Captain’s Log, Stardate 79815.1,

Following extensive repairs and resupply, Constellation Squadron has taken flight to the far reaches of the Beta Quadrant, spinward of the most distant corners of Klingon and Romulan territory. Our passage was made possible through a stabilised transwarp conduit from Federation space into a region that explorers call the Shackleton Expanse.

The Romulan Republic’s reports claim that warp travel in the expanse has long been throttled to warp two, slowed by subspace disturbances. All of that ended, so they say, with the collapse of the Vaadwaur’s Blackout.

Now, with the Fourth Fleet’s open hands to allied operations, Constellation is en route to asteroid field SE-227 where we’re scheduled to meet with a Romulan Republic science ship that’s been newly assigned to our squadron.

We may be late to the meeting. A distress call has reached us from the dark.

Yuulik couldn’t stop staring at the flight deck of Vathen’s Promise. White textured tiles warred against gunmetal grating. It was as if two different centuries had been slapped together and then generously called a starship.

Intricately designed golden arches made a spectacle of the viewscreen, and yet three rows of control banks were crowded in a purely functional manner. A chaotic spread of dials and knobs littered the controls in a fashion Starfleet hadn’t known since the twenty-third century. A golden infinity symbol, engraved on the deck, was marred by an open hatch revealing a ladder leading below. If it wasn’t a symptom of technological transition, the designer was spinning out from cultural fracture.

Today was the first day anyone from Starfleet had ever met a Dabari. And today, four of them were huddled together on the floor. All Science Chief Yuulik wanted was to ask them a couple of simple questions.  Was that too much to ask?

When Constellation’s rescue team had first beamed aboard, an elder introduced himself as Tiros, a test pilot. Yuulik asked him what the term ‘pilot’ implied about his role in the crew’s hierarchy. And yet Doctor Nelli had order Yuulik to keep her questions at least five metres away from her patients. If those patients needed so much protection, Yuulik expected them to be nearly dead or dying.

By the time Nelli joined Yuulik at the aft of the flight deck, Yuulik pointedly asked, “Will they live, doctor?”

Approaching Yuulik, Nelli wobbled between their four motive limbs. The positioning of their red eye-stalks offered no hint to Nelli’s mood.

“The Dabari’s metabolic processes were never in danger,” Nelli replied through their vocoder. “I maintained their body temperature and staunched any bleeding. Offering pharmaceuticals is… a hesitation until we analyse their biology.”

Each of the four members of the Dabari flight crew were draped in bland Starfleet emergency blankets.  Those swaths of grey did little to dampen the vibrant colours of their attire. The mustard of their flight suits was deep and rich, complimenting the shimmering emerald of their quilted vests. The design of the vests appeared ceremonial, layered atop their functional garb beneath.

Commander Calumn crouched low to meet the level of their eyes. Although Yuulik couldn’t hear his exact words across the compartment, the words she caught were the diplomatic doublespeak he favoured: speaking in long paragraphs without saying anything.

“You can’t solve everything with a tricorder,” Yuulik said to Nelli, emphasising her point by jamming her fist against her hip.  She took up more space. Demanding to be heard, she spat out her consonants in a stridently staccato manner: “Don’t they teach that in medical school anymore? There are rich histories we can only learn through dialogue.”

Three of Nelli’s vine-like limbs drifted towards her and wrapped around one of her hands. Yuulik didn’t care. Nelli said, “Doctor Flavia was adept at adapting to her environments aboard the Trabe vessels we befriended in the Delta Quadrant. She built trust by–”

“Forget Flavia,” Yuulik interrupted, stepping into Nelli’s personal space, close enough to see the slight recoil in their vines. This wasn’t the first time Nelli had compared Yuulik’s investigative ability to Flavia’s. It was one thing for Yuulik’s softer qualities as a leader to be called into question, but for anyone to question her commitment to exploration was basically treason.

Yuulik said, “The Romulan Free State has closed their borders to Constellation and recalled Flavia’s team. They even took their equipment this time.”

The illumination in the room flickered like null-point lightning over Arcadia, and Yuulik made it absolutely clear that the science department was under her command, and her command only.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if we never saw Flavia again,” she said.

From out of the open hatch, Lieutenant Commander Nune hollered for the first officer: “Commander Calumn, we’ve restored emergency power!”

He scaled the ladder from the engineering deck at a speed Yuulik had never seen when Nune was dead weight on her science team. It was astonishing what a promotion to Chief Engineer and a breakup could do for him.

Also, his skin looked amazing. When did he have time for skincare?

“The warp core is safely valved off,” Nune affirmed, “but the intermix chamber has gone ice cold. I don’t think–” He hesitated, his breath catching, probably picking up on Dabari feelings through his Betazoid senses. Otherwise, it was just as likely that Nune didn’t want to look incapable, so soon after his breakup with Calumn.

Finally, Nune said, “I don’t– I don’t believe I can restore warp power from here.”

Tiros pushed himself off the deck, rising to face Nune. He braced a hand on his left thigh, over his knee. Speaking from somewhere cavernous within his humanoid body, Tiros’s voice echoed, hollow and deep.

“Speak plainly,” Tiros demanded. “We won’t break. We’re not made from glass.”

Yuulik bit her lip. Holding back a guffaw was painful, considering Tiros’s face looked like weathered clay, lined with marble-like crystalline veins.  The irony.

He said, “What happens next matters little. We achieved our mission and transmitted the telemetry back to Dabar. Vathen’s Promise is the first vessel in all of history to reach warp three.”

This felt like a trap to Yuulik. They still knew too little to assess if the Dabar could handle knowledge of warp five, let alone warp nine.

Tiros swayed on unsteady feet, looked like a weakness in his knee. Nune reached out for him, and the engineer who had introduced herself as Rythra Oleanee jumped up to his side.  She got there first. Tiros put a hand on Rythra’s shoulder, quickly regaining his balance.

While Rythra’s skin had the same weathered clay quality as Tiros, her voice and vitality sounded much younger. She flung the emergency blanket to the floor, and she said, “There was a poster at my school of a Dabar soldier punching through the warp two barrier. Among our interstellar rivals, I knew we were destined to seize the stars first, but I never imagined it would be in the hands of a student engineer like me.”

Tiros’s voice went harder when he asked, “None of our neighbours within subspace communication range have achieved warp three. The nearest of them is years away at warp. So… who are you?”

Calum cleared his throat and puffed out his chest. Tilting his chin up, he said, “I’m First Officer Tumaini Calumn of the Federation starship Constellation. We’ve recently arrived in this region as part of an ongoing exploratory initiative, and when we received your distress signal, we felt it was our obligation–”

Rythra leaned her shoulder into Tiros’s chest. “How can you be new here?” she asked. The resonant hollow of her voice shifted tight. Her hands balled into fists. Maybe it was only the repairs to life support, but Yuulik felt the air grow chill.

Nodding gently, Calumn affected the smile he most often reserved for people who annoyed him. Yuulik had been a victim to that smile many times. Otherwise, he didn’t flinch. He didn’t move away.

“I hear you,” Calumn said, in his obliquely diplomatic way. “Our universal translator technology may still be adjusting to our, ah, respective units of measurement. We come from farther in the Beta Quadrant.”

“The what?” Tiros quickly replied to Calumn’s usage of the term ‘beta quadrant’. He squinted his crystalline eyes. His glare made Yuulik’s lunch flip in her stomach.

“Do you mean outside the–”

“There is nothing farther,” Rythra affirmed. Tiros snapped his gaze in Rythra’s direction, and she sneered.

Calumn glanced at Yuulik, just briefly, before he answered, “Our captain will explain everything. We can offer you a return trip to your home world. Our tractor beam will–”

Rythra shrieked –an animalistic wail that made Yuulik’s arms prickle with cold– and then Rythra shoved Calumn with both fists.

No, no, no, no. Yuulik’s next breath went shallow, the air biting at her lungs. She’d told the captain this was too dangerous, collapsing a space rescue into first contact. There were too many variables, too many hidden space-mines. Here was her proof, but was she about to die proving her point?

Calumn stumbled back but didn’t defend himself. Nune caught Calumn before he could fall. Neither of them reached for their phasers. Optimistic fools, the both of them.

All the while, Rythra proclaimed, “Liar! He says he’s from a federation, but I listened when the doctor spoke. The doctor said they’re from ‘Starfleet’. They’re the starbeasts! We’re obligated to protect the inheritance. The prophecy meme demands we kill them and take their ship!”

On Constellation’s bridge, it didn’t take much more than ‘kill them’ to get Nova DeVoglaer at the ready. All the work she had done to set boundaries with Yuulik might as well be flushed down the toilet. Only her years of Starfleet discipline kept her from sprinting to the transporter room and throwing herself into the fray as Yuulik’s human shield. Yuulik would be the one they would want to murder first. Of course, it would be Yuulik.

Seated at the wide Operations alcove to starboard of the empty captain’s chair, she swivelled towards the observation lounge behind her. Her right boot bounced on the floor, vibrating with nervous energy. From the moment the double doors slid apart, Nova offered her report sharply.

“Captain, the away team reports the pilots we rescued are getting violent,” Nova said. She kept her voice measured, but she didn’t let her fingers stray far from the transporter controls. “There’s talk of commandeering our ship, but I’m reading no power to their phaser banks. Transporter lock on the away team remains strong.”

“Hail them.”

Once Nova swiped her fingers over the communications controls, a musical chime indicated the opening of a hailing frequency to the away team’s combadges.

“I understand you have questions about our identity. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Captain Elbon Jakkelb,” he said as he settled into the captain’s chair, “of the starship Constellation. I understand how our presence can be surprising. I would like to offer you the hospitality of our squadron. That means unlimited food, drink, and, most importantly, life support. Unless you’d prefer to continue this conversation when your emergency batteries run dry?”