The recorded footage from the USS Merevek did not make great viewing before breakfast, but nobody could ever accuse Rosara Thawn of making positive life choices – especially herself. So she watched one of her kinsmen try to rip people apart while she pulled on her uniform, and decided she didn’t fancy eating on her own after all.

Reaching the Round Table, it seemed she wasn’t alone in that feeling. Endeavour’s senior staff had no fixed morning routine; Valance and Cortez would often eat together in their quarters, Kharth might be still shoving a pastry in her mouth as she reached the bridge, Lindgren and Arys often socialised with other junior officers in the lounge of a morning.

Today was different. Not only was it more busy than normal, with most of the senior staff present, but someone – she suspected Carraway – had laid out platters of breakfast foods across the bar. Not only did it avoid a queue at the replicator, but the atmosphere was at once more collegiate, casual, as officers grabbed plates of whatever they wanted from sausages and hash brown to fruit and pastries, and took to their seats.

Cortez and Sadek sat at the far end laughing over a stack of pancakes; it looked like the doctor was holding court with a tale of some anonymous crewmember’s mishaps in Sickbay. Valance and Airex had coffees and pastries the next table over, ostensibly in deep conversation but with the XO occasionally casting her partner an amused, affectionate, distracted glance. Lieutenants Song and Danjuma, husband and wife, breakfasted together just at the edges of the room’s hustle and bustle, alone but soaking in the proximity of people, while Carraway, Doctor Elvad, Lieutenant Turak and Commander Ra-Talorei looked engrossed in their booth in a discussion of what sounded like some philosophical or ethical hypothetical. Despite being half a hundred thousand light-years from home, the buzz was both collegial and excitable, even with the thrumming thread of tension plucked whenever anyone acknowledged just how dangerous this frontier was.

They knew they were in the lion’s den, and that was nothing so long as they were together.

Lindgren had occupied one of the booths with Beckett and Arys and gestured towards her, but while Thawn returned the wave, she did not head over. A stop at the bar got her a warm, soothing tea and a breakfast roll, but then she proceeded to the tall table where Kharth sat alone, shovelling in scrambled eggs.

‘Commander – did you watch the video?’

Kharth frowned at the interruption and swallowed quickly. ‘Good morning to you too, Thawn.’

‘Good morning, Commander, ma’am – did you?’

For a moment she looked like she might pick a row. Then she wiped her mouth with a napkin and sighed. ‘The Merevek? I’m Chief of Security. Of course I watched it. And I read all the briefing packages ahead of us coming here, as I’m sure you did. Neither of us were born yesterday, Thawn.’

‘What protocols do you have in place?’

‘The same applying to every ship,’ Kharth said slowly. ‘That you, and Rhade, and Turak, and T’Kalla, and any of the rest of the dozen or so telepaths of varying strength in the crew should report if you feel anything out of sorts. But we’re in deep space right now, Thawn, we’re nowhere near any blood dilithium.’

Thawn narrowed her eyes. ‘Don’t these protocols apply to you too?’ As Kharth pursed her lips, she pressed on. ‘I don’t think now’s the time to be cagey or awkward about Romulan-Vulcan history -’

‘Because otherwise you’d treat things with delicacy,’ drawled Saeihr Kharth, master diplomat. ‘Truthfully, Thawn, Romulan telepathy is latent at best, and I’ve personally never produced so much as a blip on any psionic energy readers. I’ve studied the reports from the Merevek and the protocols and of course they apply to me, but I’m not worried.’ She took a gulp of black coffee and peered at her. ‘You’re worried.’

‘I’m probably the most powerful telepath aboard.’ Thawn tossed her hair back like this wasn’t a brag – and under the circumstances, it was not. ‘With a recent history of exposure to psionic energy manipulation under duress. Of course I’m worried.’ It was easier to be blunt in a casual sort of way, especially with Kharth. The Romulan responded better to it and they had always had a mixed relationship anyway. ‘I was actually coming to ask if you needed help.’

Kharth’s eyes widened with a millimetre of surprise. ‘Help in monitoring the crew…’

‘I grew up in an environment where using telepathy was as normal as breathing, and moved as a teenager to a culture where reading someone’s mind was suddenly one of the most invasive things I could possibly do to a person. I have excellent telepathic discipline, and if you do begin to experience adverse effects from this… substance… then I imagine you don’t want to start with Lieutenant Turak for support.’

The two women stared at each other for a long moment, before yet again Kharth had a sip of her coffee. ‘Alright, Thawn,’ she said after a heartbeat. ‘If something starts to go sideways in my brain, I’ll turn to you on how to shut it out.’

‘I would actually,’ Thawn pressed, ‘recommend we begin some exercises before anything happens.’

Kharth put her mug down deliberately. ‘Are you offering this to any of the others?’

‘I expect everyone else has more practice in the fundamentals of telepathic discipline,’ Thawn said haughtily. ‘And it’s in everyone’s best interests for the Chief of Security to be as coherent and controlled as possible.’

‘Comparatively, you mean,’ Kharth said wryly. ‘Alright, we’ll schedule something in.’

‘Tonight,’ Thawn pressed.

Kharth looked her up and down. ‘Sure. And this isn’t about you wanting to focus on someone else’s control so you don’t have to worry about your own. Sure.’

‘Considering I expect your technique to manage this would be a return to the punching bag, I’m not sure you’re in a position to throw stones. Good morning, Commander.’

Satisfied enough – because she didn’t particularly want to spend time with Kharth – Thawn turned, a pastry from the bar, and headed for the booth her friends were at.

‘That looked important,’ said Arys rather earnestly as she sat.

‘That’s only because people don’t talk to Kharth unless they have to,’ Beckett pointed out.

Lindgren elbowed him lightly. ‘I see being bumped up to senior staff hasn’t improved your manners.’

‘Surely I can get away with more right now?’ He grinned toothily. ‘Or what’s the point?’

‘Enjoy being in here while we let you,’ Thawn said crisply. ‘The captain was generous to give you access in the first place, considering your position is only temporary.’

‘Oh, I get first eyes on almost every missive and report from the DEI and every starship in the Gradin Belt in comms range, and I had to sign about a billion new vetting forms to bump my clearance up – but being let into the fancy lounge is the real intrusion?’

She tilted her nose up. ‘For my peace of mind, yes.’

‘Don’t mind her,’ said Lindgren. ‘We’re all jealous you get to play with the SOC.’

Arys’s eyes widened. ‘It’s a hugely sophisticated piece of equipment and analysis software for all Starfleet operations in the quadrant…’

‘And it puts on a hell of a light show when I flick between the different display settings; we could have a party down there,’ Beckett agreed with an amiable sip of tea.

‘I’d say he’s trying to provoke you,’ Thawn said drily to Arys, ‘but I think he’s serious.’

Beckett met her gaze with the ghost of a smile at his lips. ‘I’m always serious.’

The main door slid open behind her, and it was Lindgren who glanced up before her expression set in a very deliberate way. ‘They’re spending more time together,’ she observed as Thawn noticed Rosewood and Rhade heading to the bar.

She tried to not make an irritable noise. ‘They work out together in the mornings.’

‘That,’ said Beckett, ‘sounds like way too much testosterone before breakfast.’

‘I leave them to it,’ Thawn agreed, then leaned in towards him. ‘So our orders are to patrol, but what from the reports do you think is going to be in our path?’

It was a transparent manipulation to get off the topic of Adamant Rhade and to get Beckett to enthuse about his new job. But it worked, because Nate Beckett was nothing if not enamoured with all of the information and responsibility at his fingertips.

‘I was going to ask the captain,’ he eventually said after waxing lyrical about Voyager’s encounter with the so-called telepathic pitcher plant. ‘Do you think I should change uniform? I know this is only temporary, but I could go into gold or into red…’

Arys frowned. ‘You’ve not been transferred fully out of the sciences.’

‘You’re right,’ sighed Beckett. ‘And the blue brings out my eyes, but I’d look real smart in red. But there’s a chance Valance will insist I go into gold, and I’ll look really washed-out in gold -’

He was cut off by the lights changing, the gentle gleam from the lamps overhead augmented by a flash of amber from the strips beside them, and for one ridiculous moment Thawn thought Beckett had summoned a colour change with his words. Then the captain’s voice broke through comms, ushering in a starker reality.

‘Yellow alert. Alpha shift to stations.’

Beckett gaped as the other three stood. ‘What’s my station in this situation?’

‘You could fight Commander Airex for the fancy chair,’ Thawn pointed out as she adjusted her uniform collar, and though he flapped, he followed as they headed with the others for the bridge.

Rourke was already in the centre seat, and Thawn suspected he’d been breakfasting in his ready room. He nodded as they arrived and set to their stations. ‘We picked up a distress call from a nearby ship, automated. Scans suggest it’s a freighter, native to the Delta Quadrant but we don’t recognise the design.’

Lindgren was already tapping controls at her console as she sat down. ‘Universal translator suggests the call was made in Antarian,’ she said, but sounded more like she was reading than fully understanding.

‘Oh!’ Beckett had stopped near the third command chair, hovering with uncertainty even though Airex had not followed them up. ‘The Antarians mediated some of the big historic treaties in the region and their language is a pretty common lingua franca because of it. So that, uh, doesn’t necessarily mean much.’

Rourke raised his eyebrows at him. ‘Thank you, Nate. Now sit your arse down.’

‘Yessir.’ Beckett perched on the tertiary chair like it might bite him or like he wanted to put his feet up and wasn’t sure which would win.

‘We’re coming up on the freighter,’ Arys reported crisply. ‘Dropping out of warp.’

‘On screen,’ Rourke instructed.

Thawn hit the control to change the viewscreen just as the stars stopped streaming in front of them, and the display was filled with the sight of a drifting, derelict freighter barely bigger than one of Endeavour’s runabouts. While plasma exhaust hissed from a vent at too high a rate,  the hull was intact, with no signs of scoring. Yet there the ship hung – dead, listing, unbearably still though Thawn could see no reason why, and she tensed as her eyes dragged over the display to find some, any explanation, and came up short.

‘They’re down to emergency power,’ Danjuma reported from Science, cutting through Thawn’s reverie. ‘No sign of external damage, but most of their systems are down except for life support, and it looks as if they suffered a major overload of their EPS conduits.’

‘They weren’t attacked,’ mused Valance. ‘Mismanagement of the engines?’

Rourke shrugged at the theorising and looked to Science. ‘Life-signs?’

Danjuma made a small, frustrated sound. ‘Their radiation shielding is damaged; I don’t know how dangerous it is aboard, but there’s too much theta radiation masking our sensors on the interior.’

‘Thawn, try to boost our sensors. Elsa, any luck hailing them?’

‘I’ve tried on a few frequencies; no response. The distress call is definitely automated, and it just says they’ve experienced engine trouble and are drifting.’ Lindgren winced. ‘It started a day ago.’

Valance looked back at Danjuma. ‘Assess how bad the radiation is; we may need to send over an away team.’

Danjuma hesitated. ‘I, uh, once Lieutenant Thawn’s reallocated the power…’

Valance turned. ‘Lieutenant Thawn?’

It took that sharp address for her to snap her eyes away from the viewscreen, and Thawn scowled at her controls. ‘Aye – yes, Commander. Sorry, Commander. Boosting power to the main sensors.’ Her cheeks flushed as her fingers ran over the console.

A moment later there was a beep at Science. ‘I still can’t be confident that if there are life-signs, sensors can read them,’ Danjuma admitted, ‘but radiation is within exposure guidelines with anti-rad medication. We can beam over, but only to sections where the interference is lowest.’

Rourke nodded and straightened up. ‘Commander Valance, get an away team down to sickbay and then beam over. See what the situation is, help these people if possible, and find out what happened either way.’

Valance nodded and stood. ‘Kharth, Thawn, you’re with me. I’ll have Cortez meet us in sickbay and bring a medical officer, too.’

The other two women hopped to their feet, surrendering stations to the relief officers and following the XO to the turbolift. It wasn’t until the doors were shut and they were on their way before Valance looked at Thawn. ‘Are you still with us, Lieutenant?’

Thawn flushed again. ‘Sorry, Commander. It’s just – it’s very alien out here. The ship design isn’t that odd, but it’s still something I’ve never seen before, built along lines I’ve never seen before. The language of the distress call isn’t one I’ve heard before. It’s all very minor, but that’s almost what makes it more unsettling. We really are somewhere completely untouched by any cultural influence we recognise.’

Valance nodded at that, settling. ‘Agreed. But these are still people who sent out a distress call, and we’re Starfleet. We answer those.’

‘Even if,’ Kharth mused as the turbolift rushed on, ‘we’re in a place where the stars are wrong.’