‘Tak!’

The office for Communications wasn’t very big, because neither was the department. But Takahashi had hoped he could come in here to get away from the others, and now he realised all he’d done was create a space where he could be cornered as Black burst in.

‘Come on, in, Helena. Sit down. Have some tea. Throw it in my face.’ He gave a big wave of the hand.

She set her hands on her hips. ‘What were you pulling back there in the meeting?’

‘Me?’ He made a face. ‘I wasn’t pulling anything.’

‘The captain wanted ideas and you were making jokes.’

‘The captain wanted ideas and you were just naysaying,’ he pointed out. ‘Also, have we met?’

‘Normally you’re lightening the mood. Relieving tension. When did you stop bothering to care if you were helping or hurting?’

He’d been apprehensive when she came in. Now he was just confused, getting to his feet to look her in the eye. ‘Why are you mad at me about that meeting? You’re the one who doesn’t want to hit the depot.’

Black ground her teeth together. ‘Hawthorne is an ideas guy, but he’s not a decisions guy. Antar isn’t going to sway anyone. West doesn’t call the captain out in public.’

‘So why aren’t you yelling at any of them?’

‘Because Nat listens to you, because the others listen to you, and all you’ve been doing is tossing it away to make bad jokes!’

Takahashi tilted his head. ‘Are you mad at me because I didn’t agree with you?’

‘I’m mad at you because you pretend like you don’t have an opinion, and you do have an opinion.’

‘Do I, now.’ Despite the tension in him, he gave a sunny smile. ‘Carry on, I really want to know what I think.’

‘You don’t like the idea of this attack. You don’t like the risk of it. And you don’t like coming up with inventive ways to kill people.’

‘If that’s so, I’m hardly going to be reassured by waiting on another four starships so we can kill people boringly but efficiently.’

‘Damn it, Tak!’ Black snapped. ‘How come you’re only ready to act like you care about things when it screws other people over?’

That wasn’t the accusation he’d expected. Takahashi frowned. ‘Now, now, Helena. Don’t hold back. Tell me how you really feel.’

Her expression tensed, anger coiling like a spring. ‘I know you didn’t want to come back. But it’s been six months. Isn’t it about time you accepted you’re in a uniform, on a war-front, on a warship? You’re not Nat’s sidekick, you’re senior staff.’

Takahashi made a noise like a computer error notification. ‘That’s not it; that’s not what you’re really mad about.’

Black took a step forward. ‘Alright, then, Tak; show some responsibility. What am I mad about?’ Their gazes locked, and now he hesitated. She shook her head. ‘At least if you can’t even say it, maybe you do feel bad about it.’

‘About what?’

‘About hanging everyone else out to dry on Kruger six years ago!’

It was safer, Takahashi thought, to give an exaggeratedly goofy shrug at that. Maybe Black would kill him, but she wouldn’t get to the heart of things. ‘You don’t think I hung everyone else out to dry. You think I hung you out to dry.’

‘I don’t -’

‘You think I was selfish and didn’t think about consequences, and you blame me. You blame me for doing what you know was the right thing, and you’re ignoring that I threw my career away over it, and lost a hell of a lot of other things by doing what I did -’

‘We could have brought in the Matsuuro foreman, we could have sent people to prison, but you chose to kick off instead and the people really responsible got away -’

‘- you have to paint me as this irresponsible jackass who torpedoed your career, because otherwise you have to accept your father’s a sack of shit who used Kruger as an excuse to control you.’

Her eyes flashed. ‘How about,’ said Black in a low, careful voice, ‘we don’t trade barbs about family.’

He paused. Then he clicked his tongue. ‘Fair enough. But you’re still chewing me out about today because you’re mad at me about things that happened half a decade ago.’

‘I’m chewing you out because you pretend to be above it all, outside of it all, until it suits you. You don’t get your hands dirty with politics or the shipboard chain of command or the sticky choices unless you want to. And I am sick of you being opt-in and opt-out, especially when you could have had my back in there!’ Black jerked a thumb over her shoulder. ‘And maybe, maybe Nat would have listened if both of us told her this was a bad idea.’

‘You know as well as I do that Nat listens only when she goddamn wants to listen,’ he pointed out. ‘But you’re not going to go yell at Nat, are you?’

‘Stop trying to wriggle this conversation -’

‘I made dumb jokes around that table because everyone was at each other’s throats. And I didn’t come up with bright ideas because I didn’t have any bright ideas. You might have noticed that I’m better at smoke and mirrors and misdirection than I am a master damned strategist.’

‘Then how about you listen to me,’ said Black, ‘and back me up? Take some responsibility as a major part of senior staff?’

He made a dismissive noise. ‘I’m the Communications Officer. I’m basically the tea boy -’

‘You are the third officer of this starship, Lieutenant Takahashi; you are a Starfleet officer with a decade’s experience in the uniform and more time clocked on these frontiers than anyone bar Nat herself. And I am sick and tired of you drawing our attention away from this with jokes to -’

Inspiration came at odd times. Sometimes it was from something irrelevant connecting dots once a million miles apart. Sometimes it was from somebody else pointing out a link, even without realising it.

Sometimes inspiration came because, ironically, Takahashi needed another distraction.

‘That’s it,’ he snapped, hands coming up to forestall Black’s outrage. ‘We draw their attention away.’

She stopped. ‘Visibility might be really terrible in this system. But I don’t think we have the resources on this one ship to give those scouts a non-existent target that’ll draw them away from the station.’

‘You’re right,’ said Takahashi, moving around Black to head for the door. ‘But we don’t only have one ship, do we?’