The entirety of this alternative Starfleet ship, this starship Canopus, screamed comfort and decadence. Wide corridors, bright lights, warm colours.

Carpeted floors.

Tikva stood at the window of her guest quarters, looking out at the streaks of stars flowing past the ship as they travelled across the expansive void between the stars. Not in the instantaneous blink of an eye of an entirely sensible jumpdrive, but in the steady progression of this ship’s mighty warp drive.

There was no instantaneous transposition of localities, switching the ship’s location with another, but a powerful, demanding warping of space-time itself that propelled the ship across the stars. Even if technically, as Shae had passionately explained it to her, Canopus wasn’t travelling faster-than-light, just the space-time around them was.

Technically not violating the laws of physics. Just bending them in ways she found herself disagreeing with.

And guest quarters didn’t do the space justice either. It was more like an expansive apartment, something she’d expect to find at the bottom of a gravity well, repeated over and over again across any metroplex in the Federation. Something that space travel would make unreasonable to have on a starship, and yet here, on this ship, was just considered ‘guest quarters’, even if diplomatic ones befitting a visiting dignitary.

“I will never get tired of that,” Shae whispered as she stepped up behind her, wrapping warm arms around her in a tight hug. “Infinite hot water.” A gentle kiss on her cheek, a brief tightening of the hug. “Honestly, love, this ship is a marvel.”

“It’s impressive,” she replied, if less enthusiastically than her partner. “But it’s not mine.”

“Could be,” Shae said.

“I’m not-” She was cut off by Shae’s playful nibble of her ear. “Stop that!” She squirmed, but couldn’t get far with Shae’s arms holding her in place.

But Shae did relent, punctuated with another peck on her cheek. “We could build something like this,” Shae finally said after a few seconds of gentle, loving silence, the two of them just watching the universe literally go by. “It wouldn’t be easy, but the Federation could do it.”

“We don’t have a warp drive. Or their impulse drives, or any number of their other technologies or systems to support something like this. Or that,” she said, raising a hand to point at the other ship flying in close formation to Canopus, dragging the Canopean Dream with it. It didn’t help that the Dream was always referred to as being towed in a ‘jury-rigged contraption’ by the people who knew what they were doing.

Or by Shae herself when she’d signed off on it after a jargon-dense technological explanation she knew her wife hadn’t understood completely.

It had been described to her using their own probes, which couldn’t go to warp themselves, but could sustain a warp field, being used as essentially repeaters to extend Atlantis’ drive field far enough backwards to allow it to tow Canopean Dream. Not without risk, which is why she had volunteered her own ship, taking the offer to evacuate should something happen. It was the least she could do after all, risking her own ship and career, instead of exposing her friend to such a possibility of calamity.

“We could,” Shae said again, with a tone like a temptress from so many good, and bad, movies they had both worked through together in their off hours. “Imagine a fleet of ships like these, even half as powerful. A tenth as powerful. Able to cross the stars, or retreat at a moment’s notice. Not held to the whims of charge cycles to move. Ships not lost due to bad charge cycles, or ambushed by the likes of the Breen and their double-jump systems and picked off one by one.”

“Like we almost were.”

“Like we almost were,” Shae repeated. “If we had a warp drive, we could have just…left.”

“Run away,” Tikva said quietly.

“Retreated,” Shae corrected. “I know you spoil for a good fight from time to time, love, but that wasn’t going to be one.”

“No, you’re right,” she conceded after a brief moment. “And yes, if we had something like this…warp drive…we could have just pulled away and ignored the Breen. But we don’t.” But then she felt the mirth radiating from Shae, the secret just waiting to spill forth. The same feeling she felt just before Shae had proposed to her.

Shae didn’t resist when she reached up and pulled the arms around her away, slowly turning to face her lover. “What? What have you done?”

“Nothing!” Shae immediately defended herself. And it felt honest. “Honestly, I haven’t done a thing!” Shae took a step closer, hands settling on her upper arms as she grinned wickedly. “But…”

“But what?”

“But we could do fantastic things.” Shae’s eyes flicked over Tikva’s head, out the window and towards the other ship out there, the Atlantis. “Imagine us having a ship like that one. A whole new fleet of ships, exploring the universe, discovering new worlds and civilisations. Championed and driven by a young, ambitious commodore.”

“And her good-looking engineer wife who, I take it, has gotten a good read of numerous technical manuals and research papers to help her revolutionise the Federation’s technological base?” She shook her head as she closed the distance between the two of them, nuzzling her wife’s neck as she settled into another embrace. “I am not going to become some crazed admiral with some special project out to reshape the Federation to my whims.”

“I won’t let you,” Shae said. “But I didn’t just get a read of some documents. I just asked nicely and their engineers gave me a massive selection of their database to keep.”

“You did what?” Tikva asked as she rubbed at the headache forming, almost instantaneously from the words her chief engineer had just said to her. It wasn’t meant to be said harshly, but obviously came out that way as she heard her yeoman, Macha, stepping back almost immediately as well.

“I let Commander th’Keras peruse the technical catalogue and then made a selection of manuals, research papers and documentation from the last,” Ana paused briefly to think, “hundred or so years available to her to keep.”

Time stretched out, lingering, letting Ana’s admission really settle in. “The Prime Directive, Ana. Heard of it?”

“I have,” Ana admitted, without flinching in any way. “It does primarily apply to pre-warp civilisations, which this Federation technically would be.”

“Technically,” Tikva agreed stubbornly.

“Which we violated by revealing ourselves to them. And intervened in their conflict with the Breen. And again, by demonstrating our technology to them, by helping to evacuate them from that system back there. Or hosting them on Canopus for the trip as well.”

She sighed, staring at her engineer. Trying to bore holes in the woman’s head with the power of thought.

Still haven’t mastered that.

Should we, though? I’m sure we would misuse it eventually.

What do you mean eventually? Probably straight away.

What are we talking about?

Nothing!

“So your violation is okay because it’s just one of many I could be on the ropes for?”

The older woman shrugged. It said a lot without saying a thing. One little action, one little sharing of information, compared to the other things that had happened.

“There’s also the matter of captain’s discretion,” Ana finally said.

“Yes, captain’s discretion, Commander.” She emphasised the rank extensively. “Captain’s discretion.” She rubbed at her temples again, trying to work the headache away, when Macha set a glass of water down beside her, unprompted, with two small white pills.

Much like Stirling before her, Macha was starting to anticipate requests, to be a step ahead.

To manage her.

We’ll have to do something about that sooner or later.

The idea came to her as she picked up the glass and pills. “Thank you for advising me on your technological exchange, Commander. I do hope we got reciprocal documentation on their jumpdrive technology, to keep the likes of the Federation Science Council intrigued.”

Ana’s smile was all the answer she needed. There was indeed a fair trade, at least in the end, after she’d already gifted a vast boon on their counterparts of this reality.

“We’ll be at Bajor in a day to drop off the jumpships, then we’re hightailing it out of this universe before anything else happens. Just,” she paused to swallow the pills and a hefty mouthful of water when she felt Macha’s disapproval building, “try not to give them anything else. I’m going to have hell to pay as it is.”

“Well, if we’re already looking at trouble, might as well double-down on-”

“No!” she burst out. “Just, no. Okay, nothing more.” She sighed when she noticed Ana’s smirk. She was being wound up by her engineer, and she’d fallen straight into it. “Dismissed, Commander.”

Finally, after Ana had left, she turned to Macha. “Stirling told you to keep paracetamol close at hand?”

“No, ma’am,” the young woman answered. No hesitation in her answer, finally. Macha had taken to heart Tikva’s own lesson about not having anything to fear from her at least. “Commander Gantzmann advised me, ma’am.”

“I see.” She shook her head, then smiled. This whole situation with Commander Black, this whole grand situation with an alternate reality, all of it, was because instead of being some backline commodore, skulking around, she’d been racing around the expanse again, being a captain.

A captain who had been looking for something unique again, something, anything to do.

“Macha, what do you know about the Shackleton Expanse?” she finally asked.

“Not a lot, ma’am. But the Atlantis had recently come from there.” Macha’s eyes went out one of the vast windows, to the Atlantis at warp beside them, an ungainly cargo towed behind them. “Do you want me to reach out to Captain Kennedy about something?”

“I was thinking more, should we go look for ourselves when we get back to our reality?”