When the King Arthur didn’t return to Regier IV at the expected time, standard protocol was followed. A priority communication was sent out. A sensor sweep conducted. And they waited.

Normally, one of their auxiliary craft might have been dispatched a light-year or so to do a quick survey further out and check for trouble. But with no auxiliary craft to spare, this wasn’t done.

An hour later, Captain Matt Rourke looked from his command chair on the bridge over to the comms station. ‘Anything?’ he asked Lieutenant Lindgren.

She’d been so dour and quiet this past month. Now the expression of sincere concern folded her brow with more feeling than he’d seen in a while. ‘Nothing, sir. No response to hails, no distress call.’

At Science, Lieutenant Beckett cleared his throat. ‘Nothing on long-range sensors, sir.’ He paused. ‘Is it weird if I say…’

But his voice trailed off, and Rourke twisted to look up. ‘Nate?’

Beckett winced like he regretted speaking. ‘I had a really bad feeling last night.’ More eyes fell on him, and he squirmed again. ‘I’m not saying it meant something, but I – I just think we should take it seriously that the away team’s not back yet.’

At Rourke’s right, Valance shifted. ‘We’re in a volatile area,’ she said quietly. ‘And there’s nothing urgent about our current mission.’

And, Rourke thought without judgement, your partner’s in the missing away team. But so was his oldest friend. So were friends of many of the bridge crew. They were none of them without bias.

He looked to Arys. ‘Signal the auxiliary craft to pull back to conduct operations in proximity to Regier IV, and I want the Uther Pendragon back aboard.’ Then to Beckett. ‘And signal the science teams to conclude non-essential operations and return to Endeavour. We can leave some teams on the surface or in the system, but I don’t want us scattered to the four winds. Anyone that can’t be back aboard in ten can carry on their duty.’

As expected, nine minutes later he had Lieutenants Turak and Danjuma on the bridge, and for the first time they seemed unified in purpose.

‘Captain, you can’t possibly…’

‘Captain, I must protest…’

Rourke lifted a hand and both of them fell silent, Danjuma quickly cowed and Turak too disciplined to push against a commanding officer. ‘Some of our people are missing,’ he said, ‘and we’re going to look for them. Scoping out the Regier system has just dropped lower on your priority list than finding the King Arthur.’

Turak’s brow furrowed. ‘It is illogical to halt ship-wide operations for the mild tardiness of five officers.’

Danjuma sucked her teeth. ‘In the Neutral Zone? Maybe not so illogical.’ She headed for Science, Beckett happily stepping back to surrender the console to the astrophysicist – though still lurking – and she ran her hands across the console. ‘Do we have anything yet, sir?’

‘No. I want you to pick up the trail.’

They were underway a short time later, all three science officers by then gathered around the console. Soon Endeavour was heading at top speed for where the King Arthur had gone to meet the convoy in distress.

But after an hour, Danjuma made another small, dissatisfied noise. ‘I’m really not picking anything up on long-range sensors, Captain.’

‘What about the warp trail of the convoy?’ Beckett offered. ‘We’ve got scans of some of the specific ships if it’s the same Fenris Rangers we bumped into in January.’

‘Get me the records and I’ll sweep for them?’

That took another half-hour, Endeavour thundering between the stars as the two blue-shirts worked. Rourke could almost feel Valance humming beside him with tension, stock-still and stoic in the eyes of anyone who didn’t know her very well.

At length, Danjuma sighed. ‘Okay, so I am picking up the warp trails of the convoy. They left the spot where they met with the King Arthur maybe eighteen hours ago. But there’s… sir, there’s just no sign of the King Arthur from there.’

Rourke frowned. ‘Is there a sign of anything else?’

‘There are signs of lots of things,’ she said with a shrug. ‘It’s very difficult to establish anything after this time without looking for something specific. It’s one thing to identify a warp signal we already have on record. It’s another to identify, say, the warp signal from a completely unknown ship compared to background stellar radiation.’

He would have killed, Rourke thought, to have Thawn here so he could help find Thawn.

Turak approached the science post. ‘But if we can detect signs of the convoy leaving, and no signs of the King Arthur going to warp, we should explore the possibility that they did not go to warp at all.’

‘I’m not picking them up on sensors at the meeting point,’ said Danjuma. ‘But we’re hours away, still.’

Beckett wrung his hands together. ‘If something had happened to them, would we detect it?’

She made a face. ‘Surely that depends on what happened?’

‘Let us proceed logically,’ said Turak. ‘For the moment, let us assume our sensor readings are correct. We know they are not there. We know they have not gone to warp. Which means they have either been destroyed, or they have travelled to drop off our sensors by some means other than their warp drive.’

‘I don’t get what that could mean,’ said Beckett, sucking his teeth, ‘so let’s look at “destroyed,” huh? Any sign of that?’

‘I’d be detecting that,’ Danjuma said with certainty. ‘The thing is that warp cores don’t disappear. They emit power signatures or they leave very obvious signs of debris and detonation.’

They were still hours out from this meeting point, Rourke thought, and he could only marvel at the technology and scientific expertise which let her speak with such confidence.

Valance was on her feet by now, turned to the crowded console on the right side of the bridge. ‘Which means the ship is elsewhere. Are there any planets nearby? Phenomena?’

‘Not that they could have reached without going to warp.’ Danjuma shrugged.

‘In which case,’ said Turak levelly, ‘I surmise they were taken aboard another ship.’ Eyes turned on him, and he tilted his head. ‘Thus they travelled at warp speed not under their own power, but the power of a ship we either have or have not detected.’

Danjuma bit her lip. ‘None of the ships in the convoy seem big enough to have even docked with the King Arthur and build a warp field big enough for both.’

‘So there may be another ship. One whose warp signature we have not identified.’

Beckett lifted his hands. ‘This is getting wildly into the world of guessing,’ he pointed out.

Turak arched an eyebrow. ‘My logic is clear, Lieutenant. The alternative is that our sensor readings are inadequate or inaccurate.’

‘You’re saying they got abducted or for some reason just hitched a ride on another ship. A starship big enough to take them aboard.’

Valance stood at the top of the science console, reading Danjuma’s display upside-down. ‘What about this nebula?’

Danjuma shrugged. ‘It could obscure our sensors at this range. But I’d expect we’d pick up the warp signature of the King Arthur entering it in the first place. I think Lieutenant Turak’s right – it’s probably that our sensors aren’t giving us enough of the picture at this range.’

‘I believe our sensors are perfectly adequate,’ Turak asserted. ‘I simply leave space for variables. But we must act on what we know.’

‘Not yet,’ Valance pointed out. ‘We have to get there first anyway.’

Rourke twisted in the chair. ‘Tell me about this nebula.’

There was a pause as Danjuma worked. ‘It’s class-11. Primarily oxygen and argon. I’m picking up traces of theta-xenon.’ Another pause, and she cocked her head. ‘Okay, that’s weird. I’m also picking up gravimetric distortions deeper in.’

‘What might that mean?’

She made a face again. ‘It’s hard to tell from this distance.’ Over her shoulder, Turak read the display and turned away with a frown, moving to an auxiliary console.

Rourke looked at his disparate science team, his tense XO, and drew a sharp breath. ‘We’ll proceed to the last known site of the King Arthur. Investigate and scan. And take it from there.’ He looked at their expressions, felt the tension radiate off the rest of the bridge crew. ‘I know the idea of waiting is difficult. But we have to be patient, and then we’ll have more information. Then we know to help. Anything else is tying ourselves in -’

‘Captain.’ Tense eyes fell on Lieutenant Turak, guileless at one of the auxiliary science consoles. He looked up as if their gazes were an invitation for him to speak on. ‘Your crew has encountered something akin to this before.’

‘Akin to a missing runabout,’ Valance pressed in a rather flat tone that belied her impatience.

‘Akin to the gravimetric distortions of this nebula. Even from this distance, the readings are clear.’ Turak looked at them all. ‘We are detecting a phenomenon comparable to what was experienced when the USS Endeavour NCC-87507 was trapped in an anomaly a year ago, and comparable to what was detected in the wake of the destruction of the station Epsilon-7 in the Azure Nebula.’

Valance’s eyes locked with Rourke’s, and he was on his feet in an instant. ‘Signal Lieutenant Adupon to get us every ounce of speed out of the warp core,’ he growled. ‘And take us to red alert.’