The pastries had been Remi Goldman’s idea. Not the pastries themselves, those McCallister had replicated himself, a small plate of mixed Betazoid and Bolian varieties that he had chosen largely at random from the menu options available at this hour of the morning. The idea of bringing food at all had come from a conversation he’d had with the Auditorium’s lounge manager the previous evening, when Goldman had caught him hovering near the dessert counter after the dinner service had ended and most of the crew had gone back to their quarters.

“You’re stress eating, sir,” Goldman had observed, with the particular directness of a man who had spent over fifteen years watching people use food as emotional management and had stopped pretending not to notice it.

“I’m hungry,” McCallister had replied.

“At twenty-two hundred hours. After, I’d imagine, a full dinner that you cooked and prepared with your lovely wife. And now you have the expression of a man planning something.”

McCallister had conceded the point. He had explained, in broad terms, that he had a difficult session in the morning and was thinking about how to approach it. Goldman had listened, nodded, and offered the opinion that people were more honest in comfortable rooms, and that comfortable rooms usually had something to eat in them.

“Didn’t you tell me once that your parents run a hotel?” Remi had asked. “I’m surprised you don’t know this already, sir.”

McCallister did, and that was the irritating thing about Goldman. He usually said things McCallister already knew and had been ignoring.

So there were pastries. And Tarkalean iced tea in a carafe alongside some glass mugs. He had arranged them on the small table between the armchairs and then stood back and looked at the effect. It looked, he decided, like a briefing room that had briefly considered becoming a café and then thought better of it. He sat down anyway, picked up his tea, and thought about their second year in the Delta Quadrant, starting with their ‘goodwill tour’ of the Gradin Belt.

Fifteen diplomatic functions in four months. His sons had attended almost all of them with him, wearing smart attire that they had complained about with extraordinary commitment. The events themselves had ranged from the genuinely productive to the deeply strange to the genuinely alarming to the deeply strange again. It had been, beneath all the complications, the occasional diplomatic incident, and the one situation he was not yet ready to think about in any detail this early in the morning, a good period. The crew had worked hard and well. Flemen had been exceptional, considerably exceptional, with certain notable and widely discussed exceptions. The relationships they built, rebuilt, and carefully tended to over those four months had opened doors that were still opening now.

McCallister hoped that Zobrella would see that. He suspected she had already done so, in an abstract way, from the records. He wanted her to hear it from him. He was still thinking about this when she knocked.

She came in, looked at him in the armchair, and then looked at the table between the chairs. She looked at it for slightly longer than she looked at most things. Then she crossed the room and sat down, and without ceremony or particular comment, she reached forward and took a pastry from the plate.

McCallister noted this. First session, she had waited. This session, she simply took. The room had become familiar enough for her to help herself, which told him something about how the dynamic had shifted.

“Tarkalean iced tea,” she said, looking at the carafe. “One of my favourites.”

“As it is mine and several others in the squadron,” he said.

She looked at the carafe for another moment, then back at him. “I appreciate the effort, Commodore,” she said as he poured her a glass. Once he had poured it and handed it to her, she looked at him directly. “So, shall we begin?”

“Whenever you’re ready,” he said, leaning back into his chair and getting comfortable.

She settled back. The pastry had disappeared efficiently. She looked at her notes on the PADD she had brought with her, then set it down, which he had noticed she did when she intended to lead with conversation rather than documentation. “The Gradin Belt goodwill tour,” she said. “You completed fifteen formal diplomatic functions over the course of four months.”

“That’s correct.”

“Your sons attended the majority of them with you.”

“They did.”

Zobrella looked at McCallister with the steady quality that had stopped being uncomfortable and started being simply how she looked at things. “Was that a deliberate decision, or a practical one?”

“Both,” he said. “The Odyssey operates as a community, not simply a vessel. Starfleet was keen for us to present ourselves as exactly that: a fully realised, family-inclusive deep-space presence, not a military force conducting diplomatic visits. Having my sons present at these functions was consistent with that representation.” He paused.

“It was also because they asked to come, and after the Quirennal incident, I wasn’t particularly inclined to say no to them coming.”

Zobrella nodded once. She didn’t press it further. “Let’s go through the tour chronologically,” she said. “Starting with Quarra.”

“Voyager’s history with the Quarrens was complicated,” McCallister said, a fact he guessed Zobrella probably knew already. “The crew were effectively used as a labour force there for a period. So our return needed careful handling. We weren’t representing just the Federation; we were representing a ship whose predecessor had left a complicated impression after exposing a huge conspiracy within the industrial workforce.” He set his mug down. “Commander Flemen led the trade negotiations. He spent three days reading every account Voyager had filed about their time there before we arrived, and he went in knowing more about Quarren cultural sensitivity around issues of autonomy and labour than the Quarrens probably expected a Federation officer to know. The trade talks opened positively and have continued to develop since. I’ve been made aware that on more than one occasion a Starfleet vessel has engaged in successful exchanges with the Quarrens thanks to our initial efforts.”

“Commander Flemen’s name appears with considerable regularity in the positive column of this tour’s record,” Zobrella observed. It was neither a criticism nor a compliment. Simply an observation she was flagging for later.

“It does,” McCallister agreed.

“Let’s move on to the Benkaran and Nygean visits,” she said, pushing on.

“Cultural fact-finding visits, primarily. We weren’t there to negotiate; we were there to listen and understand. Their relationship is complicated by history, and the Nygean justice system operates in ways that raise significant concerns among Benkaran representatives. We went in as observers, not arbiters, and we left with a considerably clearer picture of the dynamics in that region. Our fact-finding has been used for others to follow up on.” He paused. “Doctor Slyvexs was assaulted during that visit.”

“A mugging attempt,” Zobrella confirmed from her notes.

“By a group of Benkaran civilians, yes. She was returning to the beam-out point after visiting a medical facility there. Three individuals attempted to take her medical kit, presumably for the pharmaceuticals it contained.” He kept his tone even. “She declined to allow that.”

Something shifted almost imperceptibly in Zobrella’s expression. “She declined.”

“Slyvexs has been on this ship since it launched,” McCallister said. “She has dealt with Romulans, Remans, Borg, various Klingon factions, several entities of unclear classification and one memorable incident involving the entire holographic crew that I still don’t fully understand. Three Benkaran civilians attempting to take her medical kit did not represent a significant challenge.” He paused. “She also declined to treat it as a diplomatic incident, which I agreed with. It was an opportunistic crime, not a reflection of the Benkaran government’s attitude toward Federation visitors. I think in the end, the Benkaran muggers were more scared of her Denobulan defence reaction than anything else. However, Slyvexs was keen to find out more about the lack of proper medical treatment available to Benkarans on the Nygean homeworld.”

“I’m pleased Doctor Slyvexs was not gravely harmed in that altercation,” Zobrella made a note. “That mission was followed by the Kadi state dinner.”

“A successful evening,” McCallister said. “As you know, the Kadi already cooperate with Starfleet at the Barzan wormhole monitoring station. Strengthening that relationship through a formal social occasion was straightforward and productive. It had been a request from the Federation Diplomatic Corps that we were happy to oblige. Supreme Abbott Tomin was a gracious guest. We ensured that the food was extremely plain, which is entirely consistent with Kadi religious philosophy around not overpowering the senses. The crew adapted to this without incident.”

Zobrella looked at him for a moment with the expression of someone who suspected there was more to that sentence than its surface. She did not ask. “I want to move on to interaction with the Qomar Planetary Alliance,” she said.

McCallister reached for his tea. “That one was more complicated.”

“I would imagine so,” Zobrella said as she picked up another pastry. “Prelate Vinkar attempted to extract your Emergency Command Holgraphic program from the Odyssey’s database without authorisation while in orbit.”

“She did.” He set the mug down. “The Qomar’s relationship with other species is…how do I describe it?” McCallister paused as he considered the right adjective. “Particular. They regard themselves as intellectually and culturally superior to everyone else they have encountered, with one exception.”

“Music,” Zobrella said.

“Music. Voyager’s own holographic Doctor introduced them to musical performance during their journey, and it transformed their culture in ways that apparently no external influence had ever managed previously. Our return to the Delta Quadrant represented, to the Qomar, another opportunity to access a source of musical sophistication they considered themselves uniquely capable of appreciating.” He paused. “When they encountered Penelope, who is a considerably more sophisticated holographic system than anything they had previously encountered, Prelate Vinkar determined that she should be acquired for the Qomar Planetary Alliance’s cultural enrichment. The mechanism she chose was the extraction of Penelope’s program from our database.”

“Without asking,” Zobrella added.

“From what I gathered, the Qomar’s view of other species’ technology is that it represents a common resource available to those sophisticated enough to access it,” McCallister said. “They did not believe they were doing anything wrong. That does not mean they weren’t.”

“How was it discovered and stopped?”

“Penelope detected the unauthorised access attempt herself and immediately notified Lieutenant Commander Jen at operations. The extraction was approximately thirty per cent complete before it was blocked. If it had succeeded, we would have lost her program entirely.” He paused. “Penelope took the attempt rather personally.”

“I would imagine she did,” Zobrella said. “What was the diplomatic consequence?”

“We explained, with considerable care, that Starfleet holographic personnel are not transferable Federation assets and that the attempt constituted a serious breach of the terms of our visit. The Qomar did not consider themselves to have done anything wrong. They were, however, intelligent enough to understand that the Federation disagreed, and that pressing the point further would not serve their interests. They are not a species that handles the concept of being in the wrong with much grace.” He paused. “We left the relationship intact, which was the priority.”

“The vulnerability existed because the Odyssey’s systems were not adequately protected against an extraction attempt of that kind,” Zobrella commented.

“I would disagree with that. I think it existed because their technology was far superior to ours and they were able to attempt the extraction,” he said. “And in retrospect, given that Voyager’s records made the Qomar’s attitude toward other species’ technology very clear, we should have anticipated the risk and protected against it before we arrived rather than after it nearly succeeded.” He held her gaze. “After the visit, Penelope’s program received significantly increased security protocols. Her access to the ship’s core computer systems was also restructured so that her program cannot be extracted from external systems. It was a lesson learned at some cost to our comfort during the visit, but one that was learned properly. I believe all safeguards are not used fleet-wide.”

Zobrella nodded. “That is the correct adaptive response,” she said. “And the restructuring of Penelope’s access to core systems was that purely a security measure, or were there command concerns about the degree of control a holographic officer held over the ship’s systems?”

The question was more precise than he had expected. “Both,” he said honestly. “The extraction attempt highlighted that we had allowed Penelope’s integration with the ship’s systems to develop organically over time, without periodically reviewing whether that integration remained appropriate. The restructuring addressed both the external security risk and the internal question of appropriate access levels.”

“Good,” Zobrella said simply. She looked at her notes. “Let’s discuss the Pendari.” She said it the way someone says a phrase they have been thinking about for a while and have now arrived at.

McCallister had been expecting it since she sat down. He picked up his mug, discovered it was empty, set it down again, and looked at her. “Would you like a top-up?” he offered.

“Yes, please,” she replied, watching as he refilled their glasses and passed her one back to her. Zobrella took the glass and took several sips. Placing her glass back down, Zobrella looked at her PADD. She set it down next to her glass. She then picked it up again. She appeared, for the first time since he had met her, to be deciding on an order of approach in a way that was visible. Then she began.

“Let me get this straight. A delegation of Pendari visited the Odyssey after you and Commander Flemen reached out to one of their embassies on the Norcadian homeworld,” she said.

McCallister nodded in between his own sips. “That’s correct.” He suppressed the smirk as he knew where she would be going with this.

“The official delegation, representing the Pendari government, was present for legitimate diplomatic purposes.” She paused again.

“Again, that’s correct, Captain.”

“And within that delegation was a smaller group of religious fanatics who held to a particular theological interpretation of an ancient Pendari faith.”

“Yup,” he said with a loose nod. The smirk was no longer contained.

“This group became convinced,” Zobrella continued as she looked between her notes and him, “that Commander Flemen was the reincarnation of their ancient holy messiah. The basis for this belief was his Lumerian forehead markings, which they believed matched ancient religious iconography described in their sacred texts.”

“The markings are quite distinctive,” McCallister said.

“I’m sure they are,” Zobrella agreed in an almost sarcastic tone. “The fanatics acted on this belief by abducting Commander Flemen from the Odyssey and transporting him to a monastery on a Pendari colony several light-years away from Norcadia.”

McCallister cleared his throat and placed his hand over his mouth to cover the grin. “Yes,” he finally said.

“At the monastery,” Zobrella said, trying to sound professional and serious as she looked at her PADD with the expression of someone reading something they have already read several times and are still finding remarkable, “the fanatics maintained Commander Flemen in a state of captivity that they characterised as a blessed sanctuary. They kept him bound to what their religion designates as a holy totem, to prevent their messiah from departing before he had fulfilled his sacred purpose.” She looked up briefly. “They treated him, according to then-Lieutenant Keli, with absolute reverence and devotion throughout.”

“Definitely throughout,” McCallister confirmed with a singular nod.

“The devotion expressed itself in several ways,” Zobrella continued, returning her attention to the PADD. “The attending Pendari were, uniformly, unclothed. This was their means of demonstrating pure, unadorned devotion to their messiah. They believed that nothing should be concealed and nothing should be held back and that their complete selves had to be presented to him without any barriers.” She read another line. “Commander Flemen was himself, by the time the Odyssey’s hazard team located him, wearing what Lieutenant Keli’s report describes as,” she paused very slightly, “’a covering of minimal theological significance.’”

McCallister was looking at the viewport as he pushed down the smirk. This was a deliberate choice on his part.

“A loincloth,” Zobrella clarified, without being asked.

“Yes,” he said, still looking away and doing his best to remain composed.

“When the hazard team located Commander Flemen,” Zobrella continued, “he was in the process of being serviced to by several Pendari attendants. The attendants were, as established, unclothed. They were,” she read from the report with the careful precision of someone extracting information from a document that had clearly given Lieutenant Keli some difficulty to write, “described as tall, physically imposing and heavily muscular. They were applying bathing oils to Commander Flemen in what the report characterises as considerable quantities and massaging it into him.” She set the PADD down. “Lieutenant Keli’s subsequent summary of the extraction notes that it was,” she picked the PADD up again, “’a notably slippery operation due to the volume of bathing oils present on and around the target.’”

She set the PADD down for the final time and looked at him.

McCallister had, by this point, abandoned the viewport and was looking at the table between them, a deliberate choice. He was maintaining his expression with the kind of focused effort that was, he suspected, itself visible to someone trained to read expressions. How he had been able to restore his composure was a miracle in itself. He remembered watching the live visual feed during the extraction and everyone on the bridge being quite stunned at the state Flemen was found in, including those attending to him.

“Doctor Slyvexs’s medical examination upon Commander Flemen’s return,” Zobrella continued, “found traces of several compounds in his bloodstream. The Pendari had introduced these substances, the report concludes, with the intention of making their messiah more receptive to their devotions.” She paused. “Due to Commander Flemen’s Lumerian biology, the compounds had no physiological effect. The report notes that he was, throughout his captivity, not physically aroused by the Pendari’s advances.” She looked at him steadily. “The report also notes that the Pendari had, during his captivity, tattooed religious iconography across significant portions of his body and had dyed his hair bright blonde.”

“To make him appear ready to light their way,” McCallister said with another singular nod and a suppressed smirk.

“Yes.”

“The tattoos required Doctor Slyvexs’s specific medical attention to remove,” Zobrella said.

“They did. The hair took somewhat longer to return to its natural colour. Something that was used in their dye made it harder for conventional restoration methods to be used.” He paused. “It took him a few weeks to get it back to normal, as I recall.”

Zobrella looked at him. “Commander Flemen maintained sufficient diplomatic composure throughout this experience to prevent the situation from becoming a formal political and religious crisis.”

“He did,” McCallister agreed.

“While bound to a holy totem.” She said it in the way of someone confirming a fact they wish to have on the record, but was greatly surprised by all of the facts. “Largely unclothed. Covered in bathing oil. With his hair dyed blonde.”

“Yes, with tattoos across his body.”

“In a monastery on a Pendari colony, surrounded by unclothed, muscular, devoted Pendari attendants.”

“Yes, that is an accurate summary of the situation.”

A pause that was slightly longer than her usual pauses. Something moved through Zobrella’s expression that she almost, almost did not suppress in time. It passed. “That,” she said carefully, “is a remarkable piece of work.”
McCallister allowed himself one corner of his mouth to rise, just the one, before he replied. “We felt the same way. Craigen somehow found a way to avoid insulting his Pendari hosts and to survive his ordeal, and went along with what they did to him. I’m sure many other officers may have struggled with that.”

Zobrella set down her PADD and looked at the ceiling for a brief moment, just a second, no more, before looking back at McCallister. When she spoke, there was something in her voice that had not been there before. Something that, in a less controlled person, might have been called a laugh. “In fifty years of diplomacy,” she said, “I have never read a report that used the word ‘slippery’ in that context.” She picked up her iced tea. “Commander Flemen is either exceptionally composed or exceptionally stubborn.” A pause. “I suspect both. Did you honestly believe he had much choice in the matter?”

McCallister scratched the back of his head. “The Pendari are great fighters; they are known for their significant strength, so I think Craigen picked the lesser of two evils. He could have either been snapped in half by one of the attendants or allowed them to commit their devotion to him that kept them happy while we attempted a rescue.”

“Do you not think he may have violated the Prime Directive by going along with this charade?”

Shaking his head, McCallister knew how funny this whole situation had been at the time, but when he reflected on it, he was certain there were no violations. “Not at all. We’re talking about a small group of fanatics; no more than forty-seven were in the monastery at the time. None of them was armed. They were walking around naked, believing that Craigen was their messiah from ancient texts that a vast majority of their civilisation did not believe in and hadn’t believed in for a long period of time.”

Zobrella raised an eyebrow like a Vulcan would when they were fascinated by something. “How did you deal with the political fallout afterwards with the Pendari government?”

“There was no fallout,” McCallister answered honestly. “They were ashamed by the whole thing, arrested the entire group who had taken Craigen and apologised profusely.”

“And how was Commander Flemen supported in coming to terms with his incarceration?”

“Craigen’s account of the whole thing made it sound like he had spent several days with a Nuvian masseuse on Risa or had visited the Hoobishan Baths on Trill. He said every one of his needs was tended to and even more so. His only complaints were being tied to the totem, wearing barely anything, and constantly being picked up by the larger male attendants before many of them bathed him in fragrant oils.” McCallister smirked a bit.

Zobrella shared the smirk now. “And you’re sure there were no repercussions afterwards? Nothing that wasn’t put in any official records, any off-the-record concerns?”

He looked at her. “Craigen did disclose something to me privately during breakfast one day.”

“Do go on,” She insisted.

“Some weeks after his rescue,” McCallister confirmed. “The compounds that the Pendari introduced into his bloodstream had no physiological effect, as Slyvexs confirmed. What she could not fully assess was the compounds’ effect on his subconscious. Craigen told me that the drugs did not make him physically aroused during his captivity, but that he experienced a series of extraordinarily vivid dreams in the weeks that followed, involving the Pendari attendants and, he said, some members of the Odyssey’s crew. Doctor Slyvexs and Counsellor Horin were certain it was an after-effect that would pass with time. He was able to manage those residual effects while on duty, which required a degree of concentration he found, at times, demanding.” He kept his tone entirely level throughout this. “He took only the time off that Slyvexs and Louwanna specifically required of him, and he returned to full duties the moment they cleared him.”

Zobrella looked at him for a long moment. “He trusted you enough to tell you something that is not in any formal report.”

“Yes,” McCallister said.

“Because you are his commanding officer.”

“And because he trusted me,” McCallister said. “Those aren’t always the same thing, but in this case I believe they were both true.”

She made a note. Not, he suspected, about the dreams. About the trust. He had been right about that.

“I want to observe something before we move on,” Zobrella said. “And I want you to understand that I am observing it rather than criticising it.” She set the PADD down. “This is the fourth or fifth time in the record of this tour that Commander Flemen’s personal qualities, his warmth, his composure, his capacity to connect with people under extraordinary circumstances, have been the primary mechanism by which a situation has been resolved. He negotiated at Quarra through personal understanding rather than a formal process. He resolved the Pendari situation through diplomatic composure maintained under conditions that would have destabilised almost any other officer. He confides in you in ways that fall outside formal reporting structures. And in each case, the outcome was positive.” She held his gaze. “What I am noting is not that any of these outcomes was wrong. I am noting what the outcomes depend on.”

McCallister nodded. He had expected this.

“Next on my list is the Lokirrim,” she said.

He told her. The envoy’s conviction that he was a hologram and how the diplomat had punched him. He explained that the envoy believed his blood was photonic-based, and it wasn’t until a Lokirrim medic confirmed it wasn’t that they were able to move on during their meeting. The particular expression on the envoy’s face when the evidence of his error ran down McCallister’s chin. He told her how he had used the envoy’s embarrassment as a means and what the resulting agreement had produced.

Zobrella listened. “The agreement has held,” she said when he had finished.

“Yes.”

“Then I have nothing further to add to what is already in the record,” she said. “It was unorthodox, but it was effective. The follow-up, as with the Uxali, falls appropriately to the Federation Diplomatic Corps and the DEI rather than to this ship.” She looked at him. “You handled a diplomatic incident that was not your fault and turned it to the Federation’s advantage. That is in the positive column.”

McCallister nodded; he didn’t say anything as he felt the echo of that punch on his jaw and his reaction on his knuckles.

Furthermore, he knew what was coming next. He took a breath.