The hangar deck of the Victory felt improbably wide after the confinement of a Valkyrie cockpit. Ayres stepped down from the runabout’s ramp and paused, just long enough to let his balance catch up with the change in gravity. Overhead, the vaulted roof of the bay curved away into shadows and gantries. To port, his fighter sat in a tractor cradle, with a maintenance crew already approaching.

Security waited at the foot of the ramp. Two officers, their phasers worn openly but not raised. The senior, a lieutenant with tired eyes and a certain stiffness, stepped forward.

“Captain Ayres,” he said. “I am Lieutenant Fraser, ship’s security. Captain Hardy requests that you accompany me to his quarters.”

“Requests,” Ayres repeated, registering the absence of an arrest or immediate charges. The Valkyrie sat behind him like a guilty conscience, silent and unhelpful.

“I imagine he could order instead,” he said.

“He prefers to speak to you first, sir,” Fraser replied. His expression did not shift. “If you would come this way.”

The corridors of the Victory were familiar and strange in equal measure. The same design principles of other Starfleet ships, but new, shiny, immaculate and advanced. He could not help but marvel at one of the newest ships in the fleet. They walked past a pair of junior officers arguing quietly about calibration errors in a sensor array, before giving Ayres and his escort the quick, curious glance reserved for notable strangers.

He noted the small details because it kept his mind from turning too quickly towards the door at the end of the walk. The name on the panel was neat, the letters of “CAPTAIN O. HARDY” etched with the same Starfleet precision as every other piece of signage on the ship.

Fraser pressed the annunciator. A crisp voice answered at once.

“Enter.”

The captain’s quarters were broad by starship standards, but Hardy had filled it with thought rather than clutter. One bulkhead was given over to an active starchart, displaying the Shackleton Expanse. A shelf opposite held actual printed books, old and worn in the way of volumes that had travelled.

Hardy stood by the viewport, looking out at the nothing. He turned as the door hissed shut behind Ayres.

Hardy’s features were sharp and his eyes sharper. There was an academic’s slight stoop to his shoulders and a fighter’s balance in the way he set his feet. His uniform was immaculate in the way of a man who did not fuss about it, because it never occurred to him to be anything else.

“Captain Ayres,” he said. “Thank you for coming without the need for a dramatic escort.” There was humour in the words, but also judgement.

“Lieutenant Fraser did not give me much opportunity to stage a scene,” Ayres replied. “Captain.”

Hardy waved Fraser away with a small, precise gesture. The security officer nodded and withdrew, leaving the two captains alone with the hum of the ship and the starlight.

For a moment, neither spoke. Hardy studied him as if he were a puzzle. Ayres returned the look with the flat, guarded expression that had seen him through more than one uncomfortable debrief.

“You have given my bridge officers a great deal to swear about,” Hardy said at last. “I’m told that your sensor signature dropped off the board at Orantei in a burst of Pilgrim activity, and then reappeared some days later on a trajectory with unusual subspace readings, in company with the signature of your missing executive officer. There is, in the stack of messages on my desk, a very polite order from Starfleet Command that I ascertain whether you have defected or lost your mind.”

Ayres felt his body tighten, the adrenaline rising. “I’ve not defected,” he said. “I’ve no greater desire to join a death cult than anyone else. As for my mind, I don’t think I’ve ever been accused of losing what little there is.”

Hardy’s mouth twitched, very slightly. “You see,” he said. “This is exactly the sort of answer that makes admirals nervous. You make it sound sensible, and yet the words refuse to line up in quite the way one would wish.”

He moved to the desk and gestured to one of the chairs opposite. “Please,” he said. “Sit. I find I listen better when at least one of us is a little more comfortable.”

Ayres sat because he had no good reason not to. The chair was comfortable, the leather worn. Hardy remained standing for a moment, arms folded, considering.

“You took a Valkyrie,” Hardy said. “Without authorisation, during an ongoing incident, and pursued a compromised officer along an unknown subspace corridor until you ran into my runabout. That’s the headline. I’d like to hear your version before I decide how much to shout.”

There was no hostility in his tone. There was, if anything, an academic curiosity. Ayres found it faintly infuriating.

“Commander Parr transmitted her command codes under duress,” he said. “The Pilgrims used them to gain access to the Farragut’s systems. We were boarded. The reliquaries had already been distributed through the ship. They took her with them when they retreated, even if she did that seemingly under her own steam. I had a short window in which to follow. I made a judgement that allowing them to vanish with a senior officer would be unacceptable.”

“You made that judgement alone,” Hardy said.

“Yes,” Ayres replied. “There was no time to convene a committee.”

“Committees are not the only alternative to unilateral action,” Hardy said mildly. “You might have called your task force commander, who I met and was on your actual ship at the time. There is a difference between acting decisively and abrogating entirely any sense that someone else could help you.”

Anger flared, dull and familiar. “With respect,” Ayres said, “Aloran was attempting to keep the remainder of the Farragut’s crew alive under Pilgrim occupation at the time. He was in a better position to take that responsibility than I was. Whereas I had a tracer on the most likely route to wherever the Pilgrim’s heart is. I took it. I’d do so again.”

Hardy regarded him for a long moment. “Of that,” he said, “I have very little doubt.”

He moved at last, circling the desk to his own chair. He sat with a neatness that made the act seem like another form of punctuation. “We are, I think, somewhat alike,” he said. “We’re both insufficiently deferential to institutional inertia. The difference is that I usually accompany my irreverence with clear and accurate communication about my intended actions, rather than in unauthorised sorties.”

“You have the advantage of an advanced starship that is, from the looks of it, fresh from the shipyard. My ship, the Farragut, had spent weeks fighting off Pilgrims at impulse speed,” Ayres said.

Hardy inclined his head. “At present,” he said. “The Farragut is no longer your ship. I mean no disrespect, simply fact. And so dealing with the Pilgrims is the priority for the both of us.”

He tapped a control on his desk. The starchart on the bulkhead shifted, focusing on the segment of the Expanse through which Ayres had flown. The scar glowed, a twisted, thin corridor, with a faint ghost trail plotted along it.

“This is your path,” Hardy said. “Our science officer, formerly your science officer and with us temporarily, has had a very good time trying to understand the mechanics of this unusual subspace behaviour. You followed Commander Parr’s fighter along this unusual route. Why?”

Ayres did not bother pretending ignorance. “I hypothesised that the artefact, the reliqueries, had left an imprint on me, the fighter, or both, and that whatever or however that worked, it would help me navigate correctly even if I or the computer were unsure of the direction.”

“And you were correct,” Hardy said.

“Yes,” Ayres said. “I was.”

Hardy steepled his fingers. “That,” he said, “should make you feel a little more uneasy than it appears to. Back to my question about losing your mind, or giving into a subtle alien influence.”

“I had limited tools,” Ayres said.

“You had limited patience,” Hardy corrected. “You don’t like waiting for other people to catch up.”

Ayres opened his mouth to retort and then, annoyingly, closed it again. He had learned, over years and arguments, that there was no point in lying to oneself. It merely delayed the crash.

“Commander Parr is my responsibility,” he said instead. “I failed to prevent the reliquaries infiltrating my ship. I failed to see how far the Pilgrims had got into the shipping lanes. I wasn’t inclined to sit in a debrief and deliver that list again while someone else took six weeks to approve a mission.”

Hardy’s expression softened by a fractional degree.

“You’re not the first Starfleet captain to confuse responsibility with ownership,” he said. “Nor will you be the last. Your sins are not original, which is one of the few comforts I can offer.”

He glanced up at the map again. “You have, in your recklessness, given us proving data,” he said. “We know now that the reliquaries can imprint on subspace in this very particular way. We know that the Pilgrims are using those corridors to move faster than they ought. We know that Commander Parr is somewhere near the nexus of that network. All of that will be extremely useful to us in disrupting the Pilgrims. And when the board convenes to consider what to charge you with.”

Ayres felt the slow burn of humiliation under the dry words. “I’m sure the Judge Advocate General will appreciate the evidence,” he said.

“Oh, I intend to give them a full and frank assessment of my opinion,” Hardy said. “For the moment, however, we have the small matter of a death cult attempting to do something I’m sure will be bad for the galaxy. So I’m disinclined to sacrifice a competent officer to procedure before I absolutely must.”

Ayres looked at him warily. “What are you offering, captain?”

“A stay of execution,” Hardy said simply. “You are, as of this moment, attached to the Victory as a temporary advisory officer on Pilgrim operations. You’ll obey my orders. You will not take a Valkyrie, a shuttle, or even a chair on this ship without my explicit permission. You’ll share everything you know, including your best guesses, about Commander Parr’s mental state and the Pilgrims’ tactical patterns.”

“And after,” Ayres said. The word hung like a weight.

“And after,” Hardy said, “we’ll go home to Starbase 72 and you’lll answer for your unilateral excursion. I shall, because I’m not entirely heartless, make it known to the board exactly how useful your disobedience was. They’ll then do what boards always do, which is attempt to thread the needle between encouraging initiative and discouraging chaos.”

There was nothing in his tone of threat. There was, if anything, a kind of grim fairness.

“Will you recommend that I retain my command?” Ayres asked.

Hardy considered him.

“No,” he said, “but what happens between now and then can make a difference to everything else.”

He let that sink in, then Hardy smiled for the first time, a brief, dry flash that did more to connect them than any of the previous barbs.

“Look at it this way, Captain,” he said. “If we fail, the question will be academic. If we succeed, you will at least have the satisfaction of facing a panel knowing that you helped prevent the Federation’s communications backbone from being converted into a weapon.”

Ayres huffed a breath that might have been a laugh. “You don’t lack for theatre,” he said.

“I was denied my first love, which was a career in teaching,” Hardy replied. “This is my revenge on the universe. Come.”

He rose. Ayres stood more slowly, his body reminding him that he had been strapped to a narrow seat for far too long.

Hardy crossed to the wall display and expanded the view again, the map blooming outward to show not just the corridor Ayres had flown, but the wider web: Pala Ridge, the scar at Orantei, the other faint nodes where the Pilgrims had sunk their hooks.

“You’ve seen a fragment,” Hardy said. “I’d like you to see the whole. We’re going to hurt them, Captain Ayres. Not on your own, and not with the satisfying straightforwardness of a small dogfight, but we are going to make their pattern flinch. We’re going to find the place where they gather together, and then we are going to take it apart piece by piece.”

“You make it sound simple,” Ayres said.

“It’s not,” Hardy said. “That’s why I’m so keen to have an extra pair of eyes that have already stared down at the Pilgrims and refused to blink. You can, if you wish, sulk in your assigned quarters and rehearse speeches for your court martial. Or you can sit at my table, offer your experience, and help me design something that may bring Commander Parr back to herself. With the understanding that I shall be extremely cross with you afterwards.”

Ayres found, unexpectedly, that some of the tightness in his chest had eased. There was, at least, a path that did not involve being locked in a cabin until the mission ended around him.

“I don’t intend to sulk,” he said. “It would be a waste of your resources and my time. I accept your offer, Captain.”

“Very good,” Hardy said. “We’ll consider you under a suspended sentence of extreme usefulness.”

He moved to the desk again, tapped a control. “Computer,” he said. “Note, please, that Captain Michael Ayres, formerly commanding officer, USS Farragut, is attached to the USS Victory as a temporary advisory officer for the remainder of this mission, reporting directly to the captain. His disciplinary status is pending and deferred.”

“Acknowledged,” the computer replied.

Hardy looked back at Ayres. The humour was still there, but behind it something harder, older.

“Make no mistake,” he said. “When this is done, you’ll sit in front of a board and answer some very awkward questions. I’ll be there and I’ll defend what deserves defending and criticise what deserves criticism. I’m very good at both. Until that day, however, you’re mine.”

Ayres inclined his head. “What’s my first duty, sir?”

Hardy gestured to the map. “Tell me,” he said, “everything they did to your ship. In detail. Then we’ll talk about how to ensure they don’t do the same to mine.” He paused, then added, almost lightly, “And perhaps, if the universe is kind, we’ll find a way to annoy this so-called pattern sufficiently that it decides Emilia Parr is more trouble than she’s worth.”

Ayres felt something flicker, quick and painful, behind his ribs. “That,” he said quietly, “would be a gift.”

Hardy nodded once. “Then let us begin,” he said.