The diplomatic reception had reached its conclusion gradually and then very suddenly, like an oxygen leak through the smallest of cracks.

The junior officers had been the first to depart. Once the food ran out and they wrangled face time with Captain Taes, they slipped out of cetacean ops in pairs. Taes appreciated their sincere efforts to find a moment of connection with her, and appreciated all the more that they kept their moments brief.  It was rare she had the opportunity to express her gratitude to each of them personally.  And at the same time, she had to keep half her attention on Conductor Kyelen.

Most of the K’ritz crew from the starship Phravik had beamed back to their ship around 2200 hours and Flavia’s scientists all vanished immediately afterward. Typical. Taes has intended to take Conductor Kyelen aside to apologise for their earlier disagreement. Somehow, Flavia had breezed the conductor out of cetacean ops while Taes was distracted by her senior staff.

By 2300 hours, it was just Taes and her senior staff, gathered around a clutch of LCARS workstations. At one point, she was certain one of the dolphins had scowled at their howling laughter at such a late hour. They weren’t often all together, with Kellin too, aboard his new posting of Almagest. As much as Taes’s body was craving the comforts of her bed and her mind was preoccupied on diplomacy with the K’ritz, she chose to be right here.

Despite her presence, she kept herself at a slight remove.  This was a new orientation of her senior staff and she didn’t entirely recognise her place among them yet. Nova had replicated pizza, and her crew laughed at the late hours Yuulik demanded of the science team. They teased Ache for her three-hour presentation on the pirate routes around the Nekrit Expanse, and they interrogated if Kellin had become anything more, anything extra, than Captain Elbon’s first officer and ex-husband.

In one moment, Nune demonstrated the vocal exercises he had shared with Calumn in preparation for the shelkvan competition. Nune sounded much like livestock caught in a windstorm, while Calumn sounded like an Elanin singer stone in distress. And in the next moment, Taes was in the middle of it.

Yuulik was staring at Taes, staring right at her.

“How did you even meet Commander Calumn, exactly?” Yuulik asked, spitting skepticism at Taes’s decision. “I’ve never even heard of him, and suddenly he’s your number one and our lead diplomat.”

Taes blinked.  “And how’s your singing these days, Yuulik?”

Looking at Taes with big eyes, Kellin interjected, “I thought I would get to choose my replacement. Isn’t that the custom?” Then he laughed heartily, as he often did, to ensure Taes knew he was only joking.

Crossing her arms over her chest, Nova added, “I expected Commander Ache to be promoted.”

Sounding flustered, Ache retorted, “As flattering as that is, I expected no such thing.”

Yuulik never took her eyes off Taes.

She asked, “He broke you out of prison, didn’t he?”

Yuulik didn’t sound like she fully believed it, especially speaking from her smirk. Taes recognised Yuulik’s tactic, using hyperbole to gauge more information from Taes’s reaction.

“He was my defense attorney in the court martial for my handling of Romulan artefacts I obtained from the Lebaxairt Collection,” Taes answered flatly. Fact, like fire suppression forcefields, had a way of draining the oxygen out of sensationalism. “Calumn was an Associate Staff Judge Advocate aboard Starbase Three-ten at the time.”

From his chair beside Taes, Calumn said, “Flavia went on the Federation News Network and accused Taes of purchasing the artefacts from the Orion Syndicate. Starfleet quickly agreed to hand over the artefacts to the Romulan Free State, rather than the republic or the waning star empire.”

“The night before I heard the decision from the panel, I feared the worst,” Taes said. “Reprimand, demotion… I could have lost my commission. Starfleet was embarrassed by how public this had become and the prosecution brought in witnesses for days.”

Looking from face to face, it was important to Taes to be transparent about this mistake. Any one of them could find themsleves in her boots and she wanted them to know they could always come to her, wherever their careers took them.

As she considered what to say next, Taes closed her eyes, evoking that feeling. She dug deep for the fear she felt that her entire life was crumbling apart. Replaying that fateful night in her mind, she remembered it well.  Only, she remembered it like a scene in a holonovel.  She remembered it like they were events from someone else’s life. It didn’t give her that same gut-churning terror that it once did. She couldn’t feel it and she couldn’t understand why.

Having left too pregnant a pause, Taes said, “Calumn got me through that endless night.”

Five Years Ago

Nestled in the grass of the arboretum, Commander Taes stared up into the holographic approximation of a night sky. If she squinted, she could just about see the holographic projection grid set into the overhead of this deck aboard Starbase 310.

Such was the ongoing tragedy of her life.

When she most needed to make a wish on a star, the starlight was artificial and hollow.

Taes broke the silence.

“I need you to be honest with me, Too,” she insisted. “Is it time to give up? Do I hand in my combadge tonight?”

Lying beside her with his arms folded behind his head, Calumn replied, “It’s never time to give up. Never ever.”

There was a childlike innocence in his timbre she’d never heard before. He always answered legal questions with the gravest of severity. The question of surrender had touched something more profound in him. She could feel it empathically.

“Is the panel going to find me guilty?” Taes said, even more insistently. She didn’t need a friend tonight; she needed her legal counsel.

“All of the prosecution’s evidence was circumstantial,” Calumn replied. “They couldn’t even persuade Doctor Flavia to testify.” Then he chuckled, “Amateurs.”

Taes braced her elbows on the ground and pushed herself into a sitting position. Glaring at Calumn, she noticed how calmly he lay in the grass, without a care in the universe.

“You didn’t answer my question,” she said.

Calumn opened one eye at Taes and he raised an index finger.

Softly, he said, “There were questions you didn’t ask the Lebaxairt Collection. If you had asked those questions, I could have constructed you a perfect not-guilty defense.”

“Maybe I was negligent, okay?” Taes blurt out.

“Maybe?” Calumn challenged.

“The sheer amount of Romulan antiquities flooding the black market is unimaginable,” she said defensively.  Her voice rose as she could feel herself getting hot. “It was never about the artefacts or what I could learn from them. All I cared about was preservation. Everything I did, I did to do right.”

“You were very convincing to the panel on that point,” Calumn said. “That isn’t the problem in your case.”

Breathing out a groan, Taes demanded, “Give me that bottle!” She grasped for the distinctively curved golden bottle nestled in Calumn’s armpit. She yanked it away from him and pulled off the stopper with one hand, so she could take a swig of Saurian brandy all the sooner.

Calumn rolled onto his side, cradling his head against his arm again. With his free hand, he reached for Taes, grasping the base of the bottle.

“If this is it,” he said, “what are you going to do? What are you going to do?”

A single, “ha,” escaped from Taes, and then a, “ha ha,” and then a, “ha ha ha.” The unearthly laugh had come out of some part of her before she had even really thought about the answer to that question.

“I don’t know if my ego can take a demotion,” she admitted, embarrassed. “Drummed out of Starfleet might be kinder?”

She handed Calumn the bottle. She thought aloud, “But then Delta was never home for me. It’s where I recovered. It’s where I took shelter after my colony collapsed. It’s thick with those associations for me.”

“Forget Starfleet then,” Calumn said, taking a drink from the bottle, which spilled down his chin. “You could be an archaeologist for yourself. Do the digs your way.”

“With a guilty finding?” Taes asked. Scoffing at that, she shoved his shoulder. “My credibility would be ruined for every institute across the Federation.”

While Calumn wiped his face off and licked the brandy from his fingertips, Taes said, “Growing up on Nivoch, I imagined a future where I lived alone in the woods. I wouldn’t rely on any of the institutes. I wanted to think about how we think. Reconsider how we perceive the universe and our judgements. On Betazed, I think you would call it a philosopher.”

“There you go,” Calumn encouraged.

Taes smiled at him, but it was a stern expression. “That was before the Dominion, before Mars burned. It was a safer universe when I was a child. Those goals all feel self-indulgent now.”

“An independent archeologist then,” Calumn said, apparently still stuck on his first idea. “Forget the institutes; forget getting published. You could explore ancient digs for the sake of knowledge. You can get a shuttle from the Federation and then get out there. Just go. Take me with you. Think of how little we know about the Typhon Expanse.”

Taes didn’t respond to that. Pointedly, she didn’t respond to any of that.

“I could open a retreat,” Taes ponderously said, laying back in the grass again. “A spiritual retreat. There are so many people living with questions, weighed down by questions. I could help them think about their thinking.”

Calumn laughed, “So you want to start a cult?”

“That’s a leap,” Taes retorted.

“Research doesn’t satisfy you anymore?” he asked. “Research for its own sake?”

Taes didn’t have an answer. For once, she was afraid to examine that question too closely.

“Does the law still satisfy you?” she asked.

February 2402
0200 Hours

“That’s not exactly how it happened,” Calumn whispered to Taes. “What you told them about the night before your verdict.”

They were alone in the corridor outside the transporter room, but Calumn lowered his voice. They had left the kids behind in cetacean ops, allowing them to gossip about them more.

Taes smirked at him and shook her head. “I wasn’t going to tell them we were drinking Romulan Ale for the irony of it. I was so immature.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Calumn said.  “You didn’t tell them what we did to get you through the court martial.”

Taes looked at him appraisingly.

“I would never betray you, Too.”

“Is that why you selected me as your first officer,” Calumn asked. “Keep me close? Keep your secret?”

“My decision had nothing to do with my trial,” she replied. “I promise you that.”