The sun crept over the dark trees, scattering bands of orange and gold across the clouds gathering above the sea. A small campfire near the shuttle cracked and popped, tendrils of gray smoke rising into the brightening sky. A coffee pot, dented and black with carbon, rested on a stone, steam curling from the spout. Valhalla’s away team huddled around the fire, gull-blue wool survival blankets wrapped tight around their shoulders against the morning chill, tin cups warming their hands.

Anthony bent and tossed a few more dried sticks into the fire before lifting the pot and tipping it toward a cup in his other hand. There was a bubbling hiss as the dark, aromatic liquid touched the pot’s sides, splashing into the gleaming metal container. Returning the pot to its place near the heat, he turned and ducked inside the shuttle.

Captain Vance’s voice echoed through the shuttle’s speakers. His voice was cracked and thick with sleep, and on the screen, he yawned, rubbing his eyes with the palm of one of his massive hands.

Anthony set the cup next to Kyle, dropped into the pilot’s chair, and busied himself with diagnostic reports, fingers moving across the terminal as he pretended not to be eavesdropping.

“We received your reports.” Vance hesitated and glanced down at something offscreen. “Thorough as ever, Commander. We have all hands on deck working on this. Engineering and science aboard both ships ran simulations all night—”

“You don’t have a solution, do you?” Kyle interrupted.

There was another pause, longer than the last. From the corner of his eye, Anthony caught Vance shaking his head. “We’ll keep working on the problem. I’ve sent the data to Fourth Fleet, hoping their full resources can come up with a plan to get you off the planet. But at the moment, there is no real solution. Those damned orbital platforms are a real pain in the ass.”

Kyle sighed. “Yeah. Whoever came up with those things had a wickedly devilish mind. Marcus and Abby tried adjusting the targeting parameters from the main control terminal last night at zero-one-hundred.”

Vance coughed and frowned. “Let me guess: spectacular failure.”

“You could say that.”

Vance looked offscreen, his face twisted in thought. Anthony imagined the captain doing that little drumming thing on his leg he always did when he was thinking. At last, he turned back to the camera and took a deep breath. Anthony could see the hope draining from the man’s expression with every passing second.

“I’m sorry, Commander. You said this was insane. I should have listened to you.”

“We haven’t given up hope. There’s a solution. We just haven’t figured it out yet.”

“Positive attitude. That’s good. Use it.”

“Will try, sir.”

“Good. I’m holding you to that. Do you need anything? Commander Swiftblade from the Sentinel thinks we can use a solar probe to air-drop you supplies. She thinks the ceramic hull should survive reentry.”

“We’re good for now, Captain.”

“Regardless, we’re putting together a care package as we speak, along with medical and survival supplies.”

Anthony frowned. That was that, then. They were stranded with no actionable plan to get off the planet. Maybe it was because he was naive, but he had never once believed they would be stuck here permanently. It was just a matter of time. Yet here the captain was, talking about sending supplies.

Kyle nodded. “Understood.”

“Valhalla out.”

With that, the shuttle’s cockpit fell silent. Commander Kyle sank back into her seat with a heavy sigh. The two officers sat without acknowledging each other as seconds stretched into minutes, only the console’s beeps breaking the silence. While entering commands into the anti-grav generator diagnostic, he leaned over the readout to get a better view of the power distribution graphic.

“I brought you a coffee,” he said, as if it were an afterthought.

“Thank you, Ensign, but I’m not in the mood.”

“You’ll like it. It’s cowboy coffee. No better brew in the whole universe.”

Kyle stared at Anthony for a long moment and sighed. Picking up the coffee, she took a sip, raised an eyebrow, and set it carefully back on the console with a soft click. She glanced at Anthony, then out the front windscreen, clouds drifting over the leafy green trees.

The commander took another sip of the coffee and stared into the cup. “We’re in a bit of a bind, aren’t we?”

Anthony paused, glanced over at her, and shrugged, suddenly wishing he had his own coffee. “It’s the nature of the job. We all knew the consequences when we put on the uniform.”

“Yeah… we do.”

Pushing away from the helm, he stood and moved to the replicator behind the cockpit. A heartbeat later, he tasted the bitter raktagino and frowned. Oh well. It wasn’t cowboy coffee, but it scratched the immediate itch. “Several of us served aboard the old Crazy Horse before the Blood Dilithium incident in the Delta Quadrant.”

Kyle sipped her coffee, cocking her head, but said nothing. She nodded, encouraging him to continue.

“I had a buddy. Diego Garza. We were like two peas in a pod.” He let out a rueful chuckle. “Captain Murphey was so mad after a bar fight, she left us in the brig after a dressing down.” He shrugged and sipped the Klingon coffee. “He didn’t return from the Delta Quadrant. Harvested by the Vidiians.”

“What’s this about?”

He glanced at her with his boyish grin, though this time it didn’t actually carry any humor. “This place just got me thinking about mortality and how not all of us get to come home. Not that we get to go home much in Stafleet anyway when we’re that far out in the black.”

Kyle raised an eyebrow.

He sighed and slid back into the pilot’s seat. The cushion groaned beneath his weight. “Did you know I had never been to Earth until I went to the Academy?”

Kyle swirled the coffee in her cup, the hot liquid sending up little tendrils of steam over the rim. “As I recall, you are a colony brat. One of those at the distant edge of the frontier. Terra Alpha?”

He nodded. “Yeah, that’s right. You need to see Terra Alpha,” he said as he went back to his diagnostic work. “Those mountains and the plains where there is grass as far as the eye can see.” Anthony chuckled. “I guess if we had a failing, it’s our lack of creativity in naming things.”

Kyle crossed her arms and flashed him a smirk.

“Nothing new, Ensign. It happened in the American frontier; it happened repeatedly in the expansion into the final frontier.”

“Yeah. But maybe it’s not a lack of creativity, but a desire for a little piece of home. I don’t know.”

Anthony sighed, his fingers hesitating over the controls for a heartbeat before slipping back into their usual confident pace. “The shuttle should get you guys off the planet without too many issues. I’d have Lieutenant Washington take a look at that aft bulkhead, though.”

He hesitated, forcing himself not to look at her before continuing. “Once you’re in the air, keep an eye on the port impulse drive. It’s going to run hot. It took moderate damage on reentry, and I don’t entirely trust it under sustained load.”

Kyle studied him and frowned, short blonde hair framing the hard lines of her face. “Ensign.”

“Commander.” Anthony kept his eyes on the console as data scrolled past. Most indicators were green. Some were yellow. A handful were red.

He paused to look at the red ones and swore internally. The port impulse regulator was damaged. There was nothing they could do about that. They would need an industrial replicator to replace the part.

“Why would I watch the engine temperatures?”

Anthony continued ignoring her question. “You won’t need warp drive, so the starboard nacelle will not be an issue, but there might be some minor atmospheric drag causing some yaw you’ll need to compensate for.”

The pilot paused and stared out the cockpit window, letting the yellow light fall across his face as he squinted into the rising sun. A soft breeze rolled in from the sea, causing leaves to dance in the trees.

He glanced over his shoulder at her.

“You’re a certified pilot, are you not, ma’am? Other than me, the only one on the team.”

She gave him a curt nod.

“Then it will have to be you.”

“Why am I not liking where this is leading?”

Anthony’s jaw tightened. He drew in a slow breath and let it out. “I have a way for the away teams and the Klingon survivors to go home.”

“I’m not hating it so far,” Kyle replied, suspicion in her voice. Picking up the coffee, she cradled it in her hands.

Anthony glanced over his shoulder through the open shuttle door at the huddled away team sitting around the fire. “I can destroy the power reactor. We use the orbital platforms to target and fire on the facility.”

“We can’t do that. Commander Willis tried to control the facility remotely. She spent hours trying to override the safeguards.”

“I know. I was there, remember?” Anthony said with an edge to his voice.

Kyle’s eyes went wide with realization. There was a light tremor in her hand as she set her coffee down.

“No.”

“Commander, that is the only option, and it has to be me. I got us into this, and I am the only one on this mission who isn’t irreplaceable.”

“Ensign.”

Anthony shook his head and gave her an encouraging smile. “We’re out of options. I’m not an engineer. I don’t have a science degree. I’m just a dumb pilot. A redundant one at that with you here.”

Kyle stared down at the console before her, her tight expression reflected in the glossy black panel. She took several sips of coffee, both hands wrapped around the cup.

“You will be raining hellfire down on you,” she said at last.

“That’s why you will need to take the crew away from here. Find the Sentinel’s away team. They’ve been radio-silent for eighteen hours now. They’re probably in trouble.”

Coffee in hand, he stood and began pacing, his boots making soft thumps against the carpeted deck. His heart pounded, and he was wound so tight he felt like a guitar string. Sitting was no longer possible.

“We won’t be able to beam you away. There’s only a point-oh-eight-second delay between the fire button and the firing sequence. Dematerialization alone is two seconds.”

Anthony nodded.

“Ensign, it’s a death sentence.”

Anthony lifted his coffee to his lips to hide his expression behind the cup. “I got us into this.”

“You already said that,” Kyle snapped. “That doesn’t mean you get to throw your life away.”

Reaching over, he placed a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. She was thin, and he could feel every bone through the wool of her uniform. She recoiled, and he drew his hand back as if burned.

“It’s our only option.”

He didn’t know if she realized that yet. They could spend months, years, hoping for another solution. That wasn’t fair to the others. Eventually, the calculus of being stranded on this planet would make this decision inevitable. In the end, it would still be him. No sense delaying it.

Kyle looked away, brushing at her face with the back of her hand. “I’d just gotten done shaping you into a halfway decent officer.”

Anthony’s breath caught in his throat, and he pursed his lips into a thin line. He reached out again to place a hand on her shoulder, but hesitated midair. With a shake of his head, he let it fall to his side.

“Ma’am, are you crying?”

There was a pause.

“No, Mr. Talon, I am not,” she replied, her tone cold and emotionless.

Anthony sighed and turned, walking across the shuttle. He paused long enough to recycle his raktagino before heading for the exit. At the threshold between the deck and the exit ramp, Marcus and Abby looked up and flashed him tired smiles. He returned a forced one before stepping out of the shuttle. He walked several hundred meters into the grassy field, with his stomach knotted like fishing line.