The messy aftermath of the flight from the Mat’lor and concluding the investigation of Eurus-7 meant that Renard didn’t have a chance to speak with Ash’rogh until Tempest had made it to Starbase 24, and the contingent of surly Klingon survivors could disembark.

Most of them had left directly, but she’d escorted Ash’rogh and Jodrak down to the airlock herself, giving them the same guest courtesies they’d received when they’d arrived on Tempest.

At the docking umbilical, Jodrak rounded on her, grin splitting his face. ‘We have faced truth and death together,’ he proclaimed, and opened his arms. When she did not move, his smile somehow broadened, and he stuck out a hand.

‘Better,’ she said pointedly, and reached out.

‘No, no,’ grumbled Jodrak, and extended his hand further to grasp her wrist. ‘This is how warriors part. We battled a storm.’

‘I will take your word for it.’ She was surprised to find his grip firm but unchallenging, sincerity in the gesture. ‘Thank you for your help.’

‘I regret it cost us our ship, but that was Kovor’s doing,’ he grumbled. ‘Always viewed us as a stepping-stone to greater things, to drinking at the right hand of Mokvarn.’ Jodrak scoffed. ‘Now he can drink at the right hand of long-dead Mokvarn in Sto’vo’kor.’

Renard wondered if a captain slain by his first officer for failing his crew earned a place in Sto’vo’kor, but decided to not press the point. ‘It should not have ended in such a way.’

‘He could have listened,’ Jodrak grunted. ‘Nobles aren’t much good at that.’ He glanced to Ash’rogh, silent beside him, arms folded across his chest, and straightened. ‘Our transport does not leave the station for some hours. I am going to find the bar. Qapla’, Lieutenant.’

‘Goodbye, Sergeant.’

She watched him leave, nothing on his person but the clothes on his back, anything else lost aboard the lost Mat’lor, and walking unconcerned, unburdened regardless. A significant difference, she thought, to the shorter Klingon left behind, who was in his own right a towering figure yet was left somehow smaller by his looming and effusive compatriot. Or left smaller by the weight of the brooding expression.

‘You did the right thing,’ she said simply. ‘Though I say this as someone who can’t understand the necessity of killing a superior who fails you.’

‘I don’t regret my actions in the moment,’ said Ash’rogh, rolling a shoulder. He seemed to straighten with the gesture, shrugging off a burden. ‘But that it got that far. That Kovor was so… single-minded.’

‘If I understand correctly, he thought finding Eurus-7 would let him deliver a Mokvarn political victory. It’s one thing to be wrong or to fail. It’s another thing entirely to realise he would have been the one to deliver his own house’s defeat.’

‘The truth does not care about our politics or our honour.’ He shook his head. ‘But you… were right.’

‘It didn’t take great insight to realise that if Kovor carried on, he was going to get us all killed. If one trusted the Tempest’s sensor readings to begin with.’

‘I mean all along.’ He looked wry rather than pained. ‘I did not serve with Kovor for long. I was assigned as a reward – onto a ship commanded by a member of the household – for honourable service to Mokvarn. I did not have the measure of him, but extended a trust of which he was unworthy. I should not have put my honour in his hands so lightly.’

She considered that a moment. ‘That is the way of duty in an organisation. We are to follow orders of superiors we often have no personal experience of. Disobeying those orders is a luxury we’re rarely allowed.’

He gave a light scoff. ‘I assume Starfleet would not have let you slay Captain Pentecost if you were in such a situation.’

‘Not without a lot more paperwork,’ she said dryly, and this time he laughed outright, low but sincere. That made her hesitate, unaccustomed to being met with amusement. ‘I don’t have all the answers. What matters is that when the time came, you acted. A lot of people don’t do that.’

His gaze searched her face, and she was met with the unusual sense of being seen through more than she’d intended. ‘You have hesitated in the past,’ he said in a low voice. ‘When you feel you ought to have acted.’

‘That was then. This is now. What will happen to you? It might be formally acceptable for you to slay your captain. It can’t be as easy as that in practice.’

‘It should be.’ Her evasion stuck, his expression going thoughtful again. ‘Once your captain releases the findings, it will hurt the House of Mokvarn, and I will be seen as the one who let it happen. Slaying Kovor will doubtless be wielded against me.’

‘You owe the House a lot.’

He tilted his head, working through thoughts. ‘I was born to a world of the House of A’trok ceded to their vassals in the House of Mokvarn. Service was the way of a warrior, and the way away from farming. It has been a path to honour, but I am not blind. Politics will rule the day after this.’

‘Then I hope you land on your feet.’

‘I will be banished to a backwater,’ Ash’rogh said simply, ‘and given no chances for glory, and will have to satisfy myself with bloodwine and the knowledge I stood by my honour when it counted.’ It sounded final, and while her instinct was to press, to analyse, she knew the truth of Klingon military hierarchy. Without leverage, he would very likely be confined to the hinterlands and forgotten about.

Perhaps it was acceptance in the face of career death that made him straighten with a fresh resolve, fearless when there was nothing to lose, and turn to her and say, ‘So I expect we shall not meet again. You are intelligent and courageous, Lieutenant Renard, and most striking. Had this ended another way, I might have dared to bring you bloodwine in a great hall and sought what it would take to impress you.’ Instead, Ash’rogh gave a deep nod that was almost a bow, fist pressed to his chest. ‘But I take my leave. Qapla’.’

She blinked. ‘I… goodbye, Lieutenant.’

He had stood there with the weight of both his choices and the loss of them weighing him down, but when Ash’rogh of the House of Mokvarn turned away and marched to the umbilical, he stood tall anew. Not unburdened, she thought. But like a warrior meeting his fate.

Renard returned to the security office once he was gone. With Tempest docked, much of her team were stretching their legs, enjoying a break off the sometimes-claustrophobic decks of a small Rhode Island. She had expected – hoped – to be alone to grumble silently to herself about what had happened, but her heart sank when she stepped in to find Valois stood at the wall display, eyes on the still-lingering map of the strategic analysis of the Skaleri Sector.

‘Who knows who it’ll go to, now,’ he mused, not looking at her.

‘Does it matter? One Klingon House or another. Probably with none of them liking us.’

‘There’s a world where we could have negotiated with our findings. Helped Kovor and the House of Mokvarn. Built a bridge.’

‘You mean lied.’

His expression twisted. ‘I don’t know. It’s not like the evidence that the Mokvarn flagship was killed for cowardice is cast-iron. Maybe they were betrayed. But we’d need Klingon support and Klingon historical archives for more context.’

‘I don’t think they’ll be lining up to study alongside us.’ She padded up beside him, arms folded across her chest as she studied the map. ‘You could have put that argument to Kovor.’

‘I’d like to say it wasn’t a fully thought-out idea there and then. But the truth is…’ Valois sucked his teeth. ‘He was stubborn, and it was infuriating.’

She considered criticising that, but found she shared the sentiment too deeply. ‘You gave him every argument possible.’

‘Except it didn’t work. Your way worked.’ He looked at her, more apprehensive than he had been in their past conversations, clearly held at bay by her sharpness. ‘He was never going to listen to Starfleet. So you leaned on those he would listen to.’

‘He didn’t listen to Ash’rogh. Ash’rogh had to kill him.’

‘In the end. What if we’d tried sooner?’ Valois shook his head. ‘I’m over-thinking. It’s done. You did well.’ He hesitated. ‘Is it too much if I say I’m surprised you were this effective with the Klingons?’

‘I was not expecting it myself,’ she admitted after a moment’s thought. ‘I anticipated needing to cut through empty bluster. Perhaps there is something to the ones of substance.’

‘That’s true of any group, isn’t it?’

She eyed him. ‘Perhaps.’ But he looked like he’d meant nothing by it, and she pushed her shoulders back. ‘Getting the data-feed from the Tempest was a good idea. I needed it to convince Ash’rogh.’

‘Then I guess we all did our part.’ He hesitated again – then stepped back. ‘I’ll let you get your office back in order. Good work out there, Lieutenant.’

If he’d been about to say something else, she didn’t give him space to rethink, nodding quickly. ‘Likewise, sir.’

It wasn’t much, she thought as Julien Valois left the security office. It certainly wasn’t a personal relationship or rapport, a rekindling of anything she recognised; not in the eyes of a man she still didn’t know, and whom she knew looked at her and found just as much of a stranger.

But it wasn’t nothing. And neither of them were going anywhere.

The world was red and dim, the light of a dying star struggling to pierce the thick air and casting the jagged horizon in meagre shadow. Ash’rogh stood at the railing of a battered landing platform overlooking the sprawling, run-down mining infrastructure, the only reason this backwater rock had any value to the House of Mokvarn.

He had been here for two months and already knew the patterns of freighters and haulers crawling through the twilight sky. Could already count down to the shift change for the miners and soldiers working below, shouting over the hum of machinery. Was already sick of the scent of dust and molten ore and the death of ambition.

Jodrak clomped up beside him, a flask in hand. ‘The sill is working,’ he said with easy satisfaction, and sipped. ‘It is vile. But the commander needs me repairing those power couplings again. Does anything here stay fixed?’

Was it ever fixed? Ash’rogh’s reply was lost at a whine from overhead, and he looked up to see a shuttle he didn’t recognise cut through the sky and descend towards the platform.

‘That’s new,’ mused Jodrak, turning to watch.

The vessel settled down, dust billowing off the platform’s plating. Its ramp dropped with a hiss, and three Klingons emerged, armour gleaming in the dim red light, House emblems dull but unmistakable. The one at their head walked with the assurance of one accustomed to command, eyes bright and sharp with purpose.

‘Ash’rogh of Mokvarn,’ he called, voice carrying over the wind. ‘Son of the soil, once of the ship Mat’lor. You are not an easy man to find.’

Ash’rogh straightened, aware of the finery he stood before, the well-hewn armour, while he wore the stained leathers of labour. ‘I am he,’ he grunted, and resisted the urge to wipe his hands clean. ‘And you are?’

The stranger stepped closer and extended a gauntleted hand. ‘Korvath, son of K’marn, of the House of A’trok. Grandson of Lord A’trok.’

The name and the gesture, a greeting of equals rather than a demand for subservience, brought an open scoff of surprise from Jodrak. ‘A’trok?’ he echoed. ‘Mokvarn’s masters do not oft send their kin to rocks where exiles rust.’

Korvath’s smile was quick. ‘You are right. The House of A’trok would rather rest on old glories than stir itself – even to look for something of value in a place destined to be forgotten.’ His eyes landed on Ash’rogh, weighing him. ‘They say you slew your captain to save your crew. That you would not lie for power, nor bend to politics. I need such men.’

Ash’rogh’s brow furrowed. ‘For your shuttle crew?’ he asked, unable to keep a scoff from his voice.

Korvath gave a bark of laughter. ‘I need warriors of substance. The kind who act when others hesitate.’ He glanced at Jodrak. ‘And those who can keep a ship moving through any hardship.’

Ash’rogh’s eyes dragged over his armour, the armour of those beside him; over the shuttle behind them. Short-range. No warp drive. ‘What ship?’

‘Not here,’ said Korvath, reading his gaze. ‘I need a crew first. One willing to make a House remember what honour is. To make the Empire remember.’

Jodrak laughed quickly and clamped a hand on Ash’rogh’s shoulder. ‘He almost never kills his captain, I assure you, Lord Korvath.’

Ash’rogh didn’t move, though he heard the warning in Jodrak’s voice. Don’t throw this away. His eyes narrowed, regardless. ‘How did you hear of me?’

‘Starfleet records,’ Korvath admitted. ‘That spoke of a warrior who stood by truth and saved lives. Mine is a Klingon vessel in service to my House – but we will serve and fight alongside those allies. If you will tolerate it.’

The red sky was dimming as the weak sun sputtered to its daily death. Ash’rogh’s lip curled as he regarded his rocky prison before his gaze returned to Korvath.

At last, he reached out to clasp his wrist. ‘Lead the way, then. Lord Korvath.’

And as the setting sun sank to darkness, the shuttle’s flaring engines lit anew with fire and purpose.