‘…it’s really nice to hear from you, but also pretty funny.’

Borodin paused, sat at his desk, mug of coffee halfway to his lips. ‘Funny?’

‘I mean, sweet? The records from the Starfall expedition – did you… did you think I hadn’t read them front to back before even leaving port?’

Through the porthole window out of his ready room, the purple-gold maelstrom of the Synnef Nebula’s gases swirled in a kaleidoscope that was beautiful to behold but felt like putting a mask of child’s splash art across his eyes. An hour ago, Commander Varel had confirmed they were within a distance of the Ranger to, if they boosted power, finally have real-time communication, audio only. An hour after that, Varel had actually been able to establish direct contact with the Ranger, following a little recalibration that had Borodin gritting his teeth at his Ops Manager making promises she hadn’t been able to immediately enact.

Forty-five seconds after establishing direct audio contact with Juliette Yves, Borodin was regretting Varel’s calibrations hadn’t taken longer.

He cleared his throat a little officiously. ‘I thought it might contain something of relevance. Such as the studies of the exact area you’re in.’

‘Well, it’s not the exact area, is it? It’s about thirty AUs,’ came Yves’s voice, holding a hint of teasing amusement for which he did not care.

‘That’s close enough for a point of reference.’

‘It’s close enough to suggest that, yeah, the subspace distortion wasn’t here when the Starfall came through. But, uh, me and my staff did go over everything about the Khalagu and their methods of navigating the nebula before this mission started. A lot.’

There was one advantage of not having visual connection. It meant Yves wouldn’t be able to see Borodin’s flush as he stood self-consciously, trying to not rattle his mug when he headed for the replicator for a refill. ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ he said after a beat, fishing for his dignity as well as more coffee.

There was an audible hesitation from Yves. ‘I did say it was sweet?’ As if realising this wasn’t the right ploy, she pressed on quickly. ‘Anyway, it’s a great report, and the kind of thing it’ll be good for your staff to be familiar with when you’re navigating the nebula. She’s a tempestuous bitch.’

Borodin’s lips thinned. He had, indeed, already circulated the report among his senior officers. ‘How’s your crew holding up?’ It was hard to keep a brusque edge out of his voice.

‘Swinging between worried in the face of death and fascinated we might be the first people to ever get killed by this stellar phenomenon,’ said Yves, sounding a bit more relaxed in her wryness. ‘I’m keeping them busy as I can. There’s shedloads of maintenance that needs doing, and lots that doesn’t need doing but is getting done anyway. The astrophysics department’s going absolutely nuts about this whole thing. Let me tell you, Borodin, this is going to be the most studiously recorded loss of all hands in Starfleet history.’

‘You can’t talk like that.’

‘I don’t say it in front of them, sheesh. What’s a little dark humour between captains?’

‘It’s important that you keep your hopes up, too, Captain. Not merely for appearances.’ Fresh mug in hand, he tromped towards the window, glaring at the billowing expanse of the nebula beyond. ‘Masks alone don’t keep a captain going for their crew. You have to have belief. Crews sense if it’s there or not.’

There was another pause. When Yves’s voice came through, it was a little smaller but not, he thought, insincere. ‘I do believe in them.’

‘Good.’ Borodin sipped his coffee. ‘Go show that to them. Be the belief in them that they might not have for themselves. We’ll speak soon. Scylla out.’

He hadn’t given her a chance to sign off. That was what he told himself he was bothered by through the long hours of the day, with the claustrophobic sense of the nebula’s restrictions already settling down upon his shoulder. It was indecorous for a captain to end a communication in such a way, especially to a fellow captain in need.

A breach of etiquette and decency though it was, it was more palatable than what he suspected to be the truth: Yves had needed shoring up, and he hadn’t known what to say.

Remember your training. Remember that people you trust put you in this job. Remember that you prepared your entire life for this.

But Juliette Yves had been trained as an exogeologist, and catapulted to the captain’s chair because of the personnel gaps from Frontier Day. She probably hadn’t studied to become a captain for very long at all, or she would have made the transition to command red much earlier in her career. Everything Borodin knew to say, he would say to his own crew.

The thing was, he actually believed in his own crew. He didn’t know if he believed in her. And he perhaps felt more guilty about that than any of his behaviour.

On patrol, there had been a dozen items needing his attention at once: crew condition, ship condition, but also the wider tactical and strategic situation. In the Synnef Nebula, there was nothing preying on his attention other than surviving and navigating the Synnef Nebula. After only a day of traversing it, it was consuming his every thought and feeling; he could not imagine its oppressive weight on the mind of an officer of the USS Ranger.

This meant that even off-duty, he wasn’t far from his PADD. Even down in the Scylla’s gym, which he’d made sure was the most robust and well-equipped exercise space a crew of this size could possibly need, he thudded on the treadmill with one eye on reports scrolling in from the bridge.

When a message from Commander Varel came in – a neat report with a rather scribbled annotation laden with question marks – he did not stop. But he did slow to a lighter jog, brow furrowed as he read.

‘Borodin to bridge,’ called Borodin after a minute of reading, still thudding out a steady beat on the treadmill. ‘Open a channel to the USS Ranger and put me through to Captain Yves.’

His crew were not in the habit of questioning such orders, but it still took a minute to make the connection and, likely, for the communication aboard Ranger to be routed to Yves.

‘You’re calling on me twice in one day, Borodin? You really do care.’ She sounded a little tired, but he didn’t think the wryness was an affectation. It also made his guilt vanish with a flash of irritation.

‘Scylla just picked up a subspace distortion on long-range sensors,’ he said, PADD in his hand as he read, still at a light jog. ‘It looks not dissimilar to the one in the sensor records you’ve dispatched, though considerably smaller.’

‘Hot tip: don’t go near it.’ But she pressed on before he could shut down her retort. ‘Send your scans over?’

He did, his tapping of his screen a little imprecise as he moved. ‘Of course we’re giving it a wide berth. Sending now. This is only my initial impression, but it reminds me of something.’

There was a long pause. Borodin told himself it was because Yves was reading, but impatience still brewed in his chest as she did not tug at the loose thread of his thoughts he’d left dangling.

‘Uh huh…’

Borodin bit his lip and upped the pace on the treadmill. ‘Doesn’t it remind you at all of the subspace distortions recorded at Lockney? Caused by the collapse of the Borg transwarp conduit last year?’

‘Oh damn.’ Yves’s voice was hushed and his heart soared at the notion he’d stumbled onto something. ‘This isn’t naturally forming at all, is it? Gibson was right.’

‘We knew there were changes occurring in pockets of the sector; Endeavour reported distortions in the Mesea Storm likely caused by them. That would explain the unexpected impact on your warp field – wait, who’s Gibson?’ Caught up in the matter at hand, it took Borodin a second to realise he wasn’t being given credit.

‘My Chief Science Officer, he’d theorised a possible link but cross-referencing this now it’s pretty clear, huh?’ Yves paused. ‘Are you – why are you out of breath?’

Borodin frowned as he returned the PADD to its stand on his treadmill, setting his gait properly. ‘I’m working out.’

‘You work out while you analyse stellar phenomena? Let me guess, you bring dumbbells to mission briefings?’

‘Only if my schedule’s too busy to fit in a full workout.’ His brow furrowed deeper. ‘Yves, I was a pilot before I was a tactical officer and before I was a captain. I am actually educated on subspace mechanics, warp field dynamics, and their interactions with natural phenomena.’

‘I didn’t say it was a bad thing if you want to lift weights, shirtless, while identifying transwarp-caused rifts in space – say, how far are we off visual communication?’

Borodin flushed despite himself. ‘This helps us. Doesn’t it?’

‘I don’t know how yet,’ Yves admitted, ‘but everything we know gets us closer to an answer. We might figure out how to sustain a warp field if we know this is the lingering impact of a collapsed transwarp conduit.’

He nodded, even though she couldn’t see him. ‘I’ll have my staff work on the same.’ He paused a beat, working his jaw. ‘How’s your crew?’

‘Transformed since last you asked. I told them all I believed in them, one by one, which took a while -’

‘Yves -’

‘And if they didn’t seem convinced, I did a little dance.’

Borodin swallowed. ‘You’re in a tough spot. I know you can’t express that too much to your crew. Captains should have each other’s backs.’

It wasn’t an apology, but Yves didn’t press for one. Perhaps doing so would have been too much of an expression of vulnerability on her part; it would have meant admitting she’d needed more support than he’d given.

‘Okay, well. Maybe when we re-establish visual, you can do a little dance to convince me.’

‘I will not. I will have a full analysis from my team cross-examining the two subspace distortions and comparing to records from Lockney. We can compare notes tomorrow?’

‘It’s a date. We’ll, uh, speak soon? Ranger out.’

I probably deserved that, Borodin thought as the comm line went dead before he had the chance to sign off. Regardless of what he deserved, though, he still had another ten kilometres to run, and a renewed, burning drive of anxious energy to work off.