The Valois quarters aboard Gateway Station eased into morning. They had programmed the computer to brighten the lights outside the viewports in slow degrees, bringing some sense of sunlight, daybreak, to the perpetual, static sense of neither night nor day of life in space. Julien and his wife were veterans of that liminal time, but Charlotte had read an article somewhere about how best to raise children in space, and applied its advice with her usual, scrupulous attention to detail.

Julien Valois had been up for an hour, his uniform jacket waiting over the back of the dining chair, bag packed by the door. He nursed his last cup of coffee like it might slow the clock as around him the day began: the replicator humming, a five-year-old clambering onto a chair, and the older sister in pitched negotiation with her mother about footwear.

‘Not the rollers,’ Charlotte Akers said without looking away from the holographic schematics hovering over the kitchen wall. She negotiated with an eight-year-old in much the same way as bad-faith contractors: mercilessly. ‘Your teacher doesn’t want skid marks through the corridors.’

‘They’re not rollers!’ Eight-year-old Maya insisted with, indeed, as much bad faith as a corner-cutting outside ‘specialist.’ ‘They’re assisted shoes.’

Theo, five, ignored the whole debate in favour of drowning his breakfast pancakes in syrup.

Valois leaned in, rescued the bottle before the plate became a reservoir, and wiped his son’s cheek in one practiced move. He caught his wife’s eye; she was already dressed for work, hair pinned back, PADD rotating through work schematics.

‘Another fault line?’ he asked.

‘Water grid again,’ she said briskly. ‘Half the southern district’s piping is two centuries old and supposed to operate through sub-zero degrees. City planning wants me to rubber-stamp a patch and hope it lasts the winter. They’re not getting it.’ She shook her head. ‘Nothing for you to worry about.’

While this was true – he never had or could help with her work for Alfheim colony civil infrastructure – he heard the subtler stab, saw her gaze flicker towards his bag by the door. It was as if it had its own gravitational pull, except where it only drew her attention, it would take him away for good.

For weeks, anyway. However long Tempest was gone.

Instead of dwelling, he turned back to Theo. ‘I’ll be gone a little while,’ he said, with all the solemnity that was necessary for a five-year-old, ‘but I’ll come back. And when I do, I expect to see your shuttle model finished.’

Theo’s face lit up. ‘With the doors that open?’

‘With the doors that open,’ Valois confirmed. ‘You can’t just draw them on. They need to work.’

Theo nodded firmly. Somehow, more syrup was on his cheek.

Valois decided that could be his wife’s problem and turned to Maya. She was already half out of her chair, fiddling with her shoes. ‘And I want three new chapters read in that history book before I get back. Properly read. We’ll talk about them when I’m home.’

Maya pulled a face. ‘Do I get to pick which ones?’

He let the corner of his mouth twitch. ‘You do. But you’d better have something to say about them.’

‘Stop teaching her how to negotiate,’ Charlotte murmured without looking up from her display. ‘I need to keep getting the better of her.’

Valois’s gaze lingered on both children a moment longer than needed and swallowed down the tension in his chest. Gateway Station was safe, he told himself.

But so had Mars been.

Charlotte reached across the table and brushed his hand. ‘Go,’ she said, voice light. ‘Before you assign me chapters, too.’

There was no world where he’d be back before his daughter – bright and lazy, disinterested one moment and a voracious reader the next – had read not just three chapters, but three books. Assignments like this took weeks, and there was no guarantee of a quick return after.

Valois didn’t let that thought linger as he kissed his wife and children goodbye. Duty would last as long as it needed. It always did.

The USS Tempest was small enough to berth comfortably in the upper docking bay on Gateway, granting him a view of her sleek lines as he approached via the concourse, the interior windows spilling into the guts of the station. She sat, he thought, somewhere between two worlds, with all the lean efficiency of the pre-Dominion War designs, where Starfleet had been bruised by the Borg and prepared itself for something worse. But she was not built for one set task, one practical purpose: she was sleek and swift, an explorer and a scrapper, a scout and a pioneer. Mere years later, ships with that platform were bigger, grander – tougher.

She wasn’t quite a relic of a bygone time. Starfleet kept reaching back to that era after the war, that brief glimmer of a new golden age, snuffed out by the supernova. By the synths.

Valois let the view linger a heartbeat longer, then followed the curve of the concourse towards the docking umbilical. Foot traffic thinned of civilians to just Starfleet officers, and he was alone by the time he entered the bay reserved for the Tempest’s crew and cargo handlers.

He had expected to be received; such was appropriate for an incoming first officer. Perhaps he’d anticipated a junior officer with a PADD to tick off his arrival, maybe a yeoman. He had not expected the tall woman on the inside of the docking umbilical, her gold uniform crisply pressed, red hair tied back fiercely, hands clasped behind her back.

‘Lina.’

Lina Renard’s chin tilted up a half inch, but her expression remained studiously neutral, with not so much as a flinch or warmth in her eyes. ‘Commander Valois, welcome aboard the Tempest.’ There was a reproach in there, meeting his familiarity with formality. ‘I’m here to receive you. The captain wants us underway as soon as you’re aboard.’

Normally, he took a beat before stepping aboard a new ship. Leaving a station behind. Leaving his life behind. Now, his eyes and thoughts were locked on the woman stood before him as he crossed the threshold.

‘It’s been years,’ Valois said, faltering. ‘You’re the one to welcome me aboard, and that’s what you’ve got to say?’

‘I’m Chief of Security,’ Renard said blandly. ‘Captain Pentecost asked me to perform a common duty.’

The corners of his eyes creased, guilty and frustrated all at once. ‘You didn’t tell her?’

A faint shrug. ‘It wasn’t pertinent.’

‘And Tempest’s been here for a few days – you could have dropped me a line, you could have come over, met Charlotte and the kids -’

Now she flinched, the faintest creak in the mask, but it was immediately mastered. ‘I wasn’t aware you were Dockmaster of Gateway.’

‘Yes, for a few years now…’

‘And you were unaware I was the Chief of Security of the ship you’ve been assigned to,’ she carried on in that clipped voice. ‘So there is no reason for us to act as if we’re beholden to each other all of a sudden.’

Valois swallowed. ‘The captain should probably know if his XO and security chief are brother and sister.’

‘It’s in our records. If she cares to look. I can understand how she might not have noticed, seeing as you changed your name.’ Renard stepped back and extended a hand towards the doors that led deeper aboard. ‘In the meantime, she asked for you on the bridge. A yeoman can get your bags to your quarters.’

Valois fell into step beside her, the silence taut enough to cut, but strong enough that he knew trying to break it would only make it twist and hurt more. The corridors of Tempest were narrow, footfalls landing on carpeted decks, though he could hear the faint humming in the plating below and the bulkheads that flanked him of systems powering up, a growing readiness. Crew moved with brisk efficiency, officers passing them with PADDs or tools in hands, discussions low but urgent.

Final requisitions logged. Systems checks confirmed. Departments snapping into alignment. It had been a few years since he’d served on a starship, but even with his thoughts on his family – his whole family – Valois was not immune to the currents tugging at him, promising to sweep him along.

By the time the turbolift doors parted to let them onto the bridge, Tempest was a hair’s breadth from departure, every station humming with poised readiness.

Captain Pentecost rose from her chair at their arrival, turning with a sweep of the hand. ‘Thanks, Renard. You must be Valois.’

He stopped and straightened to a brisk, attentive posture. ‘Commander Julien Valois, reporting for duty -’

‘Yes, yes.’ The hand twirled in a circle. ‘Welcome aboard, XO, and all that – I really wanted us underway an hour ago, so let’s punch it now and do niceties later, right?’ The engines were beginning to spool up, the humming at the deck growing.

She wasn’t that tall, he thought, but with just one gesture she’d dragged all eyes in the room to her, and it wasn’t only because of her rank insignia. Dark hair in a messy bob, blue eyes bright and attentive, Pentecost wore a lopsided grin that could tilt all expectations to her favour, and sat in the command chair with a flourish that made her look more performer than captain – and still be listened to, all the same. It would work in a lecture hall, a city square, a conference room – a bar, a party, a mob.

Julien Valois had served under many captains and knew which ones were steady and which were dangerous. The steady ones drew their authority from their uniforms, discipline, procedure. The dangerous ones didn’t need to.

And still he took the seat at her side when she gave no more than an inviting gesture.

‘Departure permission received from docking control,’ came the report from Renard once she’d taken her post at the aft tactical console.

‘At last.’ Pentecost rolled her eyes. ‘Take us out, Hargreaves. Time to stop loitering in port and find some trouble.’