Any sluggishness of awakening faded the moment Thabo Xhakaza felt the turbolift slow. That meant he had only seconds to straighten, steel himself, and look perfectly normal the moment the doors opened and he set foot on the bridge.

At this time of the morning, alpha shift were more interested in settling into their duties than their CO’s arrival. But it still didn’t do to look nervous, and he had to fight to not flinch when Commander Octavian stood and said in her clear voice, ‘Captain on the bridge!’

Commander Xhakaza made himself smile instead of grimace. That was a skill he’d learnt a long time ago, and it always shifted him off the back foot and in control of a situation. He was used to using it when facing enemies, rivals, or irascible superiors. Then Frontier Day had happened. And at the tender age of twenty-nine, he was a starship captain.

Eyes snapped around to him, and Xhakaza waved a hand with the mask of a casual air. ‘As you were,’ he said, advancing on the pair of command chairs in the centre of the Ranger’s bridge. He’d wondered if Octavian had resented him for being younger than her, and her stoicism had not reassured. After these six weeks, he was starting to suspect it was worse: she pitied him. ‘Anything to report?’

She sat only when he did. ‘We’re continuing to monitor the solar flare’s electromagnetic pulse.’ There was a hint of frustration at the edge of her voice.

That had Xhakaza turning in the captain’s chair to his science officer. ‘Etol?’ The young Andorian’s nose was buried in his console. Xhakaza cleared his throat. ‘Etol?’

‘Ensign Vhalis.’ Octavian’s voice was like a whip-crack.

Etol Vhalis snapped upright and ran a frantic hand through his wild white hair as he realised what had happened. ‘Oh! Sorry, Captain. I was just…’

‘Report,’ said Octavian coolly.

‘The electromagnetic pulse is eighteen percent more powerful than we anticipated,’ Vhalis said, eyes eagerly swinging to Xhakaza. ‘I’ve been monitoring it all morning – I think it might grow.’

Xhakaza frowned. ‘Do we need to get more distance?’

‘Nah. We’re plenty safe, sir.’

At Tactical, Ensign Des Jeream gave a low chuckle. ‘Something goes funky on our survey and it’s still not worth breaking a sweat over. How come Endeavour gets to go over every inch of Koperion, the artificial system, and we’re out here monitoring a solar flare?’

‘Because they have more advanced and sophisticated scientific facilities,’ offered Lieutenant Sovak from helm, ‘and approximately three times as many personnel to conduct planetary survey missions.’

‘When you put it like that,’ Xhakaza mused. ‘We’ll have our moment, people. It’s imperative someone does these surveys of systems right on Gateway’s doorstep. I know it’s close to home, but we’re the first Starfleet ship to ever come here.’

‘That is inaccurate,’ said Sovak. ‘A runabout from Starbase 23 monitored this system eight years ago.’

Ensign Hali Drix, at Ops, gave Sovak a flat look. ‘You’re not helping the morale thing, sir.’

Xhakaza had lost control of the bridge’s mood, but he wasn’t sure how to recover it. So for a heartbeat, relief flooded through him when an alert went off at the Science console, and Vhalis spun in his chair to read.

‘Captain, I’m picking up a sudden massive surge in neutrinos and gravitons emanating from just outside the system.’

He’d been a pilot before he was a captain, before he was an XO. Xhakaza looked befuddled. ‘That says “wormhole” to me,’ he said, knowing that couldn’t be right. But what could?

‘Not a wormhole.’ Vhalis’s hands flew across the controls, but at the moment, he sounded more like he knew what it wasn’t than what it was. ‘It’s come out of nowhere, and this – I’m now picking up neutrinos on the long-range sensors…’

Octavian sat forward, looking like she was going to insist he stopped babbling and gave a straight answer, but Xhakaza caught her eye and shook his head. If talking his way through this was what Vhalis needed to get to the answers, then he’d be given that space.

Moments later, the young Andorian’s tone dropped. And when he said, ‘It’s not a wormhole,’ again, this time, he sounded like he did know what it was. ‘It’s just exceptionally like one.’

‘Ensign.’ This time, Octavian did press him.

His eyes snapped up to the command chairs. ‘With these triquantum waves and subspace disruptions,’ he said, voice going hollow, ‘I believe this is a transwarp signature.’

Silence rumbled across the Ranger’s bridge. At length, Commander Xhakaza found his voice. ‘Transwarp,’ he echoed. ‘As in, Borg.’

‘Yes,’ said Vhalis, but he pressed on quickly. ‘Only, it’s not right. This isn’t an aperture. This is a, a rift into transwarp space. A breach. Captain, I think a transwarp conduit has collapsed while something was travelling through it.’

Sovak tilted his head. ‘The gravimetric shear would rip any ship apart.’

‘And scatter it across light-years,’ Octavian breathed.

‘Any normal ship,’ Xhakaza said darkly, and stood. A heartbeat later, a bleep came from Ensign Jeream’s post at Tactical, and he knew the sound. That was his sensors registering a contact. Xhakaza turned and knew the answer by the look on the young man’s face. ‘Ensign?’

‘I’m picking up a Borg signature point-two of a light-year out, in deep space,’ Ensign Jeream confirmed in a low voice.

Ensign Drix looked towards helm again. ‘I really hope you’re right about that shear, sir,’ she told Sovak.

‘I think he is,’ Vhalis said as he ran his own scans. ‘This object is way too small to be even a probe. I’m not picking up any power signatures. This isn’t a Borg ship. This is part of one.’

Octavian got to her feet and stood next to Xhakaza so she could drop her voice as she asked, ‘If a transwarp conduit has collapsed, destroying a Borg ship and depositing some of the wreckage in front of us,’ she breathed, ‘then where’s the rest of it?’

Xhakaza’s chest was tight. ‘Really good question,’ he acknowledged at a normal volume, then turned to Ops. ‘Hali? Get us a line to Gateway Station. And everyone else?’ The air crackled with tension and terror. Mere weeks ago, they had come face to face with Borg. Most of them had been Borg, been his crew, who’d killed their old captain and been elevated to their own ship because of the dead men’s boots they’d emptied. This was a tipping point. It would be easy, so easy, to fall into panic. Doubt. Distrust.

He drew a deep breath. ‘This isn’t like last time. We’re all still here. I trust all of you. And if you don’t trust yourselves? Look around you. Trust each other. We’re the ones who know about this. We’re the ones who can send the warning. And that means we jump on this before anything else happens. Right?’

The nods were a little meek, a little cowed. But then Octavian said, ‘Aye, Captain,’ in that clear tone, and while her voice echoed a little too much in the quiet bridge when it hit the young officers, they stood a little straighter. They could stand fast. Once again.

And Xhakaza hoped the future wouldn’t make a liar of him for saying this wasn’t like last time.