There was a disonnance to Tress Trojet. A diffidence in her gaze. An exasperated sigh when being questioned. From how she spoke to how she held her body, Trojet demonstrated a duality in her being that Ensign Qelreth had never noticed in other joined Trill.

Qelreth had spent months in the same training squad as Trojet on Calumn Station, but this was something new. Trapped five feet away from someone –in the cockpit of a dimly lit shuttlecraft where the bulkheads all curved inwards– was bound to offer new insights into anyone.

“–Then my father slept in on the morning of the colony ship launch,” Trojet said, while typing equations on a widescreen PADD. The humour of the situation buoyed her inflexion, but her eyes were locked into her equations. “He decided to take it as a signal from the universe. A symbol of a greater purpose. And so he decided to stay behind on Trill. He made it his new old life. If he’d boarded that colony ship, he never would have met my mother.”

Qelreth stirred at the bowl of noodles they’d been picking at. Cold to begin with, the thick sauce had congealed the noodles into a solid state. It was all so unappetising.

“You keep changing the topic, Tress,” Qelreth accused, pointing their glare and antennae at her. They waved a hand on the PADD in Trojet’s lap. “What even is that?”

Despite the heat behind Qelreth’s words, Tress responded nonchalantly. She swirled a stylus across the PADD’s display in a fluid motion while speaking academically.

“When a warp field collapses, you don’t lose all momentum,” Trojet answered. “I wonder if we could cover more space by forcing the warp drive, even if only for a second per burst.”

Forking a mouthful of cold noodles in their mouth, Qelreth didn’t even know why they were eating. They just needed movement, or fuel, or to bite something.

Qelreth said, “You’re solving this problem like an engineer. You need to care for our patients first.”

“This is how I show care,” Trojet riposted, punctuating her point on the PADD with her stylus. Now, she came alive.

“When are you going to start thinking like a doctor?” Qelreth asked, chewing through another mindless bite of noodles. They couldn’t even guess if Trojet understood what they were saying.

“I can’t tell if you want to be a doctor,” Qelreth said.

“My last posting on USS Almagest was as an astrophysicist,” Trojet said, recalcitrant. “What do you want? I’m always going to carry that with me.”

At this point, Qelreth was as annoyed with themself as with Trojet. The dissonance in Trojet was flashing like red alert, but Qelreth couldn’t define its edges or articulate it, not even to themself. It was right there, they could feel it, and it enraged Qelreth not to be able to put it into words.

“It’s more than the things you know,” Qelreth insisted. They tossed the bowl onto the LCARS panel, putting it out of reach so they wouldn’t eat anymore. “It was the tour. You were on the same tour of Caelum Station as me toward the end of last year. FNN was playing in the cafeteria, and they reported on the opening of the Underspace tunnels. You started crying, and I never asked you why.”

“You never asked because it was plain to see,” Trojet said. She sat upright in her chair, and the PADD on her lap tumbled to the deck. “There were reports of Cardassian ships in the sector. There was even a rogue Kazon ship! Sorry for being scared, I guess.”

Narrowing their eyes on Trojet, Qelreth said, “That wasn’t fear.” Deflated, they lowered their voice, working it out moments before each word. “I know what fearful tears smell like. You said, ‘it wasn’t worth it. None of it was worth it.’ That wasn’t fear.”

Trojet let out a long-held breath. It sounded painful, as if she had held it for a hundred years. Staring down at Qelreth, her eyebrows raised, practically meeting in the middle.

“I washed out of the Trill Initiate program after six months,” Trojet said. She took a ragged breath after every statement. The anger behind her eyes turned to something else, maybe pain. “Starfleet Academy was a consolation. My joining the Trojet symbiont was an emergency. After the Battle of Farpoint, my physiology was deemed the– the least likely to be killed by the Trojet symbiont.”

“You’re doing it again,” Qelreth interjected. “You’re changing the topic.”

“I am not,” Trojet said, her voice quavering. “My previous host, Marl Trojet, was an experimental scientist. He worked in the research and development of artificial wormholes. Marl was– Trojet was– I was responsible for releasing the Jem’Hadar fleet from the Bajoran wormhole that decimated the Deneb Sector a year ago.”

Qelreth was overcome with a coughing fit, their body shaking from deep, wracking coughs. They didn’t understand what their body was doing. Even after a swig of warm water couldn’t stop the coughing. Qelreth didn’t understand what their body was doing, but they understood why.

Managing to catch their breath enough, Qelreth asked, “You know, though? You know I’m from Polaris City?”

Just saying Polaris City out loud tasted worse than the congealed noodles. They hadn’t been able to say the name Polaris in months. And now it tasted like offal. In this moment. With Trojet.

Qelreth could see no more duality in Trojet, no more dissonance. There was only guilt glooming behind Trojet’s eyes. It was like a singularity. And then a blossom of flickering light reflected in her dark irises. Blooms, like fireworks.

An EPS power node exploded overhead, spraying shrapnel and sparks at the two of them. Qelreth slapped the bowl of cold noodles off her flight controls. Warning lights turned red all over the control panel. LCARS menu options popped up, prompting them to make critical decisions about the continued operation of the shuttlecraft. None left any space for a status report, so Qelreth craned their neck to look out the viewport.

“Where did they come from?” Qelreth blurted. A Reliant-class starship’s distinctive shape and hull plating were unmistakable, but the four other vessels chasing it were completely unrecognisable.

“A subspace disturbance,” Trojet answered the least important question. “The energy signature is consistent with the opening of an Underspace aperture.”

“I thought the tunnels out here all collapsed–” Qelreth started to ask, and then the shuttle rocked as it was struck by more energy-weapon fire from the mystery assailants. The hexagonal pattern of the forcefield bubble flared beyond the viewport as they were shot twice more.

A yawning tear through space opened again, and all the vessels entered it, leaving the shuttlecraft Tar’Hana behind.

Trojet said, “That was lucky,” foolishly tempting fate.

And then an overhead biofunction monitor started screaming, far more loudly than any of the shuttle’s alerts. One of their patients’ vital signs dipped below baselines.

Qelreth realised, “He’s not breathing!”