“I didn’t expect to find you back here,” Taes said. She emphasised a playful lilt to make it clear she only meant it as the slightest of jabs. Not even skin deep.

While the holographic projection of stars swirled around her, Taes crossed the catwalk of stellar cartography’s raised workstation. She made herself known to Lieutenant Commander Leander Nune, who was seated at the lab’s central platform. She heard him chuckle softly, and his shoulders bounced as he did so.

Since Constellation’s launch a year ago, almost, Nune had served in Yuulik’s science department. That changed when Captain Taes selected her senior staff for Constellation Squadron’s new mission for the Delta Exploration Initiative. Taes sought to recognise Nune’s recent learnings while leveraging his lapsed experience as an engineer and department head, promoting him to chief operations officer. Nune had spent many a duty shift in stellar cartography but not since trading it all in for an operations uniform and a third pip.

Her words — those exact choice of words — were familiar to Nune, she expected. During many of her tours of the ship before sleep, Taes would find Nune at the bar of the Planetarium lounge. I didn’t expect to find you back here, she would say. There had never been much guile or artifice between them. Between their telepathic unravelling by blood dilithium and the body swap dalliance, they had already seen each other’s basest, most craven of natures. Even her momentary infatuation with Nune — held back by her Deltan oath of celibacy to Starfleet — had been washed away by the lapping waves of their deepening trust and friendship.

It was only in these late-night exchanges that Taes had begun to learn of the depth of Nune’s regret. Thoughts came more freely when spoken with synthehol on the breath. At times, Nune’s eyes widened in surprise to admit to himself, more than Taes, that giving up his posting as chief engineer had been a mistake borne of fear and shame. He hadn’t recognised himself under the rageful influence of blood dilithium, and so running away from himself had been easier. Reuniting with his mentor, Commander Perez of the USS Themis, during their last tour through the Delta Quadrant, reminded Nune of his ambitions. Taes had held space to hear him out in those moments. In others, she had introduced powerful questions to challenge him to imagine what else might be possible for him now.

On the stellar map projected head of Nune, three different amorphous polygons represented the Nekrit Expanse. Most of the shaded areas overlapped, but the edges and boundaries stretched in different directions on each layer.

“We received new sensor logs from Minerva’s scout ahead to the route proposed by Lieutenant Cellar Door. I offered to identify any hazards that may warrant changing our plans,” Nune reported. His manner was soft-spoken, as it typically was on duty, and Taes had long learned that it wasn’t due to a lack of confidence. He didn’t raise his voice when he trusted he was being heard.

Nune said, “The outermost electrokinetic storms of the Nekrit Expanse have changed formation since the last Starfleet ships passed through this region.” –He also indicated a thick green line on the maps that turned into a dotted line in places– “And we still don’t know the full extent of where the Borg have expanded and withdrawn from their traditionally occupied territories. I can add some education to my guess with the new sensor scans from Minerva, but they’ll still be guesses.”

Swivelling his chair, Nune turned to wink at Taes with a crooked smile. After a heartbeat, Nune nodded at something over her shoulder.

“I offered,” Nune said, “to submit my recommendations by the end of the shift, but Commander Calumn demanded them before lunch.”

Following the direction of Nune’s nod, Taes spun on her heel. Only then did she see Calumn working at an LCARS panel in the back bulkhead. Any flutters of embarrassment she felt at not noticing him there were flattened out when Calumn took no notice of Nune pointedly saying his name aloud. Either Calumn was engrossed by his research of stellar charts, or his ignoring of Nune’s protest was just as pointed.

Returning her attention to Nune, Taes said, “All the more reason we have to be successful in the K’ritz shelkvan ritual. They won’t even negotiate the trade of their star charts until Starfleet achieves diplomatic recognition, and their culture demands a singing competition to do so.”

Nune braced his palms on his knees and leaned closer to Taes.

“You’re really not going to represent Starfleet in the competition?” he asked.

Lowering her voice, Taes said, “Everyone keeps asking me that.” She didn’t like how strained her voice sounded, stricken by a tight feeling. Moving to stand beside Nune, she leaned against his workstation.

“I don’t know why I never considered offering myself as diplomat.  I can’t say I desired it,” Taes admitted. Considering their long friendship and the clarity Nune’s Betazoid telepathy could provide, she asked, “Do you know why?”

“That’s not how it works,” he said. “I can’t know if you don’t even know.”

Taes winced at what she was about to say. “It’s not like me to have to pull for my feelings. I didn’t notice I’ve been intellectualising my feelings instead of steeping in them. Not until recently.”

Nune shared, “I can say your mind feels the stillest it’s been since we escaped the blood dilithium.”

“And Kellin’s safe,” Taes said, adding another heavy weight released from her heart in  the last year.

Raising an eyebrow at that, Nune said, “But he left.”

“But he’s safe,” Taes insisted softly. “Yuulik’s even been behaving.”

Nune let out a short “ha,” and then he surmised, “You don’t know who you are outside of a crisis, do you?”

Taes frowned and said, “I didn’t say that,” and she didn’t deny it either. Nune just looked at her with his sleepy, half-lidded eyes, and he said nothing about her evasion. Taes nodded at him, tucking that thought aside for another day. And then she took a breath. Today, she was still the starship captain hurtling towards the K’ritz homeworld.

Standing fully upright, Taes raised her voice to say, “Speaking of a crisis, Commander Calumn, if you’ve already assigned our senior staff to chart out our route to the Nacene Reach, it’s likely a duplication of effort to verify their work before its even complete.”

“Not a duplication, captain,” Calumn remarked off-handedly as he finished tapping a string of commands into the LCARS panel. He raised an index finger, presumably communicating he needed another minute. Then he filled the space, saying, “Rather, I make myself available for questions, should they arise, while studying what little we know of the K’ritz home star system.”

As he turned to consider Taes, Calumn said, “It would be irresponsible for me to engage in diplomacy without a command of the facts.”

There was an inflexibility in the way Calumn spoke, at times, that reminded Taes of the worst excesses of Starfleet’s moral superiority. It twisted something inside her even more than Flavia’s haughty condescension.

Parsing his words, Taes tartly asked, “Despite studying the first contact logs, I knew nothing about the shelkvan competition. Does that make me irresponsible?”

As he marched across the catwalk to join them, Calumn quickly replied, “You describe a single responsibility you shirked. Yes, captain.”

Puffing up his chest in her defence, Nune barked, “Excuse me, commander?” In defence of others was the one time Nune was never soft-spoken. Taes put a hand on his shoulder, offering a mollifying squeeze. She did her best to radiate good humour and her familiarity with Calumn.

Taes remarked, “He’s said much worse about me. On the record.”

When she offered a fond smile to Calumn, his dry expression remained unchanged. The solid black irises and pupils of his eyes that marked him as a Betazoid were especially unreadable. In return, he offered her a sharp nod and snapped his attention in Nune’s direction.

“Never recreationally. I was the defence attorney at Commander Taes’s court-martial,” Calumn said, showing some small concern for his reputation. “When Doctor Flavia publicly accused Taes of buying Romulan artefacts from the Orion Syndicate.”

Warmly, Taes said, “If anyone can translate an entire corpus juris into a song, it’s Commander Calumn.”

With all the demeanour of a best friend sceptical of the new boyfriend, Nune asked, “But can you sing?” –He waved a hand at Calumn, gesturing from head to toe– “This entire affectation is giving regimental. Draconian, almost.”

Calumn clasped his hands behind his back, and he nodded again sharply. “I was trained at the Ocaasas Conservatory on Betazed.”

“Technical skill is one thing,” Nune said, acknowledging and dismissing Calumn’s response in a single breath. “But when you sing, will it give me a shiver?”

Calumn didn’t pause to consider the question.

“I cannot assess that,” he said. “Childhood medical treatments have suppressed my telepathy.”

“Then let’s find out,” Nune challenged. “Sing for me.”