me more sauce.’ He had led boarding gangs in the Vondem raids, outwitted Federation Security, faced down Nausicaan warlords. It was four in the morning, and he was damned if this street vendor wasn’t going to give him the burger he wanted – no, deserved.

It was raining by the time he stepped out from under the food stall’s canopy and into the street, precious food wrapped and tucked under an arm. There was only so long he could be gone; the last thing he needed was for T’Mell to ask someone else to get a job done. So he took the shortcut back from the market district towards Redoubt, cutting through an alleyway that would bring him to the back entrance.

Normally, he wouldn’t have thought twice about seeing another lone individual cutting through; nobody would be dumb enough to make a move against someone like him so close to a Syndicate holding. The last couple days hadn’t been normal, though, and Pendeor’s hand came to his disruptor pistol as the shadow approached.

Instincts proved correct when they reached the light and he recognised the figure. ‘Q’ira,’ he spat, drawing his disruptor. ‘You’ve got a hell of a nerve -’

But her hands were up, her eyes wide, scared. ‘Please, Pendeor, listen to me. I didn’t know they were gonna do that. I was told by Torrad to work with them, so I worked with them. Then – then they came back and killed him. You gotta believe me.’

The girl didn’t have many qualities. But perhaps her third was that she had been doggedly, stupidly loyal to Torrad. Pendeor ran his tongue over his teeth. ‘What’re you talkin’ to me for, then?’

‘T’Mell won’t listen. I wanted – you were always good to me.’

‘You want me to vouch for you?’ he scoffed.

‘I want to hand that band of Starfleet over to you. Then we go to T’Mell together. I get to prove myself. You get to take out the guys who got Torrad.’ Her head cocked. ‘Maybe that doesn’t just make you look good to T’Mell. Maybe that makes you look good to everyone.’

Pendeor stared her down for a moment. Then he lowered his disruptor. ‘I’m not about to make a bid for Redoubt. Like Torrad always said: the most important part of being king’s keeping your head on your shoulders. T’Mell’s welcome to painting a target on himself like that.’ He clicked his tongue and holstered the weapon. ‘We can do this. But don’t try to play me, girl. It ain’t that easy.’

Then a stun rod was jabbed in his back, a hand clamped over his mouth before he could shout, and the world spun and darkened.

Before everything went black, Q’ira stepped closer, lips curling. ‘Oh, Pendeor,’ she sighed. ‘It really is.’

‘What the fuck.’ Nallera’s voice was low and hushed, but echoed around the darkened chamber anyway enough to make the hairs on the back of Rosewood’s neck rise. They’d spent hours scoping out the run-down industrial buildings near the Velvet Spire before picking out the ruins of an old foundry whose reconstruction had been abandoned halfway through. Clearing out a floor far from any squatters or potential passers-by before midnight had been hard work, but not as hard as, it turned out, hauling Pendeor down to this level of the city and then back up to this floor of the building.

The big Orion was strapped to a chair now, head slumped forward, still out from the jolts he’d taken from the jerry-rigged stun rod Nallera had put together for the ambush. Aryn knelt next to him, the equipment they’d spent a small fortune on spread out before him as he carefully calculated the exact right dosage to load into the hypospray. Cassidy stood before them both, his jacket dumped on the floor, bare, muscular arms folded across his chest pale under the fluorescent lights they’d ‘borrowed’ from the building site next door.

Rosewood looked over at the cursing Nallera. ‘Don’t tell me you hit him with too many volts or something.’

‘What – no, I know how to do my job.’ She raised the unwrapped package she’d taken off Pendeor at the scene. It was a burger. ‘Look at this motherfucker. It’s wet. What the hell is this?’

‘Three.’ Cassidy’s voice was curt. ‘Cut the chatter. How’re we looking, Four?’

Aryn raised his eyes. ‘Ready. I can wake him up and dose him in one go.’

‘Do it.’

It took a minute to work. Then Pendeor groaned, rolling his head before looking up and blinking, owlish in his unkind awakening before he squinted at the bright light shining in his face.

‘…you’ve got no fuckin’ clue who you’re messing with, do you?’ Pendeor growled after a second.

‘We’re the people we think killed your boss,’ said Cassidy with a shrug. ‘Why would I give a shit about crossing a worm like you?’ He stepped forward and roughly grabbed Pendeor by the chin. ‘Or wiping you out.’

A scoff. ‘You’re still Starfleet. Icing Torrad-Var probably took two years of paperwork and fifteen bribes before someone up top decided you could maybe take out the biggest player on the planet. You’re gonna have to file a report in triplicate before you walk off this mission. No way you get to add a second extra-judicial kill.’

‘That’s if anyone finds out about it. I don’t see my debriefing officer in here,’ Cassidy pointed out, before shoving Pendeor’s head aside. ‘I know Aestri showed up last night. What’d she want?’

Rosewood watched as Pendeor’s expression flickered. He hadn’t expected them to ask questions about Aestri. But the Orion rallied after a moment, shaking his head. ‘You ask so nicely. But T’Mell’s expecting me back at Redoubt by now. Everyone’s on full alert. They’ll find us before I talk, before you get off this planet.’

‘You think that you get to walk out of this room without giving me answers?’ said Cassidy. He cast a sharp look at Aryn, and Rosewood tried to mask his own expression as he shared the same uncertainty.

I thought you were doping him to make him more compliant.

Aryn, stood over Pendeor’s shoulder by now, just shrugged. Biology would always be more complicated than could be easily overcome with what had looked to Rosewood like a random selection of drugs.

‘I think,’ said Pendeor, looking up at Cassidy with brazen indifference, ‘you don’t walk off this planet at all.’

Cassidy turned away, shaking his head. ‘I hate our goddamn reputation,’ he growled. ‘Everyone thinks they know Starfleet, everyone thinks we’re so fluffy. It means I gotta hurt you twice as much to make you believe.’

Rosewood winced. ‘One -’

Cassidy spun on the spot, lashing out with his foot. Rather than strike Pendeor, he hit the chair he was tied to, knocking it over. The sound echoed through the cavernous depths of the old foundry, but they had checked their surroundings. There was nobody nearby to hear.

‘You seem to be bad at math, Pendeor,’ Cassidy snarled, hunkered over the Syndicate lieutenant like a big cat ready to feast. ‘You get that our situation is bad but you think I’m still gonna play by the rules. Where’s Aestri?’

‘Fuck you,’ Pendeor spat.

Cassidy’s fist raised, but before he knew it, Rosewood had moved to grab his wrist.

‘One!’

Cassidy was strong and furious, and the fact Rosewood could restrain him suggested this was, perhaps, more theatrical than he’d feared. There was a brief struggle before Cassidy yanked his arm back and dropped it. ‘You gonna be a coward right now?’

‘He’s right about one thing,’ Rosewood said, trying to be both sharp and placating. ‘This goes bad, it’s a lot of paperwork.’ His eyes on Cassidy were firm, pleading, but he schooled the expression before he turned to Pendeor and knelt beside him. ‘And I’m the guy who worries about paperwork.’

Pendeor’s eyes were beady as they locked on him. ‘What? So?’

‘It’s the Starfleet way,’ said Rosewood in a soothing voice. ‘Paperwork. Systems. Protocol. Knowing how it works is the best way to get what you want. What everyone wants. For instance, Pendeor. Q’ira mentioned you’ve got a cousin on Vashti.’

At last, Pendeor hesitated. ‘Everyone’s got cousins.’

‘On work permits? Those can be revoked. Do it fast enough, and we kick you out ourselves. Maybe we drop your cousin back on Delion Prime? Lots of people waiting for him there.’

‘Woah, hey – Iganor did nothing wrong -’

‘So many protocols, systems, bureaucracies… everyone’s done something wrong,’ said Rosewood in a sing-song voice. ‘Like I said. I’m good at this.’ He leaned in, jaw tightening, and pressed on before Pendeor could rally after this unexpected pivot. ‘Thing is, we don’t want to know about T’Mell, or Redoubt, or anything of Kalviris operations. We want to know about the same person we were gunning for all along: Aestri. Torrad-Var hated her. You’re not betraying anyone.’

Pendeor was still on his side, face pressed against the cold concrete floor. ‘Iganor’s got little kids, you sick fuck.’

‘Yeah,’ said Rosewood, clicking his tongue. ‘They can get deported, too. Aestri picked up the package in Redoubt we left behind?’

A beat. In the cold silence, all they could hear was Pendeor’s laboured breathing. Then, ‘Yeah. Yeah, said it was hers, that you stole it from her.’

‘Hey,’ came Nallera’s distant protest, but Cassidy cast her a withering, silencing look.

‘But she’s gone, now,’ Pendeor said in a rush. ‘If it’s her you want, I can’t get you close to her or nothing.’

Rosewood resisted the urge to look up at Cassidy as he felt his pulse quicken. ‘Gone? Where?’

‘I’m not – she came by for the package and then to make some calls; looks like you left her high and dry without her gear or people. So T’Mell gave her a ship.’

‘What ship? Going where?’

‘I don’t…’

‘Or maybe we just deport Iganor and his partner, and take the kids in?’ The Federation wouldn’t do that, Rosewood thought. At least, not intentionally.

‘Okay!’ Pendeor’s voice cracked, his face pressing into the cold concrete now in battered shame. ‘Okay. Oltanis IV. She’s – she’s going to Oltanis IV.’

When they were done, they shoved another bag over Pendeor’s head and Aryn drugged him again. He and Nallera hauled him off to find a place he could be dumped where he’d be safe enough, but not found too soon. That left the other three to tidy up their improvised interrogation room.

Cassidy gave Rosewood a begrudging look once they were done. ‘That was good work.’

Q’ira looked more guarded. ‘Were you actually going to split his cousin’s family up?’

‘That’d take a lot of paperwork,’ Rosewood said. Only now she asked did he realise he’d not actually considered whether he’d been lying. It had simply been a weak spot he could slip a knife into. ‘What’s Oltanis IV?’

‘Tech hub, old Neutral Zone,’ she said. ‘Used to be for off-the-book weapons development and trade. It exploded in the last couple of years with the Borg gear flooding the market. And again boomed in the last six months.’

‘You know it?’

She gave a small nod. ‘Torrad worked everywhere.’ She turned to Cassidy. ‘Looks like you still need me.’

Cassidy straightened, shoulders squaring. ‘I -’

‘No.’ She took a sharp step forward. ‘You want to get this thing? It’s taken on Aestri’s name, identity, contacts, resources. If you had your finger on the pulse on those, you wouldn’t have needed to come to Torrad-Var. You think anyone else who knows Syndicate workings is gonna help you now they think you killed him?’ Another step. ‘I know you’re gonna say that Torrad-Var was just a criminal. But he still helped you. Got you what you needed. And he got murdered for it. I don’t expect you to clear your name, my name, anything. You know what I expect you’re gonna do? Kill that thing.’ Her chin tilted up. ‘If that’s all I can get, I’ll take it. You’re not the only one allowed vengeance.’

Cassidy glanced at Rosewood, who didn’t dare have a facial expression, before he looked to her and shrugged. ‘I was gonna say you’re welcome to come with.’

She stopped. ‘What?’

‘You’ve done good. Shown you’ve got not just good info but good instincts. You picked out Pendeor, knew we could grab him, told Rosewood what he needed to know to break him.’ Cassidy’s eyes fell on Rosewood, and his gut twisted as he saw the approval and didn’t know what to feel about it. Then the big man stepped forwards, and when he dropped his voice it wasn’t angry or accusing any more, but close. Conspiratorial.

‘If you’re with me,’ he rumbled, looking between them both, ‘then we finish this. Right?’

Rosewood took a breath and was surprised to feel the shake in it. When he looked to Q’ira, her eyes were shining with more intensity than the apprehension she’d shown the last day. He nodded. ‘We finish this.’