The Valdore-class’s bridge was still gloomy, though her power levels had been restored; Kharth assumed this was to keep any Reman staff comfortable. But it meant only her footfalls announced her arrival as she padded onto the hushed chamber, bereft of crew while the ship remained docked in the refit yard, save the figure stood before the central chair.

‘Did you pick a name yet?’ she asked Relekor, her voice soft only to not tarnish the quiet.

‘Korsk won in the end,’ came the Romulan’s wry answer. ‘I’ll settle just for the Talon.’

‘Simple. Effective.’ Kharth advanced and rested her hands on the back of the command chair. ‘Commander Cortez says she’ll be fit for action in forty-eight hours. Plenty of time.’

Relekor hummed. ‘Maybe.’ But now he turned, and the determined amiability had faded from his eyes. ‘You disapproved of how I commanded before.’

‘I’m Endeavour’s Chief of Security. My first duty is to protect her crew.’

‘At the expense of the mission?’

‘I disagreed with the threat assessment.’ Rather than press this point, she tilted her head. ‘Why do you care?’

He hesitated. ‘If you’re going to be on my bridge, if you’re going to be running point with the Agarath Guard when the strike force comes, I need to know I can rely on you.’

‘You could tell I disagreed with you. Did I argue after you overruled me? Did I disobey?’ At his silence, she met his gaze. ‘I’ll get the job done. We’ll get the job done. But there’s nothing worse on a bridge than a lack of trust.’

A scoff. ‘Like that’ll happen with Korsk around.’

‘Korsk shouldn’t be on a bridge.’ She shrugged. ‘He’s not starship-trained. He’ll be at his best helping the ground protection teams.’

‘He won’t like that.’

‘Then get Hiran to back it up.’ Kharth frowned. ‘Truth be told, my problem isn’t with you on the bridge. Or really with Korsk on the bridge. It’s with both of you on the bridge.’

Relekor tilted his head. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Korsk is good at what he does, and he is absolutely driven to prioritise the people – the workers – of Agarath over anything else. I understand that and I respect that. But his background has also convinced him he can only make hard choices.’ Her eyes met Relekor’s. ‘And he makes you think that you have to be cynical to be effective.’

Relekor stepped back. ‘I hardly…’

‘You were barely a Centurion when you became commander of the Agarath Guard,’ she said bluntly. ‘You’re younger than me and you’re playing pretend. I don’t think that’s strictly a bad thing, I think it’s how we learn. But…’ Kharth gave a short laugh, directed more at herself than him. ‘I guess I’m saying he’s a bad influence on you.’

His shoulders sank, and at last he started to look his age, the bubble of confidence that made him bigger slowly deflating. ‘I know I’ve got a lot to prove.’ He shook his head. ‘I joined the Navy because nobody else was standing up for our people. Then everything went to hell and I was supposed to turn on them? And then there’s Korsk, who I…’

‘You respect him,’ she finished. ‘Even if he doesn’t respect you.’

Relekor shifted his feet. ‘I don’t think Korsk has to question himself when he looks in the mirror in the morning. He always fought for his people.’

‘Korsk took the crew of that Romulan destroyer into custody and tortured them for information. If he doesn’t question himself, he should.’

Silence hummed through the bridge as Relekor looked away, frowning. At length he said, ‘If Korsk is on the ground, he’ll have his people on the ground. I agree they can protect the facilities, the Husk. But I need people on our ships.’

Kharth nodded. ‘Then I’ll see what I can do.’

When she did just that, back on Endeavour and in Valance’s office, the first officer looked like she’d sucked on a lemon. ‘How am I supposed to give you more people, Lieutenant?’

‘I get we’ll be scraping the barrel,’ Kharth admitted, ‘but even a third-year cadet would be a damned asset to the Agarath Guard’s crewing problems right now.’

‘We don’t have any cadets.’

‘Relief officers! Ensigns!’ Kharth set her hands on her hips. ‘You should keep Juarez on Endeavour. He’s a good tactical officer. Let me stay with Relekor.’

Valance looked up from her desk, frowning, and Kharth hated that Valance knew how much that suggestion had hurt. To be away from Endeavour’s bridge in a battle, in a crisis, went against all her instincts and all of her training. But she knew where she was needed most.

What she didn’t say was that she was trusting Valance, not Juarez, with the ship’s safety in her absence.

‘What I can do,’ said Valance slowly, ‘is scale back the support teams on the ground. It will mean you don’t have very long to get them up-to-speed when they finish the relief efforts.’

Kharth nodded. ‘That’s fair. But if that’s the case…’ Her voice trailed off as she hesitated. ‘Then I want Thawn.’

Their eyes met. Valance drew a slow breath. ‘Thawn would be very good at quickly orienting herself in this sort of situation,’ she admitted.

‘Athaka is more than qualified to man the bridge when there’ll be reliable people around him.  You’ll have Arys back. Veldman at Science.’ It would be almost entirely deputies at bridge stations. ‘Look, Thawn’s good. She’s very good. And this is where she thrives. If anyone can make magic out of absolutely nothing, it’s her, and on those ships we’ve got close to nothing.’

Valance picked at the stylus for her PADD. ‘Can you two work together?’

That was the question she’d wanted to ask all along. ‘I’m not going to let a year-old rift get in the way of saving these people,’ Kharth said firmly. ‘And if Thawn has a problem she can do what she usually does: repress.’

‘Fine.’ Valance nodded. ‘I’ll give you Adupon and Harkon, too.’

‘Sounds like a bridge crew.’

Valance leaned back in her chair, meeting her gaze. ‘Then it’s your mission, Lieutenant. Keep the Agarath Guard effective in this battle. Because if we can’t, there’s no way Endeavour alone, or any of our other defences, can protect this system.’

* *

‘Come!’

He entered the diplomatic offices at the summons, hands clasped behind his back. Hale stood at her desk, looking like she was reading reports while ready to spring into action at any moment.

Rourke drew a slow breath. ‘We’ve had the answers back from Lieutenant Vakkis about the military officers from the rogue ship. Zaviss was right. It was the Yenaran family.’

Hale’s eyes turned skyward, and she sighed. ‘If you could have your Security Department continue to secure them…’

‘I don’t have the spare officers once the strike force arrives,’ he said frankly. ‘We’re going to need to work with the local assets.’

‘Local assets means letting Zaviss and Korsk fight over whether Upper District security restrains Upper District families, or whether former miners barricade an Upper District home.’

Rourke frowned, hands still clasped behind his back. ‘They’re going to have to tear down that divide some day,’ he pointed out. ‘Why not today, when there’s necessity and external threat to unite them? Why do it when people have plenty and all it does is drive a wedge between them? Starfleet won’t be here forever as the acceptable neutral party.’ At her silence, his head tilted. ‘Will we?’

Hale gave a vague gesture. ‘We can’t know the future. If you don’t have the resources, you don’t have the resources.’

His gaze remained fixed. ‘Graelin keeps telling me that you want Velorum as a Federation protectorate. And how that’ll keep Starfleet up to its neck in regional politics for a decade. I’ve been fobbing him off, but is he wrong?’

She looked surprised. ‘I didn’t think I’d been coy about any of this, Captain.’

Something twisted in his chest. ‘You mean you’re trying to position Agarath as an example to the rest of the Velorum Sector, so they lobby for us staying here. Instead of focusing on what’s best for them.’

‘Being a Federation protectorate is what’s best for them.’ Her bemusement remained. ‘Why are you taking against this? You know better than to pretend we’re above politics. Everything is politics. People’s lives are politics. I’m not throwing the workers away to make the Federation look good.’

He advanced on the desk. ‘We need to focus on the here and now, Sophia. There’s a strike force coming, and I need to make sure that the Yenaran family are contained and won’t use their influence to drive a knife in our backs mid-fight. I don’t really care who it pisses off.’

‘There has to be a community, an Agarath, that can sustain itself when we win the fight,’ Hale pointed out. ‘Or when we leave, this place will turn on itself, fractured between the former rulers and the former enslaved.’

‘You think keeping them apart is the answer? Acting like an artificial barrier they’ll learn to rely on?’

‘I think if this goes wrong, we’ll have Korsk and his miners tearing down the Upper District and a fresh civil war breaks out.’ Her expression twisted with further bewilderment. ‘I’d hoped you’d be more clear-eyed on this.’

‘I’d hoped you’d not be putting Federation expansionism ahead of what’s best!’

She took a step back, a mask of control slipping on. ‘That’s unfair. I do want what’s best for them. The difference between us is that you’re limiting your perspective.’

‘Limiting my…’

‘You’re a problem-solver, Matthew.’ Hale bit her lip. ‘It’s an asset of yours. It makes you a great investigator. A great combat captain. It makes you excellent in executing short-term projects. But you worry about the battle in front of you and not the strategy, and it makes you…’ She hesitated, but he was glaring by now, and she squared up. ‘It makes your perspective on the long-term somewhat lacking.’

On a different day, he might have heard more of the space between her lines, heard more of the best in what she was saying. But he’d already been called a poser that day, a boy from privilege playing at someone who knew hardship, trying to walk in shoes that couldn’t possibly fit him.

Rourke took a sharp breath. ‘You mean I’m a thug who beats up problems and sends them packing.’

‘That is not what I said.’ Hale actually sounded hurt, but that didn’t penetrate the buzzing in his ears. ‘This is you sliding back into that persona you find safe, don’t -’

‘My responsibility here is to shore up the Agarath System until the Velorum Sector can establish its independent government and choose its future. What that future looks like isn’t for me to decide, and it’s not for you to decide.’ His jaw was tight as he straightened, shoulders squaring, and he knew on some level he was doing exactly what she’d accused him of – closing himself off to be the bruiser everyone liked to see him as. ‘So we’ll fight off the strike force. Then we’ll receive further orders.’

‘From whom?’ Hale said softly, watching him. ‘The likes of Admiral Beckett, a man you patently dislike and disagree with?’

‘From whoever’s listened to the people of Velorum.’

Hale sighed, and glanced down at the reports on her desk. Shining on the front of one PADD was a map of the Husk’s habitation dome, the division between the Upper District and the Lower Streets clearly demarcated. Then she met his gaze. ‘Which people?’

He squared his shoulders. ‘Have Zaviss secure the family. They can deal with it in the short term. Then I encourage you to extract your operations from the Husk and return to Endeavour full-time. This is the place from which I can assure your safety, First Secretary.’

By now she looked either controlled or saddened, and he wasn’t sure if he was imagining the latter. At length, Sophia Hale inclined her head. ‘As you wish, Captain Rourke.’

A hundred people had said these sorts of things about him a hundred times, and more often than not he’d led them to think it in the first place. But when he left Hale’s office, blood pounded in his ears louder than he’d expected, and the echoes of her accusations thudded with it.