When Kharth paused at the turbolift door, Valance realised what had happened. The captain stood, trying her best to keep her body language casual, but the bridge crew was too accustomed to their CO doing nothing accidentally, and all eyes turned on her. That did seem to slightly help, at least, as Kharth – attention now off her – padded slowly towards the command chairs. Valance looked back to the bridge crew. ‘As you were.’

‘How far from the nebula are we?’ Kharth asked in a low voice as if this was the real issue.

‘About an hour.’ Valance’s gaze flickered from her XO to the right-hand command chair, and she paused, unsure how to broach this subject. ‘You’ve sat up here before.’

‘In the central chair,’ Kharth blurted transparently. ‘Temporarily.’

Valance narrowed her eyes. ‘Commander, you led boarding parties at Azure, the rescue team at Tagrador, secessionist forces at the Battle of Agarath. You can sit at your new post.’

She had not consciously tried to dare her XO to take the first officer’s chair for the first time. But it was a reminder of the tension between the two women and made clear to Valance a chain she could yank if she needed, as Kharth’s expression steeled and she sat as if it were no major issue.

That was not a tactic she could use too often, Valance thought, lest it backfire. ‘We still have some personnel problems,’ she said in a low voice as she took the central chair. ‘Rourke was telling me before we went.’

‘Our junior crewmembers are still traumatised?’ Kharth wondered aloud, eyebrows raised.

‘That,’ Valance allowed. ‘And T’Varel has been offered a teaching post. Advanced Engineering Courses for young officers needed to fill gaps in rosters across the fleet.’

‘Because the experienced officers are dead.’ Kharth sighed, scrubbing her face with her hand. ‘Can’t you get Riggs back?’

‘Maybe,’ said Valance. ‘But someone has to run things at Gateway. And this leads to the other thing Rourke said.’ She frowned at nothing in particular, then glanced around to ensure the bridge crew weren’t listening. ‘Our command staff has a, how did he put it? A people problem.’

Kharth’s expression didn’t change for a moment. Then she said, ‘But we’re so warm and welcoming. Like how you just settled your new XO by belittling her anxieties.’

Only Kharth would admit to anxieties just to score points. Valance’s expression pinched. ‘He said he wasn’t too worried about it at first, but when we have a lot of young crew who will need mentoring, it suits to have a lot of different approaches.’

‘You mean you coolly inspire, and I put the fear of the Gods in them, but neither of us are very good at kissing their boo-boos better. Isn’t this what we have Lindgren for?’

‘She’s far too junior,’ Valance pointed out. ‘But he did say something else interesting: that Logan’s been essential.’

Whenever she mentioned their new security chief, Kharth looked like she was about to chew glass. ‘Essential.’

‘Working with Carraway and the counselling sessions. Putting in the hours with a lot of junior officers. Apparently, everyone looks up to him. I suppose it helps to have him around as a clear sign that you can get better after the Borg.’ Valance worked her jaw. ‘This does mean that our most socially considerate officer is the xB.’

‘That’s damning,’ Kharth drawled. ‘So, what, we should get a new Chief Engineer who’s nice?’ She looked like she heard her words the moment she uttered them, heard the echo of their last Chief Engineer, and, with a wince, waved a dismissive hand. ‘I’ll talk to T’Varel.’

‘Is that supposed to keep her aboard?’ Valance said. ‘Rourke suggested we beef up our watch officers. Consider a new permanent counsellor. And he wants us to get someone into the Intelligence post before we go on more deep-space assignments to liaise with Harrian and assess local data from the SOC.’

Kharth shrugged. ‘Put Beckett back in the job.’

‘He’s… very green.’

‘Valance, everyone’s green now,’ Kharth pointed out. ‘We don’t need someone to be a super-spook; we need someone who can look at a load of info from our own work and external reports, sift through it to find what’s relevant, and weigh it against our operational needs. He did that in the Delta Quadrant. Hells, he did that last time we went out. The kid’s good. Never tell him I said that.’

Valance’s gaze flickered from Kharth to the front of the bridge, where Thawn sat next to Lindgren at the forward consoles. ‘I’ll consider it. We don’t need to make decisions now.’

‘We just need to decide if we want a new, cuddlier command officer or if we’re bringing Logan deeper into the fold when for every officer who’ll find him inspiring, another will hate him on sight,’ Kharth sighed. ‘I preferred it when all I had to do was consider what needed blowing up.’

It was not worth it to challenge her XO on her own self-deprecating comments, which in some ways bolstered Rourke’s criticisms. Regardless, Valance thought, they were in the field anew. Their crew were recovering from the trauma of Frontier Day, settling into this new form before these new horizons. After a solid week of harassing Rourke, she had what she wanted: they were on the move again.

‘We’re approaching the Synnef Nebula,’ called Lindgren less than an hour later.

‘On screen,’ said Valance, standing as if that would give her a better view. The screen at once filled with the kaleidoscope of golds and purples of the phenomenon, the bright-coloured clouds of space that blocked sight of any horizon and threatened all manner of storms within their depths. It was as if a child’s splash art had spattered primary colours across the cosmos and added mystery and threat to simple paint.

‘Our sensor readings pierce a half-light-year deeper than they did aboard the Vigilance,’ reported Thawn before Valance even needed to ask. ‘But our coverage is still slim.’

‘Mister Logan,’ called Valance. ‘Drop a buoy here. We’re going to head deeper into the nebula. Airex, calibrate our sensors to keep the buoy on our scans even through the interference. That’s our first litmus test.’

Airex nodded, hands darting across the controls. ‘I suggest we use our bussard scoops to intake a sample of nebula gases for analysis once we’re a light-year in.’

‘Get it done,’ Valance agreed.

‘Buoy deployed,’ Logan reported. ‘All we gotta do now is hope nobody makes off with it.’

‘Hells,’ Kharth hissed as Endeavour surged forward, deeper into the expanse of the fog cloud that blocked Starfleet’s vision of a whole corner of the sector.

It was more peaceful than Valance had expected. Over hours, they slid between the tendrils of gases, surging into the depths of Synnef. Soon enough, Thawn and Airex were at the aft of the bridge by one of the larger mission control displays, analysing the readings and arguing over sensor calibrations.

Late into the shift, Logan stepped away from Tactical to lean against the railing and look at the command chair. ‘This is going to be one of those “burning the midnight oil at both ends” kind of days, huh?’

Valance looked to Thawn and Airex and sighed. ‘I’m not sure I could stop them if I tried.’

‘Permission to run some minor drills below decks, then? A lot of the crew have nothing to do except keep the ship working through the nebula. Getting them moving, reminding them they can, for instance, report to stations quickly if needed, might even them out a bit.’ Logan’s lips twisted. ‘Kids are antsy.’

Why didn’t I think of that? Valance thought, then nodded. ‘Good thinking, Commander. Get it done.’

‘And when that’s completed,’ Logan said, raising his voice to address the rest of the bridge crew as he headed for the turbolift, ‘cards in at the Round Table?’

Valance looked at Kharth once the lift doors had shut. ‘He’s good,’ she murmured.

Kharth scowled. ‘I know,’ she said, and Valance chose to not interrogate that contradiction.

She did stop by for a card game. Just the one, because even if it was with the senior staff, some of whom she’d known for years, she was still the captain. Kharth lingered longer, at least, reminding Valance that for all of her XO’s flaws, she was part of the backbone of the ship, backbone of the crew. Her bark was integral to keeping things moving, and everyone knew it was worse than her bite – though they respected that, too.

Valance tried to start the next day by putting the pastries out herself for the morning briefing. It wasn’t the same without Carraway’s thoughtful arrangement, and when she asked Nestari to see to it, her yeoman looked at her like she’d asked her to lick mud.

‘I have a bachelor’s in management,’ Nestari pointed out. ‘I read and process your classified reports. You want me to be the tea lady? Ma’am?’ She did it. But it was plainly resented.

Why, Valance wondered, is the only person on the ship not a little bit intimidated by me, my own yeoman?

At 1100 hours, they lost contact with the buoy. Airex reported it first with mild curiosity, then, twenty minutes later, Thawn confirmed they couldn’t re-establish contact with rather more severity.

Valance rubbed her brow. ‘Lindgren, what does this mean for navigation?’

‘We’ve got the most sophisticated navigation systems in the quadrant,’ Lindgren said confidently. ‘If we drop another buoy here, we can work our way back.’

‘Recommend we do so,’ said Thawn with a hint of urgency. ‘Captain, I’m worried we could get turned around in here. The sensor interference is… unpredictable.’

Airex lifted his hands. ‘One step at a time, Thawn. Lindgren is right; we work our way back methodically, we’ll be fine. Our sensor calibrations are getting better, not worse.’

Another twenty minutes later, Thawn said, ‘We’ve lost the second buoy on sensors.’

Kharth sat up. ‘Are you telling me we’re now lost in the damned nebula?’

‘I can fix this,’ said Lindgren. ‘I set a heading, and we stick to it.’

‘Depending on the heading,’ Thawn said tartly, ‘that could be eighteen hours back the way we came or several days as you take us through the longest route possible to the edge.’

Logan turned on his chair and leaned on the railing. ‘Can’t we just reverse every single manoeuvre recorded in the ship’s systems?’

Airex sighed. ‘Theoretically. But there are courses and flows to this nebula that buffet and affect the ship. If we have a specific heading, we or the systems can compensate to stay on course, but otherwise, there’s no guarantee a certain course change with a certain amount of power in the manoeuvring thrusters will actually send us in the same direction.’

‘So we are lost,’ Kharth said.

‘Let’s not be dramatic,’ Airex said a little hotly. ‘We will get out. It may… take us some time, that’s all.’

Valance sighed. ‘Let’s do Commander Logan’s plan. Thawn, Airex, continue your analysis and sensor calibrations. We shouldn’t need to get far to re-establish contact with the buoy outside the nebula.’

‘Unless something happened to it,’ Thawn said ominously.

Airex rubbed his temples. ‘I’m getting Beckett up here,’ he said. ‘He’s gone through more of the intel reports on the nebula than anyone this past week. Maybe there’s something in the strategic records we haven’t seen.’

Two hours later, even with Nate Beckett joining the now much-terser analysis team of Airex and Thawn, Endeavour’s bridge crew were not certain they were any closer to the nebula’s edge. Kharth leaned over to Valance and said, ‘Rourke’s going to be insufferable if, after you insisted for days on taking the ship out, you just got lost.’

‘Thank you,’ Valance said coolly. Any further rebuttal was cut short as Airex spoke, his tone more urgent.

‘Contact! There’s a ship out there – no, two. No – six.’

‘Any ID?’ Valance called.

‘No recognisable transponder signal,’ said Logan, hands racing across controls. ‘They’re all pretty small – the largest’s no bigger than our runabouts – and I’m reading mostly Romulan build configurations.’ He sucked his teeth. ‘Doesn’t look like Republic, though. Could be trouble.’

‘Yellow alert,’ Kharth instructed.

‘We’re being hailed, Captain!’ called Kally from the rear. ‘They must have some sort of signal booster; it looks like we can get visual.’

‘On screen.’ The viewscreen shifted to show the cramped, rather run-down and heavily modified cockpit of what had once been an Imperial Romulan scout ship but had clearly been stripped down since. Valance tilted her chin at the sight before her – two Romulans, a human, and an Acamarian.

‘Federation starship, state your business,’ came the Romulan woman’s cool command.

She stood. ‘I’m Captain Valance of the USS Endeavour. We’re here on a survey mission of the nebula, nothing more.’

The Romulan looked at her instruments. ‘From your careening around this past hour, you appear to be lost.’ She shrugged at Valance’s expression. ‘Yes, we were monitoring you.’

‘We mean you no harm,’ said Valance. ‘Our ships are newly assigned to the sector, and as you can clearly tell, the nebula is poorly understood by Starfleet. We’re here to study it.’

‘Study it, I assume, so you can send ships into it. And not just for science.’

‘You seem much more comfortable navigating it.’

‘We are.’

There was a wave at the edge of Valance’s vision, and she gestured for Kally to mute and turned. ‘Mister Beckett?’

His gaze was a little frantic. ‘They might be – listen, it’s just a theory and I don’t know how they’ll respond but -’

‘Do you want to talk to them?’ Valance ushered him up.

Awkwardly, Beckett stepped forward and gestured for Kally to unmute before he turned to the viewscreen. ‘Hi! I’m Lieutenant Beckett. Are you, ah – are you the Khalagu?’

The Romulan woman’s expression did not change. ‘You’ve heard of us.’

‘You are? Great!’ He clapped his hands together. ‘We saved your friend Narien. Well, a different ship did. Starfleet did. He’s at Gateway Station; we’re helping him sell the things he was bringing here. He’s fine, by the way.’

There was a moment as the Khalagu crew leaned in towards each other, murmuring. Then the leader looked back. ‘Saved?’

‘Oh. Three Lost Crows went for him,’ Beckett offered. ‘The USS Tempest pulled him out of trouble and brought him to us. He talked about you. You’ve got more understanding of the nebula than anyone, clearly, and, look – we don’t want pirates breathing down our neck any more than you do. We can help each other.’

‘We have no need for Starfleet help,’ came the cool reply. ‘But it seems you have need of our help. We’ll escort you out of the nebula, Endeavour, and ask you to not stick your noses where they don’t belong again.’

Beckett sucked his teeth. ‘Starfleet doesn’t really go anywhere once we get settled in, you have to know that. We could share information -’

‘Starfleet does, actually, disappear. Your history says as much. You want information on the nebula; we don’t want information on anything. If you helped Narien, we can help you get out of here. But we have nothing to say to each other, otherwise.’ The Romulan shrugged. ‘We will head for the edge of the nebula. You can follow us if you want. Or stay here.’

The signal was cut, and Beckett turned with a wince. ‘Damn! They really don’t like outsiders, do they?’

‘Let’s start,’ Valance said levelly, ‘with getting un-lost. Follow those ships, Lieutenant Lindgren.’

‘Aye, Captain. Bringing us into formation.’

‘Everyone else… keep running scans. Let’s try to salvage at least some information out of this mess,’ Valance sighed, sinking back into the captain’s chair as her bridge crew returned sheepishly to her stations.

‘I don’t know what Rourke’s talking about,’ Kharth muttered as she leaned in. ‘We’re clearly great with people.’