For over a year now, StratOps had been his domain. Sharing it with Walker was short-lived, the brash young commander now getting to work in the Security Department, barely waiting for Logan’s boots to be cold before he stepped into them. Now, Beckett could sit in the beating heart of the Intelligence Department and watch the flow of information of the squadron, the Fourth Fleet, ebbing deeper and deeper into the Shackleton Expanse.

Instead, he sat there, cycling through the same set of files over and over. An empty bowl of replicated noodles sat drying on the side of the panel. The coffee, though, was freshly filled. It was not his first cup.

He was deep enough in thought and reading that he did not hear the doors slide open; so focused on his work that he hadn’t realised he’d dimmed the lighting until a voice called, cautious through the gloom.

‘Nate?’

Nate Beckett jumped and nearly knocked over the coffee. He dragged a hand across his face, finding his eyes heavy. ‘Rosara – hey. Sorry. What time is it?’

‘Gone 2300.’ She padded down the steps to the central circular display panel, where he sat.

‘I lost track of time.’ He tilted his head back to look at her – and stopped as he found her pale and tired, hair down, out of uniform and in clothes he associated more with a cosy night in than heading out for the evening. Beckett spun on the chair and reached for her hand. ‘Hey…’

But she was staring at the display, at the files he’d been reading. Pale blue light reflected across her dark eyes, making them look more sunken, more tired. ‘The Veilweaver,’ she read, voice low.

‘Yeah, I…’ Beckett grimaced and got to his feet, moving closer even though she wasn’t reacting to his presence. ‘I had a thought I couldn’t shift. I know it’s been eighteen months – well after the fissure at Vadia, after this facility went dark. They’re not related.’

‘But we found something,’ Thawn said, her voice a low mumble. ‘A powerful, telepathic, interdimensional being, that could influence those around them. Trapped in a prison. Until we let it out.’

‘I let it out,’ Beckett said darkly. ‘After it tricked me and then forced my hand. By possessing you.’ He shook his head and looked away. ‘There are a million things in this galaxy we’ve encountered and don’t understand, and countless more we’ve not even dreamt of yet. The Veilweaver didn’t make the fissure happen. I guess I’m just… trying to make sense of this “Vezda”…’

‘I felt something.’ She blurted this out like it had been dragged from within her, and as his attention snapped back – snapped away from his indulgent self-pity – he felt the prickle at the edge of his thoughts. The feel of her emotions, the shape of her, and the cloud that hung over that so mirrored the one over him.

At his look, her gaze turned hunted. ‘I didn’t think much of it at the time. A headache. A flash of fear. I don’t know, it was odd, but I was… working. In Engineering. It was only afterwards I realised it coincided with…’ Thawn swallowed. ‘With when Security were hunting Logan. The Vezda.’

‘You sensed it?’ Beckett said softly.

She gave a short nod. ‘I think so. Perhaps I sensed whatever it was doing telepathically to influence or read people around it. Or I sensed a flare of its energy when it – if it – used the subspace folds to escape the ship.’ He stayed silent, and after a beat, she finally took his hand in a tight grip. ‘Nate, I – it felt like the Veilweaver.’

He sat with that for a moment, unsurprised and yet feeling like his insides were being unravelled at this corroboration from a source that still defied science. ‘You’d know,’ he said softly. ‘You’re the expert on telepathy, the thing that communicated with the Veilweaver. And it makes sense, right?’

Thawn gave a soft nod. ‘The Veilweaver is – was – Vezda. One which evaded imprisonment at Vadia IX – was maybe imprisoned by the Vorkasi before the Vadia IX prison was even built. That we freed last year.’

‘After the fissure failed.’ Beckett stared at her for a moment, then rounded on the panels, thudding in more commands to bring up more files. ‘This is great.’

At the back of his mind, he felt the sudden sense of his own absence – the wave that came off her as he pulled away, back into his work. ‘Great?’ Thawn echoed weakly.

‘That means Kharth might be right – you were possessed by the Vezda, back at Beacon-2401 last year, and that wasn’t fatal!’ Any of that sense of isolation fell away in his burgeoning hope, bubbling in his chest and threatening to choke. ‘All we have are these records from one encounter a hundred and fifty years old; who knows what happened to Gamble?’

‘You mean, you think Logan might be alive?’

‘I mean we can’t write him off!’

‘Nate… what happened to me wasn’t the same. It was – it talked through me. And we’re not even sure the Veilweaver was a Vezda…’

‘Are you giving up?’ Bubbling hope turned sour at the slightest opposition, and Beckett rounded on her, gaze wild. ‘After all Jack did for us? He’s had my back, through Frontier Day, through what happened with the Veilweaver, through it all, and you’re saying we write him off -’

‘I’m saying we don’t know!’ Thawn clenched her hands into fists, eyes widening. ‘I’m saying you’re being led by hope rather than science -’

‘These things are – are so advanced, so malevolent, so alien that we can hardly gather the data for rigorous scientific analysis,’ Beckett sneered, but he was sputtering as he waved a frantic hand. ‘We’re pretending we’re being logical, but all we’re doing is playing it safe, because if he’s alive we have to find him, have to figure out a way to save him.’

‘And how do you propose we do that?’

He glowered at her and smacked a hand on the control panel. The map of the Shackleton Expanse came shimmering to life, more detail filling in every hour with every report as Starfleet stretched further and further into the region. Overlaying it all was the criss-cross lines of subspace folds.

‘The Vezda can only have travelled across ley-lines,’ Beckett said sharply. ‘Which means there are only so many places in the Expanse it can be. I’m mapping out routes, assessing locations. Cross-referencing the maps with reports as they come in.’

‘That narrows this down to – scores of worlds…’

‘Then we’ll search scores of worlds, if that’s what it takes! But I’ve got to bring this to Airex, to the captain, with an iron-tight argument, or they’re just going to pick holes in it like you are!’

Thawn rocked back, eyes flashing – then that frustration died, and his own desperation went with it. When she wouldn’t shout back at him, things were really wrong. ‘You’re right,’ she said after a beat. ‘I’m the one being unsupportive.’

As she stepped away, his shoulders fell. ‘Rosara…’

‘You take everything on your shoulders, Nate,’ she said, half-laughing in frustration. ‘And you think it’s responsibility, but it’s really ego, you know? You freed the Veilweaver. Forget that Airex was there, and the ranking officer. Forget Kharth was in the monastery. But the Veilweaver reached out to you first, so it’s your fault, your burden. Oh, and…’ She snapped her fingers. ‘Forget that I’m the one it mentally hijacked.’

‘It was threatening you – and it was my call…’ He stepped forward quickly, reached for her hands.

But she pulled away, gaze too firm and angry by now. ‘Between that and blood dilithium, I’ve had enough things screwing with my head. Getting under my skin. Oh, and let’s not forget everything in the mirror universe. But you’d much rather make it about you, and your guilt – all so you think you have some degree of control over this. That you’re not helpless.’

His hands fell, bitterness blending with fear – and frustration. ‘I can’t give up on Jack,’ he said, jaw tightening. ‘This isn’t about past guilt.’

‘It is,’ said Thawn simply. ‘Because it’s about you running from it.’ She raised her hands and stepped away. ‘I’ll let you get back to work. I’ll be in my quarters.’

‘Rosara -’

‘It’s very telling, Nate, that you thought this might be the Veilweaver. And that instead of discussing it with me, you hid in here, like you’re the only one who can make sense of it all.’ Her smile was unamused. ‘Screw me, I guess? Both for how this might affect me, and… well, that I might be a bigger subject expert than you on a telepathic monster.’

‘Rosara!’

But she left, the doors sliding shut behind her. Beckett stood still for a moment, teeth grinding, fists clenched, before he turned and swore, chest heaving. For a moment, he considered letting the anger out and then going after her, at least once she’d made it to her quarters, once the initial anger had faded. Reach out. Apologise. Turn their focus onto this together.

Then there was a chirrup from the central panel as a fresh report packet came in, its data populating more of the spanning map of the Shackleton Expanse, and Beckett returned to the main display.

Every tiny clue was a step. And every step brought him inches closer to finding Jack Logan.