“We were one key press away from ending them all,” Lieutenant Morgan cried as he looked out the window. “And from ending ourselves and everyone else on board!” When the Borg signal stopped, they’d been about to trigger a containment failure in a fully juiced warp core. If the signal had continued just a couple more seconds, it would have been too late, and thousands would have died in a conflagration of their creation.

“Jace, you can’t think that way,” Chief Shafir offered as she came alongside him. When it became clear they couldn’t regain control of the ship, they’d set out to turn the ship into an antimatter bomb that might destroy enough of the fleet that the remaining free people of the Sol system might have a chance at survival. “We had no other choice.”

“We always have a choice!” Lieutenant Morgan snapped back as he turned to face her, his eyes watering and his hands shaking. “We had a choice on Nasera, and we had a choice here! What gives us the right to decide who lives and who dies? We killed our own last night, Ayala! Our own! Ensign Bragg. I shot him dead in Ellis’ quarters. And Crewman Waserman in the corridor on deck six. And Lieutenant Mills, and Chief S’garoth, and… and… and fuck, I don’t even know all their names! I don’t even know their names, Ayala, and I killed them!”

He keeled over, his hands on his knees, as tears of anguish poured down his cheeks, and all Chief Shafir could do is place a hand on his back and rub it gently as he wept. She understood how he felt. She’d been there just a few months earlier in the tunnels beneath Nasera, and while not on the same scale as what they’d almost done here, there’d been no last second miracle either. She’d actually pressed the button that time.

“And for what?!” Lieutenant Morgan pleaded between sobs. “For what, Ayala?! We killed them, and we almost killed so many more… for what? The signal stopped, and it had nothing to do with us! We could have just holed up in Ellis’ quarters until it was over… and they wouldn’t be dead!” The guilt was unbearable. Ensign Bragg would have died either way. He had the unfortunate luck of being in Ellis’ quarters with them when the signal hit. But Waserman, Mills, S’garoth and the others? They might still be alive.

Neither Lieutenant Morgan nor Chief Shafir heard the door open. “No Jace,” Commander Lewis said in an assuring tone as he stepped into the room. “You did your duty with the best information you had at the time.” The Commander drew to a stop right in front of the lieutenant and looked down at the man. “What were the last words Admiral Reyes said to you?”

“I… I can’t even remember,” admitted Lieutenant Morgan as he looked up at his boss. In his current state, he couldn’t recall much of anything except the lives he’d taken and the many more he’d almost ended.

“At any cost. The fate of the Federation may depend on it.”

For a moment, those words hung there in the silence as everyone took them in.

“Admiral Reyes understood the stakes, and she gave the order,” Commander Lewis reminded him. “You, and the Chief here, and Dr. Brooks too, you three did your duty and exactly what was asked of you. Just count it as a most happy miracle that it ended when it did.”

“Forgive me sir,” Lieutenant Morgan admitted. “But it just doesn’t feel that way right now.”

“I know, Jace,” Commander Lewis nodded as placed hand on the operator’s shoulder. “I know.” And it was true. He did know. He’d been in the Lieutenant’s shoes so many times before. Sometimes, there were only bad choices, and still you had to choose. “All I can say is that time brings clarity, and that in the end, you’ll realize you did the right thing today.”

Lieutenant Morgan wasn’t so sure.

As they stood there contemplating the Commander’s words, another figure stepped into the room. Her willowy frame was frail after the mortal and mental trials she’d endured.

“Elyssia,” smiled Chief Shafir as she bolted across the room to hug the young Trill officer. They’d grown close since Nasera, and Chief Shafir understood what had happened aboard Sol Station. The rest of them were old enough that they’d not been affected by the Borg signal, but Ensign Rel had not been as lucky. She’d been assimilated by the signal, and then Dr. Hall had dropped her. “So good to see you back on your feet!”

“So good to be back in control of them,” Ensign Rel smiled meekly, but the brightness had left her eyes, replaced by a vacant sort of nothingness. The Borg voices were gone, but their echoes still haunted her consciousness. They weren’t like the past lives of her symbionts. They were something different altogether.

Sensing Elyssia’s trials were not a topic to explore at the moment, Chief Shafir turned back towards Commander Lewis. “How’s Reyes?”

“She’s a tough cookie,” Commander Lewis replied. “The hit she took, it disintegrated her right ilium and irradiated a half dozen vital organs, but Doc Hall kept her alive until we could get her into surgery. She’s going to make it.” That was better than could be said for most of the valiant officers who’d charged alongside them. The majority had lost their lives in that desperate push aboard Sol Station to prevent the decapitation of the Federation’s civilian leadership.

“That’s good at least…” Chief Shafir nodded. “Did you hear about Dr. Brooks?”

“No,” Commander Lewis frowned. He’d figured the physicist had just gone to bed or something. It had, after all, been a long night. “What happened?” 

“Right after the battle, as we were tending to the wounded, a team from Starfleet Security came up here,” Chief Shafir explained. “Not to help us secure the ship though. Just to collect their prisoner. Dr. Brooks was literally performing a field cricothyroidotomy for a crewman in CICO when those assholes tried to cuff him. I had to turn my phaser on them and demand they wait for him to finish or the crewman would have died.” It had been a tense, and completely unnecessary scene, and she was still furious about it.

“I see…”

“After all he did, it’s bullshit!” Chief Shafir added.  “The Federation turned its back on him, yet he didn’t hesitate to try and save it. I was there with him. He was ready to die for them. And yet, when the battle was over, the first thing those assholes did was throw him back in lockup.”

“Reyes and I will handle it,” Commander Lewis assured her. Sure, they’d sprung Dr. Brooks from lockup under false pretense, but that was on him and Reyes. Dr. Brooks had simply carried himself as a true officer should, placing duty above all else even at great personal expense to himself. That should count for something, Lewis told himself. And he’d make sure it did. 

The team sat down around the coffee table and talked for a while. There were many questions about the Changelings, the Borg, the conspiracy, and the events of Frontier Day, but everything was too fresh to have clarity on those, so they spent the time recounting and deconstructing their own experiences. Commander Lewis typically walled himself away from such discussions, but tonight, he could tell it was what his team needed more than anything. What they’d been through would live with them for some time.

As the long night waned, exhaustion began to set in. “I’m sorry folks, but I’m exhausted,” Ensign Rel apologized as she got up from the couch. “I really need to get some sleep.”

“I’ll walk you back to your room,” Commander Lewis offered as he rose to accompany her.

“Goodnight, you two,” Chief Shafir said. When she’d called Reyes as the fleet fell to the Borg, she’d believed that it was the last time any of them would ever hear each other’s voices, that all of them would be dead by morning. But here they were. She raised her glass in a toast to the pair standing at the doorway. “To surviving to fight another day.”

Commander Lewis nodded silently in acknowledgement and then followed Ensign Rel out into the corridors of the Serenity. They walked slowly and in silence. Commander Lewis never knew what to say in moments like this, but this time, Elyssia Rel was at a loss as well.

When they came upon her quarters, the Ensign stepped inside and looked back. She wasn’t ready to be alone. Not after experiencing the overwhelming presence of the entire Borg Collective only hours earlier. “Would you like to come in, Commander?”

“Not tonight, Elyssia,” Commander Lewis said solemnly. “There’s a whole ship I need to deal with.” Admiral Reyes would be out of commission for at least another week, and Lieutenant Commander Eidran was still in sickbay, so that left the Serenity and her crew in his hands.

He could see the disappointment on her face.

“But before I go,” Commander Lewis said as he leaned in. Their lips met, and he savored the moment. “I thought I’d lost you last night. And I’m so thankful I did not.” He stepped back, out of the doorway, and stared into her piercing blue eyes.

“As am I,” Elyssia smiled lightly as the door slid shut.

For a moment, Commander Lewis just stood there outside her room. The emotions running through his head were unfamiliar to him, but so was everything about this thing with Elyssia. People in his line of work didn’t frequently entertain such intimacies, especially not with a member of their own team, but somehow here he was.

“You know your feelings almost got us killed,” a voice said, drawing him from his thoughts. He turned to see Dr. Hall standing there watching him with her arms folded across her chest. “You hesitated.”

“I know,” Commander Lewis nodded. She was correct, and she had every right to call him on it. When Ensign Rel had been assimilated by the Borg signal, he froze. It was only Dr. Hall’s quick reaction times that had saved them from being on the wrong end of a phaser blast.

“You need to think long and hard about whatever this is that you’ve got going on with her,” Dr. Hall warned. She respected Commander Lewis as an operator enough to not force the issue, but she wanted to make sure he understood. “Handle your shit or next time, we might end up dead on the deck.”

“I know.” 

The pair began to walk down the hallway together.

“How’s the team doing?” Dr. Hall asked.

“I’ve never seen them like this,” Commander Lewis admitted. “Not even after Nasera.”

“On Nasera, we knew the face of the enemy, and we knew what we were walking into. Here, we knew neither. We were betrayed by our own, and we had to kill our own. And in the end, it wasn’t even their fault,” Dr. Hall pointed out. “It’s completely different, and very messy.”

Commander Lewis nodded. It made sense.

“There’s another dimension too,” Dr. Hall added. “We went straight from the Lost Fleet crisis to this without any time to process. Cumulative trauma with rapid recurrence all but guarantees the development of more complex psychopathologies.”

Again, Commander Lewis nodded. He thought back to some of the veterans he knew from the Dominion War and the demons they faced for decades after. Would it be like that here for the survivors of the Lost Fleet and Frontier Day?

“It’s not just the team either,” cautioned Dr. Hall. “It’s the entire ship, and probably much of the fleet. The ramifications will be felt for some time, and they will have to be confronted.”

Commander Lewis sighed. Mental health was not his specialty. He preferred the phaser. It’s why he swore he’d never take a Command role again. “I gather we cannot count on the kid?”

“Lieutenant Commander Eidran?”

Commander Lewis nodded. In most circumstances, the ship’s command staff would be responsible for such things, but in this case, the ship had no assigned Commanding Officer – Admiral Reyes had just commandeered it for this mission – and he had a hunch the Executive Officer wouldn’t be much help either.

“He hasn’t even gotten over the death of his old captain yet, and now all of this has been piled on top,” Dr. Hall confirmed. “I wouldn’t count on him one bit, even after he’s out of sickbay. He’s a mess, embarrassed about getting shot in the back, shaken by the depth of the conspiracy, and broken by the scale of loss.”

“Well, with Reyes still on life support, and Eidran a train wreck,” Commander Lewis concluded. “I guess it’s on the two of us then to mend a broken ship.” That thought was more daunting than everything they’d just been through.